T A C: Session 05 -- 'Between a Rock & a Stone-face' -- Report
General Summary
Day 1
A fair arrival. Not much to say about this new city called Alone. It’s a pleasant place. I say that with scorn. What are we here for? There’s nothing to do.
Day 2
Sleep is abundant. We are all well-rested after time to sleep and then bed. The day is long. Night is longer. Around a quarter past the eleventh hour of evening, Grand Master Praetor takes us outside. It had to happen eventually. He goes about the city. Inspection. I doubt he learns much he doesn’t already remember. What a place. He winds up at a shuttered lender’s building. Closed until daybreak. Why would anybody be about business after sunset? A person could get tired at such a late hour, What of supper and bed? Best not to tempt some risky behaviour in the people that have put their coin in the bank! They might spend coin after dark! The idea is too much to think on without the shivers overwhelming me.
The Grand Master seems comfortable with the conservative nature of the city. We can do nothing to convince him to enter the bank to see if someone can be convinced to open it up for him. He tells us to be ready the next day to return here. A narrow escape. If things had gone differently, I might have had to use my skills for some reason. Relief washes over me and I imagine, the rest of the Cornerstone.
Day 3
At least it rains a little this morning. A change is as good as... a change. The rain stops as we arrive at the bank. The day has begun some minutes before we arrive. The bank’s iron doors are open when we get there. There must be farms somewhere nearby the city. Why else would it open so early? A bank that rises and sets with the sun. I suggest to the others that we should call it the ‘Sunny Bank’. Nobody laughs. Neither do I.
Hours drag by with no sign or message from the Grand Master. Commander Odasse decides we shall wait here while she goes to find the Grand Master. Scouts being scouts, they head off to have a look around. I tell them not to get too far away, as something – anything at all, please – might happen.
The commander returns with the Grand Master. We go inside. Grand Master Praetor puts down the cordon and the banker learns to wait until it’s cleared. There’s talk of accessing the turreted walls as a suitable place for the Quad. It goes alright. The bank will get papers made-up to rent us the space. Once in, who’s to remove us?
The rest of the day is uneventful. Oh, wait. I say that but I almost neglect to mention I emptied my bladder four times afterward, before more rest.
Day 4
Alone. What a perfect name for it. Except we’re here. I would dearly love to make the city’s name even more prophetic by leaving.
In the afternoon, the commander arrives with a sense of purpose to her. She looks through our supplies. Finds a few things that she seems to want: fifty foot of climbing cord, a regulated lantern, a grapple, an expanding boat and a back pack to put these in. She has gained our interest by this point. We cluster around offering helpful advice. “Put the boat in first as it’s heavy.” “The hook should have some wax on the tips. Why hasn’t the wax been replaced?” “Lantern needs oil. I have some here.” These comments are left to float about. Instead of acknowledging them, the commander tells us the Grand Master means to head below the city. He has chosen us to go down there with him. PAROLED!
We set off for an entrance. This is known to the newcomer, Scilvas. It is more or less obvious he’s joined the Armory. Good for us, bad for the Armory. Scilvas is a typical caster. You’d think being among warriors a caster would be using his incredible intelligence to keep his fekking mouth closed most of the time. Not in my experience and definitely not today. Scilvas is like a fatty meal’s after-effects, loud and frequently so. He leads us, the Grand Master, the Grand Vexeir and Grippe to the museum. We enter it. He finds a place within where a glyph is commanded to open and a phantasmic drawbridge is summoned. This lowers as such bridges do but in this case the lowering is into nothingness. Well, until it lowers to the distant ground below. It must have been several hundreds of feet down. Luminous chains hold whatever weight the translucent drawbridge might have. Scilvas leads on, descending the ramp the bridge has become. We follow. If he’s happy to go upon it, why shouldn’t we be?
At the bottom and safely on the ground, the drawbridge raises by some unknown command. Scilvas doesn’t do this, I am sure. We stand on a riverbank. The river is called the Abraxas. Scilvas tells us this to reassure everyone that he knows something of the cavern. The river could be called the Stream of Rivulet Creek Meander, for all I care. A river, in a cavern, under Alone, the thrill of it makes my head wobble.
We see a boat. It plies the river by force of the humans rowing it. Good to see regular people at regular work. I wouldn’t want there to be anything that needs my skills to be useful. The Grand Master seems pleased to be here, however, and makes pains to catch the boat’s attention. This is achieved and I feel a huge increase in my power as a result. Just as well as the boat is soon engaged to take us across the river. A staggering distance of some four hundred feet. I lie to impress. It’s more along the lines of three hundred and fifty feet. Without my newfound power, I might have succumbed to the trials on the river; there is the wetness of it, the flow is tremendously ordinary and the time it takes is at least twenty minutes of hard duress of sitting in the boat. We land to examine a strange chantried statue. It is told to us that its name is, The Questioner. The red-metaled statue resembles a winged lion. Scilvas explains that someone wishing to learn something must give an answer to this statue and it will provide the question that led to the answer. Brilliant! What could be more useful? The creator – I have no doubt he’s a caster -- of this lump of metal should be condemned commended. I can think of several choice answers to ask. How about, ‘The worst statue I’ve seen today.’ or ‘The cavern below Alone’ or my favourite, ‘Get fekked as usual.’ Tremendous answers all, but the Grand Master doesn’t ask for suggestions.
We leave The Questioner to its island in the river and get to the opposite bank. There are workers here. They toil to unload the boats that we are told move along the river constantly. Trade between the inhabitants of the cavern is small but important. The workers are humans. They tell us that they are indentured slaves. Working their way to freeing themselves, these people seem pretty pathetic. Once they gain their freedom they will be free to live in the cavern. Doing what precisely isn’t mentioned. Slaves to the other types that live down here seems as good as these humans will ever manage really. I’m looking forward to seeing these other s who manage to keep men as slaves without so much as a single warden. We meet them soon enough as we are told to go to the ‘High & Low Hostel. This is a place where we can expect more comfort than anywhere else in the cavern. It’s called the ‘High & Low but most call it ‘Hell’ due to its abbreviation of ‘H&L’. Why not? The place sounds dreary enough to be in the city above us and I can think of nothing worse than being there, so Hell it is.
Travel for hours takes us to within eye-distance of the hostel. It is more and less than I expected. It is seven levels of a canvas and wood building. Like a huge, wheel-less wagon abandoned in the middle of a plain. No thieving skill needed to open this hostel’s door. It hasn’t got any. The building’s front wall is open to the sky. I don’t picture the place lasting any length of time if rain were an issue here. It must not rain at all in the cavern, which as I write it, seems the-fekall-obvious. So seven floors all missing one wall and the other three walls made of sail-canvas. Essentially, the place is a many decked barge, covered in a tent. Amazing that being a place that provides drinks as well as lodging, that it hasn’t burned down before this day… Amazing and sad.
We are told we needn’t experience the delights of the place by Grand Master Praetor. We can instead, spend our next hour or two wandering purposefully around the ramshackle tents of the human slaves out the back of the hostel..... It is for such High Adventure that I joined the Quad. Praise be to the Spider God that I have chosen this career.! I spend some time looking into the hostel. There are some interesting types within on view. On the seven floors, there are strange variants on races the Quad have dealt with for years in Sainted Ark. There are goblin-types, ogre-types, homunculus-types, elves and dwarves. All something like and yet oddly just off those I am familiar with. Not obviously, but still the differences were there to be seen. All in all, quite the zoo.
When we finally get inside and get up the seven levels... we are told to turn around and head back downstairs…
We are now being led along the cobbled roads of this wonderful place by a dragon of tiny proportions. I once saw a caster with a similar sort of creature as a familiar. This differs in that it is walking on its hind legs, probably because it has no wings to fly with. It speaks in a lower voice than I expect. It talks with a lower intelligence than I expect. It does seem to know where it’s going, which I don’t expect. One out of three, one out of three... It is charged with taking us to the land of the Diminished. To this end, Vat – that’s the dragonic’s name – says we must go past his land as well. His peoples’ land is the “Ruined Nation of Ko’Bolds”, he announces. Nation? Who would allow Kobolds to form a country? I can just imagine it. What a terrific country to invest in, or to raise a family! Kobolds are small but not dragon-like, as far as I know. They’re normally just smaller than smallish goblins. What a place this place is. Alone begins to have a lot to answer for. Its isolation may be the best thing for all concerned.
We get to a fork in the paving stone road. The road has no milestones or markers, no name at all. Planning for this cavern is minimal and subtly so. Someone, I’m not sure who, calls the cavern a ‘city’. Names it, ‘Legions’. Legions. Legions, as in armies? There’s only these humanoid-types and the enslaved men. What legions? It’s not my place to argue the merits of the cavern’s name. It’s as excellent a name as it deserves.
The fork to the left leads to our desired destination. We go right. This is because the kobold tells us that the right-hand road leads to a thing called the, Realmclock. The Grand Master chooses time over a waste of time… or does he? We get not much further and our brave guide decides to let us venture on to the towering clock on our own. The Grand Master, the Grand Vexeir lead us. Once we reach the plateau’s base, the commander and the Grand Vexeir combine their skills to get us up to the tower’s base above. Perfectly good ramps that lie only some medium distance away, two of them mind you, go begging. No serious injuries are won in this climb so future members of the Order will not need to question the actions of all concerned.
The Realmclock remains a mystery to us. Not for any reason other than there is a gargoyle in keeping of it. He’s as surly and ill-mannered as I feel. The Order moves on from any thoughts of entering the clock tower. It will keep, as here time seems to stand still enough to return to it whenever we desire. More pressing in interest is the revelation that there is a place called the great stair, the last terrace, or some such title. This fires the imagination of the Grand Master and his advisor and so we set to walking the many miles to find it. The caster swears it lies at the head of the valley, the clock tower sits within. A decent day’s march should see us reach a stairway. What an accomplishment that will be. It is for excellent doings like this that legends were first created. We make good time and manage to find the stairs we seek. Once seen, it is clear that we would have had to have been simple to miss them. They rise up a tall mountain peak, too high to actually make out their end. It is decided we should take a half-measure of sleep. Grippe of the Armory needs to take a natural break. He leaves for some privacy. The next thing, the Grand Vexeir is off like a racing hound after some rodent. There are loud crashes that shatter the peace of the valley. Six thundering bangs occur, each close upon the last, except the first and last, so to speak. When we reach where the Vexeir and Grippe are, there is evidence of some kind of weapon being used. A rod of might or some firearm, I estimate. There are two broken gargoyles lying close together. One male, one female. Only a small hole in his chest and a narrow slit in his shoulder reveal any sign of death to the male. The female differs. She is missing most of her body from hip to stomach. The part that’s missing is simply, gonne – see what I did there? Grippe seems to have been in a bad spot before the Grand Vexeir arrived, at least his embarrassed thanks seems to indicate this.
We return to the site where we meant to rest. There the caster is fast asleep. He has actually slept through the fight, including the thundering weapon’s noise. With this fellow in the Quad how can we fail? Leaders lead by example, so we follow the caster’s lead and get some rest.
Day 5
We take to the staircase. Step after step. Only something like twelve thousand steps I calculate. My love for the Quad must be measured against my love for my quads. It’s a close combat. Luckily, we stop at each of the several waypoint guard-posts that occur along the stairs’ route. Most of these, except the first set, have gnollish soldiers as watchmen. Hyena-men, I call them. Why they’re allowed to watch the stair, I have no fekking clue. Someone in charge must have a terribly dry sense of humour. Gnolls are bad enough at the best of times. The smell alone is sufficient to make most lose their last meal. Confine them to a narrow staircase halfway to the sky? Well, that’s just plain mean-spirited. The gnolls seemed to be serious about their assigned role. They asked questions just like real guards would. For a half a moment, I actually believed they meant to guard the place. That soon passed and their true nature of not caring for much was revealed. Gnolls, wherever they may be, Old Realm or New, never change it seems.
Leaving the last gnolls behind brought us to the end of the stairs. They left the mountain’s support and climbed on into the sky. They didn’t hang there though. Instead they joined at their ending a bit of rock that hung in the sky. The stairs in-between spanned the mountain and this rock like an angled bridge. The rock at the end was large. Grand Master Praetor called it an island a couple of times. I guess I can see why. It was covered in deep growth. Creepers, vines and trees all combined to make our forward progress pretty hard going. We managed to get into a small clearing after about an hour’s paces. There seemed to be sounds of activity from a couple of places beyond sight on the ‘island’. Busy sounds. Like people setting up for a stay. Better to stay up here, away from the wonders below... We paused to catch our breath.
A grey woman appeared in our clearing. She was a caster. Her other-worldliness was pretty attractive. I am not immune to women who know their strengths and men’s weaknesses. She didn’t really want to be delayed. Spoke to the Grands briefly and moved on. She was a ‘Thale’ according to the Grand Vexeir. This is the first real proof that the Vexeir knows more than some. Up until now, he’s only managed to impress me with his ability to always find alcohol. A useful although limited skill and with the way he consumes it, without pouring out a measure for absent friends or a toast to the gods, I am not sure he will get to a decent age.
Next, a figure emerged from the undergrowth despite the scouts having been sent out to prevent any surprises. That’s always a bad sign, in my book – and this is my book. I took the figure to be male. Six and half in feet. Covered in a red caster’s robes and these covered in script. The script was like a geometric pattern. Precise and measured to be symmetric beyond the necessary. The more I looked at it, the more I thought I might see. Then I’d see a bit more. It was quite mesmerizing. Behind the male, as in projected behind him were yet more lines of geometry. Glyphs? Maybe. They were strangely normal or normal in the oddness. I make no sense now and made none of these lines then. He introduced the idea that he was here to prepare us to receive his mistress, a Princess of Pandemonia. Good to his dubious word, she appeared in the undergrowth. A sylph-like female, barely taller than the shrubs. Her hair was elvish-coloured. Her shoulders bare. Little else could be seen of her. The Grands greeted her, fairly. She accepted these honours, gracefully. Then she stepped into the clearing and my eyes watered. Not tears. Watered from empathy. Her lower limbs were not more than mechanisms of a chantried type. She had little flesh there at all. It was most replaced by strangely organic-shaped fabrications of some kind. The material was moulded and like a hardened fluid. She gave little in the way of information. I supposed that she simply wanted us to give her the eyeing. I granted her my best. She left as she had come but not before asking for and receiving permission to caste.
We felt nothing. Saw nothing. Grippe discovered that we were stuck inside a clear ball of force. Trapped like humans below Alone. I think that’s pretty much correct. We sat for a time after this. Stuck as we were, there seemed little point in trying to go anywhere. Half an hour went by. I was looking right at the Vexeir when he vanished and then walked into the clearing from a point some twenty feet from where he had been sitting. A casting I assume. Just before his return I thought I heard a hunting horn sound. The others said nothing of it, so I did the same. The Grand Master might have noticed as he seemed altogether most alert and ‘jovial’ with the Vexeir in the moments after his return. Something went on. I am not to know I suppose…
Like any rotten story, the best is saved ‘til last. This is as rotten a story as any. Here’s the last for you. The next fellow and the last to appear, named himself, Cant of the Confederacy. He was covered in the Black. Head to heel, he wore things that were many shades and all the same. He had spiked horns. Not on a helmet, on his forehead. He wore some valuable looking gear; twick-tahs, talismans, pendants and the like. We had met the Thale, the Pandemonian and there was a suspicious, disappearing Vexeir and now this Confederate. His was the best and strangest speech. He was adamantly odd. Both commanding and subservient. The others had been chaotic, I guess but this one was more like what I have come to expect. He threatened and flattered equally. Sometimes in the same breath, as if he didn’t know his own mind. Perhaps he did and this was why he was so apt for Chaos. He asked after a slayer. To quote him rightly, he asked for the slayer. The slayer meant the one who had killed someone named Deignghaul. This Cant called him his former leader. Cant also addressed these words primarily at the Grand Master. Cant forcefully implied that Grand Master Praetor must know the slayer as the Grand Master had been the anchor – whatever that means. Cant referenced this a couple of times and made it clear that he knew more than he let on. Cant also said one other thing of importance:
