Into the Darkness
April 22, 2009
Nursing my usual Wednesday morning gaming-group hangover (sadly, liquor is no longer necessary to wreck myself, merely staying out late is enough to thrash me pretty good these days), I find myself wanting to return to chronicling the adventures of our nerdy little band. For those of you who are interested, but don’t remember the beginning of our latest story, I posted about it here.
A quick recap for the link-loathing. Our heroes (Trellan the suave traveling musician and petty conjurer, Erasthmus the bloody-handed wanderer whose lineage bears an otherworldly taint, and Kaerdin, a gnome on the run from his own nefarious family ties), having come to Cauldron, a city in the caldera of a dormant volcano, for their own reasons, find themselves involved in the search for some children who disappeared from the local orphanage. Their investigations lead them to the shop of Keygan Ghelve, the town’s only locksmith of note. While there, they sense that Ghelve is hiding something, and responding to furtive signals on his part, they surprise a strange, chameleon-skinned man in his back room, and subdue him.
Our second episode, titled “Into the Darkness” picked up with their interrogation of the locksmith and their captive. Ghelve, it turns out, had been coerced and intimidated by a band of kidnappers into providing them with skeleton keys for the locks he had made, and letting them use his shop as a means of coming and going between their underground lair and the city at large. Ghelve’s shop, it seems was built over an entrance to the old gnomish enclave of Jzadirune (that was murder to say during our gaming sessions).
Decades ago, the gnomish artisans and magicians of Jzadirune crafted wondrous devices of clockwork and magic in their workshops below the Cauldron. Half a century ago, however, their work became infected with a strange magical plague. After it claimed the lives of several gnomes, the survivors abandoned Jzadirune and the entrances had been built over or forgotten. It was into this mysterious ruin that the children had apparently been taken.
This brought us to one of the seminal moments in any chronicle, the moment when a handful of individuals, distinguished perhaps by certain unusual abilities or backgrounds, face a staircase leading down into darkness. In that darkness lurk unknown dangers which threaten the lighted world above. When the characters decide to descend that stairway, they become heroes. See Joseph Campbell for more about “the mouth of the cave” in mythology.
Anyhow, our heroes decided to descend into the ruins of Jzadirune. Within its walls they encountered remnants of strange magic, and very little was as it seemed. At one point they stepped into what appeared to be a sunny forest glade -in the middle of an underground complex. They encountered a fountain whose waters were illusory, a fact taken advantage of my a family of spiders, each the size of a spaniel, who attempted to prey upon they unwary. In another room, stepping into the middle of it caused you to disappear from sight – though the novelty of this was somewhat overshadowed by the fact that one of the gnomes’ clockwork automata, gone rogue in their long absence, was trying to pulverize the heroes at the time. Finally, they managed to corner another of the mysterious kidnappers, and used the enchantments at their command (Trellan is a worker of small magics, and Erasthmus has certain mystic abilities as well) to beguile him. Their new “friend” willingly told them that the kidnappers were themselves mere agents for a slave ring based even further below, in the ruins of an old dwarven stronghold known as the Malachite Fortress. After guiding them to an elevator (chains and winches – after all, this is fantasy) that descended to the fortress, their ensorceled guide found himself bound and quickly knocked unconscious.
Unwilling to descend in the elevator whilst leaving Jzadirune in the hands of dangerous kidnappers, our brave little band explored the ruins a bit further, ultimately walking into a murderous ambush by the leader of the kidnappers that nearly claimed both Trellan and Erasthmus’ lives. Fortunately, the trio was able to rally and dispatch the villain, and we ended the night on a triumphant note.
