“We need to secure this room,” said Will.
“Take these spikes,” said Charlotte, “and jam them into each door. That should keep the doors shut.”
“Well,” she added, “unless they come in with a battering ram.”
“They did once,” said Will.
Will and Sam sparred--Sam using her new sword--after they set up “camp” inside the abandoned castle. Will was clearly skilled at swordplay, and he was teaching Sam different ways to block. He had her moving slowly through each move.
“Yes,” said Will, “like that. Now, let’s go through it again, just a little faster.”
“This is silly,” said Sam, moving in slow motion, “I feel like I’m dancing.”
“Good,” said Will, “because that’s what you’re doing. It’s just like a dance, it has all the moves, you just don’t know what your partner is going to do.”
“I always know what my partner is going to do,” said Sam.
Gralen and Charlotte pored through the scrolls and papers they’d found, Gralen scribbling methodically into his own notebook as they talked.
“The way I see it,” said Charlotte, “there are three things we can do tomorrow. Explore the dungeon, explore the castle, or explore that tunnel we found.”
“The only useful things we’ve found have been in the dungeon,” said Gralen.
“The worst creatures too,” said Charlotte. “I want to try to find the backside of the clock. Just to see how they did it.”
“But we can’t take the clock back,” said Gralen.
“You got your knowledge, I want mine,” she replied.
“Fair enough,” said Gralen.
He extinguished the lantern.
“It’s dark,” said Will.
“Would you rather be outside?” asked Sam.
“Maybe,” said Will.
“Quiet!” whispered Charlotte. “Look up! Look at the stars!”
The dome above their heads was now a dark, starry sky. Each of the constellations of the zodiac shone in a band around the edges of the ceiling. They could also, in the still of the night, now hear very faintly the ticking of the great clock on the other side of the ceiling.
The floor was hard and cold despite their blankets, and, tired as they were, they drifted fitfully off to sleep one by one. Sometime in the night Charlotte awoke from a dream of being locked in a room with someone else trying to get in. In the twilight between sleeping and waking, she quickly realized that the dream was real. The bar across the main doors was rattling. More than rattling, it was cracking. Someone--or something--was trying to get in and doing a good job of it.
“Wake up!” she hissed, pushing Sam awake, and then kicking at Will and Gralen. “Wake up!”
Now all of the doors were rattling, and loudly.
“What the hell’s out there?”
They all rushed to dress and arm themselves, Will and Sam putting on their armor and drawing their swords.
“Jesus,” said Gralen, “what can we do?”
“We leave,” said Will. “There are some places up the stairs that we can more easily lock ourselves into--and more easily get out of if we need to.”
“Grab everything,” he added. “We may not be coming back.”
They rushed, as well as they could lugging their supplies, up the grand staircase in the dark, and moved out to the battlement where the moon lit the sky and the ground. They dropped their things and looked out over the wall and to the outer wall. The full moon was high above their heads, and Aquarius bore his water above the horizon.
Will leaned over the edge of the parapet.
“There’s something,” he said, “but I can’t really see it. It might be goblins, or it might be human.”
“Or anything in between,” added Sam.
“Yeah,” said Will. “Or it could just be animals.”
“Don’t you see something on the far walls?” asked Gralen.
|
Charlotte, as a Half-Elf, has night vision. |
“They’re climbing across,” said Charlotte. “They must be swimming across the moat.”
“That’s disgusting,” said Sam. “That thing’s full of dead people.”
“Dead people and dead goblins,” said Will. “Maybe goblins don’t care about dead things in their nightly swim. Come on, let’s find a place to hide for the night.”
“The tower?” asked Gralen.
“Preferably some place we can get away if we have to,” said Will.
“What about the place with the secret tunnel?” asked Sam.
“Perfect.”
Charlotte glanced at the clock as they left.
“We may not be coming back after all,” she said softly.
They ran through the southwest tower and out its other door into the southeast tower, and then down the stairs to that tower’s first floor.
“Block that door that leads outside,” said Will to Sam. “I’ll go block the doors in the larger room. That will give us a lot of extra time if they try to break through those to get in here.”
“Why don’t we just leave right now?” asked Charlotte.
“I agree,” said Will. “We are going to leave right now. But we don’t know where the tunnel leads; it might not lead anywhere. We may have to return. And anything we can do to slow them down helps us.”
|
The Guide took pity on Sam, and let her player make a health roll to regain a survival point, even though the night’s rest was interrupted. On a roll of 5, Sam gains another point, bringing her to four survival points. Gralen fails his roll, and does not regain a point; he remains at four survival points. |
“Gralen!” she cried. “The sword! Look at your sword!”
“I haven’t got a--” said Gralen, and stopped when he saw the broken sword he’d tied to his belt. It now was full: a glowing green blade extended from the hilt. Gralen pulled it out from his belt, and it threw an eerie green glow over the tower room.
The door to the tower slammed open and a thing rushed in, a creature not of flesh but of bone, half the height of any of the four heroes, rounded skull with small fangs sitting on a skeletal body draped in the tattered remains of armor. Will swung his sword around, shattering the tiny skeleton’s skull. Faceless, it thrust at Will with its own rusty sword, but Will parried, and smashed again at the skeleton. This time he shattered the skeleton’s ribs and backbone, and it fell to the ground.
A dry stench burst in upon their senses as the small creatures of bone and straggly hair, dirty and mossy, poured through the doorway. Some were clad in animal skins, some with nothing, and some dripping with watery weeds.
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He made an Agility roll to catch it. |
“Catch this!” Gralen called to Will, and tossed the sword. Will sheathed his own sword and grabbed the glowing one out of the air by the hilt.
Charlotte and Sam had already pushed the door open and were rushing down.
“Come on!” they cried, and Gralen followed, with Will rushing after him.
Will tried to slam the trap door shut as soon as he was through, but a skeleton already had its arm in. Will pushed with all his strength and the bony hand fell twitching to the dirt stairs, bouncing down to the floor.
The door was shut, but shook with a heavy, powerful pounding.
“I have an idea,” said Sam.
“Run like hell?” asked Gralen.
“Remember the trap?” she replied. “We can trigger the trap right on top of these things. Then we can run like hell.”
The pounding continued, and the trap door began to give way.
“I love this idea,” said Gralen. “Do you love this idea, Will?”
“It’s a beautiful idea, Gralen,” said Will.
“All right,” Sam said, “let’s set us up the trap!”
Sam pushed them down the hallway, measuring out a coil of rope as she went.
“Come on!” she cried.
They crossed the trap by leaping across, ducking the ceiling as they leapt. Sam went first, and then Gralen, then Charlotte. Will remained at the trap door, blocking it shut. Sam used some broken beams to quickly constructed a makeshift platform at the edge of the trap. She tied the rope around one of the legs, and carefully placed a large rock on top. “It’s got to be big,” she said.
“Will, get the hell over here!” she cried, and he stopped blocking the door and ran across the trapped floor.
“Watch your foot, big guy!” Gralen yelled to Will as he leapt across the narrow and low hall.
“We need to get as far away as we can before we pull that rope,” said Sam.
They raced down the hallway and around a slight curve and came smack up against a door. Gralen tried to open it.
“It’s locked.”
“We’re never going to get the door unlocked in time,” said Charlotte.
Sam cranked her crossbow up. Will grabbed it away from her.
“We can’t fight our way back through them,” he cried. “Unlock the goddamn door! And yell when you’re done.”
Will ran back out the door and leapt to the other side of the trap. Outside the range of Gralen’s lantern, the glowing sword provided an eerie green light. He fired his own crossbow up into one of the holes in the rapidly failing trap door, hung it by his back, and then aimed Sam’s at the door.
He fired another crossbow bolt into the door and reloaded, but the creatures burst through and he tossed Sam’s crossbow down well behind him. The rune-covered sword glowed blue as he raised it in an arc trying to slice the skeleton coming through the door.
“I will not die,” he chanted in a whisper, “until I have completed the task I have set for myself.”
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If they were using spears, they are small enough that two could attack him at once. |
The tunnel was cramped and damp, which was to Will’s advantage. Only one skeleton could attack him at a time, as long as he backed up slightly when one fell through. The glowing sword seemed to want to guide him towards fighting, and he wasn’t sure he trusted that. While he was sorting this out, a skeleton’s rusty sword nearly poked right through his armor. The thing tried again, and he parried it, the glowing blade slicing right through the skeleton’s spine. It clattered to the ground, but that only left room for another one to step down. It tried to skewer Will with its aged weapon, but Will flipped it out of the skeletons bony hands and sliced the skeleton in half like its predecessor.
And still another one fell through.
“Hurry up guys, these things just keep on coming!” he cried back at the others.
Sam was fitting her tools to the door’s lock about the same time Will destroyed the first goblin skeleton.
“Get back,” Sam told them. “I need room to work.”
Gralen and Charlotte stepped back up the tunnel so they could see Will fighting, Gralen readying his magical arrows. When Will killed his second skeleton, Gralen muttered some words that Charlotte didn’t recognize, and a tiny bolt of red flame sped from his left hand towards the end of the hallway. It zipped past Will and exploded into the tattered skeleton that had taken the previous skeleton’s place. Will slammed down with the glowing blade and sliced the skeleton’s wobbling, grinning skull in half, and it clattered to the ground twitching.
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On Sam’s first attempt to pick the lock, Sarah rolled an 18--she needed a ten or less. On her second attempt, she rolled a 19, and with a penalty of 2 that brought it to 21. Things are not looking good for picking the lock at this point. |
Sam was cursing and banging on the door as much as she was trying to pick its lock.
Will parried a blow from the tattered thing trying to hit him, and it parried his. A second time, and he almost got through its guard, and as it raised its sword for its own attack, Gralen fired a second magic arrow, which exploded against the creature’s skull in a burst of light. It fell to the ground.
|
It took her four attempts to pick the lock--and if she hadn’t successfully picked it the fourth time, she probably would never have, what with the penalty of 2 for every successive attempt. Her fourth roll was a four, with a penalty of six making it just barely at the ten or less she needed. Meanwhile, Will spent six rounds against the skeletons (and is down by four survival points). And then he had to make an Agility roll to successfully jump over the trap she made. |
“We’re ready!” cried Sam. “Get your ass over here now!”
The remains around Will were looking like another battlefield, with the skeletons of four goblins lying dead--a second time--around him. Another gleaming-eyed thing stepped jerkily into view. He sliced the glowing sword down across it, and it also crumpled to the ground. And then he turned and ran. The first skeleton tripped over the pile of bones that Will’s fighting prowess had created, and then picked itself up and followed after him, other goblin skeletons following behind. Will jumped over the makeshift trap that Sam had created and when he was a good five paces beyond it, she pulled on the rope.
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Here she had to roll vs. her “Locks & Traps” to see if she did this right, although in this case it was a pretty simple trap and she had a bonus of 4 to the roll. |
The piece of wall thudded onto the ground. They held their breath, and watched, until Sam yelled “move, goddammit!” and they turned and ran just as the roof caved in above the bony goblins giving chase. They ran back around the corner and through the now open door, further into the darkness.