We rest and heal while sitting in an enclosed corridor made of blocks of stone. Then Agace notices that the stone he's sitting on is slightly lower than the others around it. Latke checks around, and finds a couple more different-looking blocks, one in the ground ahead and one in the wall. She presses the one in the wall, and Agace gets off the one he was sitting on.

Six years later, the trap goes off.

Yes, you heard right. Six years.

It's been six years since our last session. In the interim, most everyone lost their character sheets, so we had to remake our characters. Sine and Agace are essentially the same as before. Latke decided she didn't like her name and is now Revi, short for Revka Vicasca (I think) -- a more appropriate name for a wizard, and far less reminiscent of potato pancakes. And Ritha is now a swordmaster instead of a weaponsmith.

Because it's been a while since the last session, we have trouble remembering each other's names. "Agnes? Angus? Does your character have a sense of humour?"

We evade traps, fail to evade some other traps, and occasionally spend a great deal of time and effort evading traps that aren't even there. Once, we come across some words in elvish carved into an archway. Great, now we can learn what's up with this pyramid! Or maybe we could, if the elf could actually read her own language. "All the exciting stuff is written in dwarf!" Ritha says in her own defense.

At the end of the hall is a large oval room, and on the other side of the room are seven doors or hallways. We pick the most normal-looking one and travel down it for an hour. Finally the GM takes pity on us, and tells us we have the option of disbelieving things if we suspect they're illusory. So we finally get out of the twenty-yard-long hall.

That's not the only illusion we find we've dispelled. Now there are nine hallways to choose from. Great. Just what we needed. More hallways.

Sine picks one at random, and we all troop down to a watery room guarded by two statues of important-looking people, one human, one looking like an angry sea god. We find we can't enter the room until we bow to a statue (we pick the human one as he looks less likely to take a trident to us on a whim), but then we gain access to a magical maze. None of us gets very far, but we all gain some healing and a golden glow; Ritha, who travels the farthest, also gains a sense of knowledge. She's not sure exactly what she knows, but she has a sense of knowledge nonetheless. Further attempts at the maze generally lead to pain instead of healing, and we decide to come back another time when we are more powerful, or more bored.

The next one we pick is a solid door partially hidden by illusion. Revi unlocks it (after being promised pie), and we go through to find a hallway with a loose flagstone on the floor and an unobtrusive passage leading straight up. Sine and Revi go up, and find a panel with pictographs and a keyhole roughly the size of a spellcaster's wand. It seems to be a horror trap, to distract any horror that might come here and see it. Meanwhile Ritha explores the loose flagstone, finds a smooth stone slide underneath, and gets Agace to lower her down on a rope. There is water below, in what seems to be an underwater passage. Revi could cast an underwater-breathing spell on us, but instead she just wants to go down the hallway. She zooms along, remembers at the last moment to check with her astral sight, and stops JUST in time to avoid running into a web of powerful magical traps. Maybe another time, when we're in the mood for being incinerated.

Another hallway leads up, and... outside, to a small swamp on a ledge. We look back and see a wall blocking the hallway. Funny, we don't remember walking through a wall. Ritha immediately looks for edible plants in the swamp, and everyone rolls their eyes. We can't disbelieve the wall, though we know it's an illusion, but Agace just walks backwards through it and everyone else follows his lead.

Sine opens the next door, and a bunch of spears shoot out. Luckily, she'd figured it would be trapped and stood off to the side, or else she'd have been skewered. Agace breaks off the ends of the spears and Ritha takes two. Agace and Sine walk boldly into the hall, and immediately fall into a pit trap. Fifty feet down. Onto spikes. Luckily the sheer number of bones down there helps cushion the fall. The trapdoor starts to swing shut, but Ritha jams it open with her spear stubs... easy come easy go. Sine uses her fireblood to heal most of the damage she took, then looks through the bones for loot. Agace just groans and barely manages to get himself off the spikes. Sine climbs out using a rope, but it will be a lot trickier getting Agace out, since he's heavier than all the rest of us combined. Should we tie the rope to the doorknob...? Ritha remembers Revi's "sticking" spell and suggests sticking the rope to the floor; amazingly enough, this works. We spend a few hours in the oval room resting and recovering (and "heating food"; Revi wants her meat shields to be in top condition), before going back to explore.

Beyond the pit trap are yet more traps and a locked door. Revi picks it, thinks "Too easy", and asks "Agnes" to open it. "No." Sine takes the risk and opens the door to see a room full of mausoleums and loot. And shambling creatures. Agace suggests shutting the door. Revi suggests trying out her flirting skill. We debate setting them on fire. Are they cadaver men? Ritha racks her brains and announces that cadaver men go berserk if hurt badly enough. We remember just in time to actually close the door, and the shamblers bump into it repeatedly. Ritha suggests letting them into the hall so we can lead them into the pit trap, but to her great disappointment they seem to be unable to leave the room. Revi casts "icy surface" and we have a laugh watching the shamblers slip and tumble around, but it doesn't seem quite as funny when we start slipping as well. Finally Revi does a quick fly-through of the room, picking up some little silver figurines. Since she doesn't spot any further exits, it doesn't seem to be worth the trouble of hacking our way through the shamblers, so we go back and pick another hallway.

This time we retrace our steps to the wet room with the statues. We bow to the sea god statue this time, and an underwater room appears. Someone mentions magically waterproof boots, and we debate making a suit out of them (because just buying a magically waterproof suit would be too obvious). Revi casts "gills" and we plunge into the underwater room to find another maze. Instead of healing us and giving us knowledge, this maze makes us feel confusion and covers us with green fire. This time, Revi gets farther than anyone else, and strains and uses up her accumulated karma to get all the way to the end... and finds herself transported to a beach. Merpeople beckon her to a palace and she is taken to the living version of the sea-god statue, who tells her she's crossed the Lesser Pattern and proved herself worthy, so will she try to cross the Greater Pattern? She answers, "Yes!"

This greater maze feels much more intimidating, but Revi crosses it thanks to ridiculous amounts of luck. At the end, she binds herself to the Greater Pattern of Chaos, and is suffused with green fire. Just what she always wanted! The merpeople respected her before, but now their respect is tinged with fear. She wonders if she's got minions now. She asks them about the Greater Pattern and they say, "You know more than we do." (Oh really?) Revi wants to go back to her companions, and realizes she knows how, so goes; as she vanishes, she wonders if she should've looted the palace while she had the chance. She appears to the rest of us in a blazing green bonfire and tells us about the palace, the merpeople, and the Greater Pattern of Chaos, while demonstrating her stylish green flame look that she can turn up or tone down. She hopes one day to learn something, anything, about what she's just accomplished.

We try yet another hall, which leads down to a room having a couple of cave entrances, as well as a bag sitting on top of a pillar. Sine realizes that the pillar is a pressure trap, and Ritha realizes just a little too late that she's standing on another one. She asks for rocks to weigh the plate down so she can get off it, and the others go off into the caves. Hours later they return with a sawed-off stalagmite, and Ritha can finally get off the plate and streeetch. Sine gets everyone to clear out of the room, then grabs the pouch off the pedestal and runs for it. Crashing noises ensue. In the pouch is a hundred gold coins, which is not anywhere near as exciting as Sine expected. Ritha peeks into the room to see what all the crashing was about, and sees that a message has been uncovered on one of the walls. Of course it's in a language none of us can read! Did you really expect otherwise? Also, an illusory figure is speaking and gesturing. Agace draws the figure and debates making a flipbook.

Next: Strictly Ballroom
Back to the index page

© Megan Jones 2008. This story wouldn't be possible if not for my endlessly entertaining friends, and the Earthdawn RPG originally by FASA.