| Logs |
2002 September 15
| Idlewild |
| Realms |
Retired
| Reality Fault |
General Info
 |
| Realms: Idlewild Logs |
September 15
Steven, Lotte, Aiden and Sol find themselves in an underground room with very dim lighting, provided mostly from the hole they entered from fifteen feet up.. and several patches of faintly glowing greenish yellow lichen. The way down was simple, a short climb and then a drop, but no obvious return route presents itself at this time. Two tunnels lead away from this room.
Aiden kneels down next to Sol. "Can you smell her?"
Lotte asks Penny, "Do you know anything about these tunnels?"
Penny rustles his stubby wings from his perch on Lotte's shoulder and says, "Hrrmph. It looks like a root cellar to me, without the wine. And that priest's-boy all alone in our camp, with the money. I hope no one left anything behind they cared about."
Sol looks up at Aiden and whines softly, tone uncertain, and walks toward the tunnel entrances to sniff. He doesn't seem to find anything immediately.
Lotte shoots the ghuf an exasperated look. "I'm sure it'll be fine."
Steven remains quietly alert. The sun doesn't shine down here; he suspects that he'll find none who follow Lord Pelor's teachings.
He shakes his head to clear it. Stop it, he thinks. You're thinking foolishly. Let's find Lua, and not worry yet about what else is down here. We know at least her kidnappers are. He kneels down to look at the ground, to see if there's any way he can tell where there's been recent activity.
The squat lizard on Lotte's shoulder mutters darkly.
Lotte says, "Well, should we split up to briefly examine these two tunnels?"
Aiden looks up at the others, "Is it worth splitting up? I don't think Sol's found anything and we could cover more ground in two groups."
Lotte looks at Aiden. "I don't think it's a good idea to split up for too long. There might be more holes around here. Maybe just to see where these lead..."
Steven looks up to the others. "I don't think we should split up. That's a really bad idea. Come on, haven't either of you seen the afternoon-matinee horror films?"
Lotte says, "But we have to know a little of what's in both before we can choose to go down one..."
Aiden nods, "Well.. Which way, then?"
Aiden stands up and walks towards the tunnel that Sol is sniffing at. "Well. This is as good a place to start as any, right?"
Sol hangs back, tail tucked, looking between the tunnels, then finally starts down the one Aiden joined him at.
Steven frowns, as he looks down, standing. "There are a lot of footprints here. Look... there are pawprints going to both tunnels -- and there's one really big dog, a lot bigger than Sol or Lua. Uh... looks like there are some bare feet and some booted feet. The bare feet go in this direction --" he points to one tunnel "-- and down this other one are the big-dog prints." He pauses. "Was Lua barefoot? The last time I talked with her she was, uh... invisible...."
Penny says, "And how are you going to get back up? Unless I'm blind, no one brought a rope, and no one has wings but me."
Aiden looks at the ghuf. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'm certainly not planning on getting out of here right this very second. We'll figure that out when we have need to get out.."
Penny looks at Aiden and says in tones rich with scorn, "Oh. Well, it's a good thing there's nothing dangerous down here that you might want to get away from in a hurry. I'll just ride along then, til we're attacked and I'm the only one who can get back up there. I'm sure I won't feel useless at all."
Sol's butt disappears slowly into the gloom as he inches his way into the tunnel to the right
"Easy, Penny," Steven says quietly. "We're taking this carefully. We need to find Lua."
Aiden rolls his eyes at the ghuf. "Well. I didn't exactly come down here by choice, did I? I certainly didn't hear you mentioning that it might be a good idea to get a rope."
Lotte says, "I guess we'd better follow Sol before he gets away from us."
Steven thinks that's a 'Yes' from Sol, and follows the greyhound down the tunnel, hoping there's enough illumination.
The ghuf says, "I don't recall being consulted before you went caving," and sniffs.
Lotte says, "Penny, why don't you fly back up there and try to find us some rope? I'm sure Willow will help you."
Aiden shakes his head, "Well.. next time I fall into an invisible cave, I'll seek out your wisdom first." He turns and follows Sol down the tunnel. Everyone's a critic. Even the wannabe iguana.
There is, in fact, enough illumination in the righthand tunnel-- the patches of sickly green moss give things an eerie quality. Sol paces carefully along, then stops short after about five feet and snorts. The tunnels join into one larger tunnel that extends about forty feet ahead, then apparently dead-ends.
Aiden says, "Is that a real dead end or a fake one?"
Steven stops short just beside Sol. "I'd guess that it's either fake, or there's a hidden door. There was too much traffic through here to make this coincidence."
Aiden steps into the larger tunnel and starts walking towards the apparent dead end.
Penny snorts, seeing the tunnels combine and no obvious exit ahead, and says, "Milady, I think I shall. Your bard skills, fledgling though they be, are surely more than a match for whatever else may drop down here in the meantime." More quietly, close to Lotte's ear, he adds "And you're as good as I am by now. You'd be fine even if there was danger." He hops off her shoulder and glides back toward the entrance.
Sol pads alongside Aiden.
Lotte smiles at the ghuf, then quickly joins the others. She catches up with Aiden and heads toward the dead end.
Steven walks forward with Sol and Aiden, his brow furrowing as he looks at the deadend wall, trying to pick out any seams or odd formations on the wall.
Something catches Aiden's attention when he reaches the end of the tunnel.. He looks to the left and then back at the group. He turns and walks down the tunnels sharp turn.
Steven blinks, and looks back at Aiden. "What is it?"
Steven goes to join Aiden -- then blinks, seeing it now. "Oh! I hope the rest of this place isn't like this...."
Aiden looks at Steven and nods. "No kidding.."
Lotte reaches the dead end and follows Aiden. "Oh!"
The party now sees two options ahead; after turning sharply left into the cleverly camoflouged turn, they can continue straight, or turn right. To the right is a wooden door, closed. Ahead, the tunnel extends and seems to turn again.
Steven looks between the two options. "We might as well check the door," he says, his voice dropping.
Aiden nods his agreement and walks, slowly, towards the door.
Aiden leans towards the door, his eyes closed, listening..
Aiden looks back over his shoulder and shrugs..
Lotte presses her ear up against the door to listen.
Lotte shakes her head and turns towards the tunnel ahead.
Steven blinks. "Uh... anything beyond there?
Aiden puts his hand on the handle of the door and tests it.
Lotte says, "Not that I can tell. Where do the footprints go?"
Steven hmms, and kneels down to check the floor, looking up to watch Aiden as he tries the door.
Lotte also kneels to search the floor, figuring that she can see the prints if Steven can.
Aiden turns the handle and pulls the door a fraction open, then listens again.
Aiden frowns. The area beyond the door is dark, but not much darker than here. The door wasn't trapped, but he still can't hear anything.
Steven frowns a little, and looks up. "It looks like the bare feet... er, well, a bunch of bare feet, maybe... went through that door...."
Lotte nods. "Should we go through?"
Aiden opens the door just enough so that he can slip inside.
Steven stands. "Looks like we do, I guess...," he says wryly, and moves forward, hoping that Aiden doesn't fall through and disappear...
Lotte hisses, "Aiden!" but makes no move to follow him.
Aiden looks around. The room is bare except for a chest. He moves towards it.
Aiden kneels down in front of the chest and examines it, checking mostly to see if it's locked.
Steven stays in the doorway, looking around carefully.
Aiden goes back to the door and pokes his head outside. "Don't suppose either of you brought something to open locks with?"
Lotte raises an eyebrow. "I can try..."
Aiden pushes the door open all the way. "Come give it a shot."
Lotte brushes past Steven into the room and looks warily at the chest, then at Aiden. "Do we really want to open that? I mean... how ominous is this?"
Aiden shrugs, apparently completely unconcerned. He smiles at Lotte. "Good luck. Scream if you need anything." He takes this time to search the walls of the room for entrances that he might not have noticed and for footprints.
Steven arches an eyebrow to Aiden. "We'll find Lua, Aiden, don't worry," he says gently. He keeps a lookout at the doorway, fidgeting only a little bit.
Aiden looks out towards the hallway. "Uh." He goes towards the door and peeks out.
Steven blinks to Aiden. "What is it?"
Aiden says, ".. slurping.. "
Steven looks at Aiden for a moment. "Please tell me that it's dog-like slurping."
Steven looks around, wondering where Sol is off to. Slurping... oh, man, this is starting to really sound like a horror flick!
Aiden closes the door and looks at Steven. "Not dog style.. More like.. your mum's week old jello mould that you left in the fridge for too long. Did I mention it's coming up the hallway?"
Sol is standing uneasily in the corner away from the door, looking unhappy and depressed.
Lotte briefly peers around the chest as though looking for a trap, though in truth she knows she wouldn't know what a trap would look like if it cut off her fingers. She starts to fiddle uneasily with the lock.
Steven straightens, backing into the room, and looking for something to use as a weapon. "I never knew my mom," he says, "but I'll assume that means, 'really ungood.'"
Sol's head snaps up at Aiden's words, and he trots over to join him and Steven, looking more alert and less depressed with something to do. He assumes a guarding pose by the men, ears perked, hackles slightly raised.
Aiden looks over at Steven. "Want to go out there and take it on? I mean, I've seen nastier things come out of my university's cafeteria.."
Lotte ceases to fiddle mindlessly with the lock when she remembers the hairpin tucking her curls away from her face. She pulls it out and inserts it into the lock, twisting it until she can feel something move. A soft click lets her know that the chest is now successfully unlocked. She slowly opens the lid.
Steven glances to Aiden. "And I might have seen worse in small-town backwoods roads, but I'm not gonna bet on that. Let's see if it comes to the door, then deal with it here. At least then we can ambush it or blindside it...."
Aiden opens the door a tiny bit, peeking down the hallway to see where the thing is..
Steven grimaces, and stands by the door. At the click of the lock he glances once, back over to Lotte. "How are you doing over there?" he asks casually.
The cube is right outside the door.
The cube pauses in its slow, gelatinous movement along the tunnel.
Aiden watches the animate jello for a moment, to see what it's going to do.
Lotte stares at the contents of the chest, but answers Steven. "It looks like jewels or gems... and money... or something."
Steven blinks a bit at Lotte, then turns back to the doorway... and blinks. By Pelor, he thinks, it is jello!
The cube does nothing.
Steven glances to Aiden, then back to the cube, not trusting himself to say anything.
Lotte turns to look at her two companions and sees that they are standing frozen at the door. "What's going on?"
Aiden closes the door. "We're being invaded by desserts. Nothing to worry about."
Lotte furrows her brows in confusion. "What???"
Aiden draws his sword and looks at Steven. "Ready?"
Steven says, "It's... a cube. Of jello. Standing outside. Waiting." He looks at his hands. " I really don't think I'll be able to do much at all to it. Except eat it. And I think that would be extraordinarilly bad.""
Aiden nods at Steven. "Well then, just get ready to cover me.. or pull me out or something." He opens the door and steps out.
Lotte begins to understand the severity of the situation as Aiden draws his sword. She rummages through the chest in search of some sort of weapon... or perhaps a spoon.
Steven tries not to stand such that he stands in the way of a quickly-retreating Aiden, but he does lean out to be ready to jump forward just in case.
Lotte pours out the sacks in a haphazard, panicky manner.
Lotte says, "Uh... guys? Guys? I found... I found... pot. I mean, marijuana. I mean... why did I find pot???"
Aiden says, "You found pot? Whatever you do, don't feet it to this thing. I don't want it getting the munchies!"
The thing stops oozing forward and lashes out at Aiden with a psuedopod. It connects and slams him back into Steven.
Steven oofs! as Aiden flies into him. He lets himself fall backward, carrying Aiden back and away from the surprisingly aggressive jello.
Aiden hits Steven, "oof!" He falls backwards when Steven does and lands in a messy pile on the floor. "Okay.. Plan B?"
Steven winces, "Gnrk... the hell...? YEah. Yeah, plan B. What's plan B?"
Aiden winces when he hits the floor and puts a hand to the spot that the thing hit him. There used to be a shirt there.. Now there's just a painful burning. "Ouch... ouch.."
Aiden pulls his sleeve down over his hand and wipes at the spot, almost frantic to get the goopy stuff off him.
Aiden looks up, "Don't let that thing touch you.. It's acid or something.. It's burning through the cloth wherever it touches."
Steven pulls Aiden up and back, frantically looking at the door, trying to see what the cube is doing. "Then it's a bad idea for me to punch it!
Aiden chuckles just a little. "Yeah. Bad Idea."
Aiden says, "Okay, okay. Plan B.. We lure it in here.. then when it's in the room, we run out and close the door."
Lotte rummages through the chest again, and finds a pair of chainmail mitts in a bronze metal. She tosses them to Steven with a yell of warning.
Steven says, "That sounds fine to me. Any -- hey!" He catches the mits, blinking at them, then grins. "okay, this might work well. Thanks, Lotte!" He starts putting them on. "They'll do well enough! Okay, we lure Pepsi Blue out there in here.... Unless anyone's got a better idea, that works for me...."
Aiden stands across from the door with his back to the wall. "Here, jello jello jello.. C'mon. It's nice in here! There's things to eat and stuff to horde.."
Lotte says, "Wait! Let me try to make it fall asleep!"
Lotte quickly reaches into her pocket and pulls out a pinch of sand, which she sprinkles into her palm as she sings a lullabye. "Winter wind is blowing softly, Sleep, my blobby, sleeeeeeep..."
The cube does not move. No further psuedopods are extended.
Steven pauses, worried, as he watches the cube. "Do those things even sleep?" he whispers to the others.
Aiden grins at Steven and whispers, "Guess so.. Let's get out of here, hmm?"
Lotte says, "Before we go, let's grab this stuff." Lotte gestures to the chest."
Sol dances over to nudge Aiden softly in a non-hurt place, but stays away from the doorway.
Aiden nods at Lotte. "Are there bags or something?"
Steven glances to Lotte, then nods, "We'll see if there's anything we can use in there..."
Steven hrms, then looks up... and blinks, looking at the back wall. "Hey..." He glances over tot he cube, then moves over to the back wall. "There's something... odd... about this wall here...."
Lotte moves to peer at the contents of the open chest when she notices something odd about the wall behind it.
Lotte says, "Yeah... I noticed that. What is it?"
Aiden walks over the the wall and looks at it a little more closely..
Lotte gathers all the gems into one sack while the guys are checking out the wall.
Steven frowns as he looks at the wall, and shakes his head. "I don't know. I can't tell.."
Lotte picks up a gold piece and examines it.
Aiden looks at the chest suddenly, tilting his head off to the side. "So, what's in the false bottom of the chest?" He asks like he assumes that someone found it before he did.
Steven blinks, and turns around from the wall, blinking to Aiden. "False bottom...?"
Lotte looks up at Aiden in suprise. "False bottom?" She suddenly realizes her error and drops the gold and the sack.
Aiden points at the spot where he noticed the false bottom. "Yeah. It's right here."
The gold piece that Lotte dropped makes more of a 'thunk' than a 'clink' on the floor, and does not ring like metal.
Lotte says, "This stuff is all crap! It's a decoy! I am sooooo dumb."
Steven blinks a bit in surprise, glancing over to the cube to make sure it's still there. "I wonder if that thing'd like a bit of a nibble on the decoy stuff, then?"
Aiden fiddles with the spot that he noticed the false bottom, trying to figure out how to open it.
Lotte quickly goes over to the door and closes it, looking around for a way to lock or bar it. "I don't even want to think about that thing waking up."
Aiden looks up at Lotte. "This needs your touch. I'm not good at this.."
Sol pads over from guarding the door to nudge Steven's hand.
Lotte leaves the door and kneels down next to Aiden. She examines the bottom of the chest thoughtfully.
Aiden stands up to get out of Lotte's way.
Sol gives Aiden's burn a look, and nudges Steven's hand harder.
Steven blinks to Sol. "OH! Blast, Aiden, I'm sorry, it completely slipped... here, sit please, relax. Let me take a look at that burn."
Under Lotte's delicate touch and hairpin, something within the chest clicks and falls open. A small panel falls forward, and a tiny lever is revealed, set into the chest's righthand corner.
Aiden waves his hand at Steven. "Let's worry about finding Lua first. Save your.. prayers for when we need them."
Steven glances up to Aiden. "Unless I miss my guess, both Sol and I are concerned." He looks down at the wound. "All the same... it's fairly superficial. If we find some water, we'll see what we can do. Besides, just healing you up wouldn't do much for the acid goo still there." He glances to the chest, blinking. "And... I guesss we need to worry about what that lever does, now, don't we?"
Aiden looks over at the chest. "There's really only one way to find out. Any volunteers?"
Steven nods, "I'll do it. Better stand a bit clear...."
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