Part 9 - the Stargate

We wake up the next day and start exploring the basement under my parent’s house. I’ve had a little time to think about my behavior yesterday and I’m not as hot to trot on tracking down all the werewolves in the area and killing them outright. For all I knew they could be one of the escaped villagers or maybe even my brother or sister…wouldn’t they have told me they were werewolves if they were ones…? Before the events that led up to my departure, I probably would have thought being a werewolf would be cool, but not now. I was also feeling sorry for Rekka. I shouldn’t have caused such a scene. Maybe I’ll tell her I’m sorry…Billy somehow picks up an “aura” coming from the east, so we decide to go check the houses over there.

Seeing a sign in front of the Johnson’s house that warns intruders to stay out, we decide to investigate the property. Araja and I find nothing noteworthy in the house, but Isaac comes to get us saying he’s found a trap door in the barn. He heard people talking from within and believes they might be werewolves. We all gather in the barn wasting no time. We arrange ourselves around the trap door, ready to strike as Billy opens the hatch. There’s a set of stairs leading into the lower room. It appears to be vacant except for an alter to the left of the room. Briar and I investigate it and Briar recognizes it to be dedicated to Pendral’s deity, Erythnul. Isn’t that one of the god’s Araja keeps babbling about?

There’s a passage straight ahead in the dim room, and at the end there appears to be a giant glowing mushroom in the corner of the hall. Briar warns us not to eat them. We follow the passage. We pass a door that’s chained shut and continue to another door that’s unlocked. Billy opens the door silently to reveal another room. There’s a table to the right and another table at the far end of the room. At the far table there’s a group of imps seated around the table chittering along with three dog looking creatures. On the other end of the table nearest us was a dwarf trapped in a cage. I quietly ask Briar what the dog creatures are. This seemed to be right up her ally. She tells us they’re hell hounds, cousins to what she is. Briar also says something about not being from the 9^th hells plane, whatever that is.

Isaac charges into the room, leaps on the table, and casts a wall of flame in front him before our opponents have time to blink. The hell hounds rot into nothing and the imps are severely injured. Araja moves in and casts a frost spell. I charge in after Isaac, but I miss the imp as I swung at it with my short sword.

“Briar, Sick ‘em!” I shout. Briar leaps into the room, morphing into her fiery demon form, and starts trampling the imp nearest her. The remaining enemies are killed quickly.

Rekka goes over to the dwarf and begins talking with him. I hear him mention that werewolves were recently there. I ask Briar if she can scent where they went. I open a door to the left of the room. There’s a hall way with a large mushroom at the end as it curves to the left. Briar and I carefully make out way down the hall. There’s another locked door, but the path continues on. The path ends in darkness. Isaac catches up to us. He and Briar can see a door at the end of the hall. Isaac can detect magic behind the door. He hands me a torch, but instructs me not to light it until he opens the door and has a look into the room.

There’s light on the other side and Isaac beckons to Briar and I. We move forward just as someone in the other room says something. Suddenly a big Ooze appears in the middle of the room. Isaac runs to one side of the room and Billy the other, narrowly dodging an attack form the Ooze. Isaac and Billy start throwing the glowing mushrooms, and whatever else they can into the Ooze to try and stop it, but nothing they threw at it had effect. I shot a thunder arrow at the Ooze, but again it yielded no effect. Briar and I go over to Isaac, who was standing on a tiered platform next to three ash piles. Isaac opens his never ending water supply jug and begins hydro spraying the Ooze.

Suddenly the Ooze explodes. Isaac finds two rings and a rod in the splattered mess the Ooze left behind. Isaac shares the items giving a ring to Araja, keeping one for himself, and giving the staff – a fire staff – to the Bar Wench. I look around the room and see the rock slabs on the platform seem to be hiding a hidden passage. I push on one of the rocks and I’m barely able to push it aside. There seems to be a combination the rocks must be in before the passage will open. Briar and Billy help me push the rocks in order until the passage is finally revealed. There’s a thirty foot wide hole before us that’s pitch black.

Araja throws a rock in the hole and it vanishes as soon as it hits the dark layer. It seems to bounce its way down to the bottom of a pit. Isaac bravely goes first and finds a set of stairs in the mysterious darkness. The rest of us follow closely behind. None of us can see through the pitch black. After a long time of walking, we realize we’re not actually walking down stairs. Isaac has Billy take him into the darkness and they both disappear. Billy returns a short while later with a rope. After a few tries, we close our eyes and then we’re all able to pass through the darkness.

The new room is dark, but now Briar and Isaac can see with their dark vision. Briar describes the room as a very LARGE cavern with several bat colonies on the ceiling. In human form, Briar snaps her fingers and a flame ignites around her hand.

Isaac casts a spell on Briar, but he doesn’t tell me what it is. He unsheathes his crazy talking sword, and for a second I feel the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. He has the sword detect evil and this time the sword doesn’t think Briar or I are evil any more…Briar puts out her flame and Rekka lights her lantern so it gives out less light, which seems to be bothering the bats.

Suddenly I hear something large flapping toward us. Isaac grabs the lantern and points it at the sound. There’s six large bats flying toward us. Briar ignites and the large bats wheel away, abated by the brightness / smell of sulfur coming from Briar. I shoot an arrow at one and score a solid hit. Araja flies at one of the bats. The Bar Wench uses the fire staff, flaming a group of the bat and accidently catches Araja in the blast. Araja begins to fall to the ground, but just as she starts to fall, Isaac suddenly appears in her place and thuds to the ground like a ton of bricks. I ride Briar into battle, skewering a bat on my lance. Isaac, Briar and I make short work of the remaining bats.

The Bar Wench tried giving the unconscious Araja a potion of healing, but it had no effect. Isaac tried his wand of healing and it too had no effect. He tries it on the Bar Wench and it worked just fine. As we try to find out how to heal our fallen comrade, we find out one of the bats bit her.

We decide to head back to the room where we met the dwarf. While Gideon tries to heal Araja, Isaac talks to the dwarf in dwarfish. Despite Gideon’s efforts, he’s unable to heal Araja. Finally we discover the ring Isaac gave Araja was blocking their restorative attempts. Once the ring was removed, Isaac was able to heal her with his wand properly. Isaac and Billy had released a group of dwarves from the locked door closer to the entrance of the basement. They want us to show them the cave, naturally. Isaac asks them who employed them to come to the cave first, and the dwarves reply that it was all Pendral’s doing. We escort them to the cave and the dwarves can see precious gems gleaming in the walls. After a ways into the cave, we come upon a strange artifact. After further inspection, it appears to be a planar gate, a portal to the other planes of existence. The Bar Wench seems to know a lot about the gate and had heard tale of “planes walkers”. Combining the runes on the console in different configurations would open a portal to different planes, but if the wrong combinations were put in, it could obliterate the user. The gate was currently dialed in the 9^th hell.

I asked Briar again if she were from the 9^th hell plane and this time she answered yes…I’ve got to get to the bottom of this.