Session Start: Sun Jun 09 13:51:47 2002
[14:33] <Grey> Zim steps onto the bridge. Zim gets smacked by various air elementals. Zim gets hurt badly. Zim gets ripped to bits.
[14:43] <Grey> Lani, in an anti-magic field, starts collecting Zim's remains. Lani only finds a small amount of stuff.
[14:46] <Grey> Leo turns up. The rest of Zim must be all over the place. We start collecting bits of Zim. We summon elementals and the like to collect stuff.
[14:55] <Grey> We attempt to forewarn Talib of Zim's "death", but cannot contact him.
[14:56] <Grey> (evening)
[14:56] <Grey> Zim reappears.
[14:57] <Grey> Talib apparently had made preparations, for he had left a teleport without error on a scroll for such an event. Zim appeared in crude clothing. During the collection of items, we also find other items.
[15:00] <Grey> Zim appears very dead. Ribs are showing, skin is hanging. Not a good look.
[15:01] <Grey> Negative energy bursts don't help. Zim casts an illusion over himself.
[15:04] <Grey> Grey cannot step onto the bridge: over the waterline presents an impenetrable barrier. The barrier starts to dissipate 20' up. Must be a vampire thing.
[15:10] <Grey> Zim is missing a couple of items.
[15:12] <Grey> T'zaz indicates that Zim's life force is not tied to his physical body any more. Hence why he looks very dead. T'zaz also indicates that spells to fix constructs, repairing spells, may well work.
[15:15] <Grey> Lani and Zim scoot off to Serraine. They'll be back the next day.
[15:19] <Grey> The repair light damage spell works on Zim.
[15:33] <Grey> We chat briefly with the mephit, before blasting him. He goes away, leaving hit top hat and tails behind. We teleport without error to the island, which is not shrouded in mist.
[15:41] <Grey> There are two hills. A small one, and a tall one. No structures. Zim starts using the Ioun Stone.
[15:47] <Grey> Er, there is no hill: it was all an illusion. There is some stonework construction. In the center is an iron sundial, sitting on a stone pedestal, next to a pool of water fed by a spring.
[15:50] <Grey> Someone has applied a chisel to the sundial, obscuring the time. Perhaps there was something valuable there?
[15:52] <Grey> Rih spots a smooth, large, round boulder in the center at the bottom of the pool of water.
[15:55] <Grey> Zim summons some Tritons to have a look around. The triton moves the boulder, beneath which is a passageway, leading to an air-filled chamber.
[15:59] <Grey> Lani and Zim head down, taking Rih with them. I teleport to Rih.
[16:08] <Grey> The cavern is directly underneath the sundial. There are runes on the roof, there is a circular bronze door, and a 2 inch wide cylinder next to the door, like a pipe.
[16:09] <Grey> I read the runes: Runs but never walks, has a mouth but never talks, has a bed but never sleeps. Zim gets it staright away: a river.
[16:10] <Grey> (I cast improved tongues)
[16:10] <Grey> I say river into the pipe, and a clicking noise is heard from the door: it just unlocked.
[16:11] <Grey> Lani opens the door. Beyond it is a 5' wide shaft. There is water within the shaft. The water is still. Zim creates an arcane eye, and sends it forth. At the base is another bronze door. Zim and Lani go down to open it. The water rushes in with a great whoosh!
[16:30] <Grey> Below is a cavern, a shore, writing on the wall, and big white spindly things on the shore next to the water.
[16:31] <Grey> Some kind of demonic creature, with birdlike movements. Surpisingly fast, in spite of the size.
[16:32] <Grey> They start casting spells at Lani! Ice storms pelt the area.
[16:38] <Grey> Zim is in the air, taking damage. Lani and Rih duck under the water. Combat ensues.
[16:40] <Grey> There are eight of the white spindly things.
[16:41] <Grey> Zim shadow evokes a fireball: only two are affected, and one realises it's an illusion. Grey teleports in behind the demons. Four notice him, and with breakneck speed, attack.
[16:46] <Grey> The air around the demons is very cold. A couple more demons join in the attack. Some of them attack Safranna, who is a large bird.
[16:52] <Grey> One of the ones attacking Grey stands ready to hit him, should he cast a spell.
[16:54] <Grey> Lani summons a fire elemental. Despite it making some effective attacks, the elemental fails to hit. They're very hard to hit.
[16:58] <Grey> Grey does a maximised fireball. Three are unaffected. Two are destroyed, others are hurt.
[17:10] <Grey> Zim slows some.
[17:10] <Grey> Grey starts chopping at them.
[17:11] <Grey> Lani summons another elemental.
[17:12] <Grey> The elementals start grappling.
[17:31] <Grey> We continue to smack away at one another. We are winning. Grey make dirisive comments at one.
[17:38] <Grey> We finish them off.
[17:43] <Grey> We look around. There's more runes: A precious gift, it has no end or beginning, and in the middle, nothing. Grey gets it: a ring.
[17:46] <Grey> A ring appears: in it, written, no pain, no gain.
[17:50] <Grey> Whilst wearing it, it hurts. It's painful.
[17:51] <Grey> Zim and Lani start looking around the water.
[17:51] <Grey> The ring glow slightly. Whilst Lani and Zim search, it stops glowing.
[17:55] <Grey> We get out, using teleports and stuff, back to the surface of the island.
[18:00] <Grey> Lani scouts the area. She finds a large carved face, the mouth big, open, and large enough for people to enter.
[18:01] <Grey> There's large double doors, with an inscription in heldannic, indicating that this is the tomb of Lady Gasping.
[18:01] <Grey> There is also a pennant, magical, waving in the breeze.
[18:02] <Grey> The carving of her face has been defaced.
[18:03] <Grey> The double dooors are on the other side of the hill.
[18:04] <Grey> The person defacing the face has only defaced one half of the face.
[18:04] <Grey> The face looks like Hel's symbol.
[18:07] <Grey> There are six unlit braziers surrounding an unlit dais near the carving. They are magical.
[18:08] <Grey> I light the braziers. Writing then apppears on the dais. It says: enter brave soul, that wishes to give himself to the worship of our dark lady, and be taken into the heart of her temple.
[18:10] <Grey> I have a quick look. There's a tunnel, I head in, checking it out. I get zapped by a lightning bolt. I go further in, checking it out.
[18:13] <Grey> At the end are a set of big stone hands, moderately magical (transmutation).
[18:15] <Grey> Zim goes to the other side of the hill, and checks the doors for traps. We then rest, and rememorise. Lani repairs Rih, so he looks as he used to in life.
[18:20] <Grey> Before resting, Zim opens the tomb doors. There's a corridor leading forth, but he investigates no further.
[18:30] <Grey> Lani casts an identify on the hands, and the ring: basic properties are: hands transport living sacrifices further in, and the ring can cast negative place protection when activated)
[18:31] <Grey> Since we don't qualify as living sacrifices, we'll go in via the doors on the other side of the hill.
[18:39] <Grey> We don't bother with a lightsource, since we can all see in the dark.
[18:40] <Grey> Nothing explodes, zaps, or otherwise harms us.
[18:41] <Grey> The celing is carved with scenes of mythical beasts, scenes of heroism, and the like. In the walls are bones and skulls.
[18:42] <Grey> Two rails in the ground lead up to a set of doors further on. Zim detects for undead: all twenty hollows in the wall, containing bones, contain undead. Zim detects strong undead in each of the hollows.
[18:44] <Grey> Lani looks at a plaque, towards the doors. It has writing, saying: the man who made it did not need it, the man who brought it did not use it, the man who used it did not know it, but he who ventures in this place must climb within its cold embrace. A coffin.
[18:48] <Grey> We open the doors, beyoond which is a long hallway. 30' ahead is an intersection. There is something invisible, perfectly smooth, within the intersection.
[18:48] <Grey> We see some glimmering further along. Zim casts glitterdust on it. We see there are four invisible, circular pillars at this intersection.
[18:51] <Grey> I pass through, and then notice three people being attacked by one of the white spindly demons. We move to assist, but as we enter the area with the pillars, they disappear, and the ceiling collapses.
[18:52] <Grey> Lani isn't hurt much.
[19:34] <Grey> We charge to help the adventurers, only to discover they were an illusion. There's writing on the far wall: the part of the bird that is not in the sky, which can swim in the ocean, and always stay dry. What is it?
[19:36] <Grey> The answer, beneath it, is there in runes, but our language interpretor does not work.
[19:36] <Grey> The answer is six letters long. The second last letter is o.
[19:40] <Grey> We have a look at the other corridors. The northern passage has a set of double doors. The west corridor is cold, and filled with a faint it of mist.
[19:40] <Grey> We investigate the cold corridor further.
[19:41] <Grey> There is a gargoyle head at the end of the corridor. There is much frost. Zim scratches away frost, revealing another riddle.
[19:42] <Grey> Riddle: seen in winter, not in summer, light as air, the strongest man cannot hold me for an hour. Six characters.
[19:51] <Grey> The fountain spouts a liquid not water: possibly poison?
[19:52] <Grey> Breath does not work for the latter riddle.
[19:52] <Grey> We check out the northern double doors. The double doors are made out of black stone. Beyond is a large room, perhaps 100' across. There is an alter of black stone. On the front is a picture of a women, carved into it. Someone has chisseled in indents making it look like she has sharp teeth.
[19:53] <Grey> Her tongue is long, and leads to a bowl with writing. In front of the alter is a stone coffin. There is an effigy of a well-to-do women in a fine dress.
[19:55] <Grey> There are six harpies within six pentagrams in this room. They're screaming, although we can't hear them. The room is bathed in silence. The harpies have noticed us.
[19:56] <Grey> The runnels in the ground run up to the coffin, where they stop. There is a riddle in there: what is broken by naming it: presumably silence.
[20:00] <Grey> I say the word in there, and the silece ends. The harpies scream away, unintelligably. I search everywere. I touch the altar, and feel magic washing through me. I resist whatever change it wished to inflict.
[20:06] <Grey> I break one of the pentagrams. A harpy escapes, and attacks me. They are, in fact, vampiric harpies.
[20:07] <Grey> We kill all of the harpies.
[20:08] <Grey> Some bells in the room don't make any noise. Strange. Lani and Zim figure out the answer to the bird riddle: shadow.
[20:15] <Grey> A click happens, and a small hole in the ceiling opens.
[20:17] <Grey> We look within. Inside are three sets of bones, with stakes thhrough the heart position.
[20:18] <Grey> Hmm. A Ring to protect against energy drain, stakes, and running water. Hmm. And an earlier riddle solution being coffin.
[20:22] <Grey> We go to investigate the coffin. We try to force it open. Safranna manages to lever it open. The coffin is empty. We slide the coffin on the rails to where the plaque is.
[20:28] <Grey> I then get in, and the coffin starts sinking into the ground. We all hop in. We're in a small crawlway. We start crawling around. It's quite lengthy, and if we weren't undead, we'd have ended up going unconscious due to some magic in the area.
[20:33] <Grey> We arrive at a simple stone chamber, lined with blackened wood. In the center is a 5' diameter ring of gold paint.
[20:33] <Grey> There are several levers. There's a phial of dark, greyish purple liquid. There's a staircase leading up to the west. The phial is on a table. The levers are labelled: door, descend, death.
[20:42] <Grey> We pull door, which opens a door at the top of the staircase. It's opened a secret door to the altar room. The phial seems to be holy water. We pull the descend lever, and step within the gold circle. It descends.
[20:47] <Grey> We're in a square room, palm prints on the wall, and a carved face of Lady Gasping. A mouth moves, and says a message to us, talking about blood and stuff.
[20:48] <Grey> When we put our hands into the walls, we see an adventurer putting their hand in the spot where we put our hand. We can make new hand-prints in the wall. There were 15 hand-prints. We search around.
[20:52] <Grey> One of the hand prints is like the guy who hired us, but younger. There's another hand-print, but much more like how he is now. Interesting.
[20:52] <Grey> Once we've all put our hands in the wall, an opening appears.
[20:54] <Grey> There are more niches with undead in them, although we see no sign of movement. There are 14 niches.
[20:56] <Grey> We find a chasm, with a small rickety bridge over it. Further up, we see another bridge. We start heading over.
[20:58] <Grey> After a glitterdust, we observe there's a fine webwork of sharp threads. Lani had a bit of her wing chopped off.
[20:59] <Grey> The bridge area is safe.
[21:00] <Grey> We head on, and find a room with a couple of pedestals, a bunch of metal objects on the ground (weapons, etc), and another exit.
[21:04] <Grey> One pedestal has a crystal shard grasped in a womans hand. The other has a dial of some sort. Zim figures the dial controls the strength of a magnetic field. He also finds a secret compartment, which can be used to open the door.
[21:06] <Grey> The crystal is strongly necromantic. We continue, and wander around. We enter purpose-build corridors.
[21:17] <Grey> We find another riddle: Walks in the wind, runs in the rain, makes dry oceans in the sun, counts time, stops clocks, swallows kingdoms, gnaws rocks.
[21:19] <Grey> We just smash the door down, using my battering ram. Easier than answering riddles.
[21:21] <Grey> Beyond are two doors. Behind one are a number of jars, with heads looking like the adventurers in it. There's a block with swrling designs on it in the room.
[21:25] <Grey> Taking the heads out of the glass causes them to decay rapidly. I manage to cast a sending to one of them still in the glass. Successfully.
[21:31] <Grey> I then use paper to figure out which of them may know something. I cast sendings to one, who indicates they know much of this place, but wants us to return them to life in order to share it.
[21:36] <Grey> Apparently he's been here quite a long time. Decades.
[21:40] <Grey> Apparently it has been the tomb to two people. The first was dedicated to Hel. The second was lady Gasping.
[21:44] <Grey> We try to arrange a scroll of Rary's Telepathic Bond, via Serraine. One is available. It costs 1125gp.
[21:47] <Grey> Lani sits down to learn the spell. She then memorises it, and casts it. Lani also gets one other head in the spell.
[21:52] <Grey> The knowledgeable head is known as Vanger. He was a hunter in the kings employ. He tracked down criminals and such. He was hunting down treasure.
[21:54] <Grey> Lady Gasping was beautiful but vain.
[21:55] <Grey> When they mined for tin, they encountered the temple to an older evil. A vampire was imprisoned in this region. Erik von Heidal, from Glantri. They uncovered him, and Lady Gasping was possibly turned into a vampire, and possibly buried here. Erik may have convinced her to remain beautiful forever.
[22:04] <Grey> He thinks these two may well still be here.
[22:05] <Grey> We go acquire a large amount of blood, to feed to Lady Gasping and Erik Von Heidal, so that we can reason with them.
[22:05] *** Disconnected
Session Close: Sun Jun 09 22:05:19 2002