The party follows Floradine's lead and easily makes it past while the trap is resetting.

You step through the double doors, and your lanterns light upon something that shocks you.  An eight foot wide hallway extends a short ways before turning right.  Lining the walls are the remains of human skeletons:  skulls, arm bones, ribcages.  They are stacked together, mixed in no particular fashion, but your eyes are caught by the many skulls staring back at you with empty sockets.

Another tremor shakes the ancient volcano, and you see one of the skeletons move.  Instantly alert, your weapons rise, but then you realize that the bones are just clattering to the floor from the earthquake-like seizures of the mountain--with nothing supernatural about them at all--and are being jarred loose from their eons of rest in this...catacomb.


This message was last edited by the GM at 18:29, Fri 29 Sept 2006.

Garanon walks forward and around the corner to see what's there.

Not letting the thief get ahead of her, the druidess follows closely.  As she passes the skull lined corriders her lips curl into a look of distaste.  "As most unfavourable way to start the journey on the Great Blue Path." she comments referring to the soul moving on to the spirit plane.

Floradine also looks around with jaw hanging open.  "Unless, of course, they were put here as sentinels.  Guarding something important could be a great honor, even if, I dare say, it is part of some curse."  He follows closely to Shae and Garanon to make sure they do not get out of arm's reach.

Shanjalae walks beside her father a few paces behind the others.  As she enters the catacomb, her head turns from side to side and her face turns pale.  While she looks from one stack of skulls to the next, she stops in her tracks and says, "The voices of the dead speak loudly here.  The voices are too many.  I cannot distinguish them.  I cannot understand their articulations or pleadings."  She rushes to catch up to the others.

Shanjalae's words echo up the hall causing Shae to stop, one hand reaching to grab Garanon by the shoulder causing him also to stop.

"Wait a moment, the placating figure is not going anywhere." she says as the only explanation to Garanon before turning back to her sister.

"Are you alright my sister?"

Garanon turns and waits, effecting a slight bow with his head.

Shanjalae motions them forward with one hand.  "I must get through here quickly," she says, walking forward again.  "The voices are too painful."  She holds her hand to her head as though to a headache and moves swiftly to pass up Shae and Garanon and forge ahead.

With a concerned frown, Shae hurries to catch up with her sister, her good hand quickly grasping that of the younger elf squeezing it in reassurance.

"We will get through this as quickly as we can." she affirms, casting a quick glance back at Garanon, "Won't we?"

Rathyl keeps as close to Garanon as he can, occasionally casting wary glances at the others.

You walk around the corner, duck under an archway and enter a wide chamber beyond.  Across the way, you see a large altar-like structure with strange carvings, and directly behind it is a statue holding a red glowing object.  Ancient faded mosaics cover the walls.

To your left you see two upright objects that at first you take to be statues.  But at second glance you see that they are sarcophogi roughly shaped in human form.  To your right you see two more.

Between the two sarcophogi on each side are shelves lined with old canopic jars.  Most of the jars have broken or cracked with age, but a few look completely intact.

Your eyes move back to the statue in the center and you realize that it is actually no statue at all, but the well-preserved body of some ancient man holding the long, luminescent object.  It is with that revelation that you realize you have entered a crypt, one that has not been disturbed in at least a thousand years.




This message had punctuation tweaked by the GM at 22:44, Mon 25 Aug 2003.

Garanon runs up to the altar and looks closely at it while stepping around it toward the mummified remains and the object in its hands.

Floradine also walks up to the altar and inspects it, but he does not walk around behind it.

Shanjalae suddenly falls to her knees, grasps her head between her hands and says, "The voices have joined in unison.  They are chanting together.  They are saying...they are saying..."  She winces in pain.  "They are saying, 'He comes, he comes.'"

She stumbles forward toward the altar, and the pain in her head seems to abate as she moves further from the hall filled with the dead.  "The jars.  They do not contain human remains.  They contain...magic.  Potions maybe.  One of them will heal you."  She rubs her temple as the pain resumes.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:37, Tue 26 Aug 2003.

Engravings on top of the altar are in Allevian.  Kallad steps forward and translates:

Thou jealous, ruthless tyrant! Heaven repay
On thee and on thy children’s latest line
The wild caprice of thy despotic sway,
The gory bridal bed, the plundered shrine anon,
The murderous blood, the tears of Pianonne.

Underneath that, in a different and larger script, is written:

Herein lies the noble knight,
Preserver of our ways,
Strength to his life,
His heirs and his hereafter.

You realize that you probably will never know what truly happened or what story is to be told about the corpse holding the glowing red sceptre, which is carved into the likeness of a woman.  But you do realize that this is no altar.  It is a stone coffin.