Editing Game-Summaries:4/11/2020 Recollections (section)

==Recollections by [[Jeroy]]==
Tallulah, Wethril, Ford, Dereth, Rezik, and I went on a journey to complete the weapon legacy of my Bloodcrier and Tallulah's Bloodscreamer. We started our journey by heading to the Temple of the Moon in the Great Waste. A massive temple buried upside down below the Great Waste. We arrive with little trouble thanks to Tallulah's deft navigation and cartography skills. We enter and immediately have to navigate down the ceiling of a staircase. Each of us manage to maneuver down the slope with ease except for Dereth. He is not the most nimble adventurer as he slips at some point and tumbles down to the bottom, arriving with a series of clangs and bangs. There is a pause as the sound of his armor rings down the hallways as we hear a groan and muffled "I'm fine" come from the heap of metal. He stands up to see us holding back laughter. "This armor has saved me more than it has hurt me, so go ahead and laugh now."

Rezik suggests "Perhaps you should take the armor off so we can move more quietly?"

Dereth doesn't even consider it "No. If we find it may be needed later, perhaps. But for now it stays on. Besides I'm not wearing anything underneath this."  

We begin to make our way down the narrow hallways of the Temple of the Moon with Tallulah and Wethril in front, me behind them, Rezik in the middle, then Dereth, and Ford in the rear. We are moving as quietly as possible to avoid alerting anyone or anything in the temple of our presence. On the 4th level Tallulah hears something up ahead and holds up her hand, we stop. She tells us she hears the sound of rocks being dragged or pushed around the corner. She casts pass without a trace on all of us as we make our way up to the corner to learn more of what lurks beyond the turn. As we cautiously move our way towards the source of the sound Dereth kicks a stone and the sound stops. Dereth sends his familiar around the corner and sees a stone-humanoid figure with metal plate bolted onto it standing motionless, in the hallway.  

"What now?" Tallulah asks.

"Tell it we mean it no harm." Recommends Rezik.

"Anyone know how to speak to a statue?" Asks Ford.

"I'll try in Old Tongue and common." Says Dereth.

"I can try dwarven." Says Jeroy

We call out but with no response, we are met by eerie silence. Slowly we approach and turn the corner to find the stone figure looking towards us. We approach slowly and pass by it without any activity. Rezik casts an alarm spell around the figure to know if it begins to move again as we press on further down into the Temple. While on the 6th level Rezik suddenly stops and turns to look back from where we came.

"Everything alright?" Asks Ford.

"My alarm just triggered, either that statue moved, or something moved past it."

"Cool moving statues, cool cool."

Again Tallulah holds up a hand and we stop.

"Do you hear something?" Asks Dereth.

"No, but I feel as though we are being watched."

Dereth casts true sight and is able to see the full depth of the hallways before and behind us.

"I do not see an invisible creature, traps, or something else that would not be plainly visible to us all. But I have the same sense that you do. We must proceed with caution."

Tallulah nods and continues to walk down the hallway but walks into an invisible wall. 

"What the Avernus?" She exclaims.

Dereth sees golden bars in front and behind us. "It's a force cage!" He tells us.

Rezik jumps into action. "Get ready to run." As he blasts a disintegrate spell at the bars, but the bars are unfazed. "...Or not." He says with disappointment.

Tallulah notices an emerald gem in the wall but as she goes to touch the gem the stone wall surrounding it appears to "blink" to cover the emerald, so seamlessly it appears to have never been there. She looks to the rest of the wall to find it is covered with emeralds that "blink" in the same way.

The walls begin to close in around us. "Anyone else got any ideas?" Rezik asks the group?

"Stand aside, this temple housed my Bloodcrier, perhaps it is the key we need." And with a mighty blow I swing my maul onto the force bars. A mournful tone sounds throughout the hallway and echos out in all directions but the walls appear unchanged.  

"Hmph I really thought that would work." I say looking at Bloodcrier with confusion.

"You ALWAYS think that is going to work." Dereth says exasperated.

"50% of the time it works every time." I shoot back.

While these shenanigans are ongoing Ford is crawling along the floor, following the lines of the stone and glyphs that triggered this trap with intense focus.  

"Tallulah, step on that glyph over there." He points to one near her foot.

"Jeroy, stand on that one. Dereth, that one over there, and Rezik that one." He says to us.

"OK when I say go, step off the glyph. Everyone ready?" We nod.

"Ready, go!" We step off together as he pushed down on a glyph in front of him. The walls continue to close but the bars disappear.

"Run!" He exclaims! As we dash out the walls close completely and then meld seamlessly together, as if there was never a room there before.

We continue on and enter a large chamber. On the ceiling relative to us, are two prison cages that appear to be broken out of long ago. Approximately 100 feet farther into the room, but on the "ceiling", is a large deius with a glowing portal above it. After inspecting the room full we seem to have no other options around us but to go into the portal.  

"So how do we get up there?" Dereth asks. I pull out my immovable rod and rope. I tie a clove hitch around the rod and hold it out to Rezik and Dereth.

"If any of you tossers can get up there you can activate the rod and then the rest can climb." I say to Dereth and Rezik.

Rezik rolls his eyes as he takes the rod. "...Tossers." He murmurs to himself as he casts the fly spell on himself. He floats up to the portal and activates the rod. "Come on up knuckle-dragger."

I climb up and enter the portal and as soon as I pass through I am overcome with a feeling of pressure, heat, and moisture. Around me is a series of caves and tunnels unlike anything I've seen before in all my years as a dwarf. The air itself has a crushing weight about it as I even struggle to stand up against it. The rest follow behind and feel the same oppressive weight.

"Where are we?" Tallulah asks.

I closely inspect the rock walls and find them to be a dense igneous rock. The type of rock, the crushing pressure, the stagnant air all points to one thing.

"We are at the center of Terra." I tell the group.

"That explains a lot and somehow also not enough." Ford says grinning through a headache.

We explore the pitch black cave around us and discover it is littered with glass orbs that appear to have etchings suspended in the middle of the interior of the glass in an unknown language.

"Can anyone read this?" I say to the group. Dereth peers into the orb and struggles to read and slowly shakes his head.

"It's in Old Tongue, but it makes no sense." He says with a look of confusion. "The sentences, the syntax...It's in gibberish. There are parts that reference something vaguely magical, but nothing complete."

Rezik's eyes light up. "Like a coded spell scroll or page of a spell book?" 

Dereth nods his head. "Perhaps but I cannot even begin to tell what school of magic or spell they would be for."

Rezik turns to me. "Seems like your big muscles might come in handy for something during this mission after all. Once we are done here you will need to carry as many of these as I want."

"You mean as many as I can carry." I respond.

"No." He shakes his head and rests a hand on my shoulder. "As I want."

Tallulah feels a slight movement in the air further into the cave. "There is moving air ahead, but odd. The movement feels as though something is….breathing."

"How big does something need to be so that its breathing makes the maple syrup air at the center of the earth move?" Ford asks the group.

We begin to investigate the cave and come to find more of the same statue creature we saw on the 4th level of the temple. As we position ourselves we see come out of the darkness a far larger stone creature which shakes the cave with every step. Dereth calls out to it. "We mean you no harm, we are only here to explore."

It opens its mouth but all we hear is a series of rumbles and vibrations that reverberate through-out our bodies.

"Anyone catch that last part?" Ford adds in with a snicker. Dereth casts tongues on himself and tries again to speak with it.

"We mean you no harm, we are only here to explore." He repeats.

It speaks to him "You will not take Zeretan from me!"

Dereth looks to us with confusion and turns back to the creature. "Who is Zeretan? We mean you no harm."

"You ask too many questions!" As we see that the other statue creatures have flanked us. We are surrounded. The large creature turns to me and extends a hand and I feel the reverberating rumble through-out my body. Suddenly Bloodcrier is gone. Distraught I look around and see that it is in the hand of the creature. I turn to Dereth with a frantic look. 

"He says ‘that's mine?'" Dereth says with a confused look.

What happens next I remember only in bits and pieces. The last thing I remember is entering a rage, but this was a white hot rage unlike those I have felt before. I draw my soulmate and with all the fury and power of my ancestors guiding my strikes I swing down crushing blow after crushing blow on this creature. After an unknown amount of time I feel one swing come down onto the creature so that it crumbles like a house of cards before my falling axe. It becomes nothing more than a pile of loose rocks and dust and I frantically search for Bloodcrier. But I do not find it.

Still in a rage unlike any I have known before I turn to see one more of the statue creatures standing. I raise my axe again and come down with all the force I can muster. "What did you do with my Bloodcrier!" I scream as the statue creature is crushed into dust. I take short and panicked breaths. I see no more of the creatures around me and still I do not see Bloodcrier. I look to my compatriots but no words come out to express my frustration. I see Rezik wave his hand across me and I am instantly overcome with complete exhaustion and I fall to my knees.

"I'm glad I cast haste on you. Good work Jeroy. But don't get lazy on me, those orbs won't carry themselves." Rezik laughs to himself. "I'm surprised you didn't use Bloodcrier during the fight. You just left it on your belt the whole time?"

We continue into the cave and close to the breathing sound. We find a huge maw, almost as tall as the cave breathing in and out. When we try to communicate with it it breaths towards us and showers us with dirt. Dereth tries to telepathically link us to the maw and we instantly are overcome with a moment of endless knowledge but I fall unconscious. I awake sometime later to see Rezik and Dereth tending to Tallulah, Ford, and me.  

"You all fell unconscious. This thing is Zeretan, the older earth elemental. Rezik thinks if we excavate the rock around the mouth to expose the face we may be able to communicate with it." Dereth tells me. I shrug my shoulders and say that I can help dig.

Rezik tosses some spells and exposes the eyes of Zeretan. He stands back from the mouth and stares directly into its eyes. His face goes blank and his eyes widen but suddenly he falls to the ground. We rush over to check on him. "He's dead!" Tallulah says to us.

"Maybe someone more in tune with the earth needs to communicate with it." I say looking at Bloodcrier. "Dereth, please be ready with something from your Goddess." I turn to the eyes and instantly the world goes black.

I am bathed in a warm glow, the weight of the air is gone and my mind feels at ease. I look out to see all of my ancestors around a large banquet table overflowing with find dwarven food and ale. The sounds of minstrels echo through the mountain halls as laughter erupts over stories told over a thousand generations of dwarves. I am beckoned over to join as a seat is pulled out for me. As I step towards the table a blinding light washes out all I can see.

I awake back in the cave surrounded by Ford, Tallulah, and Dereth.

"You ok?" Tallulah asks me.

"I...yes...I saw my ancest….where….how long did it talk to me?" I saw with confusion.

"The moment you looked at it you died. Like not even a second." Ford lets out with a belly laugh.

"Died?" I say to Dereth.

"Yes, died. I had to revivify you." He says to me. He motions to Rezik's still unconscious body. "Same thing happened to him but I know he always has a backup plan. We can leave him. But we should grab those orbs and head back to the keep."