A Wurzel’s Wanderings

8th of Sage’s Vigil, Year of the Horde 

For all the dark mystery that had befallen Phirul, I slept surprisingly soundly on the rough stone floor of Andy’s Armoury. Much of the credit for this, of course, is due to the Everfluffy Bedroll Company, renowned throughout my native Peithris for its fine workmanship and use of only the finest elven fluffthistle (imported from nearby Tre’burale). As they say, “If you can’t sleep on an Everfluffy, you had best become a dwarf!”

We rose early and, after a rather tedious meal of dried rations, set out once again in the direction of the Abbey. This time nothing would divert us from our mission!

Except, that is, a glowing hatch.

It  was Kiira who noticed it first, halting the party to point up at the ceiling. “What’s the red glow there?” she asked.

Viggo looked puzzled—he couldn’t see anything. Nor could I. However, Noctuz could sense it too. “Yes, Kiira, well spotted.. its some sort of illusion. Let’s see what is behind it.” With a wave of his hand, he dispelled the arcane concealment. An inscription of sorts appeared in the steel plate:

TO VISIT THE WONDROUS TREEPO
YOU MUST MERELY SET THINGS RIGHT
AN ERROR WILL BRING A SINISTER PLIGHT 

Beneath the inscription there were a series of four sliding tiles, each bearing a symbol: grass, sun, a kobold, and a cow. 

I thought a moment. “The sun nourishes the grass, which nourishes the cow, which nourishes the kobold…” Viggo nodded in agreement, but I was far from certain. “Perhaps, Kiira, you might use a mage hand to slide the tiles, while we all stand well back?” I asked.

“Why yes of course, Arnold,” she smiled. She clearly had more confidence in my puzzle-solving skills than I did. A misplaced confidence too, as it turned out too. No sooner had she moved the last tile in place, when a loud click was hear, the panel swung open, and a hideous blob of somethingness fell from the ceiling to engulf her. We had it wrong.

“By Moradin’s long grey beard, its a gelatenous cube!” Thor shouted. “And its eatin’ poor Kiira.. we’ve got tae get her out, lads, or the poor lass will be little more than a pool ay gooey elf-melt!” Viggo had already drawn his bow, and quickly loosed a couple of arrows into the quivering blob. It shuddered from the wounds, to our relief. At least it could be injured with normal weapons. We all attacked it immediately, hoping to save our friend before it was too late. “We’re coming, Kiira.. you just hang on in there lassee!” Thor shouted in grim encouragement to her, as he swung his hammer into the creature’s side.

“By the xlasinthar flaalilnyrin great llanythlis green tree of life, DAMN IT!” I was surprised to hear Kiira’s voice coming from somewhere well beyond the cube, clearly in a much worse mood than she had been before its attack. “I’m kidnapped, locked in a cage by some twisted tiefling, the apocalypse has ravaged Phirul, I’ve had my life force sucked out by dark incantations, almost died, been ambushed, and now that stupid goddamn blob has ruined my only change of clothes? Well, by the happy fairy lights of Llalnthilal, lanalthx that!” With this final expletive, she joined the fray, launching her powerful magicks against the creature.

I had no idea the fey cursed so well, to be honest. It’s a good thing they can teleport to safety, though.

With its intended eladrin meal having safely vanished, the hungry cube turned on Thor. With a loud “GLOOP,” it lurched forward, suddenly engulfing the dwarf. I threw spinnyblades towards it, backing up all the while in an effort to avoid a similar fate. “GlooooooOOP!” Another lurch, and Vigoo too was now inside its semi-transparent body. 

Happily, the creture was little match for the arcane magicks of Kiira and Noctuz, not to mention the blows being struck from within it by its rather undigestible prey. With a final shudder, it melted, spraying us with its messy mass.

“Oooh, you do look funny, what with goo in your hair, m’dear!” I grinned at Kiira, as I wiped jelly from my face. One eladrin glare was enough to tell me that this was a topic I had best leave alone, for now at least.

With the trap sprung, we could see above us a small shaft leading into a room of sort. Viggo and I climbed up, as Kiira blinked to join us. It seemed to be a small and dusty storeroom, with a single door set into one wall. Kiira noticed a glass sphere by the door, and picked it up with a smile of recognition. “Its a fey lightball, isn’t it?” I asked, picking another up and giving it a shake. To my satisfaction, it started to glow. “I remember that Uncle Wilburforce had a couple of these.. he traded them for that rusty old Dwarven brew-maker of his, back that year that ol’ Bessy the barge-pony had her twin foals… I remember him taking it down the Draper’s Duck one evening…”

I dwarven voice interrupted. “Shall we try tae open the door? Or just shake the pretty little bauble things?” Thor too was in a bit of a mood since his devouring, and eager to press on. He stepped forward and tried the door. It swung openly easily, into another, larger chamber. We stepped inside.

This room was larger than the other, with a small raised gallery at one end. The floor, curiously, was covered with scorch marks and a puddles of a strange blue liquid.

“Who is this Treepo, Abzurian?” asked Dirock, as he surveyed our peculiar surroundings. “Mmmmmm…” replied the dragonkin, as he tapped his fingers. “Treepo is a dyer… mmmmmmm  yes, a dyer…”

That didn’t really explain the room, however—much less the arcane protections and traps we had encountered on our way in. Viggo and I strode across the room to the gallery, and climbed up. There was another door set in this wall. We gestured at the others to join us.

Unfortunately, Dirock had only taken a few steps in our direction when we all heard an ominous “click” from the floor where he had trod. Almost instantly the door we had entered through slammed shut, and spikes thrust up from the floor–almost impaling the cleric. Even more alarmingly, the various puddles in the room began to assemble into blue rivlets, then a stream, flowing into an ever-enlarging mass. To our horror, a huge blue creature rose up in the centre of the room, swaying menacingly. Then, with no warning, it sent bursts of blue liquid from its huge body, striking most of us with a biting, acidic sting.

Viggo and I started firing into the creature. Kiira blinked to join us on the gallery, and Noctuz also climbed up. On the floor of the main chamber, Thor and Dirock confronted it more directly, as The Abzurian lay huddled in the corner, burnt from the acid blast. The large creature swung blue appendages at the dwarf and cleric, battering them severely before letting forth with another blast of acid. I leapt down to use my dagger, hoping thereby to inflict more damage on the foul foe. Finally it shuddered, and flew apart with a splash, reforming the puddles we had first seen on the floor.

The room was clearly a trap, as had been the hatch we had first entered. Clearly too, Treepo was much more than an ordinary dye-maker.

Viggo jumped back down to the main room, and carefully picked his way across the floor until he reached the door into the cellar that had slammed shut earlier. He was unable to budge it. Our only way appeared to be to move forward. But was this other door trapped too?

The ranger searched the door frame, and the wall beside it. Sure enough, he soon spied a hidden panel in the wall. I opened it and found a single plain lever. Would pulling it set off the trap, or facilitate our progress? I pulled it…

There was a click, and a whir. The cellar door sprung open. The spikes rose up a little from the floor, and stopped. It appeared that the lever deactivated everything.

With this, we opened the door in the gallery, and peered into what seemed to be a rough-hewn hallway, its walls marked almost everywhere with chalk scribbles. Peering more closely, they appeared to be formula of some sort, rather than incantations. A deranged alchemist, perhaps? That would explain the acid-creature.

One end of the hallway led back to the cellar through we had first entered, obviously via a secret door that we had not detected when we had been there earlier. The other end led into a chamber that seemed to confirm my hunch as to what Treepo did when he wasn’t dyeing things. The floor was strewn with sheets of papers, with still more scrawls. The walls were covered with shelves, and the shelves laden in turn with bottles, boxes and bags of strange ingredients, together with tongs, beakers, mortars and pestles, and an odd clay pot.

A single curtain was drawn against the north end of the room. I peered cautiously behind it. The room continued, but this part was far more presentable, with a large desk, pens and ink, and several bound books. It looked like an office, with a door at the far end.

Kiira caught my eye with a gesture, as she pointed out a blue flask on one of the shelves—a healing potion. While I had no wish to antagonize the mysterious Treepo by ransacking his possessions, it did fair compensation for the assaults we had endured from his traps. I nodded at her to take it—the clever fey thought like a halfling.

I knocked carefully at the next door, and opened it slowly. “Hello? Anyone here?” I called out cautiously.

To our surprise, a small creature yipped in alarm, and flittered off down the corridor with a high-pitched yelp of “zombiezombiezombiezombie…”

“What was THAT?” I asked, turning to my companions. “It looked like some sort of flying monkey vole…” I stopped, realizing I had never seen a flying monkey vole, and really had little grounds on which to draw such a judgement.

“Perhaps a homunculus? An imp? A familiar?” Noctuz suggested, equally unsure himself.

There was only one way to find out. We stepped into the hallway, and walked after it, all the time calling out greetings in what we hoped was a reassuring and friendly tone. No response. Four of us continued on, while Kiira, Noctuz, and the Abzurian stayed behind to peruse the office for clues as to identity and fate of the mysterious Treepo.

Soon we entered a large room. To the sides were variious vats and tubes filled with mysterious bubbling liquids. At the far end, three large metal doors could be seen. On the ceiling, a mysterious metal contraption was attached, looking rather ominously like a large metal spider. From the far end of the room, the creature’s odd voice could be heard again from behind a crate. “No, zombies, go away, zombies.”

I flattened myself against the wall near the entrance, looking warily at the device above us. This place had “trap” written all over it. Thor and Dirock, however, resolutely strode forward. “Damnit it ya wee little man, I’m nae a zombie..” the dwarf muttered, as he searched for the owner of the voice.

“Teehehehehe.. got you, zombiezombiezombies!” the voice laughed triumphantly, as a metal barrier slammed shut behind us. Sure enough, it was a trap. The three iron doors in the room opened, and three hideous beasts emerged to attack us: a dark, jumpy spider; a hideous beetle, and a horrific scorpion with gnashing pinchers. Thor confronted them immediately, as Dirock readied himself to call down upon the various thunderous and smitey powers of Kord upon our foes once more. Viggo drew his swords, and leapt into the fray. I.. well, I hid and sniped.

Despite their onslaught, Thor had little trouble holding back the creatures. Dirock, however, soon found himself grabbed from above by the mysterious contraption, and injected with foul and noxious substances. I dashed to the location from whence the voice had come, and found—as I expected—a tube of sorts. If my theory was correct, Treepo or his homunculus were at the end of it, somewhere nearby, controlling the traps and the contraption above us. 

This theory too was soon confirmed, for no sooner had Dirock broken the grasp of the metal claw when a secret door flew open and the homunculus flew out to attack us. It was rapidly slain, as were the rest of the creatures in the room. I set a small fire, and sent smoke wafting down the tube. It emerged a minute later from a small closet behind the secret door. Examination of this revealed an array of levers to control the doors and devices in the room, as well as a second secret door leading back to the office. There Kiira and Noctuz stood reading and collecting various arcane materials from Treepo’s collection, strangely unmoved by the deadly struggle that had ensued.

With nothing else to explore on this level, and still no Treepo to be found, we mounted a spiral set of stone stairs to what we presumed was the ground floor of the establishment. We found ourselves within a room filled with shelves, and the shelves in turn filled with bottles of various kinds. A quick search revealed a few things of interest—including a bottle of Thrudcurrent Ink. Could this be the shop from which Edgar Stoat purchased his writing supplies? I was excited at the thought.

There were no windows in this chamber, only two small secret doors and a set of stairs continuing upwards. The doors, we surmised, led into the shop proper. I opened one carefully, having first oiled the hinges, for I had no desire to alert zombies to our presence.

Sure enough, it opened up into a larger room, with shattered windows, a broken door, and the stock of inks, dyes, and alchemical goods in some disarray. I crept about it quietly, to see what I could see.

What a saw was a little dark man, with a mischievous and far from pleasant-looking smile. Could he be Treepo? I whispered a greeting to him. He introduced himself with a name I could not quite catch, but which most certainly bore no resemblance to the missing owner of this shop. He seemed to be oddly unconcerned as to any zombies nearby, and indeed mocking my considerable caution. Instead, he seemed rather more interested in pilfering items from the store.

I gestured to him to join me, and returned to join my companions in the much safer location of the central chamber. At first I thought he had not followed me. A few minutes later, however, he emerged from a shadow through some arcane trickery. (He was, I would later learn, a Dark One—an inhabitant of the Shadowfell. The zombie armageddon had apparently enticed him and others of his kind to seek profit amid the chaos and despair that was now Phirul.)

We conversed a moment, neither side anxious to give much away in the way of information or tactical advantage. He did, however, suggest that the zombie apocalypse was somehow linked to one he termed the Dark Lord—Orcus, Demon Prince of the Undead Dirock surmised. Mainly, however, the sketchy little fellow mocked us, threw a few bottles at Viggo, but otherwise did nothing that would indicate deadly intent. Finally he left us alone, and departed.

With this, we continued up another flight of stairs, arriving in what was clearly Treepo’s living quarters. Judging from what we found there, Treepo was a kobold, had not been home recently, and he was none to fastidious in keeping his kitchen clean. His journal also provided further evidence that he had sold Thrudcurrent ink to a rather mysterious, and possibly halfling, buyer. Edgar Stoat might have stood in this very building! The thought was so thrilling that I could feel the hair on my toes stand on end.

In another time, when the city was not infested with tens of thousands of flesh-hungry zombie spawn of hell, I would have followed these clues in the hopes of meeting my boyhood hero. For now, however, we had more important things to do. We needed to rest, then continue on to the Abbey, in the hopes of finding there a safer refuge for the hungry survivors huddled on the roof of the Golden Gryphon. We collected what useful supplies we could from this place, and once more returned to the sewers below.