It has been one scary place after another since I left Peithras: demon-worshipping Sultorean nobles, angry albino sailors, legions of zombified undead, invading orcs, and even a hungry dragon. As we started to descend the ancient spiral staircase that led downwards into the evil gloom of the Undercroft of Vecna, however, there was little doubt that this was the worst of all. I could almost hear old Uncle Wilburforce admonishing me: “Arr, what ye be doing, yer daft halfling? Ye could be roasting yer toes in front of a warm fire with a pint of Horwhistle’s Olde Best Barley Stout at the Ginger Penguin, instead of creeping toward yer doom in the cellar of a crazed evil god with fewer scruples than eyeballs!”
Viggo must have noticed my fear, for at that moment he slapped me on the back and grinned. “Fear not, little Arnold! The Raven Queen is with us, even here. And not worry about death, for I am sure Skalrag will meet us there!” The mage winced at the reference, and cast his usual cantrip to light our way. It seemed to function much less well than usual, as did my ever-burning torch. The blackness of the Undercroft mocked our efforts.
Despite Viggo’s efforts to keep our spirits up—truly, he is a ranger with no fears (unless that transvestite dwarven hedgehog-juggler in Peyon is counted)—we were a somber and quiet group as we travelled through the dark passages of the Undercroft. I wished Kiira was here, for we could do with her magicks alongside Skalrag’s in this dark place. The eladrin had stayed behind at Binwin’s cabin to do some research (she was none to clear about what), and had promised to catch up with us later. Little had she known, or had any of us known, where we would now be.
After a while, the passage entered into a chamber of sorts. Ahead of us a stone statue of a dark figure stood, holding a silver sword. To our left and right were smaller statues. We stepped in cautiously—it seemed an ideal spot for an ambush.
Indeed it was. Without warning, two figures emerged from the shadows, and attacked. Both were carrying long spiked chains, which they wielded with deadly skill, injuring or knocking prone several of our party.
As if this wasn’t enough, we heard—if heard is the right word—a dark moaning, which rose to a crescendo of anguished shrieks that ripped at our very souls. A hideous incoporeal wraith passed through the largest statue, and also advanced on us.
Viggo shook his head, and first muttering to his grandmama, then uttering words that unleashed the bound-magicks of his weapon. The wraith was thrown backwards and restrained for a time in sinews of magical energy. Skalrag cast a spell—which, oddly, caused the floor to glow a little (he later claimed he knew this all along, but at the time seemed as surprised as anyone). Thor charged at the first of the twirling enemies, and Dirock grabbed at his holy symbol.
For my own part, I drew my dagger, and stabbed at the chain-dancer with little effect. I also backed away slowly from the wraith, having no desire to once more hear its haunted screaming within my skull. Viggo laughed—I swear, he liked this place—and severely injured one of the dancers, which Thor promptly decapitated with a heavy blow from his axe.
The ranger shouted to the other chain warrior, “Szervusz? You with whirly thing? Bozmeg kecske! You see what a sword of the Raven Queen do to your friend?”
Thor interjected. “Aye lad, ye grazed him an’ left the dwarf to slay him…”
At this point, a new foe entered the fray—one of those accursed dark ones that we had first encountered in Meepo’s dye and alchemy shop in Phirul. He stabbed Viggo in the side with his dagger, then vanished.
The wraith, now free of his arcane restraints, once more floated towards us…
“NO! By the might of KORD, I command you BACK, I say BACK foul creature of death!” Dirock’s voice boomed and echoed against the stone walls of the chamber as a searing flash of light burst from the small silver hammer-symbol in his hand. The wraith was thrown back into the shadows.
I stepped into the shadows myself—shadows far across the room from the wraith, I hasten to add—and hid, readying my sling. As I did so, there was a POP, and everything went black.
Thor’s voice called out: “Ah cannae cut th’ heids aff ay these evil folks if Ah cannae see them! Skalrag, whit is gonnae oan?”
“Its not me!” I heard the mage reply.
POP! The dim light returned, and there in the room stood the dark one, ready to plunge his blade into Viggo’s underparts. He didn’t get the chance. I let my sling-stone fly, and it hit the creature square in the middle of the head. It fell dead at the ranger’s feet. The other chain warrior was soon dead too, leaving us only with the wraith to deal with. Skalrag and Dirock made short work of it.
We examined the sword. It appeared to be more ornamental than practical, but it did appear to be made of solid silver. I put it in my bag of holding for possible resale. How much would a sword of the one-eyed one fetch in the markets, I wondered?
Beyond this passage there lay another, the walls carved with strange patterns, scripts, and figures. At one point, however, a carving projected further from the wall than most—a small semi-statue of a figure stood near the floor, its hands held upwards as if to hold some spherical object…
I guessed quickly what the object might be–the platinum eye I had taken from the large orog leader in the Monastery of the Sundered Chain. I had dropped it into Dirock’s pocket, partly as practice, partly as joke, and partly for safekeeping. He hadn’t mentioned it, though.. had he perhaps not found it among the many religious tracts and symbols that he kept on his person?
I brushed past our cleric, and—with a quick covert filch—retrieved it. It fitted perfectly in the statue’s hands, causing a secret door to grind slowly open. “This way, I think…”
The secret passage continued for some forty or so paces before opening up into a chamber with a vaulted opening to our left. The walls here were carved with a scene of stick-men with spears, and some sort of bizarre-looking dragon. A hunting scene, perhaps? But why here, in the Undercroft? We searched, but found no more secret doors. We thus continued on through the opening, and to another passage beyond. It went a further fifty or so paces, and turned to the right—where a large pit blocked our way.
I volunteered to climb down, and have a look. I could find nothing of interest (although Viggo would later find panels in the stone that I had missed), and so I climbed up the other side. My companions all jumped across safely.
We continued on some more. We passed an area of dart-traps, but none of us were injured. Soon, we saw a light up ahead—a stone pedestal stood in a tall circular cavern. A single beam of arcane light shining down upon it from above.
As if that wasn’t marvel enough, there was the even greater marvel of what stood on the pedestal. An ivory goat! As Aunt Petunia used to say, you could have knocked me down with a wet ferret … what was it doing here?
Skalrag walked around the dais, and pronounced that the goat seemed to be magical. Viggo and I searched for traps, but could find none—although we both presumed that this was because we could not find them, not because they were not here. After all, who leaves a magical goat on a pedestal in their undercroft unguarded?
Nevertheless, it was all too much to pass up. As all of us (except Viggo) stepped back, Skalrag used his arcane mage hand to lift the statuette from its location. No sooner than he did so than things began to happen.
RUMBLE! First, the room began to shake, and large blocks started falling from the ceiling.
Next, Viggo grabbed the goat as it floated past him, and thrust it under his cloak.
GRRRRCLICKCLICLCLICKCLICK… as he did so, I heard a grating sound further back along the passage—an iron portcullis was descending to cut off our escape! Faster than you could say “Old Derrick Darrowtoes grows very large Talonian rutabagas in the sunny patch of upper meadow near Farmer Brownlee’s prize cow Bessie and her four spotted calves, one of which he’s named Mildred after his spinster aunt for reasons he won’t divulge, sober or otherwise,” I raced down the corridor, leapt over the pit, and slid toward the grate, desperately hammering an iron spike into the wall in an effort to block its passage. Moments later Thor and Dirock joined me, doing the same (and with rather more success).
As the passage behind us continued to crumble, Viggo ran past clutching the goat. Skalrag followed, turning into the next passage for safety. This wasn’t such a good move, as it turned out.
CRASH! A large stone sphere came crashing through the wall, smashing heavily into Skalrag before continuing down the passage. We chased after it, planning to step out of the way at the next turn in the corridor.
THWORPLING! There was a sound of an enchantment being tripped, and suddenly the chamber that had once featured engraved stick-men and a dragon on its walls suddenly sported a bare section of wall, a dragon, and a collection of skeletal warriors. They clattered towards us.
I stepped aside, waiting for them to come closer. Closer they came too, so close in fact that the dragon knocked Skalrag unconscious with a blast of its fearsome breath weapon. He fell, groaning and bleeding in his traditional way. As Viggo and Dirock bickered over who would save him this time, Thor kept the dragon busy with his axe, cutting into it with powerful blows. I decided to help—stepping out from my hiding place to throw a handful of spinnyblades at our enemies, blinding the dragon and cutting down several of the skeletons. I then used a move that I had first practiced on the gray dragon at Chenth: slipping under it, I stabbed it hard, then kicked it harder, pushing it several feet back. One more cut of my dagger and it was dead. Or more dead, perhaps—it seemed almost stitched together out of dragon parts, an undead zombie draconid of sorts.
Skalrag regained consciousness, muttering something about Death. By now we had grown accustomed to it.
Injured, tired and hungry as we were, we decided to rest for a bit. This seemed as good a place as any to do so—there was but the one secret entrance, which had closed behind us when we had removed the eye-orb from the statue. For good measure we pushed the stone sphere to block the passage, and took turns on guard duty as the others slept. Our dream were haunted by this place, but we nonetheless all felt better for having rested.
After gnawing on some dry biscuits, we decided to reenter the main passage through the secret door, and continue further along it. Eventually it ended in a junction. The passage to right led to a set of stairs spiralling deeper into the Undercroft. The passage to the left led into a large dark chamber. Before us, set into the wall of the junction, was an imposing stone door. It was locked. There were, however, clues as to how it might open: a depression large enough to hold a small orb, and an inset in the wall where one might place something… like a hand.
Dirock looked at it, and immediately recognized the significance. “The lock here bears the iconography of Vecna… the depression for an eye, and a place to put a hand, symbolically representing the very disfigurement of the Whispered One.” We tried the platinum eye we had found, and a skeletal hand, but to no avail. If there were magical keys to be had, they weren’t ones that we yet possessed.
At this point, Skalrag spoke up. “I have an idea.. let us consult the Blue Hand of Wisdom!”
The suggestion brought back memories—I had remembered the Blue Hand of Wisdom playing their ever-popular music at the Harvest Festival, and it was common indeed for an inebriated patron or three at the Ginger Penguin to try to sing their classic “Get Yer Hands Out Me Pockets, I’m Not Dead Yet,” usually loudly, and rather off-key. I was unclear, however, how a halfling fiddle trio could help us out here, or indeed how they could even be lured to perform in the undercroft of a malevolent, twisted god.
“No, no,” Skalrag said as I asked him about his plan. “Not that Blue Hand of Wisdom—they’re good, by the way.. I meant the.. what’s it called? The… Hand of Fate. Yes, that’s it. Hand of Fate.”
The mage opened his ritual book, and murmured an incantation. As if by magic—well, precisely by magic—a large hand appeared, floating in midair before us. It was blue too, which added to my confusion, and possibly his.
“Are you the the Hand of Fate?” asked Skalrag. The hand responded with a thumbs-up, to which the mage winced in reply. He had just used up one of his three questions.
“Which path would most benefit us?” The hand seemed uncertain—clearly, each of the paths had some gain. Perhaps all three of them were even necessary. Skalrag asked something else—I don’t remember what—and then released the Hand. It responded with a V-sign, and then vanished.
We all agreed that it made sense to go to the left and explore the large chamber before descending into the Undercroft further, and so in that direction we headed. Entering the room we found three large capstans set into the floor, each marked from zero to nine in what looked like a giant combination lock. An engraving on the wall provided what seemed to be a clue:
Witness the nascent warlord, once prisoner
He who would unite the tribes around his banner
He who would betray his people in our name
He has come full circle, as must those
Who would witness his reward
What did it mean though? Perhaps we should rotate each of them a full circle to unlock whatever it was they unlocked?
“No,” said Viggo. “Viggo think we must go round like the days and seasons, and the sun in sky, which is 365, except not is 365 of us, is five, so…” He started to do some math on his fingers.
In the meantime we tried my solution. It was the wrong one, and Viggo, Skalrag, and I each received a painful bolt of necrotic energy in punishment. A short while later, Viggo finished his math.
“360!” While his logic was unclear, it did have the advantage of being the number of degrees in a full circle. Moreover, I was quite sure that my capstan, the third of the three, had let out a louder “click” when I passed the number zero, which also buttressed the ranger’s theory. We tried it.
“CLICK… CLUNK…… WHIRRRR.” Rather than more necrotic pain, this time we were greeted with the sight of a secret door opening at the far end of the chamber. We walked over to investigate further.
The door led into a labyrinth of small passages, each more roughly hewn than those we had seen earlier. Moreover, the very walls here seemed to be embedded with bones and skulls, in a sort of macabre stucco. I shuddered—it wasn’t a home decorating technique that I was likely to ever use in my own barge or burrow.
We explored the tunnels for several minutes, and found them finally to converge on a small central cavern. There stood a motionless skeletal warrior, with four arms and a scimitar in each of its four hands.
“Well, as they say–four-armed is forewarned…” My companions groaned.
“Aam sure ‘at if we tooch heem, he’ll jist wake up an’ lat at us.” said Thor. “Ah aam sooo siick an tayerd ay bein’ attacked! Ah say we jist lay intae th’ creature an’ chop it up intae wee shards ay bain afair it can dae much damage.” It was a brutally simple plan. And so that is what we did: we ringed the skeletal creature, and at Thor’s signal unleashed our attacks. As soon as we did so it began to stir, and then lashed out furiously with its blades.
The fight went well enough from my vantage point skulking around a corner and flinging stones at the thing. I became aware, however, of a complication: several skeletons had emerged from the very walls of the tunnels, and were converging on our location. I stabbed at one with Petunia, missing, and then called out for assistance.
Thor stepped back to assist me, and between us we destroyed two of the undead nearest me. In the main chamber, Viggo and the others finished off the four-armed warrior. We all then went skeleton-hunting.
I couldn’t see so well in the dark, but soon heard Thor cursing as he found himself facing another. Unable to squeeze past him to assist in the narrow chamber, I instead ran up, jumped on his shoulders, and tried to summersault over the skeleton’s head.
It was a bad jump, and the creature swung at me with its rusty sword as I leapt past. In doing so, however, he left himself open to the dwarf’s counter-stroke. Thor cleaved it in two. I picked myself up from the ground, and grinned.
“Hawhaw, ‘at was fin, halflin’! Let’s gang fin’ anither!”
It didn’t take us long. Once more as Thor engaged it, I leapt onto his shoulders, and attempted a summersault. It wasn’t much better, and I fell prone behind our foe. I stood up, blade in hand, when I heard Viggo behind me.
“Viggo want to try, like Arnold!” The ranger ran up behind me, and tried leaping on my shoulders. The effect as was might be expected: he knocked me to the ground, barely cleared the skeleton, and started falling toward Thor. The dwarf bashed him down a side passage with his shield, then together he and I finished off our skeletal opponent.
We returned to the small central cavern, where Dirock and Skalrag waited for us. They also had eliminated a skeleton or two, albeit in more traditional fashion.
TO BE CONTINUED
Our battle had been a desperate one, although we had won in the end. By the valor of Skalrag (how often does one say that?), most of the prospectors had been rescued. However, as we sat a few minutes to gain our breath, my head hurt something terrible—and not just from the heavy axe blow it had taken from one of the orcs now dead on the temple floor. It hurt because this, like every other victory we had won since the Omen of the Goats, only made the whole evil-plot-threatening-to-destroy-all-good-things seem that much more complicated. It all felt rather like trying to unravel a basket of Kalonian water-eels.
Shocked by this appaling display of poor form, I temporarily took leave of my senses: I cast Seven-League Step and rushed past the enemy over to the altar, where I poured my last healing potion down the throat of the nearest prisoner, who was only seconds from death. The man’s wound closed up as the elixir coursed through his veins. The orc executioner came at me with his dagger, but I managed to duck under his arm. Suddenly remembering my days of being bullied in the schoolyard, I responded as I had then: with a boot in the goolies. To my amazement, it actually worked, and while winded orc clutched at his groin, I hastily wrapped a bandage around the throat of the second man, slowing the bleeding. I stood up, feeling pretty proud of myself … until I noticed the Witch and the Shaman were approaching to help the executioner deal with me. I glanced over my shoulder at the brawl behind me. “Uh, guys? A little help?”
“Demons and angels preserve us,” I whispered, “this is an account of the life of Vecna himself.” We realized then that we had stumbled upon a place sacred to the Lord of Secrets. Arnold suspected that an entrance was hidden inside one of the sarcophagi – all we had to do was figure out which one.
