GREYHAWK 2000 - Stories
ADVENTURE 6 - Beyond the Ancient Doors
We returned to Longspear after the harrowing battle with the hideous ogre. In
Longspear we took about a month off. Damoni and I spent the time researching
new spells (I added hold person, lightning bolt, vampiric touch, invisibility,
and spectral hand to the spells that I knew). Virgil found out that his wolf
charm was cursed, and we think (hope) that he had the curse removed. Zensun
spent the time learning ancient Suelese. He found out that the seal on the ancient
doors that we had found in the back of the Hideous Ogre's cave told a story.
The short of it was that when the Suel first came to this area they found an
ancient ziggurat haunted by demons and devils. The suel sorcerer named Xanthias
put a seal on the entry to the ziggurat so that none would approach it. We
thought that the door we found in the hideous ogre's cave could somehow lead
to the ziggurat, so we decided to see if we could get through it. We also
deciphered a note that we found on the ogre. It was from our old nemesis Aerifon.
The note said that if the ogre were to find the "book of all knowledge" and return
it to Aerifon he would be set free. We decided to be on the lookout for
that book.
3/16/592 Longspear - We decided that it was time that we add another
warrior to our group. While the rest of us were busy studying, Virgil and Feanor
went out looking. I figured two elves would come back with an
elven fighter. Boy was I wrong! They brought back the ugliest, smelliest, and
most scarred half-orc I had ever seen. Grock Axgrinder was his name. He was loud,
obnoxious, and generally hard to be around. Luckily, he reminded me of
Bonecrusher.
3/18/592 Longspear - With our new companion downwind, we set out for
the ogre's cave and the ancient
doors.
4/1/592 The Ancient Doors - The trip was uneventful and we found
ourselves before the ancient doors. No manner of physical force was able to budge
the doors so I was forced to resort to a knock spell which I thought would have
little chance of success. Immediately after I cast the spell, the seal fell to
the ground and the doors swung open,
slowly grinding the seal to dust as they did.
The complex beyond was like nothing we had ever seen. There was room after room
with colorful statues and mosaics which we did not recognize. Statues of warriors
were brightly dressed with ornate armor and ceremonial decorations including
feathers, animal hides, sea shells, etc. Some of the statues were of creatures
that resembled the hideous ogre. Many of the rooms were half filled with
water and there were traps everywhere.
One room had a pile of rocks on top of which was a huge conch shell. As we
tried to move past it, a huge crab claw reached out and attacked us. We were
able to kill the crab demon pretty handily.
Another room was mostly filled with water. There was a landing, however,
with two statues of squid-headed men standing at the edge of the pool. When
we tried to cross the pool we were attacked by a giant squid tentacle. We
quickly got out of the water and let fly all sorts of magic and missiles at
the tentacle, if fact, this is were I cast my first lightning bolt spell. When
we though we had killed it, Grock went back into the water (Unfortunately,
the swim did not lessen Grock's stench level). He soon found out
that we had not killed it and we decided to retreat and explore other areas.
We quickly found a secret door. We followed this secret door and, low and behold,
it lead to the other side of the room with the giant tentacles!
That is as far as we got that day. We decided to spend the night at the sand
trap. Our rest was fitful and we seemed to be the worse for the night. Many of
use were suffering from nausea, cramps, and muscle aches.
4/2/592 In the Ancient Ziggurat - The first thing that we did on
our second day in the ziggurat was try everything we could to open the
ancient doors which had sealed us in this accursed place. Nothing we did
would open them, however. Resigned to our fate, we set out to find the
Book of All Knowledge and any sign of Xanthias. We discovered many
strange rooms in our search, too many to mention all of them here.
I will, however, describe some of the strangest or most dangerous
rooms. Hanna's find traps spells were invaluable, as almost every room
we came to was trapped.
The Room of the Mummies - This room was about 50' long and 30' wide.
It had two stone divans, each with a mummy lying on it. Between them was
a low stone table with a flask and two goblets made of crystal. Hanging
from the ceiling was a lit brazier. When we entered the room, a strange
glowing ball flew out of the brazier and attacked us with bolts of lightning.
As it attacked, the mummies sprang to life and attacked also. The mummies
were perfectly preserved, in fact they could have been live humans. We
beat back the mummies and slew both of them, but we could not hurt this
strange glowing ball with any of our weapons. I tried a magic missile
spell on it which seemed to hurt it. It definitely angered the thing as
it left who it was attacking and came straight for me. The shock of its
lightning bolt made my heart stop for a second and burned my skin badly.
I turned invisible to get out of its reach and close to Hanna who could
heal me. With Hanna by my side able to heal me, I once again attacked the
glowing ball with magic missiles. While we did that Zensun tried to catch
it in his pouch, or man-purse as he has started calling it, to no avail.
Damoni and I both cast every magic missile we had into the thing before
it dissipated.
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