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Children of the Dead

Bralfang swishes his tail in salutation on hearing Sprague's parting words, then climbs with urgency and soon disappears between the peaks of the Black Veil.

Atlagi eyes Sprague up and down once. They widen slightly on seeing the priest's golden hand. His demeanor changes slightly when he looks toward the entrance to the Sleeping Caverns, a slight twitch in his posture that betrays unease. The twitch is gone as soon as it appears and Atlagi addresses Sprague. His words seem to be meant for the whole party even though Sprague is the the one spoken to.

"My men and I have this under control. You lot can move on or return to Unadol. Tell Ullar the situation here is well in hand. Thank you for your service to the region. You will always be welcome."

With that he turned back to the lake as though expecting the group to honor their dismissal.
 
Elven Lord said:
"My men and I have this under control. You lot can move on or return to Unadol. Tell Ullar the situation here is well in hand. Thank you for your service to the region. You will always be welcome."
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Omylia doesn't move from her spot, though she nods at the kyrie's command.


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"Oh absolutely, Captain! Even at a quarter strength your official forces are bound to have a better grasp of this cavernous matter. We wouldn't want to step on your toes needlessly trying to assist. However our dragon friend has just taken off, and the journey is long, so we'll stay here for a bit before being on our way to Unadol. I don't know about you, Captain, but I've not had a bite to eat in ages! Surely this lake isn't off-limits, even if we're not to head to the caves? Yes? No?

Let's just rest for awhile. These fine gentlemen have the situation well in hand. Isn't that right, guys?"
 
Sprague nods in agreement and makes his way among the visitors, checking for wounds and offering healing.
 
Lorca feels uneasy about this turn of events. They had been granted guidance by a goddess and delivered to this location on a legendary dragon, and now the party was considering simply abandoning the quest?

She slithers over to the others and lowers her voice box to its lowest volume setting, before saying, "Something doesn't feel right here... We are being dismissed too suddenly and besides, refusing our help will only lower their odds of success. I think that this Atlagi fellow is hiding something. We ought to follow them and see what they are up to."
 
DestroyerHive said:
"Something doesn't feel right here... We are being dismissed too suddenly and besides, refusing our help will only lower their odds of success. I think that this Atlagi fellow is hiding something. We ought to follow them and see what they are up to."
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Omylia nods, though still smiling brightly at their Kyrie guests.


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"(Yes, we're definitely going to FOLLOW THEM. This little tyrant has ulterior motives scribbled all across his face. Let's just not cause a scene here, right now...)"
 
"(Yes, we're definitely going to FOLLOW THEM. This little tyrant has ulterior motives scribbled all across his face. Let's just not cause a scene here, right now...)"
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"Oh, I understand now... You're very clever, young one!"

Lorca raises her voice box volume loud enough for the kyrie to hear and says, "Yes, I agree. We shall remain here outside the cave and make no attempt to enter." She winks a reptilian eye at Omylia. This clever ruse is sure to deceive the kyrie!
 
A guffaw escapes Atlagi's lips. "I'm not leading my men in THERE!" he laughs. "That's suicide. I've called for dwarven dredgers from Belthrandir to seal the entrance to the caverns with many tons of rock and stone and dwarven magic. They'll be here within the week. If you lot want to die go right on ahead in. It's neither here nor there to me."

With that Atlagi flicks a wrist at his escort and a dozen kyrie take to the air, flying back toward Kyrit.
 
"Atlagi! Farewell."
Sprague waves goodbye.
"Well now that was rude. Should we explore the cavern?"
 
"Yes great mage - I believe that we should enter the cavern once the kyrie leave eyesight! But why is this Atlagi fellow so quick to avoid the cavern? Perhaps he is using the young elf's 'reverse psychology' tactic. He says that he will not go in in the cavern to make us believe that he will not go in the cavern, when in reality he will enter the cavern from another side, while dissuading us from entering the cavern so that he can perform his foul mission without obstacle. But if my deception trick worked, then why did he up and leave so soon? Unless he is also aware that I used the 'reverse psychology' tactic? No, surely not... Only a sage viper like myself could be clever enough to devise such a ruse..." she continues mumbling to herself for several minutes until her brain hurts from the exertion.
 
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NARRATION

The party takes a much needed respite by Trapper's Lake. They fish in the waters and hunt along it's banks. Lorca disappears for a while. The party assumes she's taking a dip, scoping out other possible signs of latent power. However, the lake appears to be just that, an ordinary lake.

Compelled by a mysterious hand, the party members gather outside the entrance to the Sleeping Caverns in early morning. The sun is barely peaking over the distant horizon, bathing the towering mountain facades above them in pale orange light. The party may experience some hesitation or excitement. They've heard so much about this place. Very little actually confirmed. It's a place shrouded in mystery where dark enigmas lurk. A place where history grasps at the present with absent hands, pulling, pulling, asking for questions it may or may not deign to answer.

As one, the group enters the caverns, bristling with anticipation...only to find themselves staring at a perfectly ordinary cave. Thick stalactites hang from the ceiling and stalagmites rise from the floor like the upper and lower jaw of a great beast. The first half of the room is illuminated by the light of the sun, gradually paling to near total blackness at the back.

No foul creatures of a long dead general leap out to strike at their heels, and the magic adept party members can sense no sorcery. There is no sound in the cave but for the occasional shuffle of a sleepy bat's wing and the steady drip drip drip of moisture running off a stalactite.

On closer observation, the party makes out one area in the back of the cavern, about the size of Bralfang's head that is much darker than the rest. It may be a way forward. However, a thin trail of something rust colored runs toward the far back of the cave where the party cannot see a thing.

It may be that there are multiple ways forward...or none, but it is abundantly clear to everyone that this cave, with its winding rows of stalagmites, is the perfect place for an ambush.

Spoiler Alert!
 

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The darkness of the cavern is all-enveloping. Lorca would be on alert, had her stomach not been growling so loudly. Her recent expedition into the lake was fruitless, as she could not find any fish to catch. She looks at Omylia hungrily, licking her fangs. In viper culture, if the pack was starved of sustenance, they would consume the weakest among them. No... she thinks to herself. This new pack does not seem like they would take kindly to our customs. Then her finned ears pick up a faint sound above her - the fluttering of wings! She lowers herself to the ground and springs up with all her might, snatching a bat between her jaws. She crunches hungrily, devouring the catch.

Between bites, she modulates to Sprague: "Chosen of the goddess, may you bless us with the gift of light? I am as blind as this thing in my mouth."
 
Marilli's face changes twice in the space of a few seconds. First she looks a bit sick when Lorca eats a bat whole, then breaks into a fit of giggles at Lorca's words. As Sprague's mage light illuminates the cavern like a chandelier hanging high above them, she transforms into her wolf form and sniffs the air with heightened senses.

Sprague's mage light isn't the only thing that illuminates. bright rays project themselves from his golden hand, acting as a bit of a flashlight, illuminating things he points at better than the soft glow of the magelight. The stalagmites cast long, pointed shadows like teeth on the floor. The rust colored stains on the dirt become more sharply focused.

Marilli sniffs the stains and pulls back, a snarl on her lips. "Blood. A few weeks old by the smell of it." She lifts her head and opens her mouth. "It leads that way, toward the far back of the cave."

Spoiler Alert!
 
Omylia blinks a few times, adjusting to Sprague's light. She glances Marilli's way.


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"Blood? Blood is good. Blood points eyes toward papers. Perhaps we should FOLLOW THE BLOOD. Unless there's anything more interesting in that black void over there. But it's not as if we wanna avoid the danger, here in this forbidden place where our query is said to dwell!"

In the meantime, Omylia paces around the cave, combing along the leftmost wall. She keeps her camera raised and her eyes peeled, trying to INVESTIGATE the cave entrance while the group is still here.
 
Omylia's investigation turns up little. There's quite a bit of moss latched onto the entrance to the cave where it gets a bit of sun during the day, but a slight nook in the side of the cave entrance catches her interest. It's only a few centimeters long and a fraction of that thick, but to her inquisitive eye, it looks like an indent, like something was pushed into it. Whatever it was has long since fallen away, and there's no trace of it on the ground below.
 
Lorca observes Omylia in confusion. The elf discovers blood and then proceeds to look at a wall? Lorca has interacted with Ullar's elves before, but this one is particularly peculiar!

"I agree that we should follow the blood trail. Rarely has a blood trail led to disappointment. Either we find a clue to our mark, or at least a tasty treat. Or both."
 
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Nelson had been all but silent since they embarked on Bralfang for the lake. The words of the Goddess and of his ancestor continued to echo through his mind. He felt... uncertain. Unable to focus. For the first time in his life, he feels unsure of his fate.

He is pulled from his thoughts when Lorca leaps up and he recoils and laughs as she devours the bat. "Well damn viper, you shoulda said something." He pulls a bag out of his satchel. When he opens it, the smell of seasoned dried meat wafts from it.
"This bag was a gift from a Kyrie wizard friend of mine way back in the day. Keeps my jerky fresh for weeks." He grins and eats a piece, then offers the bag to Lorca. "Have all ya like."
 
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Lorca's eyes widen as she looks into the bag. "You are most generous, kind cow-Kyrie! I am forever in your debt!" she digs her pointed snout into the bag and pulls out a few strands of jerky. She feels secretions coming to her eyes as she savours the delicious dry meat. No matter what happens, I must always prioritize protecting this one over the others, she thinks to herself.


[TRIGGER WARNING: SNAKE IMAGE]
Spoiler Alert!
 
NARRATION

The party picks their way carefully through the cavern entrance. Their ears remain vigilant for signs of hostiles, but none make themselves known. Despite the light offered by Sprague's magic, the ground is still treacherous. Lorca alone seems unphased by the difficult terrain, her long, lithe body slithering effortlessly across bump and divot.

For this reason, she is at the head of the party when they reach an old, rotted door. Trying the door, it doesn't budge. The rotted panels simply give way before the vipers fingers, falling with a dull thunk to the floor on the otherside. Slithering through a rotted gap at the base, Lorca pries the bar from the other side, and the door swings open loudly on rusted hinges, hanging at an odd angle.

The rusty smudge leads the party forth into a large stone chamber like the entryway to a keep. The floor is cobbled stone covered with moss that somehow grows despite the lack of light. The pillars which hold up the ceiling are made of finely fitted stone. The ceiling stones are supported by beams which, oddly enough, do not appear to be rotted at all, unlike the door. Brightly burning torches illuminate the room in the warm glow of natural fire, revealing a large obsidian slate in the center of the floor. Words appear on the slate which bear a harrowing reminder of the children in the forest.

At the far back of the room, the blood trail ends, at a body.

Before anyone can stop her, Marilli dashes forward. "Papa!" she gives a half anguished, have uncertain cry.

Eliren grumbles that the party is making an awful lot of noise between the door and the kid and races after her.

OPEN ROUND

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Sprague approached the obsidian slate and touches it with his golden hand, running his fingers over the words.
 
Lorca is alarmed by the sound of Marili's wailing. She does not feel grief over the loss of loved ones, as her people are very short-lived and exist only to strengthen their pack, but her heart aches all the same. She wants to comfort the girl, but does not know what to say, and so slithers toward Eliren.

"I agree, pale elf," she modulates to Eliren, "between the were-girl's crying and the invisible force that flung the door out of my hands, we may be attracting unwanted attention. I'll stand guard."

She quietly slithers over to the arch at the end of the chamber and peers through, trying to stay out of the torch light. Her vision is poor in the low light, but regardless tenses on her coiled tail, ready to pounce on anything that emerges from the darkness.
 
"Allow me." [Attaches a six-foot Bo to his new Shield, and a Torch to its front side.] Tapping the floor with it before him as he goes, he begins to enter the far-end passage.
 
"It's not my father," Marilli says, sniffling.

"I should think not," Eliren says, "It's a woman." His eyes wander over the corpse coming to rest on something clutched in the dead woman's hand. Gently pulling the long stiffened fingers away from the palm, something falls into his hand.

He holds it up so the party can see. "It's another one of those Crimson Sigil rings. If this isn't that archeologist Atlagi mentioned, I'll eat my hat...if I had a hat."

He seems about to say something else, when his head shifts slightly to the side, angling an ear toward the door.

A few moments later, the rest of the party picks up on it too. Voices carry to them from the hallway beyond. Deep, guttural chanting in a language that hasn't been spoken on Valhalla in hundreds of years. The sound grows steadily louder, and is soon accompanied by the rhythmic clamping of marching feet.

Omylia who, despite her somewhat loose relationship with the truth, is actually the most educated of all of them, recognizes it first. Orcish.

"They're still a ways off, and with all that noise they're making I doubt they know we're around...but if they're not headed this way I'll eat...Nelson's hat," Eliren finishes, adjusting for his previous error in expression. He muses to himself, "We could hide here, set up an ambush...go on the offensive, they'd never expect that..."

"...or we could, you know, retreat," Marilli says in a small voice, "back to the cave."
 
"Retreat is for the cowardly and diminished in number. We are neither of those! We are the Magnolia Seven! I suggest that we hide in the shadows and wait. When the enemy enters the room, we attack as one and overwhelm them in an instant. That is the way of my people."

Lorca slithers over to Nelson and lowers the volume of her voice modulator, "I will stay by your side, provider of bountiful meat, and protect you with my life. No one is eating your hat today."
 
Sir Kae moves back into the room, dismantling his apparatus. "Lorca has the right of it, of course. Especially if there are more than a few of them.
 
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