IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE
PRELUDE 2D: THE AWAKENING – TITHENMAMIWEN
PBeM – March 5th thru 9th, 2007
The 15th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty
You open the door at the end of the columned hall. Beyond it lies a magnificent chamber made all of gold. Its walls and floor and ceiling are all embossed and etched in bas relief. Directly opposite you and Agnarr stands a door of giant proportions — literally large enough for a giant to traverse it — made entirely of ebony and covered in similar bas reliefs…
… and that’s the last thing you remember.
You wake up lying slumped to one side — as if you had somehow fallen unconscious while in your meditative trance — on a bed with sheets of light green silk. An elegant bedside table is just off to your left and, in the corner of the room opposite you, a large cedar chest is nestled. An unstrung bow hangs on the wall directly above the chest.
Pale light shines through a nearby window. Looking out you can see the grey mist and hear the gentle patter of the rain. Church bells are chiming the dawning hour, just like they would back home…
Actually, you know that bell…! It’s the bell on St. Gustav’s Chapel!
Rushing to the window you confirm what you already knew to be true in your heart: You’re back home, somewhere in Midtown. The window looks north, over the King’s River Gorge and into the Temple District. You’re a couple stories above the small alley below you.
As the initial moment of excitement ebbs, you take a moment to soak in your surroundings. You’re wearing a loose garment of wool – very high quality, but typical of what you usually wear for your evening meditation. Moving over towards the chest and bow, you can see that it’s not yours, although even a glance tells you that it’s of extremely high quality. It looks similar to some of the bows you saw on your way through Hyrtan.
The chest is locked. You head over to the bedside table to see if there’s anything you can makeshift into a lockpick, but when you open the drawer you find a key laying next to a small, decrepit-looking book.
The key fits the chest just fine. You do a quick inspection for any possible traps (practically out of habit) and pop the lid: Inside you find about a dozen different outfits of extremely expensive clothing, all of it apparently in your size.
You pick out an outfit as close to your every day clothes as possible, leaning towards ease of movement over status (you want to be able to be completely comfortable in an elven household while also running or climbing out of a window if the need arises), and quickly change into them. You then neatly fold the wool garment you were wearing and place it in the chest, lock the chest, put the key back in the bedside table, and take out the book you’d noticed before.
Glancing through it you discover that it is badly damaged and only partially legible. Those parts which are legible are written in draconic. The opening paragraph of the piece identifies it as a “Treatise on the Varied Arts of the Dreaming”.
Taking a piece of cloth you wrap the book up carefully and pocket it. Then you turn and begin making the bed. Under the pillows you find two adamantine daggers – they look as if they’ve been deliberately secreted there. Your hands quickly perform a delicate search of the rest of the bed. In amidst the twisted bedcovers you find a mithril necklace in the form of a dragon’s head.
You quickly resolve to search the entire room, to see what else might be hidden or unapparent.
The first thing you find is a bag strapped under the bedside table (positioned so that it’s out of sight, but easy to reach). The second is that the chest has a recessed bottom: It’s deeper on the outside than it looks from the inside. You’d guess that it has a false bottom.
But first you head over to the door, intending to see if it can be secured in some way. You’re surprised to find that it has been locked from the inside with a sturdy iron bolt.
You grab the bag, flip open the chest, and begin laying things out on the floor. Once you’ve got the chest empty, it’s relatively easy to find the tilting point to swivel the false bottom. Swinging it aside you find, folded carefully inside the lower compartment, what appears to be a mithril shirt. It’s beautifully crafted with a dragon sigil worked in black silver on each shoulder (the sigil matches the design of your amulet).
Lying on top of the mithril shirt, however, is your longsword — the one you found in the ghoul’s cavern. (Crafted from an unidentifiable black metal, the sword’s pommel is an elaborate sculpture of a black dragon. The wyrm’s tail extends from the pommel’s lower end, while its head extends above the handguard.)
You grab the bag and examine it, discovering it to be a bag of holding. You turn it inside out and 300 gold pieces drop to the floor. Righting the bag of holding again you put the gold, the mithril shirt, the longsword, the amulet, the book, and one of the daggers into the bag. You strap the bag and the other dagger on under your clothes, taking care to conceal them, replace the false bottom of the chest, place the rest of your clothes on top of it, lock the chest, and put the key back in the nightstand.
You take one last careful look around the room, just to make sure you haven’t missed anything. Then you head to the door and listen again. Not hearing anything you carefully slide the bolt open. It clicks loudly despite your best efforts. You open the door and step out into the hallway…
