IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE
SESSION 14D: IN THE BEAST PITS
January 5th, 2008
The 5th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty
They headed south, down the only remaining hallway. Like the hall to the north, this hall was lined with statue niches – each containing the fiercesome aspect of an orcish warrior.
After sixty feet or so, the hall ended in another large chamber. What appeared to have once been an extremely large fountain stood in the middle of the room, but if there had once been water there it was long gone now.
On a pedestal in the center of the fountain were three statues, each depicting a wolf-like creature: One appeared to be a wolf of prodigious size. Another gaped saber-like fangs and had bony protrusions jutting from its spine, skull, and ribs down to a serpentine tail ending in a bulb of bone. The third appeared almost pantherish, with tendrils emerging from its shoulders.
“What are they?” Elestra asked.
“For those two,” Agnarr said, pointing to the second and third, “I do not know. But the one in the center is a dire wolf. They are well known in the north.”
Three more halls led away from this chamber: The ones to the west and the south were shrouded by badly tattered drapes of black cloth. To the east, the hallway stood open — but after about twenty feet was blockaded with a great mass of broken furniture, large chunks of rock, and the like.
“Who do you suppose did that?” Elestra asked, gesturing towards the blockade.
“I don’t really want to find out,” Dominic said, clutching his holy symbols a little tighter.
“I agree,” Tee said. “Let’s head to the west.”
This led them into a series of tight corridors filled with many turns and numerous doors. Picking a direction at random, they ended up in an exceptionally wide chamber with several open doorways leading to the hallway. A half-dozen high stone tables were stretched out across the far end of the chamber, and each table was covered in heaps of rusted metal and broken glass (except for one, which was empty). Off to one side, a large stone shelf reached from the floor to the ceiling.
They proceeded carefully, starting with the shelf. Tee picked her way through broken containers and fossilized garbage. Ranthir identified several substances which might have once been alchemical components, but they had all been rendered useless through age.
Tee then proceeded to the worktables, and the story was much the same here. The only thing of interest were a few scraps of paper which had somehow been preserved in a hermetically sealed compartment. These were written in a mixture of Ancient Common and what Ranthir identified as a remarkably sophisticated but archaic Orcish.
As Ranthir began carefully pouring through these notes, Tee reached the final worktable – the empty one. But as she moved to search it for hidden compartments or the like, the illusion screening it suddenly dropped away, revealing a wolf lying on the table. Its back had been carefully cut open and the flaps of flesh carefully pinioned to the table’s surface. Surgical equipment lay nearby.
More horrifically, the wolf’s spinal column appeared to be laying halfway out of the creature. But, upon closer inspection, Tee realized that this was, in fact, a second spinal column – the wolf’s original spinal column was still in place. She called Dominic over and he confirmed it: It looked as if someone were grafting the second spinal column into place alongside the original spine.
The wolf did not move, but its eyes were open. It seemed frozen in time.
Ranthir set aside the orcish notes for a moment and came over to the table. After a quick investigation, he discovered that the entire surface of the worktable was contained in a stasis field. A switch located on top of a jumbled mess of machinery would apparently turn this stasis field on and off.
“Should we turn it off?” Ranthir looked to Tee.
Tee thought about it for a bit, and then motioned Agnarr and Tor over. Once they were in position – their weapons drawn – Tee reached out and flipped the switch.
Instantly the wolf began howling in pain, bucking wildly and spraying the room with blood. Its movements ripped its pinioned flesh free from the table—
And then Agnarr sunk his greatsword into its skull.
Everyone around the table stared at each other with faces spattered with blood. Agnarr sighed deeply. “Better to put the poor creature out of its misery.”
“How long had it been like that?” Tee wondered.
None of them cared to answer.
CHAOTIC STORAGE
Heading across the hall they passed through an iron door. The walls of the room beyond were covered in glass cylinders. Each of the cylinders were between four and six feet long, perhaps six inches around, and filled with light blue fluid. Floating in the liquid were dozens, if not hundreds, of clawed animal legs. A few of the cylinders had shattered, allowing the liquid to run out, and in these only skeletal remains were left.
Agnarr identified all of the legs as belonging to dog-like or wolf-like creatures, although few of them belonged to any species he was familiar with.
Meanwhile, Dominic reached a more disturbing conclusion: The legs didn’t appear to have been amputated. There were none of the tell-tale marks or serrations.
“You mean they were grown like this?” Tee asked.
Dominic shrugged. “I guess so.”
“That’s disgusting.” Elestra blanched.
After a few minutes of inspecting the room carefully, Tee discovered that one of the glass tubes could be twisted in place. Doing this caused several dozen neighboring tubes to move out from the wall and roll to one side, revealing – in a burst of stale air – a doorway leading to another room.
The walls of this hidden chamber were covered with wooden cabinets and drawers – a truly chaotic cacophony of such things, seemingly organized with no rhyme or reason.
Tee headed into the room and started searching, but the very first drawer she opened tripped a distinct, metallic click. An instant later, the room began filling with a cinnamon-colored gas that poured out into the next room.
Ranthir instantly recognized the thick, acidic smell: “Burnt othur! Get out!”
But his warning as unnecessary: At the sight of the gas filling the chamber, the others were already running out of the area… choking and gasping as they went.
It took the better part of half an hour before the fumes had thinned out to a point where they felt safe venturing back into the hidden chamber. Tee took extra care in checking over the next drawer… and discovered that it was trapped as well. In fact, ever single door, drawer, and nook in the place was a trigger for the same trap!
Investigating carefully, she eventually traced all of these triggers back to one master switch, which she used to disable the traps.
Once that was done, she could proceed with ransacking the room. Many of the drawers were empty; others contained various detritus or items that had obviously decayed. However, she did find three items of particular interest:
Two vaguely cube-like hunks of metal attached to each by a 2-inch long cylinder. A rubbery tube ran from one of the cubes and ended in a plug-like device (similar, although not identical, to the ones they had found on the surgical equipment near the bloody pit). Playing with it revealed that the other cube could be split open after being twisted, revealing a multitude of tiny switches arranged in a random jumble.
A small wooden box filled with metallic discs with holes drilled through the middle of them. Tor observed that this metal had been folded back upon itself countless times, like a finely-crafted sword.
A small glass sphere filled with a thick, black liquid.
Tee secured each of these items in her bag of holding and then, satisfied that the room had no further treasures or trinkets to yield, they headed back out into the hallways.
