Fall Into Rune
| Fall Into Rune | |
|---|---|
| Date | 2023-08-31 |
| Storyteller | Doug |
| Tier | Trainee, Medium |
| Player Characters | Bees, Lunaris, Kasumi, Echostar, V, Taru |
| Rewards | 250xp, Rune of Gula, Putrid Sack of Rotting Fruitx3, 184gp. |
| Result | Success |
| Author | Unseelie |
| Downtime | 7 days |
Associates investigate the portal previously found in a coffin.
Trigger Warnings
Themes of eating disorders and torture, while toned down compared to the session, may still disturb some readers. Also perhaps a bit of claustrophobia not present in the original session.
Log
Rather than Taru's flowery handwriting, this log is written in a neat, precise script, just barely large enough to be legible.
A final tale for the night then? Alright, get your beer and gather round! And you over there? I suggest you finish dinner quickly, for this is a gruesome one.
Now listen closely as I tell you of sisters and betrayal, of opulence and dessication, of cities long gone and gods forgotten.
But first I must introduce you to those who braved the dangers to uncover these secrets!
Bees, not a swarm but a singular fae being, and their trusty mount Cees, whose watchful gaze protected our backs.
Lunaris Nightbloom and her proud familiar Moon, a master of mysterious arts and always ready to assist those in need.
Kasumi the observant, whose insight is as clear as the waters she calls forth.
Echostar the bold, always willing to take the first step into danger, and with the strength to walk back out.
V and her brave companion Vitriol, whose healing has prevented many a tragedy.
And finally myself, offering support with my sword, voice, and magic.
Together we ventured forth to where the naked man hung dead from the rotten tree until his name was spoken and he sank into his coffin. Ah, some of you have not heard of that incident? A story for another day then, and perhaps best told by another. No matter, all you need to know for today is that this man, Krune, lied down in his own coffin, only to sink through the stone as if it was quicksand. Another investigation was called for to explore where this apparent portal led, and this is where we came in.
I will not bore you with the details of our examination of the surroundings. Suffice to say that Echostar, ever eager as he is, was the first to enter the coffin, only holding a rope Kasumi handed him so we could pull him back to safety should it be necessary. We waited in tense silence as the seconds passed… But then, two tugs on the rope! Fearing the worst, we pulled with all our might, but to no avail. Lunaris was even pulled in herself, and rather than abandoning our comrades, the rest of us followed as well.
Sinking through stone that should be solid is as eery a sensation as one would imagine. It slowly envelops your legs, then creeping up your torso, until, finally, it reaches your face, taking first your breath and then your sight. Fully encased by stone. No light. No sound. No movement. Only a faint feeling of pressure from all sides. Until, slowly, you rise again.
This is what happened to each of us. Not dropping through into a pit as we imagined, but sinking into one coffin and rising from another in a far distant place, perhaps even a different world. Around us nothing but dust and dessication. Clouds hang in the air, hiding the sun, but not sparing a single drop of water. It was no empty desert though—large mountains hid the horizon to the east and west, and surrounding us were scores upon scores of coffins in all kinds of styles and sizes, some closed, most exposing their dried out contents to our eyes. One thing, however, many of them had in common was the presence of a necklace like this. See the goblet it clearly portrays? It seems it is as unfamiliar to all of you as it was, and still is, to us. The symbol of a long forgotten god, most likely.
Besides the coffins there were two more things of note. One a path to the north, trampled by many feet and strewn with belongings of people long gone, as if left in great haste. I cannot tell you more of where it leads, but I'm sure the council is quite interested in having it explored further in the future.
The other was a building. Once certainly a magnificent temple of wood and stone with six great domes and many decorations in the shape of spheres and circles. Little of that remained, just enough to imagine its past splendour. Still, it was the most obvious place for our further investigation, so that is what we did.
Within it looked much like one would expect. Dust and sand and broken stone covering the floor, just faint flecks of paint on the walls remaining, and even those bleached by time and the sun that must shine in through the broken ceiling on days not as heavily clouded as this one. However, in the very back of the building we found something that stood out: Eight large frames containing what must once have been elaborate paintings in front of a podium and rows of pews, mummified corpses still sitting and standing as if suddenly drained of water before they could even react.
Close by we found a stone archway with stairs leading to a basement. A large stone hall with a green substance covering floor and walls, acidic to the touch. A stench of rotten food stained the air, held in by the entrance doors despite its source being long gone. Only one room to the side, long collapsed, and in the back a statue of horned woman, broken to pieces, but still clearly holding onto a goblet matching the symbol we found in a fallen off hand. Most haunting, however, was the centre. There in the middle was a pit in the floor as if scooped out of the stone itself and filled with a black, tar-like substance. And in it sat a corpse unlike all the others we have seen so far. It, too, was void of any liquid save the tar it sat in, but it wasn't whole. No, its entire front, from the midst of its jaw down to its legs was gone, as if ripped away.
Now, we have all heard such stories before, we knew as well as you do that this corpse was not going sit still forever. We did not, however, know what would make it move, so we moved carefully, exploring ahead of us by magic means.
And the moment something came into contact with the tar around the corpse, it happened! Its eyes began to glow in an eery orange and it almost seemed to weep, then it slowly rose to its feet, the tar dripping from it the first liquid we saw in this strange place. All of us stayed silent and so did the corpse, but not for lack of effort on its part! Its head rose in first a silent scream, then suddenly it took a big breath… and just continued sucking in air, never stopping. Loose debris from all around the room was pulled in, the doors behind us rattled, and we had to fight against the wind, some of us forced to step closer.
Echostar reacted immediately. He ran in, greatclub raised. A mighty slam down on the corpses head, and… nothing. Neither the
ferocious hit itself, nor the enchantment I placed on the weapon left any mark.
The corpse didn't even respond. It just persisted in its unending breath, pulling in both Echo and V, the former even sinking into the tar.
At this moment we almost thought him lost. But no, despite the air being pulled into the corpses maw, a ceaseless stream of tar and stones emerged from it like vomit, soon bringing Echostar with it. V, meanwhile, was spared a similar fate by the combined efforts of Vitriol the vulture and Cees the corgi.
Things seemed to go well at this moment, or at least as well as they can be in a room that was slowly being drawn into the maw of a dead body. Working together we managed to stay out of the tar, and Lunaris even found some places to attach a rope to, giving us a lifeline should we need it. Except… we still did not know how to stop this. Nothing we did to the corpse appeared to damage it, be club, blade, or magic. Nothing made it even react to us further in any way.
It was in this moment that Bees made a discovery: There, in the very back of the room, some rubble refused to move in the wind. The statue and all pieces that broke off of it stayed still as if the pull that affected everything else in the room did not exist. When told about this, Kasumi immediately identified the likely solution to our situation in a seed within the goblet the statue once held, just as unmoved as the rest of it. Determined she fought her way past the pit, soon followed by Lunaris. Several times they almost slipped, were almost dragged into that pool of corrosive, clinging tar, but finally they made it.
Kasumi called the water she had mastered to bring forth the seed from the cup, and Lunaris used her sling to hurl it to Echostar, right in front of the pit. He, then, threw it right where the corpse's mouth would once have been.
The effect was immediate. A movement, almost like swallowing if it had a throat. Slowly the seed sinks down, taking on the same orange glow as the corpse's eyes, which in turn took on a softer glow, and the winds finally die.
And yet, our adventure was not over. Despite the rest of the room returning to stillness, the door still rattled, until it opened and the eight corpses from the pews above walked in. We prepared for battle… but none came. Instead we found our vision blurring, then fading.
When it returned we were but witnesses to a scene long in the past. Around us the temples basement shone in all its splendour: The walls painted and hang with tapestries of nature scenes and goblets, no pit in the floor, and the statue in the back whole and holding a goblet filled with water, the seed floating in it. All around the room stood boxes filled with food, much of it fresh fruits unlike any I have ever seen before. The collapsed room we had noticed before was whole and filled with buckets of waters, a washroom apparently.
And from within it, the sounds of vomiting. Retching and coughing noises that almost felt sacrilegious in a place like this.
Soon, a woman emerged, regal looking in a gown of purple and gold. I cannot tell you what people she belonged to—she was tall, even more so due to a pair of curved horns, her ears were long and pointed, and her skin had an ashen tone. Not, however, inherent like my own, but the ashen grey of one whose colour was drained away by illness. When she opened her mouth, the signs of the sickness that ravaged her were even clearer. Her teeth were yellow and cracked, and her throat a burning, inflamed red. Tears of disgust and guilt in her eyes as she looked at the boxes of food in the room, and an emptied one she left behind in the washroom.
She was not alone for long. Another woman entered, dressed just as regally as the first. Shorter, daintier, petite truly, but her steps were thundering as if she was three times her size, and her scowl murderous. She, too, was horned, but hers almost appeared as if made of wood.
Immediately upon entering she started berating the crying woman, only pausing to send away an aide who named her as 'Lord Xandera'. A sister, she called her, but one she feels cursed to share blood with.
"Crying, sleeping, and vomiting like a toddler, is this all you can do now? A Lord of his majesty, and you are on your knees, face deep in a basin. You disgust me, you repulsive, wretched example of a Lord," she spewed at her apparent sister, who only weakly attempted to defend herself. Xandera's tirade went on, full of hate and frustration at her sister's waste of food, apparently lacking to others in their domain.
Words, however, weren't enough for her, as she said herself. "I didn't come here for words, I came here for actions. You'll suffer no longer. Let your younger sister help you." And with this said, she forced her sister to her knees and rammed a vial filled with a pale, white liquid down her throat.
Suffer, however, she did. The liquid ran down her throat, burning all that it touched. Once again she started to vomit, but this time no food came out, instead her own flesh and bones. Her own desperate healing magic keeping her alive, as the entire front of her body dissolved, the liquid, now black and tar-like, then melting into the stone floor below.
Xandera left long before her sister truly died, taking with her the crown that once adorned her horns.
With that the vision ended. The name Zutha came to us, and when given to the corpse, it finally dissolved fully, seeping under the earth to rest. And with her final passing, the corpses still guarding the exit let us leave uncontested.
Transcript of the tale "Fall Into Rune", as told by the bard Tarina "Taru" Autio in the Ashenforge Guild Hall. Committed to writing by Taso Autio.
Below the transcript are another few lines, these ones in Taru's handwriting.
I left this out of the tale to not cause undue attention to the affected, but for the sake of a complete log: Bees continues to carry the rune made of Krune's flesh, and V took on a similar one found where Zutha's remains seeped into the earth and that before glowed on the corpse's body.
- Tarina Autio, Associate of the Round Table.