Common Worlds

These sessions took place during an abortive attempt to move some of the game to play-by-email. It worked pretty well for a few months, but ultimately stalled. However, during that time we captured a much higher level of game detail, especially dialog. Text in blue is mostly by one or another player.

Croly used the Iron Key to open the way into the Rass Crypt, where they discovered many of the bones of the ancestors. Also, a huge bronze-barred door in the floor separated the tower proper from some catacombs that had clearly been under Rass control at some time in the past.

The hatch set in the floor of the family crypt was a "Do Not Enter" sign even the illiterate could read, but the Shaman and his kin were determined. Ancestors of theirs had used this, and they wanted to know what troubles might be below.

Everyone could hear the joints pop on Barlo's Four Storms as they leaned their backs into the task, bronze bars slowly grinding the bars out from under their lags. They came loose with a sound that sifted dust off the stacked and watching skulls of the ancestors.

More grinding sounds as Paz lifted the hatch aside. Below, the smell of damp, rot, and fungus. Lights revealed piles of trash and broken armor, and once everyone was in what turned out to be another room, the only alarming thing proved to be some shamanic wardings scratched into several places on the walls.
"See those?" Croly asked Cam. "I hope you can read them. No? I thought you'd been studying. They are the work of those who came before, and they say 'DANGER! Do not open! Bad Magic!'"

It seems that your ancestors sealed things up in these walls for safekeeping. The rest of the room proved to be a dumping ground for things of no use to the Rass, but of use to the family's enemies--lead armor, nomad weapons and other things no longer identifiable.

Then the door. Bronze bound, but showing signs that something disturbingly strong tried to open it the hard way. Seems like they didn't succeed.

Beyond that a narrow corridor and the sound of something moving. Soon enough, that something revealed itself as a gigantic great troll dressed for a fight. Bigger than it was smart, it came at you all and got its final rest from arrows, Barlo's flaming, flying sword and strange Cam magic.

Underneath all the armor, it turned out to be a zombie. Its home had been a pretty large chamber made up of four large stepped platforms, which widened as they went down. At the bottom, another door, bound from the inside. Inside there, a room no bigger than a closet, and another, smaller hatch that opened into the roof of a main sewer.

Investigation of the sewer had two immediate results: discovery that it was collapsed at either end, and getting Senech covered in crap. Boomer found a crack in the inside wall of the sewer that appeared to have once been a poorly concealed false wall, now rotted away from years of neglect.

That crack led into a raw rock cleft, narrow and close. Senech blithely failed to notice ancient booby traps requiring Gilli to destroy the remnants of disease spirits inhabiting them. Croly sent other spirits to their rest and everyone hoped they would reach the end of the cleft without alarming anyone. Everything seemed older than memory.

The cleft ended at a black chamber. Black with soot covering everything, looking like the inside of a smith's furnace. Walls, floor, ceiling, all covered with soot, and sand on the floor crusted into glass. But it was cold, silent and empty.

Cautious poking around led to more alarming discoveries. Though no one was here, clearly in the past some tremendous magical flame had scorched everything in the chambers. Hundreds of pounds of bronze lay in puddles on the floor. In a connected chamber, two horrifying things--a filthy, half-destroyed altar of mud, stone, filth and bones, a shrine to Malia, the disease goddess. And worse, before that altar, heat warped but intact,
a huge sealed iron jar marked with runes of death and disease.
"If those marks are true," said Gilli, "then there could hardly be something worse. Those marks are wards and warnings of the Green Plague. If there's even a bit of it in that jar, and it got loose, it would kill all of us, and everyone above us in the Real City. Just for a start." No one had ever see her look so upset. Or determined.

While everyone thought that over, something new filled the silence. The sound of digging. From over at the collapsed entrance, those who listened could hear people clearing rocks.
"About a day or a day-and-a-half before they get through," said Boomer. "unless they work all night too, in which case, about half a day."

Gilli refused to leave until she finished the job on the half-destroyed shrine. With help, she set about cleansing it while Croly set a curse on the collapsed entrance. At Gilli's direction, Boomer worked transformations, Barlo stood steadfast, Senech brought destruction and Gilli called the White Lady's healing onto the polluted shrine. With a crack and a grinding, the shrine collapsed into dust and ash.

More surprises on a day full of them. The shrine's collapse revealed a passage slanting away downward. Warm greenish light filtered out, the smell of a warm day and the distant hint of pleasant music. A strange contrast with the mumbling of the old shaman working his curses, the struggles of Asher and followers to manhandle the iron jar out the way you came, and the noise of unknown diggers.

The revealed passage curves down and away in more raw stone. But just at the edge of visibility, a square lintel has been carved into the rock. Carved there in the lintel are these words:

        Where is the Pure Heart that enters and returns the same?
        They dance within
        Where is the clean hand untouched by Death which will not harm?
        They dance within
        Where is the Open Mind that takes as is given?
        They dance within
        Where is the Innocent Soul that gives as is needed?
        They dance within
        Where is the person undifferentiated from all Others?
        They dance within

On the left upright of the lintel:

        Dance as they do

On the right upright:

        Live as they do

While everyone else looked at the shrine or wondered about the green light and the lintel, Senech snuck back to the area where we heard the digging coming from.

In the soot on the floor he wrote "they went that way --->" arrow pointing towards the shrine and the green light. Right where the diggers, once they break through, could see it immediately.

Asher, oblivious as his brothers to Senech's actions, spoke up. "The poem reminds me of tales of the Green Age, when all was innocent. Or of certain classes of Aldryami spirits, though I don't recall which because I didn't get to study that scroll. If, and I say if, the inscription is purely correct about present conditions, I'd say that it contains something far from our experiences as dwellers of the Great City of Pavis and heirs of the Big Rubble survivors."

As Asher finished declaiming and explaining, Gilli noticed Senech stepping back to the circle of people standing around the opening. He adjusted his pants as if he just finished relieving himself--but did it seem as if he did that only after he might have noticed Gilli noticing him?

He saw his sister staring at him, and holds up a filth-spattered puppet, which waved at Gilli.

Gilli shook her head, trying to figure out that clown.

Senech gyrated his puppet at Gilli. He pointed at the puppet constantly and gave a look of exasperation.
Then he started gyrating himself in a way that sort of suggested dancing, and started towards the lintel area.
His dance imitated various polka type steps with a few sable mating dance maneuvers thrown in. His puppet was his dance partner.

Gilli took a deep breath, already regretting this.

"I believe Senech is suggesting that we dance through the passageway...?
Could 'Dance as they do' and 'Live as they do' be a command to enter?"

Nodding energetically at Gilli's interpretation of his pantomime, Senech began boldly jiggling his way down the passage toward the inscription.

Asher drew a quill and journal, then began a prayer to Lhankor Mhy. "The Open Mind is alluded to in the ceremony of initiation to the cult of Pavis. The other references are unfamiliar to me. The inscription looks and reads like any of hundreds of Old City inscriptions, from the time of High Pavis, before the nomad invasions. Does anyone know how to dance?"

Calling again on Lhankor Mhy, Asher breathed onto a smooth grey stone he pulled from a pouch. Runes on it glowed and flickered as the sage attempted to conjure the Sage's Eye from it, but the pressure of the situation breaks his mortal concentration and after a flicker, the grey stone again appeared to be just that. It was clear to Asher that this is a place the Sage's Eye has never been.

Senech continued down the passage, and by the time Asher has finished his feat, he has reached the carved lintel and pokes his puppet around its edge, as if it could check out what lies beyond. The puppet looks startled,
then Senech brings it back around and holds it up to his ear, nodding as the puppet's mouth moves.

Moments later, Senech falls over and begins an elaborate pantomime wrestling match with the puppet, which seems to have stopped "whispering" to Senech and is instead trying to pull his ear off.

Croly unstoped a rough quartz bottle. A filmy ectoplasm rose out of it, coalescing into a winged eye. It stared at Croly. "Tell me what is beyond that arch!" he commanded, gesturing down the passage with the Wand of Skulls. The floating eyeball moved off, stopping for a moment to peer at Senech's gyrations. Senech continued to wrestle around on the floor for a moment, then scored a decisive pin on the puppet. He jumped up and does a little victory dance over his collapsed opponent, looking up at you all expectantly, as if anticipating applause.

The eye continues around the bend.

Moments later, it returns, reporting to Croly. "A long rough corridor that seems to end as it opens into a larger, lighted space. A large statue or stony guard sits at the end."

Croly put up his bottle. "Let us proceed while the protection of our ancestors yet holds." Then, under his breath, "But I don't dance."