We had
travelled up and down the whole castle and still no golden spear. It
had to be here, so we trekked down to the lowest level and looked
around there again. There were two rooms down here we hadn't yet
searched. One room had a big bullseye on the floor, but that room was
protected by a room of fire. Fire in that there were scorch marks all
over the room -- so it was obviously trapped. The other room had a big
pit that Tev had almost fallen in to. But that room was also protected
by an antechamber that held two SIZ 15 metal balls.
Well, everybody was here so it was a simple matter of disabling the
spheres. Protection 4 sure helps against their hammers and it was quick
work for Krelga, Tok, Nakaro and Timroth. Timroth and Tev were lowered
into the pit and they searched for any secret doors or hidden
treasures. What do you know, Tev found a scroll case. Once we had it
back up here and opened, it was some sort of message. An arrow pointing
up from inside a box, with circles at the tip and base of the arrows.
Also some writing that we couldn't read.
But really, who knows what this means? So we went to the bullseye room.
Testing the floor showed that it was trapped. Jets of flame bathed the
room whenever the floor was touched. First we tried to exhaust the
flames, but gave up after a few minutes. Perhaps we could jump across?
It was about 10 feet across to the other room, not too hard a jump. Tok
volunteered and immediately ran and jumped to the other room. He looked
around a bit, then stepped on the bullseye and disappeared.
Hmm, another teleporter. What now? Nakaro and Timroth followed Tok,
just in case he was in trouble and needed help. Krelga, Tev and I
decided to wait here, since we didn't want to jump across the fire
room. If the others hadn't teleported far they'd be back here in a few
minutes. When they weren't, we looked at the scroll again. Krelga
thought that the arrow might represent the shaft of light, which did
taper off into an arrowhead at the top. That implied a room at the
bottom of the shaft.
|
Back to the
lowest part of the shaft that we had found so far. We could
sort of look down there but didn't see much. Krelga set to work
polishing some scraps of metal to make mirrors. It took us awhile but
we got the mirrors made and lowered them down on ropes. Not a great
view but we had time. It *was* another room, with four thrones and an
altar. The light provided by the shaft was weak, so we couldn't make
out much. We couldn't make out any other doors. This was obviously an
important room.
But how to get down there? Krelga and I looked at Tev. Oh no! I'm not
blinking down there! What if there's a warding or traps? I could be
flash fried! Ok then, we had to come up with another way. Krelga and I
set to work, trying to find out what kind of spells went through the
shaft of light. Not Earth. Life worked. What do you think Tev? Tev?!?
While we were busy, Tev had gotten bored and blinked down anyway.
Too bad he was now unconscious. We waited to the next day until he woke
up. From down in the room he said that the thrones had runes on them.
Life and Death and two others he couldn't make out in the light. Also,
there was a golden spear on the altar. Not wanting to chance it, Tev
grabbed the spear and blinked back up to us. Diiman's Bane! Success!
Since the guys hadn't shown up by now, we left for the rendezvous
point, filling our packs with bronze from the castle.
We met up with Reg and the other guys still hadn't shown up. Hmm, maybe
they were dead? No way, one of them would have successfully called on
Divine Intervention. So I guess we wait a week. And meanwhile Krelga
played around with Diiman's Bane. It was a light-weight golden spear,
incredibly strong. A spell matrix embedded in the spear had Fireblade
and Light Wall. It can also cast Sunspear once a day. Quite impressive,
for an evil heat weapon. |