So we finally got to the heart of the matter with these caves, it would seem. The merry band of adventurers us... oh the tall and short of it all... we stumbled upon something that may be at the heart of something that's going to set all the lands into a rumble. Down in these caves lie ancient magical portals to places all over the lands... Powerful conduits built by Siarrans, or angels, dragons, dondar... or all the above.But that's not the worst of it. These portals seem to be working on their own without the help of keys. My guess is that this passage system was either flawed to begin with, or has been degenerating through the years. Either way, a bloody long-mouth stepped through out of the plains next to The Three Kingdowns. Luckily Corr and Barg took charge of the matter and slayed the thing before it could make good on it's disparaging remarks over our variuos mothers. I tried to fix the first portal we were experimenting with after the tall-mouth came through, because it had become damaged some how... and lo-and-behold, I got knocked back on my butt.
But that wasn't the worst of it. I got caught in some type of magical ether-world. Bright light, lands all around me connected by magical pathways... but all twisted... the connections were all knotted. Not like it was at the beginning of these portals. But... that wasn't even the worst worst of that. A godish voice was speaking to me. That was: "speaking to ME". And I can't recall what it said, but I understood. It was telling me about the passages, trying to instill me with wisdom... and it was too much. I blacked out and was thrown away to the wall of the room. Something's alive in that alternate dimension.
-=Ceder
(con't from previous entry)Kanton had used up all his healing whammies, but we decided to explore a bit more anyways. Good call, because we found the big hall. The biiiiig hall. It was a big hall even for big halls, and I know big halls from big halls.
Um, right. So, they *had* in fact decided to hand us a giant mural of important events in their history, right up to and including the events leading up to their decision to abandon the area. What it looks like is basically that these four races, angels, siarrans, dondaur, and dragons, came across the ocean from another continent Quite Some Time Ago, and started building cities and setting up a network of these gate things to connect them. Then they tried to do something, expand them maybe?, and there was a cataclysm that instead tangled them all up. So some of them (the angels and siarrans) decided to pack it in and go back to the other continent, thoughtfully leaving behind a warning that the gates were messed up and shouldn't be used (it was more poetical than that, like, "Don't use these gates, no really, some gates are just a bad idea" or something like that).
They left behind more than that warning, as we found out when we went up to the next level (there were four step-like tiers) and it was drawing our pictures. Like after the more finished part of the mural there were all these monsters sketched in charcoal and then it was drawing *me* (from the bad side, too, which figures), like, as I stood there, and it started on Lucan, and the lines were just appearing from the air. We sort of poked it and it didn't seem to be a guy, just a magic maybe like Cedar's invisible hand thing?
While looking at all the different levels the floor thing - there was one of those sigils in the floor, only a giant one - got all active with wandery columns of light, so we fell back to the hall and got behind the door and looked out. Couldn't see around the buttress so Cedar turned me invisible and I went out and looked around it. Was the damnedest thing... I couldn't see my own hand an inch from my face. Anyways, the light got together way up above the floor and this giant insect guy came through and fell down and hit the floor hard, which turned out to have killed him when we finally got up the nerve to go check. Good thing too because his body was all armor just like a giant bug. Don't think he would have hardly felt me hit. Went and checked the drawing magic to see if it had drawn it and got a nasty shock when it had drawn a siarran. I was sure there was one of those four-armed buggers sneaking around but the background wasn't the same. So apparently it could see other places?
Went and told the filing-system guy - Lucan called him the "sage", which I thought was kind of like oregano - some about the cave, and he told us some stuff about sentinals and towers with personalities (who hopefully don't turn into vengeful ghosts if you burn them down). Sounds like there's sort of places in the land where there's lots of magic, and the Illendi built their gate system on top of these places? I feel a bit like I'm trying to dig with a hammer, thinking about these gates and stuff. About the best I can do is stick to what does make some sense - and there's a lot of those questions too.
- Why did the siarrans go all the way back to another continent when their gates broke instead of staying and walking from place to place like normal people?
- If it was so important the gates stay shut, why didn't they turn them off or take all the keys?
- Can the gates randomly open without keys and does this explain why all these weird monsters have been showing up in the Telperest area, or is the activity in the system the result of someone using the gates (elsewhere?) recently and if no one had messed with them they'd be dormant?
- Did the Siarrans get to Correllendor through the gate system?
- Are they using them to travel within Correlendor?
- Is the gate system a choke point for the Siarrans? Would breaking the gate they're using effectively stop their invasion?
- Are they in fact invading, or are they colonists?
- If they did get here using the gates, what made it worth it to use them again if it's such a bad idea?
- If they didn't get here using the gates, are they *looking* for the gates to try to reactivate the system?
- Again, have they just lost the piece of information that this is a bad idea, or are these rebellious siarran punks who laugh at the notion of "consequences", or in the past whatever-hundred years have they come up with a solution to whatever the problem was, or is the situation in their homeland so dire as to be worse?
- What *are* the risks of gate misuse? Opening the door to monsters? Opening the door to Things Worse Than Monsters? Could a Siarran attempt to reactivate the gate network cause another cataclysm?
Need to scout out the Siarran camp we've heard about. See if it looks military, refugee, or what. Hard to tell what our goals are at this point - break gates? Find bigtime wizard to fix gates? Fetch army to hold gates? Despite historical connection gates may have nothing to do with current Siarran situation. And, can't exactly pretend to be Siarrans, slip into camp, pick up information, but prisoners notably unhelpful and anyone with a reason to change continents probably not a good treachery/bribery potential. If can't answer questions spying on their camp... what next? Go to Emery, find dream-mages, use own mind-tricks back on them and ask questions in dreams (if in Emery, possible long-range option to find Felderoak and get it into friendly (not druid!) hands for use holding Emery in case of full invasion?)? Ugh. Maybe they'll have a nice big mural on the walls of the camp showing key events of the past five years... or maybe not. Sigh.