under Durgam's Folly

[cellio]

January 22 (Sunday), later

Today did not get off to a good start, nor has it ended well.

Last night Turok, Liandra, and I had strange dreams. We all heard a booming voice telling us to leave and saying "Durgam's Folly belongs to us". If Prolix, Kyle, or Firella heard it, they're not talking.

This morning we set out to kill the metagolem. We opened the door to the tunnels, climbed down, and were almost immediately attacked by some small constructs. They seemed to have some resistance to fire -- not good! We killed them, but it made me nervous about what else we would meet.

We found ourselves in a maze, and it turned out that some of the "walls" were actually machines, including one that tried to swallow Liandra. There was also a large invisible ooze crawling around, and it got Hrolf! Fortunately, we killed it before it could eat him. This maze was very creepy and unnatural.

We came to a room containing a half-human half-machine and some other constructs. We thought at first that this was Theodocius, but it turned out to be Bellek, his apprentice. It also turned out that Bellek had been corrupted; rather than help us, he attacked us. We tried to disable him without killing him, but he died anyway. (I later concluded that we wouldn't have been able to save him anyway, given that we couldn't save Theodocius.)

We soon found Theodocius, or what remained of him. He was being guarded by a huge metallic construct. Theodocius didn't speak, but he scrawled "help me" on the wall in a sort of oil-blood mixture. Meanwhile, the guardian attacked us. After a moment Theodocius wrote "kill me" on the wall, which we certainly didn't want to do. We focused our attention on the metal monster that was attacking us and eventually killed it.

I took a closer look at Theodocius. He was more machine than human, and he seemed to be in a great deal of pain. There's no mistaking that look in his eyes. It was horrible. There really wasn't anything there to save; the metagolem had seen to that. If someone did to me what the metagolem did to him, I'd want to die too. Ugh.

Theodocius insisted that we kill him and promise that he'll stay dead. He was particularly worried that the metagolem would rebuild him. He said there was a message in the chest, and then he begged us to kill him, which Turok did.

There was a chest in the room, but it did not contain anything. Eventually we realized that the message was in Theodocius' chest, in the machinery that was now where his heart had been. Eww, gross.

His chest contained a journal, written in Theodocius' blood (and, later, the oil that replaced his blood). The tale of what the metagolem did to him is too grim to repeat here; I have kept the journal and we aren't going to tell Trina about it.

We had found, and failed to rescue, Theodocius, but we were still in search of the metagolem. We fought our way through assorted other constructs, and came to a room carved out of black stone. The room had an eerie green glow to it; perhaps this is the vein of control underneath this place. It is quite unsettling, and I fear it will keep me from sleeping well tonight. It feels malevolent to me, even though I would expect a magical control enhancer to be neither good nor evil. Especially if it's part of the dragon of Agondre. Hmm.

We soon came to a room where the black rock contains red streaks and there is a red glow all about. We are currently holed up in this room with the door barred, and it's very unsettling. Here we were attacked by a flesh golem, much more powerful than anything we'd fought so far, and after that we were attacked by an even more powerful stone golem. The stone golem in particular seemed immune to almost everything we could do, and it nearly killed several of us.

Theodocius had warned us that the metagolem is not a golem, so I was pretty sure that there was something controlling this stone golem. Prolix ran through a door into another room and I followed; the golem nearly swatted me, but I was saved by a magical shield. While the others fought the golem, Prolix and I set about destroying machinery in the room that might have been the metagolem, but it had no effect. It was not until we spotted another door and ran through that we found the real metagolem, a copper cube glowing blue. We smashed the metagolem, and the golem as well, and some of us took pieces of the metagolem so the parts would not all be in one place.

One of the machines turned out to be powered by magical writings. Prolix found the remains of Theodocius' spell books there, and was able to rescue one volume. Killing the metagolem did not cause the evil feeling to depart from the place, but we have little choice tonight: we have exhausted our healing and several people are still injured, and we ran past constructs that we know are waiting for us on the other side of the door. They might be inert now that the metagolem is destroyed, but we really can't take the chance. We're going to have to sleep here tonight, spooky as that is. Or try to, anyway.

I know I'm tired, but I could swear that the walls are actually throbbing. I'm physically tired but my mind can't sleep. It's going to be a long night.

January 23 (Monday), morning

It was, in fact, a long night, filled mostly with nightmares. I am very tired. Apparently so is everyone else.

But it wasn't entirely a night of nightmares -- I had an uncharacteristically refreshing dream in which I was an owl, flying alongside Hrolf as we swooped through the night at high speed under the glow of a slightly red moon. It was exciting.

When I woke up I found some feathers in my cloak, even though Hrolf does not sleep under the blankets with me. That was very strange.

Also strange were the sideways looks Hrolf was giving me. Finally I asked him what the problem was, and he said he isn't used to me in bird form.

What? He said I had turned into an owl in the night and I was flying around the room. I suppose that would explain my dreams. When we get out of this place I will have to investigate this further. Right now it is time to pack up and get out of here.

January 23 (Monday), evening

We found more constructs on the way out. We killed or dismantled most of them. I managed to capture an animated wooden doll (no organic parts, for once); I look forward to studying it.

We also found a prisoner chained to a wall, a cat-man who seems to come from Turok's homeland. He was quite evasive when we asked him how he got to this land and came to be chained up in the tunnels underneath Durgam's Folly. Eventually we decided to turn him over to the guards at Durgam's Folly and let them decide what to do with him.

When we emerged from the tunnels we surprised the guards; when we didn't come back last night they apparently assumed we had died. We told them of the horrors we had seen down there, though we did not say much about Theodocius, and we showed them the shards of the metagolem. Trina was, quite naturally, upset that Theodocius had perished, and she asked us if we could help raise him. Liandra had a long talk with her, and I think Trina eventually understood just how far gone her master was. There wasn't really enough to raise, sadly.

Comments

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I love it when you foreshadow things that I don't think you know about. It makes me feel like I've got at least one handle on this whole 'storytelling' side of roleplaying.

[cellio]

I've now re-read this a few times trying to figure out what I foreshadowed. Thanks, I think. :-)

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

You may safely assume that the cryptic nature of my comment was intentional. :-)

It's probably the case that you'll reread this journal entry at some later point and say "Ohhhhh!"

[cellio]

Of course it was intentional. I know you. :-)

Would you like me to speculate out loud, or keep it to myself?

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

If you're speculating, I'd like to hear. Perhaps I'll get ideas. :)

[cellio]

I decided to do some of it in character.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I've been rereading your journal entries, and came across this.

The foreshadowing that I had in mind when I wrote my original remark was of the 'new knowledge and powers coming during dreams'.

[cellio]

Heh. Complete with flying alongside Hrolf under a red glow. Nifty that a bit of fluff I threw in for character turned out to be related to something real!

(Now, how to work in a bit of fluff about the wealthy uncle with a basement-full of magic devices? :-) )