From: caz@owlnet.rice.edu (HWRNMNBSOL)
Subject: [KQ] Kron [Shunned Center] Starting Gate
Organization: Rice University
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 22:43:05 GMT

Kron bears a guttering torch.  He has taken a timber, swathed it with oily
rags, and lit it with flint and steel.  It burns well, and sheds an orangey
light on the slick stone walls of the Gaps.

Kron and party stand in one of the tunnels that crisscross the underground
of Generica.  Built ages ago, and for no observable purpose, the ubiquitous
Gaps now serve the general populace of Generica as hiding places, secret
transportation, and the source of feared and unspeakable predators.

Most Generican Gaps are filthy and clogged with debris.  Oddly, these tunnels
are clean and empty.  A thin, slick layer of some kind of clear grease or
slime coats the walls.  There is no dust, no tracks, no standing water.  The
flickering shadows hide nothing but uncertainty.

The questors move down the tunnel.  Soon the path forks, and forks again.
Who knows which direction will take them toward their destination?  However,
something subconscious tells the group which way to turn.  'Raelf, Traveller
and Wanderer, has shielded the party's Volition Complexes well, but on another
subtler level, an intense beacon guides them through the maze.  As one, the
group chooses a way along twisting corridors, and nobody thinks to question
that which seems obvious to all.

A Yellowish glow begins to surround the party -- slowly, at first, but it
creeps up softly, and is soon noticed by all.  Kron snuffs his torch.  The
hall is well lit.  Trails of slime, such as the paths left by some monstrous
slug, coat the walls in yellowish-green phosphoresence.  The light is enough
to see by.  They proceed.

Kron begins to feel a growing sense of claustrophobia.  The very walls seem
to be closing in on him as they walk down endless halls of grey oppression.
He looks again -- the walls ARE closing in on them!  As they march, the 
walls have grown narrower and lower.  Thk must stoop to avoid hitting his
head on the ceiling.  Indeed, the very shape of the corridor seems *wrong*;
perhaps it was designed by a madman, or a creature whose form bears no
relation to human physique.  Kron tries to imagine a beast whose shape would
fit to the walls of this maze, and supresses a shudder.  In the halls of Lost
and Ancient Things, imagination is No Man's Friend.

The glowing slime trails grow in intensity and frequency.  In some cases,
the width of the yellow bands is up to a yard in width.  They seem to weave
a peculiar kind of dance on the walls, floor and ceiling; to Kron's weary
mind, it seems to make a kind of sense, this grotesque patterning.  Could
this be the mating dance of some peculiar shell-backed fiend, or is it some-
thing even less appetizing?  

The atmosphere of these subterranean crypts seems drawn and tight, and the
nerves of the noble adventurers are taut as steel springs.  They jump as an
ululation splits the hallways, as if from some nearby place.  It is not a
sound produced by any man or beast known to civilization, and it plays at the
rough edges of Kron's well-worn sanity.  The howl is followed by a despairing
moan, and then silence.  It echoes slightly, and could have come from just
about the corner.  The crew exchanges glances.  They walk faster.

Then they jog.

Then they trot.

Soon, hardened heroes from across the globe are running, pell-mell, into the
unknown.  The hallway's light spots flash past unnoticed.  Soon the glowing
trails peter out, then disappear, but the company does not attend in their
headlong flight into madness.  They sprint as if their lives depend on it;
past eyes gleaming like hellish coals; past brushing strands of musty,
quivering moss; past writhing forms and snapping beaks and walls of twisted
stone and lights of unearthly colors and growls from a thousand throats and
laughing scents and tortured screams and books with no pages and shapes with
no shape and HIGH-PITCHED TONES AND THE MUSIC OF INSANE FLAUTISTS AND IDEAS
WHOSE VERY NAMES *HAVE* *NO* *NAME*




into silence.

A square of greenish, pulsing light.

A timeless, crumbling archway, framing the light.

A subsonic pulsing, the beat of a gigantic heart.

 


They step through the arch.

Here Dwells Madness.

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