Runelords 06.0 - Alaznist's Compound

The four walked the short distance across Sandpoint, until they reached the glassworks once more. The crowd was still gathered there, and perked up immediately upon seeing them approach. They walked to the doors, whereupon Virgil addressed them in an attempt to get them to disperse. He informed the crowd that there was an attack upon the glassworks, that Tsuto Kaijitsu had led in a band of goblins in the night to attack his father and the other employees and that he had escaped through a series of smuggling tunnels under the city. The goblins had been slain, the tunnels were being secured, and they were actively searching for the culprit; the present danger had passed, and everyone should return to their business, though they should alert the guards immediately if anyone should see Tsuto. Though he did not rile the crowd any further with his shocking revelations, they were also loathe to leave, seeing as how nearly every town guard who hadn't left with the sheriff was currently in the glassworks, and this was probably the safest place in town, not to mention the place to be to hear the latest news. Eamon reiterated the request to break up, but the crowd was apathetic to his request, content to mill and gossip in the street outside. The soldiers muttered their agreance that this was not really their problem, and went inside.
Spotting the mayor overseeing the investigation and clean-up of the glassworks, the four stopped to update her further. Virgil spun a tale of how he and Khyrralien had gone into the tunnels while the other two brought Ameiko Kaijitsu to receive medical attention; they had been attacked by Tsuto Kaijitsu, and in the scuffle, part of the tunnel had collapsed, trapping them on the far side and costing them their weapons. They had been forced to walk out the long way, eventually making their way back out into the woods and into town, which explained their recent absence. Kendra was skeptical of this story to say the least, and questioned precisely where the exit to this tunnel was; Virgil's dismissive answer that they weren't woodsmen and were unlikely to quickly find it again was less than satisfactory. They changed the subject, informing her that they would go back down into the tunnels and search the third path, to see if Tsuto was still down there. Virgil asked one of the two guards if he could borrow his sword, as his was either lost under a pile of rubble or in the hands of a fugitive. The man was recalcitrant, and Kendra spoke up, saying that the city would only pay for the armaments of town guards, and they were not to be distributed. Virgil haggled, saying that they were working in the town's interests and that they wouldn't be able to do the town much good without weaponry, but she was adamant. Eventually, she offered him a dagger that she drew from her boot, telling him with grave seriousness that she would want it back. He agreed, and with that, they went down the stairs towards the tunnels.
They walked the decent distance down the third path, ignoring the ones that led to a dead end and a cave-in; as they walked, they could all feel a palpable shift in their moods as a seething anger began to taint their thoughts. This affected even Luna, much to her concern, as her undead nature made her immune to nearly all mind-altering magics. 
A small alcove gave them reason for pause: movement had been spotted just inside its opening. Muttering to themselves, they made a plan, readying their weapons as Khyrralien wrapped his headscarf around his antlers. Leaning forwards, he used it as a dummy in an attempt to lure out whatever stood just out of sight. The plan worked: a ranseur lanced forwards, stabbing through the dummy but missing the man himself. As they arranged themselves for battle, they could see their opponent: a horrific creature that appeared vaguely human, but was hunched, twisted and mutant, with ill-sized limbs and a gaping maw that hung open down its chest, with row after row of razor teeth lining it. It stabbed at Khyrralien with its ranseur, as Eamon rushed forwards, unleashing his angelic fury as he had on the goblins. The very sight of Eamon's rage seemed to provoke the monster further, and it gave a wretched cry as it stood up straighter and matched the solder's anger. The battle was short and ended with the monster's demise, but the victory had cost both Khyrralien and Eamon, who bleed from rather grievous wounds. It was then that Virgil commented that it must have been one of the "quasit's freaks" that was mentioned in the journal, only just then realizing the passage's meaning. A quasit was a lesser form of devil, not unlike an imp: nothing that would remotely challenge them at their full strength, but in their current state, might be more than they could handle. With the strange aura provoking their tempers, they began to snap at each other, lacking a plan. Eventually, they turned back: they required healing and better arms if they were to have any hope of surviving whatever lay in the tunnels before them. As they left, Eamon claimed the creature's ranseur, and they hauled the corpse along with them as well in the hopes that Quint could tell them more about whatever it was, as none of them could remotely identify its nature.
Lugging it up and dropping it on the floor in front of the three people still assembled in the building, Virgil dryly stated that they had a devil under their town, and he would deeply appreciate some weapons now, as well as some healing magic. The mayor was still hesitant, so Virgil agreed that they would temporarily join the town guard officially, until this mess could be sorted out. She agreed under duress; one of the two local men was sent out to fetch some spare equipment, particularly armour, as well as the father. Before he left, they told him to get Quint as well, because as a scholar, they were interested in his opinion on whatever it was they had fought. The mayor was hesitant to let so many people into the crime scene, but since the father would have to come anyways she allowed it, since she was sick of trying to work with the adventurers who so clearly had their own agenda.
When everyone had convened, newly equipped with armour, bows and longswords, and had been healed with the father's magic, Quint arrived and looked over the scene. Seeing them wearing town guard regalia, he shook his head, but when they reported that they had called him to look at a golem they had retrieved from the tunnels under the glassworks, he smiled and told the mayor that, though she could try to take them out from under him, they still knew where their loyalties lay. Everyone shook their heads as he turned towards the dead thing that was laid on the ground. He was barely interested in the golem, as he found the thought of the person who was making them far more interesting. His only note was that the creature carried a ranseur; alone, this was meaningless, but when combined with the palpable aura of anger they reported, it brought to his mind the ancient Magelord Alaznist, a frightening Valparisan woman who used ancient rune magic focused on the sin of wrath and was usually depicted wielding this same weapon. When they thanked him and told him they would bring him anything else they managed to find, he smiled and brightly told them that he was coming along to see where the tunnel went firsthand. He wouldn't be dissuaded, so all five set back off into the dark.
Travelling back down the tunnels, they passed by where they fought the vicious golem, remarking on their heightened feelings of anger as they went. Quint in particular found this very interesting.
Beyond, they found the tunnel broke through a stone wall in several places, leading into what appeared to be a sunken building. Walking in, they found an ancient storage room of some sort, filled with broken pottery whose contents had long since become dust. Poking around revealed nothing of interest, so they moved through the door on the far wall. A hallway led them down towards an open foyer, with another hallway branching off as they went. Ignoring that path for the moment, they entered the foyer, dominated by a large statue. The effigy stood in the center of the room, its back pointed towards them from where they entered, but as they walked around it they could see it was of a regal woman whose fearsome, wrathful expression inspired fear even as an inanimate recreation. She held up a beautifully decorated ranseur, threatening any who would walk down the stairs before her. They glanced up the set of stairs, wondering where it would lead, but instead settled on going through the door that stood adjacent to the hallway they had entered from. Quint gushed over the statue, citing it to be the Magelord Alaznist herself, and climbed up on it to see if the ranseur was attached or if it was its own separate piece. Luna fretted, trying to make sure the elderly man didn't hurt himself, while the other three investigated the adjacent rooms.
Beyond the foyer was a two-story jail: a wooden catwalk led from the door around a series of barren cells, as well as down to the floor beneath them and another doorway on their far right. The wood was surprisingly firm: a weak magic had been woven through the planks, preventing the decay that had decimated everything else in the compound. As they glanced about, Virgil hopped back, barely managing to dodge the pointed end of a ranseur that suddenly shot up from between the catwalk floorboards. Another golem lurked beneath them, clinging to the wood. They sprung into battle, and the single opponent was quickly felled by their combined might. In the course of the fight, however, the creature managed to bite Eamon's shoulder, and they learned of the rage-inducing venom on its teeth. The angel was gripped in violent emotion for the briefest of seconds, but the lingering horror and shock of experiencing such a feeling left him drained and weak. Knocking the lifeless corpse aside, Eamon collected its ranseur and sheathed it along with the first. There was nothing else of note in the cells: dust, rusted, worthless chains and decrepit, disintegrating bones. Satisfied, they collected Luna and Quint before moving along the catwalk to the next room: an ancient and barren torture chamber. As they passed through the doorway, Luna thought she heard something: a low, vicious growling sound, coming from beneath them. The others heard nothing, and she shrugged it off for the time being.
Walking down a hallway led them past some sort of laboratory with three holding cells, each containing a goblinoid skeleton with some sort of horrible mutation: a rib cage that extended past the pelvis, a grotesquely oversized skull and an additional limb. Finding nothing of value, they carried on.
A strange spherical room emblazoned with runes was further down the hall; objects floated about as though gravity had no meaning. Interested in what had been left in this curious room, Virgil leaned in and submitted himself to weightlessness. At first Khyrralien held onto his arm, then his ankle, before Luna suggested the rope she still had from when they lowered her down the lighthouse ruin. With a safety rope, Virgil was free to twist and turn artfully about the room, collecting the floating objects that included a book, a wand, a scroll, a bottle of wine and a dead, maggoty raven. The book was written in the harsh runes of Infernal, but Virgil could read it easily enough and identified it as a bible of sorts, discussing the proper worship of Fierna. The wine was nothing special, barely an old vintage, and Virgil pocketed all four finds, leaving the dead raven when Khyrralien claimed he didn't want it. Quint joined him in the sphere, commenting on how it was actually rather relaxing. He berated Virgil for not being able to read, however, and commented on the flashing runes as they spelled out various words of aggression, such as "hate", "revenge" and "fury". Both men were pulled in, and they moved back into the hallway and down the set of stairs that had been set ahead of them.
At the bottom, the stairs entered into a large open room, where a series of trapdoors lay about the stone floor. They didn't have time to consider these, however, as before they could even enter the room a voice screeched out at them. There was an enormous goblin, nearly the size of a man but whose shape didn't suggest that it was bugbear; it had three arms, a weapon in each one, and yelled out threats at the top of its lungs before running towards them. Eamon rushed to meet him, but the goblin bypassed the angel and stopped at the foot of the stairs before vomiting a stream of acid. The narrow stairs prevented Virgil, who had been bringing up the rear, from getting by Luna and Quint to engage the creature. The wizard cast Protection from Evil on Luna, and Khyrralien and Eamon attacked the goblin while Luna tried to hit it with the bow she had been lent. The creature fought viciously, screaming that its name was Korvus, identifying it as one of the goblin "heroes" that Shalelu had mentioned. A casting of Grease from Quint sent one of its weapons flying, and between Eamon's rage and Khyrralien's antlers, the mutant creature was eventually brought down. Khyrralien took the dead creature's silver dagger, adorned with a skull on its pommel; Virgil took its rather cruel-looking enchanted longsword, and Luna was passed its high-quality handaxe, as she lacked any particular close-range weapon.
Turning their attentions to the trapdoors, they found each to cover a small, deep pit. Inside each pit was a zombie that looked up and growled when the door was disturbed. However, none of them could reach up high enough to climb out of the pit, so they were rendered harmless. Taking the ranseurs, the three extraplanars began the task of executing the shambling creatures; Luna stood off to one side, obviously made uncomfortable by the affair.
When it was finished, the group moved to the only doorway in the room. It led to a second set of stairs, which ended prematurely in a cave-in, sealing the path and preventing further exploration.
The group backtracked and made their way up the stairs that they had ignored previously, guarded as they were by the terrifying gaze of Alaznist's statue. These too had been blocked by a cave-in, though a vague hint of fresh air blew through the rocks, suggesting that the surface wasn't too far. Regardless, the way was impassable, so they walked back down the stairs.
Finally, they returned to the hallway that they had passed by, before reaching Alaznist's statue initially. The hall took them around a corner, where a small, black altar of sorts was set up in an alcove. The basin atop it was filled with a cloudy, murky water that Eamon could tell was evil. Quint identified it as waters of Fierna: an extremely potent unholy water that, if an imbiber didn't immediately vomit it back out, would cause horrific mutation. Leaving the shrine be, the group approached the end of the hallway, where stood a large set of double doors.
Inside was a chapel, where the air had a cruel chill to it. The room lacked pews, and instead a large fountain lined with skulls stood in the center of the room. Beyond it was a raised mezzanine, where something set in its floor glowed and smoked. They all passed the fountain and climbed the stairs that stood on either side of the raised platform, to find a large triangle-shaped cauldron of sorts, large enough for a man to sit in and filled with what looked almost to be translucent lava, steaming and roiling. Despite appearances, a deathly chill seemed to emanate from it. As they looked, Khyrralien was suddenly overcome with a compulsive urge. Before anyone could react, he whipped out his dagger, cleanly slit his wrist and flicked an amount of his own blood into the water. As the others snapped at him for his foolishness, the strange liquid reacted: its orange glow dimmed slightly as a horrific golem, identical to the others and wielding a ranseur, formed and stabbed at Luna, who managed to whip her arms up in defense and who was stabbed through the hand for her efforts. As they began to fight off the creature, Quint, Eamon and Khyrralien were suddenly overcome with panic, and fled from the room with terror. Virgil managed to stave off most of the effects, though he was visibly shaken; he held back until Luna had retreated past him. As he made to follow her, he called out in Infernal that they'd be back. A small, female voice replied in the same demonic tongue as they retreated that they would all be sacrificed to Fierna: they had found the quasit. 
Category:Rise of the Runelords