Runelords 38.0 - Barl

Deciding that they had gotten a bit further into trouble than Virgil had anticipated, he told everyone to wait while he ran back to fetch Khyrralien. Jogging back as quickly as his shrunken legs could carry him, he made his way unimpeded back to the central shaft. Using Invisibility followed by Dimension Door, he returned to the courtyard and ran towards the lamia's building where they had left Khyr. The treants appeared to be on alert: they patrolled about with a purpose, and Virgil dodged around their paths. Hunting around, he eventually noticed Khyr's feet hanging off the edge of the roof of the supply building as he napped. Tossing a rock and hissing up to him, the invisible Virgil caught the aelurian's attention and got him down, casting Invisibility on him as well. Having to take Khyr's hand to lead him effectively, Khyr tittered at Virgil's small stature. The pair dashed across the field, Khyr having picked up Virgil to carry him like a backpack. As they went, Virgil explained what they had seen and done. Khyr teleported them to the base of the excavation, and they paused for a moment to introduce Khyr to Needlenest, though they didn't linger long.
As Khyr passed into the visually upsetting room, he fell prey to the same trap, and he collapsed under Virgil's weight as he suddenly shrank as well. Running past the runewell, the group reunited. Everyone agreed that they did not want to engage whatever the bloody headless knight obviously was, and chose a different path.
Entering a rounded room with a large suspended metal orb at its center, Khyr skipped forwards and began to drum his hands on it. The orb began to morph and contort, attacking Khyr as it resolved into some sort of round iron construct with a belly full of roiling magma. Swords seemed to cut through it like butter, but the gashes left healed themselves just as quickly as they were made. Attacking it with ice seemed effective, however, and as everyone lay into the creature, it seemed to begin to melt into the floor. Eventually it was little more than a puddle, slowly creeping its way across the floor and up the curved walls. Unsettled, both by this and the strange, alien perspectives in the room that made it seem as though they walked up and around the ceiling despite the fact that they only moved straight forwards, the group took their leave, exiting as they noticed the liquid metal had coiled its way around the entire room's surface.
Pressing forwards, they found themselves in a large hall. A glowing stone door with seven-pointed designs dominated their attention, but there were other doors as well: an ornate door with carvings, a plain door, and a door that had been partially pushed open by what seemed to be a landslide behind it. The glowing door seemed to require a key of some kind: it had a circular indentation at its centre, with yet another sihedron carved in it. They knocked upon the plain door, but got no response; walking inside, they found a perfectly round, curving tunnel that echoed their voices. As Virgil and Khyr took a step inside, two large, slathering hounds walked around the bend. As they walked, it seemed as though their legs rotated about their body, so that they started by walking on the floor and ended on the ceiling. With a visceral repulsion, the men jumped back, slammed the door, and hoped that the creatures couldn't open it.
Moving to the ornate door, they investigated the carvings, which seemed to show a crowd of people at study, and an amphitheater of some kind. Opening it, they found a second door, much like the first. Behind that was a sheer, stone wall that was almost immediately recognizable as the product of magic. The group groused about their inability to pass by the barrier, until Virgil suddenly realized that they could just Dimension Door past it. Khyr grinned and responded immediately by travelling alone. While the others shook their heads, Khyr found himself in what seemed like a lecture hall, lined with thousands of books on shelves and tables of arcane supplies. On one end was a raised stage, upon which was a desk and, seated there, a dwarven man. The man turned, took one look at Khyr, and shot a spell at him. The Disintegrating beam very nearly killed the man in one blow, and Khyrralien gave out a hideous shriek that even the others could hear through the stone.
Managing to teleport himself back, the group healed him and prepared to re-enter: this was almost certainly Barl, the dwarf that Needlenest had warned them of, and had told them was one of the two in charge of this operation. When they teleported back in, directing themselves behind the chair that Barl had been sitting at, they found themselves in a thick, soupy fog that hindered their ability to move. A deep, rolling laugh echoed through the mist; Eamon swung his sword towards the sound, but hit nothing more than the table. Virgil used Dispel Magic to get rid of the fog, revealing that the laughter came from a large helmet that lay on top of it, visually similar to the headless suit of armour they had seen before. Barl flew on the other side of the room. He declared that 'the intruders had at last shown themselves!' before throwing another spell that plunged the stage into a thick fog. This mist, however, was poisonous rather than thick, and the group scrambled to get free of it.
Barl threw spells at the group from his safe position in the air, easily resisting Virgil's attempts to cloud his mind and evading the weapons of Alicia and Eamon. Khyr fired crossbow bolts at him to only marginal success, and Shadliss struggled with Vansaya, Khyr's other crossbow.
In an attempt to bring him down, Virgil used Dimension Door to teleport on top of Barl, grabbing onto him. Unfortunately, his small size was not enough to weigh him down, and Barl laughed as he pulled out an axe, swinging it around and devastating Virgil, forcing him to let go or be slain. Dropping another layer of fog on his opponents, Barl declared that this was not a fair fight and that he was quite done playing around with them. With a promise of sending the treants to deal with them, Barl vanished, teleporting away with Dimension Door himself.
The party, sour and injured, agreed on their intent to steal as much was physically possible from this room. Khyr grabbed books and random items as Virgil picked through scattered spell components for necromantic supplies. As Khyr swept over the desk, he found a rounded stone that seemed to match the indent in the carved door in the hall: the key. 
The helmet continued to laugh. Addressing the helmet, it declared that it had watched them cower in fear before it; it was indeed connected to the bloody armour they had quailed in front of earlier. It named itself a Judge of the Etherial Court of Order, and it certainly found the pathetic mortals in front of it amusing. It explained off-handedly that it had lingered here in this place as a guard for a long time; a portal had been nearly established between the Court and this plane some time ago and he had been stranded when it closed, so he acted as a sort of guard to this place, an ancient temple made by monks who sought to connect the planes. The gathering of power by Karzoug pleased it: he had offered the Court summons before, not an enslaving spell but a cordial invitation, and the Court was all too pleased to accept. If he would come to power again, than surely the Court would have access to Materia once more. Laughing heartily, and with a few threats that he was coming to chop off their heads, the helmet grew a series of tentacle-like legs and scurried away.
Demoralized and sullen, the group loaded themselves with what they could carry before Virgil used what was left of his power to teleport them to the surface, beyond the walls. He cast a final spell that summoned ethereal phantom horses, which carried them away to safety at great speed.Category:Rise of the Runelords