7.24.22 - Infiltrating the Keep

We tried to retreat down the hallway to regroup before dealing with the guards, but we were met by the cook and her companions. Since we were stuck, we began trying to pick them off one by one as they came after us, but there were more of them on an upper level doing the same to us from a distance. Our foes began to fall as we regrouped, and Pey’s newest pet, Pew, went surfing down a set of stairs that led down into another area, taking a few people with them. Also, Pey waved a new wand of his around the room until the ladder to the upper floor disappeared. A few moments later, we managed to dispatch the last of our attackers in order to follow Pew down the stairs.

On the lower level, there was a cushioned theater-like area with bright colors everywhere and a little nook where I found Dense staring at some levers and a riddle. I tried pulling and pushing the levers in correspondence with the riddle only to have a giant panel of metal crashed into me. Dense had me back up before we tried the opposite combination, which worked that time. While we were doing that, Pey had been trying to break the glass hidden behind the curtains on the wall.

When the levers clicked into place, the glass slid up into the ceiling allowing us to pass into a room full of pews facing a stage where a swirling mass of rats in the shape of a person was standing holding the classical comedy and tragedy masks. They introduced themselves as Gorgol as we came in and sat in the pews. Once we were seated, they moved the comedy mask in front of their face and welcomed us into their theater. We asked them what they were doing here, so they began to tell us a story:

The story started in spring with a wizard who was worshiped for the peace they brought to the land. (As they said this, the scene on the curtains hung around this room changed to show flowering trees blooming a bright pink.) Then, in the summer, there came adventurers. These people sought to end the peace and kill the wizard to take their power for their own. (The curtains shifted to rolling fields of green grasses.) The adventurers drove the wizard to hide and become the master of this keep. Slowly the wizard became known again to the people who needed them and by the fall had a following of people whom they had lifted up and gifted power that they needed to help themselves against the adventurers. However, these people too turned against this wizard and slew them with the gifts they had been granted, but the wizard’s spirit remained. (The curtains shifted to a forest painted in reds and oranges.) In the winter, a small helpless being named Knit came seeking aid after they had been abandoned, so the wizard’s spirit helped them. (The forest froze over into icy shades of blue and white.) Knit helped bring the wizard more followers and even wrote a book to Bast to help those in need. He became stronger than the wizard had ever been; becoming the great Bast himself. Now, Gorgol, the wizard, wants to end the royal family to bring forth the avatar of Bast to set things right and restore balance to the land. Gorgol told us they want the lower people of Aaru’un to rise up to bring down their oppressors.

After their story, they asked us if we would go talk to Sheriff Leigh in her room down the hall and bring her to them. We went to investigate the room where we found a fairly organized space with freshly packed bags at the end of the bed, but no Leigh in sight. However, Pey heard something scurrying around under the bed, so he turned into a cat to hunt down a rat who turned out to be Leigh. She fought against us and would not even answer our questions so Marko smacked her with his sword. We brought her back to life, but as we did that Pew stole the beautiful red and gold cape she was wearing and started sucking on it very loudly under the bed. While Pey tried to get that back, we asked Leigh why she was trying to run away from Gorgol. Leigh told us that since we were here she had messed up and Gorgol would not be happy with her if we took her to see them. We decided to offer her a deal: if she could take us to where my family was being kept she could leave.

Leigh led us back past the theater and the dining hall to a set of stairs we had passed but not explored on the way in. Down the stairs the smell of rotting apples began to permeate the air the closer to the bottom we got. At the bottom, Dense opened a door to reveal a room full of apple trees dripping sap and we noticed up in the branches there were cages; each holding an underfed member of my family except one in the very center where my father should have been. There were wind chimes hanging near each of the cages, so Pey very carefully pointed his wand to make the cage around my mother disappear. He was successful, but as she landed carefully on the floor it became clear she was stuck in the sap. She cried out to us to watch out for the Gum Gum as we heard a roar from above as an oversized ape with extra long legs appeared in the branches.