Fantasy A Tempest of Fears: a d20 Dungeons & Dragons adventure (Primary)

OOC: Well, seeing as you suggested it, Cass...take 20 is good...borrowing a character again here to show you the results...

The Party

Gleaming Dawn Church, Ashenport
Three hours past dawn, Third of Marpenoth
Year of Lightning Storms (1368 DR)

The adventurers (bar Ivaela and Eiros, who remained at the open door) moved into the church. Though the storm outside howled on, somehow it seemed unnaturally quiet within the body of the building. Lightning flashed blades across the main aisle, chasing Yuriko's steps; there was no other light in the place. Stone floor, the rogue noted to herself, then immediately asked herself why she'd noted that. What...? No. Leave it for later. Misplaced impressions'll sort themselves in time. Focus on the job. At least the storm was masking what otherwise would have been the steady clock of their bootheels, leather and iron.

The pews stood mute guard as she headed up the main aisle, eyes skittering over the floor to search for traps. She glanced at Zaid and Russell, who'd fallen in on either side of her -- was that intentional? Well, intentional or not, she did feel a lot safer, even if being surrounded by plate-armoured men was normally a signal something had gone badly wrong in her profession. She let one corner of her lips tug in a faint half-smile of thanks, turning back to the altar ahead of her.

Malaeus and Darron fell in alongside each other a few steps back. Summer was their only companion, but on the other hand they were both equipped to defend themselves.
Weren't they?
The wolf was snuffling around the floor, moving with interest from one pew to the next. He seemed to hesitate for a second at one pew, then was trotting back to Darron's side. No snarling or growling this time, at least -- and it sure didn't look like that priestess, Sharallan, was here this time.

Lightning flashed again as Yuriko reached the main altar, moving to examine what lay there. Experimentally ran a fingertip across an exposed few inches of marble -- dust came away with her hand, leaving a delicate sheen behind. And now that she looked at it, the rest of the symbols here didn't look to have been used for some time, either.
Except--she moved across to the candelabra that stood at the centre of the altar, seven pale fingers of candles standing dark and erect. There was just that hint of something in the air...she reached out, bringing a finger and thumb close to one of the candles' tops. Felt the heat on her fingers before brushing away the small spots of wax that came away.
"It's still warm," she said to the two armoured men standing nearby. Now her voice echoed uncomfortably loud in the church. "These candles were alight. Recently. I can smell the smoke."
"I smell sabba'," replied Zaid gruffly, and his voice tumbled down the aisle to the others. He'd been looking around, too. "But there are no antechambers up here. Only this main hall."
"Less to check over," said Yuriko, the assurance calming her a little.

It took a few minutes, all five of them pacing over the place, be it in darkness. Some instinct kept them from lighting torches or casting spells; maybe Ivaela and Eiros would be obvious signs of intrusion to the place, but visibility in the storm was down to spitting distance. And yet, even darkness did not dispel the sheer ordinariness of the place. Though the paraphenalia of the place had not been used in some time, everything else fitted the impression of an abandoned or shut-down church.

In the end, it was Russell who found it. Pausing for a moment, the cleric leaned on one of the ancient wooden pews--
--which moved.
Pivoted, to be exact; a few degrees forward, with the clack of a coffin lid falling back into place. When it locked into place, there was a heavy grinding from the front of the church. Lightning flickered; a ten foot square at the bottom of the few steps to the altar was dropping away. No, not dropping: sliding aside in sequence, a trapdoor, the stone squares becoming a spiral staircase leading down into the earth. No lights from below; no noises other than the grinding of the mechanism, which stopped a few moments after it had begun, leaving a sudden, heavy silence in the room. A ten-foot square spiral staircase down into darkness, now open. Waiting.
Stone floor, Yuriko remembered. A stone floor on a wooden building. Why would you build a wooden building on a stone foundation?

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Malaeus Balle

Gleaming Dawn Church, Ashenport​

​

"Now that is something you don't see everyday in a church," commented the warmage once the grinding noise of the spiral staircase had ceased. He stepped over to where the hidden passage appeared and gazed down into the darkness, seeing nothing save for steps fading into the dark.​

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The warmage whispered something and touched the top of his staff, a brilliant light bursting into existence and banishing the nearby shadows and dark. He glanced back at the others.​

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"Shall we?"​

​

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Casting Light on the staff head. I haz a Gandalf Staff!

 

Zaid Nejem, Death's Hand
Etc.

Ordinarily there would've been a need for a long, droning lecture about how there would be absolutely no tolerance of witchcraft providing the lighting source because I, your narrator, am ever so keen on finding the one or two aspects of a character that really drives other players batty and dialing it up to eleven, but unfortunately for me Zaid was of the opinion that there were bigger fish to fry, and besides, this is tough enough to force out as it is. And to show I'm really sporting, I won't even make the follow your nose reference.

Readying his blade and shield, the large Bedine man furrowed his gaze down the dark stairway. He felt a slight breeze whistle past his ear. "We should arrange a walking order - the followers of Dai’na ghulnaath are not known for their straightforwardness, and that aside strange things lurk in the dark, safe from the eyes of the sun."

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OOC: I'm assuming we've got 5x5 stairs to work with? Probably want Ivaela in the front, due to low-light vision and well-armoredness. Zaid in back to take rear guard, Russell perhaps in the exact middle in case healing is necessary, if Malaeus needs to hold his staff he should be in the middle-front, Darron and Yuriko are fairly flexible.

I say this mostly because it occurred to me we don't have a marching order.

 

IC: Russell Holston

"That sounds like a good idea," Russell said after a moment, glancing towards the main door. "Ivaela? I think we're going to need you, but I don't think your fine mount will be able to join us unless he can negotiate this staircase."

He was torn between surprise at his inadvertent discovery of said staircase and amusement at what a certain light-footed friend back in Waterdeep would say if he knew what Russell had just done.

Settling his shield on his arm, he moved to join Malaeus and Zaid.

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OOC: I'm cool with the general idea. How's this: Ivaela in front, then Malaeus, Yuriko (in case there are any items such as locks or traps that she needs to be able to get to and disable without climbing past too many other people), Russell, Darron, Summer (because a wolf, unlike a unicorn, will actually fit ), Zaid.

Also, the cleric is named Russell, ramzy.

 

OOC: The worst part is when I had Zaid describing the order in character - before that started to seem completely ridiculous - I actually got the Al-Kahen Holston part right. There is no excuse.

 

OOC: For the record, it is a 5x5 staircase down, so you're single file at least until the bottom of the stairs. Any advances on a marching order of Ivaela, Malaeus, Yuriko, Russell, Darron, Summer, and Zaid? If not within 24 hours, I'll update.

 

IC: Darron

The church was ... unsettling. No; unsettling was too mild a word, but Darron had no other way of describing it. The church looked like a perfectly ordinary mostly-abandoned church, and yet his skin crawled. The back of his neck prickled. Summer prowled between the pews like a restless ghost. And yet ... nothing.

Sabba, as Zaid kept saying. Perhaps the Bedine word was the most apt here.

It almost came as a relief when Russell found the stairwell. Darron felt his nerves settle, almost immediately, into pre-battle calm. Finally, a clear sign that there was something wrong here, in this church ... that it was not just supposition and paranoia.

No need to call Summer; the wolf was at Darron's heels instantly. The young druid let his hand fall onto his companion's head for a moment, and then Summer was slinking back to his preferred battle position behind Darron and slightly to the side, ready to pounce at a moment's notice.

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Battle order looks good to me!

 

IC: Ivaela Teuthor and Eiros

Ivaela came over in response to Russell's comment, looking dubiously down at the dark staircase. Just about anything could be waiting down there, especially in a town like this. She didn't exactly relish the thought of going down there, but she could hardly stay up here while the others went headlong into potential danger.

Hooves sounding on the stone floor, Eiros joined them. He cast a reproachful eye over the others - especially Ivaela. "Stairs? Really?" He heaved a large equine sigh, and peered down into the darkness. "Next time," he told Ivaela, very precisely, "we find a task that involves forests instead."

"Understood," she replied, shaking her head a little. She knew that tone; Eiros was not happy about the likely events to follow, but had no intention of lagging behind. Even when he didn't like a task, he'd be at its forefront if it was necessary.

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The Party
Somewhere below the earth
Three hours past dawn, Third of Marpenoth
Year of Lightning Storms (1368 DR)

Yuriko bit her lip as she moved into position. Thankfully, it looked as though the paladin was going first, and though it was a pretty tight fit, her unicorn was going with her, too. She hadn't seen a horse quite capable of walking down stairs, but somehow Eiros managed to achieve it and fit into the oubliette that was the wooden staircase leading down into the earth. And then her. At least if you are going to die here, it'll be quick, a distinctly unhelpful part of her said. No room to maneuver, and no place to run. As she breathed in, something tickled her nose: an odd smell on the air, something familiar--salt, she realised.
No, not salt.
Saltwater, hanging in the air.

Malaeus's staff gave off a pale, steady light in the staircase. The unicorn's hooves on the wooden stairs were like the knocks of dead men from the inside of their coffins. The helix of the wooden staircase creaked and shifted beneath Yuriko's feet, almost as if grunting in pain, and it took most of her inner control to keep from crying out or clutching at the nearest, hewed stone wall. What was it about this place? She'd padded down stairs in places promising far more immedate death before, and thus far her ears hadn't picked out any shouts of alarm or any indication they'd been found.

It only took maybe thirty feet vertical descent or so before the stairwell opened into a wider chamber, and the light from the warmage's staff crept out to embrace the far walls. Yuriko took a quick sighting: twenty-five feet long by about twenty feet wide, one end of the chamber rounded. Stone walls, with a ceiling ten feet high. Stone floor here, too. Five wooden doors out of the room: one each for the western and eastern walls, but ahead, on the straight wall opposite the curved one, three doors -- two small doors at the room's corners, and a set of great double doors at that end.

It was only as she reached the floor of the chamber that she had the chance to look closer at the walls of the chamber.

Chirasu.



Every wall was etched with images of horrific creatures of the deep, from mighty serpents to great krakens. Their eyes seemed to glare at Yuriko in hatred.
Those that had eyes, that was. She thanked the goddess that Malaeus was carrying a spell of illumination rather than a flickering torch; movement of the flame would have given these dreadful carvings the semblance of life. The rogue sucked a breath in.
Again, that smell of saltwater on the air.

Yuriko held a finger up to her lips to her companions, then slowly padded around the room, action pushing away some of the horror of this room. Moved around to doorways, testing carefully with a lockpick. The wooden door on the western wall was locked; the one on the east was not. Nor, indeed, did those double doors seem to be locked. And as for the two smaller doors on that wall ... a hunch led her on. She carefully put a hand to one door, and opened it.

Beyond that small door was a small space: five foot by five foot or so. She almost jumped when she saw the black shapes. Exhaled sharply, and got herself back under control. Robes. Nothing but a set of robes hung up, a dark green surmounted with the shimmer of fake sapphires that gleamed overbright in the light cast by Malaeus's staff.

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IC: Russell Holston

The march downstairs had been worrying. Russell had expected every moment to hear shouts of alarm from below.

But the room the stairs led to, though devoid of enemies, was enough to send a chill down his spine. This was not something that had been made recently, by his guess; these were the kind of carvings that took years to complete, and they looked old. This town had worshipped the demon of the deeps before Lathander had ever come here.

The thought strengthened his resolve, and he waited patiently as Yuriko checked the room. Always trust a thief's instincts, even if you don't trust the thief.

He tensed as she made to open one of the doors, and reached for his sword, almost drawing it on seeing her shock. "What is it?" he asked softly.

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The Party
Somewhere below the earth
Three hours past dawn, Third of Marpenoth
Year of Lightning Storms (1368 DR)

Yuriko shook herself, pulling out one of the dark yards of cloth with more force than was strictly necessary. "Nothing," she said. "Just robes. It's a cloakroom of some kind." And odds are on ... she moved across to the cloakroom's counterpart on the other side of the double doors, opening that door and looking through briefly. "So's this one."

She held up one of the robes to the light of Malaeus's staff, critically assessing it. Not a true travellers' cloak with deep hood and strengthened hemline on the cowl to keep out the rain; these had more the look of ceremonial pieces just to cover the head and torso. And cheap ones, at that; she'd picked the sapphires as fakes already, but the cloth wasn't the deep, heavy wool or silk that one encountered on the average cleric, but homespun-looking fabric fraying in a number of places. Either way, it would be apparent to anyone looking at them -- not just the Waterdeep Whisper -- that they'd be no use for disguising one's self.

Yuriko let the robe fall to the floor, moving closer to the rest of her companions. "That door's locked," she said, nodding in the direction of the eastern wall. "That one," she said, turning to the western door, "is not. And those ones are open, too," she added, gesturing absently at the double doors, and for some, unidentifable reason, wishing she hadn't.

TAG: Cass, All

 

Malaeus Balle

Somewhere below...​

​

"Can you assess whether you can pick the locked one or not?" the warmage asked after nudging the dropped robes with the tip of his boot. "From my experience what is locked is usually either important or dangerous and may be worth investigating first."

Malaeus glanced at the others, his gaze purposely avoiding the carvings of the eldritch creatures on the walls and doors. This place was disturbing but it was something he should have expected from worshipers of Dagon. He was just glad that he was not a cleric. The evil this place must emit must be more unsettling to his two holy companions than it was to him.​

​

He gave the unicorn an amused look.​

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OOC: Woo yeah.

The PartySomewhere below the earth
Three hours past dawn, Third of Marpenoth
Year of Lightning Storms (1368 DR)

Yuriko felt a flash of annoyance -- he asks me whether I can pick a lock? Me! The Waterdeep Whisper! -- which in its way was welcome, because it chased the unsettling air in the place away for a moment.
"Please," she said, rolling her eyes. Then turned and strode over to the locked door. Crouched down; checked the mechanism. As it had back in the tannery, she felt as if white light was shining on the lock, exposing all its mechanisms and tumblers to her eye and hand. No traps; it had only taken a gestalten flicker to ascertain that. And the lock itself was crude and brutal in its own way; it took her a matter of ten seconds or so to flick or outright disable the tumblers in the keyhole, and with a flourish, she turned the handle of the door, opening it on soundless hinges (a little grease from her toolkit on the metal removed any noise that might have otherwise given her away.)

Malaeus's staff reached feebly into the darkness beyond, but the rogue took a couple of cautious steps forward.

Whereas the spiral staircase from the church was wooden, the spiral staircase before her feet was carved from the living rock itself. It led downward, into the depths. Into darkness; perhaps into infinity.

TAG: Mitth, all

 

Malaeus Balle

Somewhere below...​

​

Malaeus chuckled lightly. He should have known better than to question a rogue's ability to pick a lock. Silently he watched her work her magic on the door and with a quiet click she was done in seconds. "Not bad," he praised after she pulled the doors open and he dipped his StaffLight™ toward the darkness and stone stairs. "Lovely, more dark, gloomy stairs."​

​

He was not about to go down them first, nor did he feel like going down there at all. There was just something about how the light of his staff could barely penetrate the dark. The warmage was not one to be unsettled by the dark. Not even a Darkness spell unsettled him but this dark, this pitch black chilled him and twisted his gut into knots.​

​

He did not like the feeling.​

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"So... stairs or check the rest of this floor first?"​

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IC: Ivaela Teuthor and Eiros

Ivaela gazed down into the darkness, feeling decidedly unhappy about this current situation. This was not a good place to be; the carvings on the walls made that clear enough. This was a place only welcoming to a certain kind of person.

She bit her lip for a moment, thinking. "We should check the other doors first. I don't want anything lurking behind them to get the drop on us." The paladin paused, noting the way Eiros stared down into the darkness of the staircase. "Do you see anything?" she asked him, knowing from long experience how much better than hers his sight was in true darkness.

TAG: Saint, all

 

IC: Russell Holston

"I agree," the cleric said, glancing around at the others. "We check the rest of this floor. If we go down without knowing what lies behind us, we could end up trapped should we attempt to leave." He moved towards the unlocked door on the western wall. "This one first, then the double doors, I think."

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IC: Darron

Darron hovered uncertainly towards the back of the group. This sort of thing was entirely outside his realm of experience - sure, as a child he'd gone ruins-diving with the other kids (twice; the second time he'd broken an ankle fighting imaginary monsters, and his mother had forbidden future expeditions), and he and Summer had once spent a happy week exploring an abandoned village with a itinerant band of adventurers, but nothing like this. Nothing as ... creepy, or dark, or just plain skin-crawlingly wrong as this.

Malaeus' staff provided enough light to see, and he was childishly grateful, even though he could've just started lighting coins of his own.

Summer, though, was not possessed of such irrational fear. He padded up to Russell, sniffing the door on the western wall.

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The Party

Somewhere below the earth
Three hours past dawn, Third of Marpenoth
Year of Lightning Storms (1368 DR)

"Hold a moment," said Yuriko, turning sideways to avoid touching Eiros as she moved from the maw of the stairwell to Russell's side. She crouched at the western door one more time to reassure herself she hadn't missed any subtle mechanisms, then carefully opened the door.
It swung back on silent hinges.
That really bothered her.
Across the room, Eiros did not respond with words; perhaps a wise move given one never knew how far sound carried in such places and the fact the stairwell was like the canal of a monstrous ear. Either way, the impression he returned to Ivaela was emphatic and clear enough: an image of darkness, of midnight. The unicorn's darkvision wasn't revealing anything more of the stairwell than what Yuriko had apparently seen; most likely because there just wasn't anything else to see.

Yuriko, meanwhile, was moving carefully into the room on the western wall. Malaeus's staff didn't illuminate all of it, but there was enough to see, if only gloomily. The same, unsettling carvings across the walls. Not a large space; maybe ten feet wide by twenty-five feet long. The chamber was empty but for a pair of unmade bunks, each with a small footlocker beneath it. The sheets were yellowed from long use, and acrid with the sweat of sleeping men with evil dreams. The rogue wrinkled her nose. Wait -- down the end. She padded carefully into the gloom, peering close. Another door, though it had the look of--
Yes. Yuriko gave it a cursory inspection, then opened it. Another closet; this one, though, was full of blankets and pillows as well as spare cloaks.
And over at the back ... she reached in, withdrawing a book. One of a number of such books all sitting at the back of the shelf. Leatherbound; inscribed with that same swirled pattern that she'd seen around this town already. And in the centre, that symbol again -- the one Zaid had described to them as that of Dagon.

Not my field. "There's another closet back here," she called over her shoulder. "Some basic stuff, but some books as well. Any of you more ... studied types want to take a look?"

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Malaeus Balle

Somewhere below...​

​

The warmage, curious, brought the staff over to where Yuriko was standing with a book in her hands. He reached in and removed one of the books from the shelf. Leatherbound and patterned with the same symbol as before. Malaeus narrowed his eyes as he flipped open the hard cover to the beginning pages. He had a feeling as to what it was and doubted he would be able to discern much insight from it.​

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"Holy text I would imagine," he whispered, half afraid his voice would carry or that the monster this book was devoted to would hear him and appear.​

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So.... is he right? And what language is the text written in. Assuming its not Common or one I already know, I think its Linguistics and since I dont have Knowledge Religion, its a basic Knowledge roll right?

 

Malaeus

Somewhere below the earth
Three hours past dawn, Third of Marpenoth
Year of Lightning Storms (1368 DR)



The writing in the book was, indeed, in Common. He had an ice-rimed impression for a second, in the harsh light of his staff, that the book was written in blood. No--merely written in a strong hand with good quality ink. Words, on the first page--

Know always that you are an outsider; a Stranger in this age and among those who are still men. This tome is given that you may Recite and give proper praise; but Learn the words within not with Eye but with Mind. More wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black Seas of the infinity, and The One permits us voyage far upon the Seas. Have no fear. The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the Unknown. Be joyed, for fear of the Unknown is beyond you now. And the One has said there will be opened such vistas of reality, and of men's position therein, that all shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age. But not you, for you are with The One; a Stranger in this age and among those who are still men.​

​

Malaeus turned the pages randomly. The staff's spell gave no guttering of illumination to provide a facsimile of movement -- that would have been unsettling indeed -- but in its own way the letters' stillness under light was disturbing.
Like a spider, he thought, caught in the open. Crouched, motionless; with no place to flee, and thus, waiting with endless patience for the moment in which to spring and in death spend its venom in its slayer's flesh...

Another yellowing page drew his eye--

Among Inferiors​

Throw a stick, and the servile dog wheezes and pants and stumbles to bring it to you. Do the same before a cat, and he will eye you with coolly polite and somewhat bored amusement. And just as inferior people prefer the inferior animal which scampers excitedly because someone else wants something, so do superior people respect the superior animal which lives its own life and knows that the puerile stick-throwings of Alien bipeds are none of its business and beneath its notice. The dog barks and begs and tumbles to amuse you when you crack the whip. That pleases a meekness-loving peasant who relishes a stimulus to his self importance. The cat, on the other hand, charms you into playing for its benefit when it wishes to be amused; making you rush about the room with a paper on a string when it feels like exercise, but refusing all your attempts to make it play when it is not in the humour. That is personality and individuality and self-respect -- the calm mastery of a being whose life is its own and not yours -- and the superior person recognises and appreciates this because he too is a free soul whose position is assured, and whose only law is his own heritage and aesthetic sense.​

​

The cat's path is the Great Path.​

The warmage turned another few pages, delving deeper into the book's pages. It seemed to be a book of religious instruction, the inference being instruction on disciplehood under Dagon. He might have to hand it over to Russell to be sure, but there were certain colleges back in Halruaa that would've paid for such, if only as academic texts, and--Gods.
The page in front of him was a sketch, of some religious ceremony. An altar, a hooded man depicted behind it. A pregnant woman giving birth, and a knife descending--no!
Malaeus slammed the book shut.

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IC: Russell Holston

Although he had been extremely uneasy at the mage so casually picking up and reading unknown books, the cleric had restrained himself; it was too late, once he realised what Malaeus was doing, to stop him. Instead, he waited with hand on sword-hilt, half-expecting something to emerge from the pages or Malaeus to turn into something unpleasant. The silence of everything other than his own companions was beginning to grate on Russell's nerves.

The slam of the book jolted him, and he strode over to Malaeus, barely holding in a rather rude word. "What was in that gods-cursed book?"

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Malaeus Balle

Somewhere below...

"Evil," the warmage simply replied, still disturbed by the last image he had seen. Had this village done that? Had they sacrificed a birthing mother and child to this demon? He shuddered at the thought, his face set in a grim expression.

He looked at the leather bound book and the symbol engraved on it. He could only imagine how such evil had managed to become rooted in this place. Shaking his head of the vivid images he had seen, he looked up to meet the steady gaze of the cleric and took comfort in the man's warmth and light that seemed to radiate from his mere presence. He was glad the cleric was here, it made this place less... evil.

"It is as I suspected," he finally answered once his composure had returned. "A holy text, instructing the disciples on worship, guidance and... sacrifice. You will not be so eager to save these fools once their depravity becomes known to you."

He handed the book over to the cleric to let him see for himself. The image of the proverbial sacrificial lamb still vivid in his mind.

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IC: Russell Holston

Russell grimaced a little as the book was offered to him, but accepted it anyway. It clearly hadn't done any damage to Malaeus, given the mage's reaction, so he gave it a cursory glance through before putting it back on the shelf. "Disgusting," he said quietly. "I'd suggest we burn them and prevent any chance of their winding up in other dangerous hands, but we can do that once we've cleared the rest of this... den."

The mere idea of this cult resurfacing elsewhere gave him chills.

"Come on. If there's nothing else to find in here...?" This last was directed at Yuriko.

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OOC: For reference, Yuriko's Perception check comes back at 22, and her Thievery check comes back at 21.

The Party
Somewhere below the earth
Three hours past dawn, Third of Marpenoth
Year of Lightning Storms (1368 DR)

"No. That's pretty much it," said Yuriko, standing up from the footlockers she'd opened while the mage and cleric were looking at the book. "This's some kind of short-stay, I'd guess. Nothing in here but a few old bits of clothing. Either way, there's not much more here."

She led the way out of the room, turning to face the last door which remained untouched: the great double doors on the south end of the hall.
The rogue moved carefully up to the door; put an ear to it, holding a hand up to the others. Death always lies behind the last door, her mother had taught her...but as far as she could tell, there wasn't anything moving back there. And yet...and yet...
She shrugged. This door was locked, and whether death lay beyond it or not, they weren't exactly going anywhere without it being unlocked.

Crouching as she had by the door into the stairwell, she set to work with her tools. This, at least, was solid and something she knew how to do - and whilst getsumei no michi wasn't with her this time, the door wasn't trapped, and the lock simple enough. A few moments later, she stood, padding back to the others, nodding.

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It is unwise for the squishy party member to open doors simply to just get this game moving.

Malaeus Balle

Somewhere below...

Malaeus took the book back and stuffed it somewhere admist his robes. Although he did not like the blasted thing, he was somewhat a scholar and understood the value it would hold in the eyes of someone like minded. There were plenty of such people back in his homeland and although he did not suspect he would return anytime soon, it was worth keeping until he did.

He watched then as Yuriko carefully unlocked the last door and then made her way back to the rest of the group. When no one volunteered to open it, the warmage sighed and marched forward with a little irritation.

"A cleric and a paladin afraid of the boogeyman that the wizard has to open the blasted door," he mumbled under his breath. He glanced at the crusader. "You, come here desert dweller. Surely you do not fear what lurks in the dark?"

Without another word, and standing slightly to the side just in case, Malaeus placed a hand on the handle and pushed the doors open.

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