The Catacombs of Scara Brae

[Aeraul Smythe]

Act I

As a whole, the group didn't exactly go clickity-click and start working together. A few barbs were shot back and forth and side-to-side, and everyone took part in it whether they were giving or receiving. After a few rounds, the barbs sank deep enough and started to contract, and where the Raiders did not click, they simply congealed together. After a while, a Watchman's stares and incessant throat clearing drove them down.

Two-by-two they went, two to each ladder. Even at what seemed like a quick pace, it took them almost fifteen minutes to get down to the bottom of the well, and by then the only light from above were a handful of distant, pitifully inadequate stars. What greeted them was an eight-walled chamber centered around an ancient, and very recently lit and stoked torch. Its four sides were each shaped like a stack of skull faces.

Across seven of the walls, ancient words were etched in; some crude, others so elegantly that it looked as if they'd been traced with a pen. Everything was written in the archaic tongue of Old Diamonic, but all the letters and glyphs were off somehow; as if literally turned sideways so that you could only recognize the language in the same way most people know that a gigantic wood-based plant is, probably, a tree. If you stared too long, the letters looked as if they might move. The only wall without these runes was instead dominated by a druidic seeming archway; three huge rectangular blocks shaped in the likeness of a doorway.

"Well," someone said; it didn't really even matter who, "Whoever put this together knew how to make it look cozy."

And on they went, into a darkness that literally felt old. It was a chilled, eldritch kind of darkness that looked like it'd host all sorts of horrible things with glowing, slit-shaped eyes -- something that probably caused a few skipped heartbeats the first time any of them exchanged looks with the phospher-eyed Half-Orc who, by hook, crook, or stupid luck, had snagged the map. Halfway down the hall, and the group stopped.

The light from the torch behind them literally stopped with them, in a perfectly set line. Undeterred, hand-carried torches and lanterns were lit in its place, but even their light seemed almost feeble and strangely detailed down here. As if the darkness wasn't bad enough, it was also becoming more and more humid and cold, and it didn't take long before each of them noticed an unpleasant smell that, at this point, was simply too complex to pin a single metaphor to.

They arrived at last to the end of the first corridor, and there they stopped. It forked, and with a little squinting, Aeraul was able to confirm that both of the new hallways forked as well. The original expedition had gone to the left, then the right. It fell to someone, anyone, to ask the obvious question.

"Which way now?"

...and it fell to everyone to decide.

[Streetrat]

Getting down the ladder had been trying, to say the least. The pack sat almost frighteningly weighty against her back, threatening to pull her straight off the ladder, and she moved faster than the men directly beneath her, constantly almost running into them; she was used to climbing rickety structures in a hurry, and this was much more stable than most than she'd been on.

Although the writing at the bottom had been interesting, what was more interesting for Meg was finding out what was further in. Maybe there's some long-lost treasure, or an abandoned underground temple... or a whole bunch of things waiting to kill us. The last sounded the most plausible, but she wanted to try and think positively.

When they got to the fork in the tunnel, she muttered something about the builders not being considerate of explorers in the future and tried her best to see what was beyond. Unable to see much, and noticing that the tunnels looked pretty much the same, she looked up at the others to see if any of them were moving decisively. Realizing they were pretty much as still as she was, she poked her head around the waist of the large green man - Meg figured he was some sort of Orc, having seen more than a few come through Rabanastre during her stay there - glanced both directions, closed her eyes and spun in a quick circle. Opening her eyes, she was facing the leftmost edge of the hallways. "Left, then left again?" She suggested, "Start at the far edge and work our way to the right."

However, she didn't move, mostly because she couldn't see worth a damn and was far from the most likely to survive any traps that might be in the tunnels ahead. In fact, she was probably the least likely, due to her small size and lack of armor.

[Bloodrose]

Teric gripped the metal ring at the top of his lantern as tightly as he could, trying not to let it show that his hands were still shaking. About a third of the way into their ridiculously long descent the old warrior's acrophobia had started to set in, and the feeling had almost been surreal. Teric, had he not been gripping the ladder like a miser to a copper, might have been compelled to crack a joke about having a fear of heights while being, in fact, underground...

"I was going to vote we go right, and then right again." He piped up from the back of the group. When everyone else had set off down the only hall exiting the octagonal...foyer, if you will...Teric had lingered behind for a few seconds to privately "stand sideways and try to read the wall."

Or at least that was the excuse he had quickly formulated should anyone in the group have turned around and caught him trying not to wretch...

"But left and left is just as good I suppose." He added with only a second's pause. Since Teric was not in possession of the map, an honor somewhat questionably bestowed upon the biggest target in the group, he had a distinct interest in sticking along one wall. A hasty retreat, should one be called for, was better facilitated by knowing how to get out.

You should have just gotten on the ferry back to Corone. A voice inside the recesses of his mind intoned quietly. There was a musty, unusual smell lingering in the air down here that was both familiar and unknown to the old warrior at the same time. Standing still, waiting in the gloom for the group as a whole to make a decision, Teric got the sudden sensation that he knew that smell, but it was one of those things that he just couldn't put a finger on...

[Xen]

Having reached the bottom of the ladder safely, blessed be the thayne, Xen found the darkness slightly disturbing. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the dark, but more that he just couldn’t see what was down there. And there was something down there. He knew that quite viscously. Not two feet left until the bottom of the ladder and his hands slipped, landing him directly in a puddle of mostly dry blood. It wasn’t fresh, nor was it old enough not to be very, very sticky.

As they moved down the tunnel, the smell seemed almost as though it was intensifying, though perhaps this was in correlation to an increased proximity to the glowing eyed giant. It occurred to Xen that he should warn of the others of their larger companions scent, but it also occurred do them some people became violent at perceived insults, much less intentional insults.

Shaking one of the alchemic vials to refresh the eerie green light it gave off, Xen didn’t have any real opinion of which way the group should take to get somewhere. At first inclined to argue for the opposite directions as Meg, for the precise reason that she wanted them, the ice elemental was forced to reconsider when Teric spoke up. Breaking the seeming harmony would be pointless, if perhaps pleasing.

Looking to the big guy, Xen spoke up. “Hey, you’ve got the map. My understanding is that it shows which way the last group went before they died. I vote we go the way they didn’t go.” Altering his voice slightly, Xen spoke again as though a different person. “Excellent idea Xen. Very sound reasoning. Let’s try not to die.”

[Aeraul Smythe]

"I'm inclined to vote with Teric and Meg. Left and left," Aeraul decided, just before rolling the map up and resealing it into a lacquered wooden sheath. He then tossed it over to Meg or Teric; whomever happened to be close enough to catch it first. "I'll take point, for obvious reasons," he added, switching the torch over to his right hand and finally drawing out Mankind. The Dao all but gleamed in the unwarm light of orange-red torch and cold green alchemy.

First to the left, and down the path that they knew (more or less) to be safe. It wasn't quite as long as the first, but it was certainly messier. Scorch marks lined part of one wall, and a steel short sword stuck out of the floor, mostly undamaged except for a few distinctive purple stains on the blade. Not long after that, they arrived to the second turn and again came to a stop.

To the right was a strong enough smell to overpower the background scent of the Catacombs; something not all that far removed from gunpowder. The first expedition had included an alchemist; he had obviously gone down fighting somewhere down that hallway. With any luck, he'd taken out whatever had ambushed the group...

...but there still weren't any bodies.

They turned to the left though, and kept moving. Barely a minute or so later, it was like they were truly stepping into another world -- one complete with its own, doubtlessly arcane ecosystem.

There was grass all over the floor. Hollow and crystalline until one of the partymembers stepped on it; it didn't matter who. Then, as if in a massive tide, the grass lit up and began to rustle and wave about in harmony with the air currents of the Catacombs. The pale blue light it gave off was far too weak to be useful, at best it could be seen from ten or eleven feet away, but still just bright enough to be ethereal and outright ghostly.

The further they continued into the corridor, the more detailed it became. To either side were four dead-end hallways, each terminating with an old wooden chest in front of suit of rusted armor; all the ones on the right were armed with ancient Coronian broadswords and shields, and all the ones on the left bore crossed Aleraran scimitars of similar age. Every suit differed, though most had helms with swept back horns and a mono-eye motiff for the visor.

"I believe this is the part where someone has a one-liner and we all get killed," Aeraul pointed out.

Poor sodding green-skin obviously wasn't very familiar with Murphy's Law, divided into the Three Cheap-Tarnished-Brass Rules:

1. If it can go wrong, it will go wrong.
2. Murphy hates you.
3. Murphy is always listening.

Incidentally, about two seconds before someone (likely Xen, but let's not count out the other two, eh?) could actually give that one-liner, there was a set of ratty squeaks in the distance. One, two, three, and then a fourth not long after that for the maximum amount of time you can survive with your heart skipping beats. Each one was accompanied by a brief, brighter flicker of light than the grass.

Silence followed. Aeraul, at least, eased up a little. Even went so far as to slump his shoulders.

And then he went keeled over as one of the suits of armor crashed into him from the right, shield against shield and sword held high. The others were already moving to attack as well; two moved to cut off the party's chances of escaping the way they'd come, and the two attacking Aeraul moved to position themselves so that the partymembers couldn't just flee further into the Catacombs.

That left two attacking Teric and Meg from the right and the left, mano-a-mano, and two attempting a double-team on Xen; one from each side. The one attacking Teric brought a shield and sword, the one attacking Meg brought dual scimitars. Xen had to contend with both such opponents simultaneously, presumably because he and Aeraul represented a bigger threat: A Half-Orc and an Ice Elemental were bound to be more dangerous than a girl and an old man. As to the attacks themselves...

Teric was met with a lesser attempt at the same type shield bash that felled Aeraul, followed in kind by a wide sweep of the sword.

Meg was confronted with a left scimitar thrust and a right scimitar sweep to follow-up. Her attacker was a little faster than the others, but not by much.

Xen got both. Simultaneously.

Welcome to the Catacombs, Raiders.

re: The Short Sword: Its make and style is entirely up to whoever grabs it first. Just know that it's an Average Steel Short Sword.

re: The Map: It goes to whoever catches it first. Xen is allowed to grab it if he wants; Aeraul just meant for it to go to Teric or Meg.

Feel free to take as much liberty as you'd like in how much time your post spans (from the first hallway all the way up to your responses to the attack), and give me a PM/IM if you'd like to choreograph your respective fights to any extent. I'll update the Map once this skirmish is over

[Xen]

Creeped out by eerie grass that shattered beneath their feet, the strange lighting, and a sudden claustrophobia, Xen’s thoughts were becoming quicker and shorter. No. No, no, no. The plan is to not die. Not die here. Maybe somewhere with snow, but not here.

His internal monologue cut off entirely with the squeaky sound that came at irregular intervals. The brief glimmers of light from further down the tunnel made his heart leap up his throat each and every time. Then there was silence for a moment, almost as though nothing were going to happen. Gulping air thirstily, Xen blushed at realizing he had been holding his breath the entire time.

Just as he started to relax, the half-orc in front went down beneath an armored foe, or perhaps a foe of armor. It wasn’t really bright enough to see which. Brought to focus by the monstrous clanking of their armor echoing from the nearby hallways, Xen was forced to focus entirely on himself and his two metallic foes. His survival came before the groups after all.

Throwing the alchemic vial at the suit with two swords, Xen took the second suit’s shield straight in the back, knocking him to the floor. The shielded foe’s sword swung harmlessly overhead, luckily enough for the ice elemental. Unluckily, the full force of the shield had been overmuch to knock Xen down and the armor careened right into him with a painful collision of metal shoes and bone ribs.

Laughing breathlessly with the pain, Xen yelled to the others. “And I thought the Knights of Scara Brea ruled with an iron fist…”

[Streetrat]

Being right next to the big guy helped Meg get the map - even if being short put it in reach of everyone else first. Sticking her staff up in the air, she stopped the tube's momentum and dropped it near her. Before it could hit the ground, she scooped it up and secured it in a belt loop.

Maps are always useful. And if Xen gets it I'll probably never make it out, knowing him.

The crystal grass first intrigued Meg, then made her jump after her boot brushed a few blades and it lit up. After that, she avoided the oddly glowing substance as if it had the power to stab her through her boot's sole and would inject her with something nasty. Ergh. This is less than happy, although it is rather pretty. What the hell is it, anyway? Even though the hallway were interesting, she was for too paranoid about the grass to pay much attention to it.

When the tallest member of their party utterly jinxed their luck, Meg was just about to comment on how that was probably the worst thing to say at this point when the sounds came. Her lungs feeling full of lead, she forced herself to calm down and breathe - which was surprisingly difficult.

When the suit of armor came at her, her first action was to throw herself forwards, between its arms in order to avoid both the thrust and sweep. Unfortunately, it didn't seem as constrained by the real of normal movement and its right arm continued around to crush her against its breastplate - but her diminutive size proved an asset, as the small spikes on it completely failed to stab her. Still, having the breath crushed out of you is less than a pleasant experience, and the armor was bringing its hand around for another blow.

Trying desperately to wriggle free, Meg only managed to get her bag stuck above the arm pinning her. The next attempt led to pulling her legs in, digging her toes into the waist plates and pushing hard, giving her the leverage and height she needed to mostly avoid the next blow. Her legs replaced her torso, and the blade just barely missed impaling one of them.

Adrenaline racing through her system, Meg snapped back at Xen, "Obviously not. I'm guessing this is why we're down here and not them."

[Aeraul Smythe]

Battle was joined; Xen went down and the Dead Maullers went right after him. One sought to plant a foot on his chest and keep it there, while the other did a quick but elaborate twirl of scimitars before trying to plunge both swords right into his shoulders. It didn't go quite how the two Maullers wanted though, and for a very specific reason.

Teric Bloodstone is old, but he's not that old. With the elegance of experience, the senior Raider took out his own attacker in short order (sidestep around, flick the wrist to disarm, buckler to the face to offbalance, thrust through the visor to finish) -- and then he intervened on Xen's behalf with an almost artful twist of his sword. The scimitars stabbed down into the grass to either side of Xen's head, but they didn't actually touch him at all.

As this was happening, and as Xen and Meg traded barbs back and forth, the streetrat turned into an acrobat and her attacker responded in kind. Once the first round of attack-and-evade ended, the Mauller twisted away from her and came back for another go. This time it did a scissoring attack; first from side to side, then up and down. The follow-up was a double thrust; both scimitars. It pushed forward with every attack, trying to take away her ability to evade and, if at all possible, disarm and kill her in the process.

And as this was happening, Aeraul let out a war-cry that was downright human. As the first Mauller pinned him on the floor, shield to shield, the second tried take his head off. He blocked with his Dao's handle, then heaved the shield-Mauller off to one side and rolled to his feet. Where Teric was elegantly quick, Aeraul was quickly brutal; he spun hard and smashed the scimitars out of the second Mauller's hands, then took its head off with one hard swing of the Dao.

As two of the eight Dead Maullers fell, their bodies quite literally crumbled to dust in their armor; itself suddenly rusting so much that it might crumble if touched. The magicks animating them were old, and as the fight wore on, it began to become visible; lines glowing along each suit in sharply angled, mostly symmetric patterns. The lines on Meg's particular attacker glew brightest and quickest, whatever that meant...

Bunnying pre-approved; urge to write Teric like a Sean Connery character resisted. If only just.

[Bloodrose]

The ladder, the daemonic scriptures on the wall, the eerie glowing grass; these were all things that passed by Teric as they continued into their underground expedition. While all were momentarily frightening, interesting, or creepy in their own respects, none of them really stayed with he warrior as the group pressed forward...

When the group was attacked from every side, however, the veteran's interest and expertise were immediately brought to light...

With decades of practiced experience Teric dispatched the first of the animated sentinels, rapidly turning his attention to his companions as they came under superior numbers. Now this is something I can understand. The warrior thought in passing as he spared the double-teamed young man behind him from an unfortunate skewering with a quick thrust of his own sword. It wasn't as if Teric savored and sought out the dangers of armed combat - it was just that he was more than comfortable dealing with those dangers whenever they arose...

The big mix-breed's war cry was enough to draw Teric's attention as the towering swordsman swatted the head off his own attacker. At least I have one compatriot capable of taking care of himself. Was Teric first thought, and a pleasant one at that. Meg and Xen were doing less spectacularly against their respective foes, but you can't expect everyone to be a trained fighter...

"Help Meg!" Teric shouted at the big guy. At the same time that he yelled that, he turned and kicked the second of Xen's attackers into the back of the leg. With its other foot in the air to try and pin the boy to the ground, having its other leg buckle under it sent the sentinel falling backwards; a process helped along by Teric taking hold on the back of the armored chest piece and slinging the walking suit to its back. Once down it was simply a matter of Teric jamming the point of his sword between the helmet and the top of the chest piece to send another foe rusting and crumbling into the dirt...

[Streetrat]

While her companions fought the other suits of armor, Meg focused completely on the one hell-bent on skewering her. Spinning to evade the first swipe, she dipped and scooped up her staff, using it as a buffer for one of the swords coming at her chest. Out from a belt loop came the Watch's knife, which she held out to catch the other scimitar before it impaled her, managing to get away with only a single shallow cut across her upper arm. Just as abruptly as it came, the armor relented only to come at her from an angle she wasn't used to. In dismay, she watched her knife skitter away from her, hand slightly numbed from the force of the blow. Now she had only the one weapon, but as soon as she could get a hold on her reactions it would work better than trying to fight this thing with an unfamiliar tool. She backed up as it advanced, feeling for a wall. Once she hit one, she began to think again, and fell silent.

Alright Meg, breathe. This can't be worse than that prick of a trainer at the Fighter's Guild. Remember, judge the distance, watch the speed...

Not all of the advice she'd been given were of use against this thing - dead as it seemed - but enough seemed to have bearing. She coiled against the wall, watching for an indication that the thing was about to swipe again. As it neared her again, she pushed off and sidestepped, crouching under the blades and sweeping low, aiming for the ankle of one leg and knee of the other. A satisfying thud met her ears as one of its legs was knocked forward, throwing it off balance and giving her more time to dart out of range. Trying to ignore the glowing lines as much she could, Meg readied herself.

It twisted, the wall preventing it from falling to the ground; she dropped into a low stance and braced herself. While it was no longer between her and her companions, the wall had been nice to have at her back. A blade swiped over her head, followed by another slightly below that, which she again deflected with the staff, leading the scimitar down and away from her body before reversing the strike and bringing the other end to impact one of the hands. While it didn't drop the weapon as she had hoped, its swing was halted.

Changing stances again, Meg looked for a weak point. If she still had a blade, there could be straps to sever, limbing it. However, her knives were either too small to do anything to it or sitting on the ground beyond the thing. As its blades scissored towards her again, the girl struck out and up for the head. This time her lack of momentary panic served her well, as the helm cracked backward, severed whatever neck was left inside, and the entire thing collapsed, head rolling a few feet from he rest of the body.

For a second, Meg stared at the inanimate form before her, then let out the breath she'd been holding, hoping it didn't get up again.