Subterranean Worm Civilisation (OPEN)

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A faltering glow, amber in colour, marbled the shadows. Gum do Mugu, a shaman grown in the distant tropics, blinked away the crusting from his narrow old eyes. He stared at the source of the light, it was circling within the perimeter of a translucent globe. His wrinkled forehead bore the weight of worry, the worry of a strange circumstance and an unnatural light. "Where am I?" he asked of the damp, muddy walls. Spidery roots webbed the ceiling. The floor below was sodden, causing Gum's bare feet to wrinkle. When the shaman tried to right himself, his palm slipped in the mud and he ended up nose first in the earth.

The earth... the water... the roots...

It was then that he realised, he was beneath the ground.

"How did I get here?"

He slammed into a something, eliciting a groan as it sent him end over end, only to fall the next ten feet and land on his back with a mighty thud. John's mind drifted lazily from one image to another, the branch that hit him was a root, he noticed, and the cavern he was in was bathed in some kind of orange light. He could see no trace from where he had fallen, the daylight was swallowed by the twists and turns of the hole that brought him here. He closed his blue eyes, shaking the mud from his mind as he started to roll over, keeping sure to not to roll over on his ribs, bruised by the fall.

He utterly failed to notice on his way down, but now he saw a dim figure, lit only slightly in the back by some kind of orange light, it might have been fire if he could hold the thought, and even then only an outline. He spat on the ground, groaning as his ribs protested to the sudden motion, and rolled over all the way, disregarding the way it dirtied his tunic slightly. It was already dirty anyways.

"Who are you?" he asked simply, still rolling thoughts around his head slowly.

However faint the light was, it was enough to expose a famous frame. Gum could recognise the hulking silhouette and tempered face of Sir John Cromwell in any light. After wearily groaning to his feet, the old shaman—experiencing a degree of ease in the presence of a known quantity—obliged with his name and title.

"I am Gum do Mugu, Arch Shaman of the Xangu people."

In spite of being wiry and lithe by comparison, the umbral holy man made certain to capitalise on the ghoulishness of his appearance. He stood, barely in the light, exposing his scarred and bony torso; the shaman's chest was decorated with a necklace made of three shrunken heads.

"I know you from your successes in the fighting pits of the Citadel."

Do Mugu revealed the deep lines of his sullen face in the orb's sickly radiance before continuing.

"Cromwell, have you arrived in this dreadful place to be my assassin or my ally?"

(Totes in this one!)

Lorenor found himself waking up in the dirt...in the mud specifically.

He appeared relatively nearby the position of Gum and Cromwell.

Coughing mud that he had breathed into his system he felt like he had a pounding headache. He wiped the mud from his face and stood up, his body glowing and an distinct sense of danger surrounding him. His glowing eyes focused and he was adjusting to the dimly lit cavern. There were naturally glowing fungi present in the cavernous expanse. Further, Lorenor's own body glowed as an after effect of The Holy Light. Again that distinct feeling of danger originated from the area they were all in...not from Gum or Cromwell. Lorenor stood up straight and proceeded to clean himself off best that he could.

He walked over towards Cromwell and Gum.

He looked at Cromwell and nodded to the man with utmost respect. Then he looked at Gum. "Cromwell is a good man, stranger. I can speak for him." He arrived at the last part of Gum's speech. "Cromwell...'tis an honour. My name is Lorenor, I am one of those Paladin folks." Lorenor spoke in a more educated sort of variant of common speak. He then looked towards Gum. "Xangu Basin...you're from Dheathain are you not?" Lorenor was curious about that man. He'd not met many folks from the various paganistic religions of Althanas. He'd only come across Thayne worshipers and a few other variants of The Thayne Codex.

Lorenor could not shake the feeling that they were all in incredible danger. "I guess we're all in this together. No reason we shouldn't work together." Lorenor extended his hand towards Gum so the fellow could shake it, if he so chose. He looked at Cromwell. "Do you have any idea why we are all here...or perhaps...we were summoned." Lorenor mused out loud and waited to hear any sort of answers from Cromwell or Gum.

John raised himself to his feet in the darkness, slightly surprised that he could hold his head upright. A sour frown crossed his face. He was bruised and missing his appointments. He towered above the other forms, both of which he recognized now, and spoke, an almost-groan coming through his lips.

"If I wanted to kill you, shaman, I would not fight you here. I should not like to fight you anyways."

He reached out, feeling dirt and stone under his massive paw as the other spoke. He recognized the paladin from somewhere, but his thoughts were still slow in coming, and he could not place the man. If that was any indication of anything, it was that he wasn't dangerous, at least not at the moment. He frowned slightly, trying to make out exit or opening in the cavern. He responded to Lorenor's praise with scorn, slightly concealed.

"I think the paladin speaks too much for me," the half-giant said, hauling painful memories through the slowness of his head. "Paladin folks tend to." A cigar appeared in his hand by magic. In a moment it was lit, and he spoke again.

"Where are we?"

The immediate warmth in the trio's introductions soon gave way to the chilling reality of their predicament; Gum had listened to the two men speak, expecting one to conveniently reveal the truth of their situation. But neither did. It was then that the cavern's claustrophobic confines began to constrict, the Xangu native slowed his breathing to a conscious rhythm.

Do Mugu shook Lorenor's hand, and he could feel the grains of earth on his palm come between their grip. "I was in Radasanth," the shaman began, earnestly trying to answer Lorenor's question. "Speaking with a creature whose face was a shadow under a long, folded hat." Lorenor's glowing blue eyes reminded Gum of the shadow-faced being's eyes, they too glowed unnaturally.

Gum turned from the paladin to stare at the half-giant, the flame lighting the cigar had caught his attention. "Where are we?" asked Cromwell.

"The shadow-faced soul asked that I travel to Scara Brae to attend to the errant spirits inhabiting their mines." A droplet of tannin-stained water splashed down onto the shaman's hooked nose. "Are these the mines?" Gum had never been to Scara Brae, let alone Stonevale. Yet, it was clear they were underground, but there were no signs of mining... no rock or ore. Just damp earth, wet roots and a light without a reason for being.

Lorenor knelt down for a moment and placed his hand in the mud.

He was feeling around for something that could be like like old mine tracks...anything they could use to get oriented.

Lorenor didn't find any worth while clues so he stood up for a moment looking at Cromwell and Gum. "Can't seem to find any mine tracks. If this is an old mine...we must be very far underground." Lorenor was assuming that...but it was a fair assumption. He could not shake the feeling of danger that they were all in...but perhaps it was a feeling of paranoia more than anything else. He was summoned...Gum...but why were we all pulled to this place...? Me and Cromwell...? Lorenor wanted to know the why of things...he considered that the root of any mystery he involved himself with.

As he stood there he looked at Gum and Cromwell. "We should secure a way back to the surface if we're to escape." Lorenor said calmly.

John reached out and felt an earthen wall making up one side of the cavern. It felt slightly wet, definitely not stone, nor pebbles or rocks of any kind that he could tell. In the dim light he could see small roots and such, signals that they might not be that far underground. He let out a sigh as his thoughts returned to him with normalcy, the cobwebs of being knocked around in his fall finally dispersing.

"I was in Radasanth," he muttered, looking around further. "I was going out to the forge and I just..fell." he finished, looking up at the cave ceiling. Root stalactites hung down, almost making him duck. It was here he noticed the source of the amber glow.

A sinuous, faintly-glowing line separated one third of the cavern from the other, spreading around the walls to the ceiling, forming one continuous loop. He got the odd feeling that it looked like somebody'd gone and cut two caverns in half and glued them together. He dismissed the thought with a whiff of his cigar and decided to look up instead. Seeing the low spot where he'd fallen in and the thicker roots, it seemed like if they could manage it, they might be able to get back up where he'd fallen down. He set the cigar down on a little outcropping on the other side of the orange glowing line, and pulled himself up, trying to see where he'd fallen in.

No dice.

Whatever hole had been there had closed up tight, and he could no more dig himself out than he could dig himself in, leastways not with his bare hands. He dropped down, his boots making a sizable print in the mud, and reached for his cigar, surprised when it did not budge when he tried to pull it from the shelf. Looking closer, it seemed grayscale, like the color had been taken out with some kind of reverse paintbrush. He saw it elsewhere now too, everything gray, even the roots. Striations marred the surface, and he reached out with a bare hand to touch what he could only assume was stone. It had the feel of stone, and when John pulled his hand away, he started in surprise as a piece of skin remained stuck to the stone, causing him to pull back a finger with very thin skin.

It turned to stone?

"Back from that side, both of you," he said, not sure how it would get them out of the cavern.

"Agreed," Gum said to Lorenor. Respect for the paladin came easily. After all, a shaman's and a paladin's respective roles in their societies were comparable.

"But I am concerned," the shaman conceded to his counterpart. "We have found ourselves here without clear explanation." He rubbed each temple with an index and a middle finger, as though to clear the way for a solution to enter his mind. "I am concerned that our escape might be equally as-"

"Back from that side, both of you," said John, interrupting the shaman.

Obliged by the gravity of Sir Cromwell's indomitable voice, Gum backed away from the consuming stone magic as advised.

Under duress, Gum snapped at the ominous orange light and scowled at it. "You are a spirit," he snarled. "I can feel you in there." Inconsistent with his typically even temper, the barefooted shaman stomped through the mud and towards the sphere containing the light. He spread his palm and pressed it against the orb, creating a hand-shaped shadow across the cavern. "Comply and release us, or I will bring you to Oxxad for judgment and your time haunting the Overworld will be over."

A moment passed.

Nothing.

Do Mugu pulled his hand away.

Then the light began to fade.

"I am sorry," he said somberly to his unlikely comrades. "Its soul is weakening."

Before the dark, the hopelessness, and the stone overwhelmed them, Gum felt something between his toes; something squirmed underfoot. He bent his arthritic knees with a crunch and crouched down. Pinching in the dark, damp substrate with his thumb and forefinger, he was able to pick up the slimy source of the wriggling. Letting it rest in his palm, he showed his finding to his allies. It was a long, skinny earthworm.

Lorenor saw the spirit that Gum communed with...Lorenor could try it too.

But that was not what concerned him. Lorenor looked up and could not see a ceiling at that point...it was an unnaturally high cavern wall. Lorenor stood up. He looked at Gum and Cromwell with a concerned expression on his face. "Gentlemen." Lorenor began. "Look around you...the wall writhes, as if in agony." Lorenor was not sure how he didn't notice it all before...but the walls...naye...the very mud itself moved. Lorenor suddenly did not like the situation they were in at all...it actually really terrified him.

"Gum we need a way out of here." Lorenor said calmly. He looked at Cromwell and then at the spirit. Lorenor decided that the spirit would play an integral role in the situation that they were all in. 'Gum, may I try a thing?" Lorenor asked the Shaman before he proceeded forward towards the rapidly weakening spirit. Lorenor could also use Compelling Arts in a similar way that Gum could. Albeit...Lorenor's understanding of spirit folks was not as deep as Gum's apparently was. Still...they needed a bigger understanding of the situation at hand.

Lorenor walked towards the weakening spirit, and began to talk. "By The Light...I compel you...draw upon the life spirit within me. To regain thy strength." Lorenor was taking a gamble. He didn't know what sort of spirit was before them...but he KNEW that he had to help it. Lorenor walked towards the spirit and knelt down before it...humbling himself to the apparition. "Do not fade from us as we all need one another." Lorenor said, and there were tears flowing from his eyes.

"Young student of The Arts...do not weep." The Spirit called out from The Great Beyond. "I shall grant ye whatever aide I can. Thou hast agreed to help me in exchange." And so...Lorenor bound himself to the wayward Spirit. The spirit reached out and touched Lorenor on a rather deep level. Lorenor did nothing to resist it...

The Holy Light compelled Lorenor to help and so he helped...perhaps them all.

John stood, a life of strangeness the only thing keeping him from going slackjawed at Gum's, and then the paladin's, command of this spirit, some remnant of a bygone age, maybe trapped just the same way the three of them were.

At the paladin's command, the spirit brightened, if only slightly. He saw the detail of the stone in the cavern. It spoke, resolving from a mote of light no bigger than his fist into a wide sheet, drifting toward one side of the cavern, the side still made of dirt and roots.

"I will help you as I can, but I fear my time is short. A force draws me hence. I will help you ere I am gone, though. This path leads I know not where, but staying here is your demise as surely as it was mine. Good luck."

The spirit's light shifted, fading. It looked like it was being sucked...into something, or out of something, but as John noticed it enough to think about it, the light was gone, faded into bits no larger than a flying spark from his forge, and lasting just as long. In place of the spirit, there was a small doorway, so short that even Gum with his hunched form would need to stoop a little to pass through.

This was not going to be a fun trip.

As the spirit went, so did the light though, and John reached out to a mossy wall to steady himself in the darkness.

"Anybody got a light?"

Do Mugu's mood faded into melancholia with the spirit's dying light. When the passage opened up ahead, he felt an overwhelming rush of despair rise up—it was an energy only those appropriately attuned could feel—and so he steadied his balance with a palm against the cavern's wall. Having felt the eerie surge of dread escape from the tunnel ahead, the shaman began to murmur anxiously under his breath.

"The lost are below. The lost are below. Hundreds of them are haunting the earth."

Sighing solemnly, the shaman returned the earthworm he had found back in the moist dirt below and moved into the opening. Gum stepped forward, ahead of Cromwell, and stooped his back to stare into the blackness afoot. As terrified as the trapped spirits were, Gum knew their malice was not directed at the shaman, the paladin, nor the warrior.

"Anybody got a light?" Cromwell asked. To which Gum responded with a seldom, subtle smile, "we will not suffer without illumination." The shaman lurched into the darkness and watched as lights, just like the first, brightened the passageway with a familiar amber glow. "These dead, they are our allies."

While taking those first few steps down and into the unknown, Gum glanced back over his shoulder to request assistance from Lorenor. "Paladin, use your power to strengthen these poor souls as we pass by. We will need their light to fight the demons in the darkness." While the shaman himself had abilities to interact with the spirit world, it was evident that Lorenor possessed different, but highly effective powers. "I am pleased to be in the presence of an astute paladin."

The shaman turned his attention to Cromwell next and enthused, "Sir John, we will need your famed strength." Amazed to see it first-hand, the Xangu native pressed his wrinkled fingertips over the magical titanium and remarked, "this metal might be strong, but your spirit is stronger." Whether it would temper the mighty warrior's heart or not, Gum made a promise to Cromwell. "If we die here, your soul will find its way out of here." The shaman was not prone to offering false promises, but there was no way he could be certain any of them could escape this place... whether they be living or dead.

At that precise moment...Gum took charge of the group.

Mayhaps it was better that way. Lorenor watched the spirit form they'd assisted fade into aetherial energy after it opened a new passage for them. Lorenor cried silently for the lost of the spirit. Damn...if only...I could do more... For some reason, The Paladin found himself thinking about another time. Another place. A place that was destroyed by his failure to do anything against the forces of darkness. Never...again... Lorenor's heart wept for the ruins of Eiksalt. Destroyed by the agents of Darkness. Those who played victims of the very crimes they committed. "Eiskalt." Lorenor said out loud without meaning to.

"One day, I swear I will be strong enough to avenge them." Hearing Gum's words at that point, The Paladin agreed. "I will assist them to the best of my limited power." Lorenor suddenly realized something at that exact point. "Gum...Cromwell...those glowing fungi I saw earlier are not plants. They are residue. SPIRIT RESIDUE. Where in The Thayne's names are we?" The more Lorenor considered the situation at hand...the more he did not like it. The walls were writhing at that point. He decided at first, it had to be a trick of the eyes. Maybe he was tired, maybe he was paranoid. But he could have sworn he saw the walls writhing and twisting.

"Cromwell...DON'T touch the walls." Lorenor said carefully. At the request of the light, Lorenor calmed himself for a moment. He was getting scared...he had not been that afraid in a long time. Where the fuck are we? Why were we summoned here? At first he considered the possibility that they could have been in an intricate Trap set by N'Jal. Though the energies in the air felt far more sinister than anything N'Jal could ever have hoped for. No...it's not N'Jal. I have intricate knowledge of what N'Jal's energies and taint felt like. THIS...WE'RE in a different situation all together. Lorenor was thinking to himself. The trapped spirits were there in the same situation the three wayward Adventurers were...they were all TRAPPED.

Instinctively, Lorenor drew his sword. He began to shine with a very brilliant light, a residue of The Holy Light. His aura. A sort of nimbus glowed that emitted a brilliantly glowing energy. A purity of self. A way of life. Lorenor rushed forward towards Cromwell. "Cromwell! Don't touch the walls!" He hoped he was not too late.

John registered the paladin's statement in passing, like a part of a conversation he wasn't interested in. He reached forward still, the wall writhed...invitingly? No, curiously was better. What was it made of? Would it reach out and touch him back? He wanted to touch it.

A hand on his wrist, rough and yanking down, rescued John from his thoughts. He inhaled sharply, looking around almost for the first time since he saw the wall. He looked down to the hand that wrapped a little more than halfway around his wrist, and pulled away from the grasp, looking down at his hand like it had betrayed him.

"It...spoke? Something like that. I don't remember really," John said, trying to put his thoughts, already forgotten, into words. Lorenor spoke up in the silence.

"Best we keep our hands to ourselves, yes? We still don't know anything about this place."

John's eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but he didn't look at the wall again, even though he was catching the sinuous motion out of the corner of his eyes. Even when the paladin summoned light from his sword, he did not look. He hoped Gum was working on getting them out of here. He started to walk through the doorway, ready to be out of wherever they were.

"Best we not think about it either, too," The half-giant said. "Gum, do you know where these spirits are from, or how they were brought here?"

Famed strength indeed, bloody useless if I get distracted by a wall of all things.

Subterranean Worm Civilisation - No Judgment
Rewards include 1.5x Stonevale Bonus for Lorenor

Gum receives 440 EXP and 44 GP

Paladin_Lorenor receives 580 EXP and 66 GP

redford receives 500 EXP and 44 GP

Congratulations!

Rewards added!