Session 20

So here's Sira. Not long ago she was living in the magnificent alien (well... not to her, but you know what I mean) city made of crazy plants grown into buildings. She and her dad didn't get on, so she probably devised a foolproof way of having him killed. Almost certainly since Iskai (that's the race of space-cat people that she belongs to) law says that the family of the prime suspect must take responsibility for investigating the crime, she hired a human from a different continent to come over and do the deed.

Since he'd have no family near by, no one would be there to investigate and she'd get away with it (it would be easy to trick the human assassin into getting himself killed later too - just send him into a death-trap haunted house). Just as long as the human killed her dad very publicly so everyone could see what species he was.

Probably quite irritatingly, it turned out that some other humans had turned up just at the wrong time and the local town leader decided they were close enough to family for it to be their job (with the help of a police space-cat woman) to convict the killer...

Thankfully the humans were amazingly dim. Even when they found Sira's family heir-loom on the body of the human - clearly an expensive object that could've been given as payment - she and her probable accomplice (there was some other chap she got involved to act as an intermediary with the killer) managed to convince them it was an elaborate form of suicide!

Officially cleared of any suspicion - Sira was still aware that anyone with half a brain would be able to spot her obvious probable involvement in her father's death. Her best course of action would be to get out of town for a while - give people a chance to move on from the apparently solved killing.

To this end she decided that she would tag along with the humans who "solved" the mystery in her favour. Clearly idiots, they would probably never suspect her of having paid for her dad to be murdered and would almost certainly attest to her good character on returning from whatever barmy mission they were on - "We have to find the giant metal planet eating monster that we travelled here on..." Sounds like a wild goose-chase to her!

Not even questioning her motivations, the humans take her along with them (and irritatingly Dirr the police lady too... But she doesn't seem to suspect anything either...)

Sailing across the mighty ocean, Sira and these prune-brained weirdos end up on the human populated land of the druids. It becomes immediately apparent there's no massive metal monster here so Sira pushes the group to keep on moving. The further from home, the better for now!

But irritatingly they can't just leave. They have to go on some sex errand for the king which leads them to the layer of the Druids - an underground catacomb filled with monsters and demons.

And this is where her plans of casual travelling suddenly go awry! To help them navigate the labyrinth, the druids assign the team "Mellthas" the deaf mute simpleton. Although Sira initially dislikes him - it turns out that despite being even more of an idiot than the rest of this gang, Mellthas is so good with his fingers that he can make her feel things she's never felt before! I.e. a psychic connection with a sex starved human!

Sira falls in love then and there! Dank and Satanically infested though the surroundings might be, she is captivated by his suddenly-not-so-unattractive face (and hands).

From then on she's been in a sort of loved up stupor. Not really thinking about the horrible dangers they've been wading through. Until now!

Just now the floor gave way beneath the team. Where previously they'd been fairly carefully mapping and scouring the dungeons so as not to get lost - they were all suddenly plunged into a totally un-known area of the underground city. Sira suddenly wakes up to how deeply she's let herself get into trouble! What is the point of leaving her home town (probably) to escape suspicion if she's going to let herself be entombed in an inescapable crypt! Even if she HAS found "love" with a nimble fingered human - how did she let herself wander so blindly into obvious, enormous peril like this?!

The roof - where the gang just fell through, closes up behind them. They can't even use the rope to climb back up!

"DIRR YOU IDIOT!!!!!" screams Sira. "YOU STUPID EFFING IDIOT!!!! WHAT THE EFFING EFF WERE YOU THINKING YOU INSANE CATBITCH!!!! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE NOW!!! YOU STUPID STUPID EFFING STUPID IIIIDDDIIIOOOTTTTT!!!!!!!!"

Mell holds up a little sign saying "Sira! Calm down!" but she knocks it from his hands, pokes him in the eye and kicks him firmly in the fork.

"RIGHT!!!! I'm taking the lead now! You... UTTER idiots can't be trusted to get anything done!!! HOW HARD IS IT TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF A DUNGEON, RESCUE AN OLD MAN AND GET OUT!?!?!?! WHY!!! WHY WOULD YOU BE SO AGONISINGLY STUPID!!!!!!"

Sira finds it difficult to express exactly how enraged she is by this situation. But to try and get a fraction of it across she pushes her face close to Hoff's and just goes

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!"

Rolling her eyes backwards into her head, clawing at her face with her hands, quivering at the knees and then collapsing from the strain.

There is a brief, stunned silence.

"Ehem..." starts Tom. "I think perhaps Sira must've... bumped her head in the fall..."

"Ahhhh! yes!" chime in the others (except Mell who holds up a sign saying "Relieved agreement") as the tension of Sira's outburst is defused totally by their ascribing it to her being out of sorts from the drop.

"We women are prone to hysterics sometimes" says Dirr, preferring to betray her gender for the sake of avoiding a socially awkward situation when their companion comes round.

They all have an 8-hour rest to compose themselves before waking Sira to carry on.

On looking around themselves the gang notice that they're in a long room. There's a door at one end and a barred portcullis at the other - neither locked. There's a fire pit in the corner but nothing much else to look at...

Out of the door there's a locked chest that no-one can pick and a fountain. I fill a bucket from the fountain and go and put out the flame pit (since there's nothing much else to be doing... apart from exploring through the portcullis).

Excellently there's a secret button behind the flames, and pressing it opens a passage behind it. Down the passage is another flame blocks the way - but it's easily dealt with by another trip to fill up a bucket at the fountain.

Further along there's a force-field! Hof says it's "A non-electric force field! This is more than a rational man can cope with!"

Looks like this is a dead end. The passage carries on past the field, but I can't get through... And as I'm staring on my last torch dies. I'm lost and trapped in the dark. But it's not so bad! Un-like when I was in the crazy haunted house back on the first island, this time I've got Sira with me. With a little encouragement she lights up a glimmer spell - it's not as bright as a torch, but it's enough to make seeing-where-I'm-going not too problematic!

I turn back and explore a little through the portcullis - there's a load of red-walls and a red pressure plate. I guess if I want to go this way I'll have to open them, but there's swarms of Warniaks and Fears on the other side...

Maybe I missed something by the force field? Oh, I did. The passage actually carried on past it (I guess it forked, but one of the forks was fielded over and the other one I missed before in the dark).

I seem to be leaving a lot of places un-explored now, but to be honest I'm totally lost and cut off from the last place where I knew where I was going... I find three pick-axes in a pile of trash and some stairs up!

They lead to a room full of three flames and a locked door. Dead end? Ha! Not for me! It takes no time at all to ferry three buckets of water up here to reveal a lever that opens the door that leads to the blue pressure plate room where we fell down last time! Fantastic!

I'm back on track and ready to start properly mapping and exploring! Only... well... I know there's areas I've not seen properly yet... but there's some very tempting stairs down here... I'll just have a LITTLE peep down that way...

These stairs lead back down to the same floor I just came up from - but in a different area. An area riddled with dodge-the-fire-ball traps.

Scuttling around to dodge the flamey death I get totally lost - this place is a total maze! I'm finding areas and leaving them un-explored at a terrifying rate! I honestly no-longer have the first idea if I'm on the right path or not!

In one room that seems to be a dead end Dirr announces "The rubble in here! Tch! Makes this place look like a quarry. Like people had been quarrying in here. Like a QUARRY."

The significance of her words doesn't strike me until I spot a crumbly wall...

I found pickaxes... this place looks like a quarry... the wall looks crumbly... what can it all mean...

SECRETS! That's what it means! And nested secrets too! I smash through a wall into a room... then through another wall from in that room... then through another! Honestly, I'm drowning in ignored side-passages... Charging blindly through the chambers of this dungeon miles away from help and safety - I sort of know this is a really bad idea, that it'll only take one fight to bring me horribly un-stuck, stranded in the heart of an un-known area.

Oh well, I've been this brash, the only thing to do is keep going and to heck with whatever treasure chests I might be missing!

Pull a lever, totter through a portcullis and I'm at a T junction. To the right is an obvious trap room of red walls with monsters behind, baited with a juicy chest. There's only a green plate on the floor but the team all stop to have a conversation about how funny it should be that there's a green pressure plate but only red walls... Too spicy for me, I've left enough other avenues un-explored, this obviously bad-news area's not going to tempt me...

In the other direction there's a crazy pit chamber - LOAD of pit traps making a maze across the floor. At the far end is a passage blocked by a series of force fields.

You know... I never really tested what these force fields do if you hit them. It could've been that you could strut straight through perfectly happily. I never tried it...

So I try it now!

BZAT!

Everyone gets hurt horribly. But they survive and we've pushed through the first field.

I wonder if there's meant to be a proper way to switch these things off... Probably... but I also wonder if I could just push straight through them...

BZAT! BZAT!! BZZAT!!!!

Amazingly, by blindly barging through all the fields I survive all the way to the end of the passage. Well... Dirr survives. Somewhere along the line everyone else was shocked to death and she had to drag them along behind her...

But it was worth it! Stairs down! Down ANOTHER floor! Alone (sort of, unless you count in the company of corpses) Dirr creeps down.

It's all totally dark and quiet... quiet, that is, except for the buzzing of warniaks in the distance...

I scamper back up the stairs for a quick rest - but find the fields have all reactivated behind me! Properly trapped now! I'd better hope this was the right way!

With everyone a little recovered I advance for a SERIOUSLY tough sequence of warniak and Fear fights!

So tough that everyone levels up pretty frigging sharply! To the extent that by the end of it all Dirr can take down a level 3 warniak in one punch! And Hoff has gone up to level 11!

Level 11? What at? He never does anything except stand at the back not being able to stab warniaks who creep up on him!

Actually, I feel a little sorry for him. He's basically total dead weight at the moment. I make a mental note to kit him out and train him up next time we're in town - it can't be nice for his self-respect that all he ever does for the team is look at every magical item they come across and say "Magic!!?!? But this is so baffling! I'm baffled!"

Honestly, the fights in this room are epic! I have to take time out once or twice to rest up some more - but it's all worth it! Finally, when all the monsters are dead, I can cross the room to the door on the far side and there - back in isometric 3rd person mode - is BERO!!! QUEST COMPLEEEEEEEEETE!!!!!