Session 1/27/08

                Date unknown (rested in Chaal-Nathra twice):  Upon awakening from their rest, the five companions notice the area inhabited by the gnome spirits has grown somewhat less corrupt, as though the presence of the spirits was somehow purifying it.  Those gnomes not watching over the party are engaged in games, debates, sleep and snuggling with loved ones, and are still quite hopeful for the group’s success in finding a way out of these twisting passages.

                The first task at hand, it is decided, is to free the many gnome spirits that were found on the back sides of the jagged black spires in the lung-like chamber.  Together, the five set out and are soon back in the windy room, whereupon Telenvor volunteers to climb the rightmost spire.  “I fell from a tall tree back when I was three or four years old,” he shrugs.  “Broke an arm and a leg that day, but it also broke my fear of heights and falling.  This ought to be fun.”  He readies his climber’s kit and begins the ascent.  At first, he is easily able to control himself despite the high winds, and he moves up the spire with grace and confidence, smashing open dozens of glowing gem-cysts and releasing dozens more grateful gnomish spirits, who leave to join their freed compatriots near the party’s makeshift camp. 

                Soon, Tel has climbed too high (over 150’, more than halfway up the 250’ tall spire) to rely on his training alone.  In order to climb higher, he must start taking risks.  Grinning, he leaps up to a new handhold and smashes another pair of cysts open after securing his footing.  His next step is a bad one, though, and he tumbles backwards, cutting his hand on the jagged black stone as he tries to right himself.  Tel desperately pulls out his grappling hook and rope and makes an uncannily accurate midair throw, barely managing to snag an outcropping and catch himself.  He slams hard against the spire as the rope breaks his fall, grunting in pain and testing his jaw for broken teeth.  “Not a problem,” he winces, climbing down to report to Essedar, who gently tends to his wounds with prayers and offered tokes.  As his wounds close and energy surges into him, Tel looks at the rest and says, “I’m still for it.” 

He begins his ascent again, but just a few feet above his previous bad step, he trusts a bad handhold, which gives way.  Lacerated by the jagged pillar again as he tries to right himself, Tel falls over 180 feet to the bottom of the chamber, tumbling out of control against the spire as he plummets.  Slamming down with a terrible bone-crunching noise, he lies still and broken.  After a few seconds of stunned silence, he grunts and opens his right eye to peer at Nathaniel, Essedar and Zara.  “Ess, you have any more of that stuff?”  he moans quietly, cracking a small smile.  Essedar spends several long moments channeling his strongest curative magics, and though the effort drains him, Tel is soon back on his feat and stretching his muscles for a third attempt.

Londario has looked on with puzzlement as the healing prayers, but now he speaks.  “Friends, could we not enlist the gnomes for help here?  They seem to have a good effect on the areas they inhabit, though I’ll grant such things are relative in this horrid place.  Nonetheless, it is as the Walker would wish it: cooperation towards a greater good.”  Nathaniel claps him on the back and Zara hugs the startled fighter, while Essedar coolly smiles and nods in his direction.  Tel shrugs and agrees.  “I can use all the help I can get up there… the winds are really swirling.”

The gnomes are happy to help, even though they are at first confused by what the party asks of them.  “You mean you wish for us to merely come and observe your goings-on?  Very well… and they called us eccentric!”  More than sixty gnomes follow the companions back to the lung chamber and begin flitting about the room, letting the sucking currents pull and push their incorporeal forms playfully.  They cheer Telenvor on as the rogue begins his climb yet again, and his efforts and spirits do indeed seem bolstered by the gnomes’ presence.  Several times he almost slips, but somehow the gnomes seem able to direct him towards the safest holds as well as calm the currents.

With a tremendous final effort, Telenvor reaches the top of the right spire, upwards of 250 feet in the air.  Gripping the jagged rock with his knees and thighs, he slams Zara’s mithral hammer down on a massive red gem-cyst atop the tip of the spire, releasing a flood of gnome spirits.  The great black pillar rumbles, cracks and then splits in twain from the top down, rapidly collapsing and falling away into the floor, leaving a gaping 10’ x 10’ hole in the floor.  Tel can do naught but freefall given the circumstances, but the gnomes work their magic again, buffering his fall and making him seem as light as a feather.  Whooping and cavorting in midair with tumbling glee, Tel returns gently to the bottom of the chamber, his wide flashing smile visible from far above.

Nathaniel chances a glance into the freshly-made hole in the bottom of the fleshy chamber where it was previously impaled by the broken spire.  Below he seems nothing but wheeling patterns of stars into infinity.  For a moment, the young wizard is tempted to leap into the hole, but his willpower and survival instincts take hold and he resists the pull.  His long glance does reveal, through Nathaniel’s knowledge of the arcane and astronomy, that the stars are wrong; his view was not from the perspective of Gaia, but from some distant point in another galaxy.

As Nathaniel ponders this development, Tel climbs the left spire and repeats his brave work, systematically climbing and smashing the many cysts on the spire’s back side.  He finds another huge cyst atop the second spire, and repeats his joyful, slow freefall descent as he cracks it open with the mithral hammer.  The two holes in the floor close up within a minute after the pillars’ destruction, and the party judges the room as free of contamination as they can make it.  Two chambers that the party has marked yet remain to be explored: an unknown area across from the lung room, and the shadowy, webbed area with the strange horned idol.

                As they reach the new and unknown chamber, each hears a rhythmic beating from within, but at a strange and unsettling pace.  The room has four smaller inner chambers and it ripples with bloody, pulsing muscle and large bloody veins.  Zara’s spear provides a shadowy glimpse of hundreds of large, bloated black leeches attached to the walls of the heart-like structure.  When the adventurers move ahead, the leeches squeal in an horrible chorus as they squirm and coalesce into two large, hulking amalgamated monstrosities: leechwalkers!  One of the vermin-oids catches Londario with a tentacle and dozens of leeches slide beneath his helmet and armor, draining his blood and leaving him pale.  The leechwalker maintains its grapple on the valiant Protector, sucking more and more of his life away as the battle continues.

                Zara leaps into action with her spear, whirling, stabbing and short-hafting as she engages the second leechwalker.  Nathaniel and Essedar target the first one with bolts of holy fire and volleys of arrows, but it won’t die or relinquish its hold on Londario.  Tel moves in to stab it, and their combined attacks finally wear down the squealing creature, allowing Nathaniel to dissipate it with a final blast of holy fire from his staff.  Zara pierces the dark, bloody core of the other leechwalker yet again, and this time her strength overcomes the monster, leaving the party alone in the room.  The walls of the four chambers, once bloody and sore with leech-wounds, immediately begin to heal up and stop oozing, and the pervasive heartbeat grows louder and more regular, losing its unnerving quality.

                After searching the four chambers (which are empty of any other creatures), they make their way out of what they have deemed “the heart” to rest and recuperate.  Unsure of what lies ahead, the five wayfarers sleep once again under gnomish watch in Nathaniel’s secure shelter, determined to head next towards the shadowy, web-filled chamber down the main corridor.  Essedar, Nathaniel and Zara each believe they are exploring the corrupted insides of some larger creature, and that the room beyond – the last unexplored room that they have marked – must be the “brain.”  The strange appearance of the horned idol there presents even more questions, but those will have to wait a few more heartbeats to be answered, as the brave friends have not yet stepped fully into that darkness.

Falling Stars, Rising Hope