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3/13 - Sir Otto having completed his vigil at last, and Alfredus having been given a clean bill of health, we at last set out this morning for the buried villa. I hesitate to claim that I have had a vision; nevertheless, in the course of my prayers this morning, I had the overwhelming sensation that I was being advised that we would need enchanted weapons; therefore, I took care to beseech Orus to grant me this ability, and urged Decimus to have this spell in his arsenal. We rode out, taking along a sturdy slave to carry the hooded lantern, the picnic, and the miscellaneous equipment which might be necessary. The entrance has been cleared to a comfortable depth. Though buried, the ruins seem sound enough, with plenty of sturdy columns and walls decorated with sad and absurd depictions of heathen mythology. Sir Otto expressed his disgust at this artwork, but some of it was well enough executed, and one can hardly blame the artists, who for the most part were deliberately excluded from the light of Orus by the vile machinations of their false gods, and who had to do the best they could with the opportunities granted them. The guards had warned us that they had seen animated skeletons, and worse, roaming the darkness; and sure enough we had scarcely entered before we were accosted by a dozen of them, coming at us from two directions. I fear the unsuitability of convent training for this life has manifested again - only after trying vainly to hit one a few times, did it occur to me that I have a much more powerful weapon against the undead than my quarterstaff would be, even had I managed to strike one, which I did not. When I at last deployed the might of Orus against those facing Alfredus, Tamara, and I, they exploded into dust, leaving only their rusty weapons behind. By this time, Sir Otto, Robyn, and Decimus had almost finishing dispatching those they faced, but not without sustaining injury. We searched, unhindered, for a time, discovering the study and bedroom of a wizard who, when the doom came upon this place, had inadequate time to pack. He had left nothing of obvious value behind, though there may be some unexpected gems among the works of theoretical magic upon his shelves, which were all in the tongue of the Leagues. The architecture giving us no indication of where the important rooms were, we were in the process of determining, semi-randomly, where to explore when Primus, playing behind a faded tapestry, discovered a set of carved double doors. This gained us entrance to a large trapezoidal conference room, at whose tables were seated enrobed and desiccated corpses. Sir Otto detecting no evil, we entered, and were assaulted by these corpses. My ability to channel the divine power being too limited, as yet, to do more than make a handful of these zombies attempt to flee, we had a long, hard combat ahead of us. Fortunately, they were hemmed between the table and the wall and were unable to come at us more than two at a time. Tamara climbed upon the table to strike at them from the side; Sir Otto, Robyn, and Alfredus blocked their way into the open area where they could have used their numbers against us; and Decimus stood in the entrance shooting them with his crossbow. Possibly I should have blessed us, but I was acutely aware of how few spells I am empowered to cast; instead, I cast the deathwatch spell, which had proved its potential in the alley in Brigantium, and attempted, like Decimus, to strike them down with my javelins and crossbow. Sir Otto was grievously wounded once, and Tamara twice, with just time for me to heal her between times, yet she would not heed my advice and leap down from the table, which would have given her some protection. When at last the abominations were vanquished, Decimus and I set about retrieving our bolts and javelins - there is some indication that I may have actually hit a few of them, something I had been in grave doubt of - while the others examined the room. The zombies wore robes, too old and dirty to display any distinctive features. I fear they must have been deluded servants of the false gods, pressed into this foul service even after their deaths. It seems dreadful to leave them where they lie, yet how can one carry out proper services for the dead in these circumstances? I was interrupted in my contemplation of these hard questions by the disappearance of half my companions! The center of the room is decorated by a mosaic of a gigantic compass rose, and the back wall - the long parallel side of the trapezoid - is one large mirror. Robyn and Sir Otto were examining this mirror when they suddenly disappeared. The effect was not at all what I had been led to expect of a mirror of life trapping, resembling teleport instead. Tamara and Decimus both attempted to divine how the effect had been achieved without triggering it themselves, using implements; and both vanished as soon as their implements (Decimus's staff, and Tamara's zombie) touched the surface. Primus quickly leaped after Decimus. This left Alfredus and I with something of a quandary. On the one hand, if our companions could not find the means to return themselves, their only hope was that Uncle could scry them and bring them back. To this end, the sooner he knew they were missing, the better. On the other hand, if they encountered traps or hostile forces on the other side, they might well need us at once. I thought that we should entrust the lantern bearer with a message and go into the mirror ourselves; certainly, it seemed my clear duty to follow them, since if they were hurt on the other side, they would need me to heal them. Alfredus did not see it in this light at all, and threatened to prevent my doing so by force. I trust that it was only a threat; at any rate, I did not test his resolve in this matter, but divested the lantern bearer of such equipment as it seemed reasonable that I could carry - rope, the food, a spade, and the lantern - and ended the argument by stepping through the mirror. On the other side I found a dense forest, which Tamara informs me is called "jungle," full of the cries of unseen parrots and, belike, more exotic creatures, of which we never got a glimpse. Seeing that no new danger had arisen, but unable to guess what might be along at any moment, I used up the rest of my dispensation for the day in order to heal everyone to the extent that I could. The healing potion and scrolls are now all gone. Decimus amused himself taking samples of flora, hoping to identify edible or medicinal plants. Seeing that Alfredus or the lantern bearer would inform Uncle as soon as possible, and that we could expect rescue in the near future, but mindful that there might be unforeseen difficulties, we set about making the best camp we could, preparatory to exploring our new world for food or for the return mechanism. Unless this was a place of exile, there must have been a way to return; but Uncle and Alfredus came for us before we discovered it. At some future date we will have to come back and learn more, when we can be properly equipped. Uncle used "teleportation circle" to return us to the vicinity of the villa, and left us to guard it and see that nothing wandered through the devastate the countryside. He has not specifically berated us at idiots; but I am no less deeply embarrassed for all that. I cannot help feeling that there was some better solution, either in the jungle or the room, that was staring me in the face, and that a more competent servant would have seen it, and not needed to disturb him. I also have the sense that we took a wrong turn somewhere, since both the skeletons and the zombies fell to normal weapons. There is something much worse lurking in that darkness, and I am sure Orus means us to be fresh when we meet it. I must do better tomorrow. Meanwhile, I have had time to complete a new scroll, and I am determined to be more efficient tomorrow, and not allow so many of my friends to suffer injury. I was too conservative with my turning of undead yesterday. There is no point in saving an ability of that nature - Orus gave it to me to be used. 3/14 - Another day, another duty. We set out again for the villa, and proceeded more rapidly to begin with, having apparently cleared the place of skeletons and zombies. We explored outward from the conference room - which I think should be cleared, and the zombies cremated. NB: speak to the supervisor of the guards at the site on assigning a work detail. The compass rose is clearly an important symbol, as we found it in another room. We also found more mirrors, and three strange monsters. The first, a large bipedal lizardlike monster, burst out of a green crystal ball when Tamara attempted to open a verdigrised copper chest in the same room with it. Fortunately, Decimus was ready for it, and cast it into magical sleep. We debated binding it and carrying it back for Uncle to donate to the arena, but Decimus's spell would not last long on a creature this size - as big as a man - and its jaws and teeth were sufficiently fearsome that I judged we should not take the risk, and instructed Robyn to kill it. I admit, this was in accord with my inclination - the Games appeal to the lowest and vilest tastes of humankind, and I would prefer not to encourage them - but I tried not to let that influence me. It is hard to believe that a single creature, however exotic, could have bought enough political goodwill to be worth, say, Tamara's or Decimus's life; or even a significant delay of the primary goal of mapping and cataloging the contents of the ruins. The second creature we found was a strange and oddly beautiful catlike woman, adrift in a large bubble of force; the third was a snakelike woman, similar to the fabled medusa, also in a bubble of force. I suspect that this bubble may be related to the scroll Tamara retrieved from the chest, Fizzult's Sleep of the Ages, but Uncle will have to study that matter - it is much too complex for Decimus to grasp. While traipsing back and forth through the trapezoidal room, Robyn stepped on a switch which began lowering the compass rose in the middle of the floor. Fortunately, no one was standing on it at the time. We confirmed that we could raise and lower the pattern at will by use of the switch, marked the switch clearly in ink to prevent accidents, and proceeded onward, intending to investigate further when we had more leisure, when the survey is complete and we are no longer waiting for the menace resistant to normal weapons to leap upon us from the dark. A large room containing a large but shallow pool and another, smaller mirror contained a secret door leading to a storeroom. We searched this room systematically, but uncovered only common items in a state of decay - rope, large blocks of wax, etc. Another secret room, however, yielded a highly interesting mosaic map, with notes brushed on in ink. Essentially, this map displays the known world of a few hundred years ago; but it also shows the interior of the southern continent, well to the south, and indicates routes to other, more distant lands to the east and west. I considered that the area marked "subjects" in the interior could be the area to which the mirror sent us yesterday, since Scipio came from the interior, and I am sure I heard parrots. Other notations, concerning "enemies" and "allies," might also mark logical destinations for the teleportation mirrors. Intriguingly, several islands were shown to the west, which do not appear on modern maps, and an entire civilization was shown to the east. Mapmakers being what they are, these may be fabrications; and history being what it is, the political boundaries marked on the maps are almost certainly no longer relevant. But - if the magi who lived here had contacts in the unknown east and west, could there not be a connection with our black-clad intruders of the other night, with their peculiar language, weapons, and grain, unlike anything in the Empire? Some of the markings also seemed to be in code, and the rest were all in the tongue of the Gilded League. I copied down what I could, and Robyn has volunteered to make a full copy later. I think it can be carefully removed and taken out; but an extra copy does no harm. A single careless workman could destroy in a moment what has waited centuries in the dark for us to find. Nothing of special interest was found in the desk, save the key to a chest Tamara had already opened with her locksmithing tools. There she found a scroll of "teleport without error" as well as two flasks, one with a red and one with a white seal. Decimus has taken charge of these, and we can have the slaves carry the 12 sacks of gold out at the same time. Robyn found yet another secret door, which appeared to conceal someone's emergency escape stash - one he was unable to use, for his robe and dagger and money sacks were all intact and waiting for him, quietly decaying... (At this point Sofia reached the end of the scroll, but not of her diary entry. To be continued.)
Last Updated:
Saturday, 26-Apr-2003 21:26:09 CDT
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