Last time…
The adventurer caroused about a town for a couple of days gathering
information and supplies before leaving for Firetop Mountain.
Once inside I snuck past a guard, killed an
orc chieftain and his servant finding a black glove.
This caused me to wonder if perhaps the
Warlock isn’t already dead.
I ventured
further exploring more of the dungeon.
I
saved a prisoner who gave me not only advice but important information on how
to proceed.
I then found a couple of
goblins torturing a dwarf who sadly died before I could do more than kill his
captors.
I then came upon a portcullis
separating this area of the dungeon with further exploration, thanks to the
prisoner I saved I knew the way past.
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Now we continue…
A little meta before we get to the story.
After debating on going backwards in the dungeon to finish exploring the
areas and doorways that I did not on my way through I decide against it.
Honestly, I’m not 100% certain I’m intended
to.
I think you are only supposed to
choose one of the options given to you in each paragraph, so I decided that
doing this might be against the rules and ruin the story, so I decided to move
on.
I use the lever on the right to lift the portcullis and continue my
explorations.
I followed many T-intersections
always trying to move north and west.
In
one of these tunnels the path continued to get smaller until I was hunched,
then stooping and finally crawling on my hands and knees until finally I could
go no further as I was too large to fit.
I backed out of the tunnel to the sounds of echoing and ominous
laughter.
Perhaps the warlock is indeed
still alive and whether this shrinking tunnel was magic or natural I’ll never
know.
Hopefully this doesn’t become a
frequent occurrence.
Now I’m moving consistently north and west at every opportunity because
north and west worked for me earlier.
I
think perhaps this was planned in the dungeons construction for at one point
the floor gave way to a large pit.
My
luck held though, and I managed to avoid taking the tumble.
Perhaps they felt convincing intruders to
head north and west would inevitably bring them to their death here in a
pit.
Backtracking I found a black wooden
door with silver trim covered in strange runes and lettering in language that I
cannot read.
Feeling like this is almost
certainly a trap I pass on.
Not far beyond this room I find another plain door which I enter.
The floor is covered in tiles patterned in
alternating layout.
The pattern is that
of an open hand and stars.
I assume this
is a puzzle of some kind and that a wrong step will kill me.
I choose to stand on the open palm assuming
you can touch that space because it is a hand whereas if you touch a star
perhaps that represents falling into space.
I am wrong.
As soon as I step
onto the first tile a ghostly hand reaches up from the floor grasping my ankle
in a vicelike grip.
At the same time,
other hands reach up from all of the other hand tiles grasping for anything
nearby.
I hack the hand apart to free
myself and the others disappear with it as though they were never there at all.
Wonderful.
I cross using the stars and make my way through to the door on the other
side of the room and exit northwards.
Feeling somewhat luckier after that encounter I press on.
My wanderings eventually take me to another
T-Junction.
There is an arrow carved
into the rock and I end up going that direction (which to me is a poor choice
because it didn’t say what direction it pointed!).
After following that hall for a bit though, I
figure it out and adjust my map accordingly.
As I continue to follow passageways north the air becomes cool and I can
hear water as I enter a spacious cavern with a river flowing from the
west.
It looks strong and is quite wide.
Faced with the choice of resting or swimming
I decide to take a respite hoping perhaps an answer will appear, like maybe a
ghostly ferryman.
No answer comes to me, however a large sandworm does.
I feel the ground tremble before it bursts
from the rocky soil with its mouth agape attempting to bite me with its sharp
needle like teeth.
I fight the worm
valiantly and slay it.
Exhausted form
the tussle I finish my meal and decide that swimming is the only option.
I wade into the river but don’t make it very
far across before the current drags me down river to the east through a hole in
the wall.
After an uncertain distance I
manage to drag myself back up onto a piece of shoreline on the south side of
the river which is sadly the same side I started on, though the cavern I am now
in is new to me.
Taking stock of my
surroundings, I decide that this is apparently where I want to be as I’m
presented with a number of new things in my surroundings.
There is a sign post with a rusty bell on it
that says I should ring for the ferry and it will cost two gold.
There is an old raft with a long stick I
could use to punt myself across the river and there is an even older looking
bridge that crosses the river.
The ferryman?
I guess I might have
misunderstood the preamble of the story and didn’t cross the river before
making it to the cave, perhaps this is the river I should cross.
Remembering the story from town about the ferryman
but unwilling to try the two even less safe looking options I ring the
bell.
An old bent man comes out from a
wooden door in the rock on the north side of the river.
He un-moors a small boat and rows over to
me.
He states that he will row me across
at the cost of three gold.
I point out
that the sign says two and he mumbles something about inflation.
The villagers said he liked to haggle but I
really just don’t have it in my right now.
I’ve got money and it wasn’t mine to start with so I pay the fee.
He rows me back to his side of the river and
after tying off the boat wanders back from whence he came.
I am faced with three choices.
I can follow him into the tunnel he went to
(I assume his home) northwest.
I can go
through a door in the rock wall to the north or I can follow the riverbank
east.
This seems like an excellent point to take a short break.
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