May 23, 2011

Swallowed by the Mouth

Having survived the descent into the Demon's Mouth, the party set out exploring their surroundings. They were surrounded by a vast cavern, extending off an unknown distance in every direction. There was an obvious crater in the bat guano that covered the area beneath the shaft (but not inside the cavern itself), and a path through the guano indicated that whatever had fallen had been drug off. Mary followed the trail, and soon found the skeleton of a deer. Many of the bones were shattered, consistent with a 200' fall, but they also showed signs of having been gnawed on. No one could identify what kind of animal had done the gnawing.

Having ventured some way into the cavern, Mary noticed a dim greenish glow in the distance. The party decided to investigate, and soon found that the glow was coming from a dozen or so clusters of white, fan-shaped objects jutting up from small humps on the cavern floor. A few feet farther on was a rock wall, the first the party had seen of the edge of the cavern. The Professor and his team rushed forward to investigate, ignoring the party's warning of caution, and soon declared that they were some sort of fungal growth. When nothing bad immediately happened, the party joined them. They soon found that the hummocks the fungi were growing out of were decayed bodies. The bodies were humanoid, but smaller than humans and with elongated jaws filled with sharp teeth.

Before anyone had a chance to recover from the shock of this discovery, a horde of creatures burst out of crevices in the rock wall and attacked. They were vaguely humanoid, some traveling upright on two legs while others maneuvered on all fours. They were covered with short dark gray hair or fur, except for their hands, feet, and faces, which were covered with tough, scaly skin, similar to a rat’s tail. Their faces were narrow and elongated, and they had sharp fangs, as well as long sharp nails on their hands. Their high-pitched squeaking noises sounded almost like language, and they wore crude loincloths.


Phil cast a quick Prayer as the battle was joined. Everyone had at least one of the Rat-Things attacking them, and the Professor soon went down. Everyone else managed to hold their own against the creatures, and soon most of them were dead. Joe killed a couple, and suddenly found himself flying. At that point, an even larger group appeared from farther up the cavern. James had had enough of this, and his Fireball wiped out the entire group. In the silence that followed, more squeaking could be heard from the opposite direction, retreating - apparently these creatures had enough intelligence to know when they were outclassed.


Some bandaging and a Cure Light brought the Professor back to consciousness. Joe used his newfound (and unexplained) ability to fly to scoot down the cavern wall a ways until he found an opening. The cold draft they'd felt at the surface seemed to be coming from here, where a broad ramp led downwards. This passage appeared to have been excavated from the rock - its walls, floor, and ceiling were unnaturally smooth. It curved downwards, roughly paralleling the curve of the cavern wall above. It ended abruptly and opened into a broad avenue leading off to the right. Like the ramp, it's walls were completely smooth and featureless, except for two 20' wide openings directly opposite each other midway down its length.


The party elected to follow right-hand-rule, and found themselves in another vast chamber. Their lights seemed especially inadequate to illuminate its unmeasured length. While the floor of the passages they’d just traversed were unnaturally flat and smooth, the floor of this chamber was completely uneven, covered with innumerable small hummocks or piles of debris. On closer examination, these proved to be piles of desiccated human bones. There must have been thousands upon thousands of sets of remains, covering virtually every square foot of the enormous chamber. The party cannot even walk across the floor without crunching dry, brittle bones underfoot.


Doreen examined the remains, and declared that the bones bore the racial markers of American Indians, and  appeared to be many thousands of years old. Among the remains, the party found the occasional flint tool, although nothing that would resemble a weapon. Any organic material, whether cloth, leather, or wood, would have long since disintegrated. Many of the bones bore teeth marks, and the skeletons appear to have been scattered by scavenging animals. In addition, many of the skulls had odd marks encircling the entire top of the skullcap. Doreen proclaimed that marks appeared to be scars where the bone was cut and then healed together again. She says they looked very much like the skulls from cadavers of people who had undergone brain surgery that she examined at the University’s medical school.


As the party examined the inner wall of the chamber, they found a place where the stone gave way to a rectangle of copper-colored metal. Its surface was untarnished, and covered with a light layer of frost. Beside the metal panel was a square engraved into the stone, with a a strange rune or symbol etched into it. Just the appearance of the symbol was disturbing - there was an indescribable feeling of wrongness about it. Just the sight of it was enough to send Brett past his breaking point - one look, and he ran screaming from the chamber. Red went after him, and when he brought him back, Brett's mind had clearly snapped. "Oh, look at all the pretty flowers," he said, pointing to the piles of dead bodies.


Assigning Red to keep Brett under control, the group continued their explorations. On the wall opposite the metal panel, they found an area of the wall that was covered with paintings. Some were outlines of human hands or stylized pictures of deer and buffalo, such as the party had seen photos of from Cro-Magnon cave paintings in France. However, most were very strange. They showed human-like figures that appeared to be running from or bowing before strange, winged beings with no arms or legs. They almost appeared to be insect-like creatures, like butterflies or dragonflies, except they have no legs and strangely misshapen heads. Other humanoid creatures with similarly misshapen heads appeared to accompany the winged beings. The colors of the paintings are drab – mainly deep purples and off-whites – but they are still very clear, and in fact glisten as though the pigments are still wet. Doreen speculated that the winged creatures may have been a depiction of the primitive tribe’s gods, because the human figures clearly seem subservient to them.


Fascinated by the apparently wet pigments of the paintings, James reached out to touch one. He was immediately seized by a convulsion. When he regained consciousness he described a vision he'd had. This cavern had been full of living people, and he'd been one of them. He had furtively dug a hole in the wall and buried a small metal sphere, quickly covered it, and began painting over the spot. Just then, a section of the opposite wall slid open, and blinding light spilled out, silhouetting a figure too horrible to remember.


Deciding not to disturb the paintings for now, the party continued their exploration, eventually moving to the room on the opposite side of the hallway. At first glance, it appeared similar to the first room:  innumerable hummocks cover the floor. Upon examination however, these prove to be piles of rock and rubble, surrounding countless perfectly circular pits in the floor. The pits descend for an unknown depth, and many have passage dug into one wall. Likewise, the outer wall of the chamber is riddled with crude tunnels, some still showing the signs of supporting timbers, but most long since caved in. 


Many of the rocks are encrusted with red crystals that seem to fluoresce under the party's lights. They also sport clusters of fungi growing from them, different from those found upstairs.  The professor was very excited by this find, and although the party kept trying to stop him, he insisted on digging through the piles of rubble, examining the crystals under a magnifying glass and putting samples into his backpack. He said they looked like a type of uranium crystal, but the color was all wrong. Leaving him to his work, the party kept exploring. They found another copper-colored section of wall, seemingly identical to the one in the other chamber, but nothing else of interest. They decided to go back and look behind the painting in the first room. However when they went to leave, they found the Professor sitting lethargically among his crystals. He responded to their questions, and obediently followed when they told him to leave. Worrying about what might have caused his change in behavior, the party dumped all his crystals on the floor. He didn't protest, a sure sign that something wasn't right.


Back in the first chamber, Jerry went to the place where James had experienced his vision, and used a camp shovel to dig behind the painting (much to Doreen's horror). A few inches in, he found a dull metal sphere, miraculously still attached to a supple leather thong. It looked like the Spirit Stones that Ulysses had worn. Jerry tied it around his neck. 


Deciding that it was time to try the metal panel, the party arrayed themselves around it. Presuming that Jerry was now "protected", they let him press the strange rune. The panel slid aside with a his, and a blast of cold air flowed out. Inside was a large, circular chamber. The air was icy cold, and the party found themselves shivering in their summer clothes. In the center of the chamber was a large, circular sheet of ice; the party decided to give it wide berth. The Gatestone pointed to a featureless section of wall. On the opposite side, the party found a section where the smooth surface of the wall was interrupted by absolutely straight precise grooves forming a 5x10 grid. Each square contained one of the disturbing, abstract glyphs. Once again, the party decided to err on the side of caution and leave it untouched.


Examining the wall indicated by the Gatestone more closely, Jerry noticed a hairline break in the wall's surface, outlining a large rectagular area. However, no amount of experimentation (without touching the panel on the far side) could cause it to open. However, as they stood staring at the wall, wondering how to get past it, it suddenly flew open and a blinding light spilled out, silhouetting figures too horrible to remember...

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