RECAP: Abomination Vaults, 11-1-26

“We thought it was just an old tower—a crumbling stack of stones that time and the swamps had forgotten. We were fools. The surface ruins are merely the top of an anthill. Once you crawl into the tunnels below the swamp, the dark doesn’t just surround you; it watches you. It waits for you. It whispers to you. My friends… my brave, beautiful friends… they are still down there, their screams echoing in dark rooms that smell of dust and spiders. I left my sword, my honor, and my mind in those depths. If you see the blue light dance upon the fog, do not draw your blade. Do not seek the vault. Just run.”

— Garrick Vance, sole survivor of the Vanguard Company,
told to a scribe in the archives of Absalom, three weeks before his disappearance (4612 AR) 

The air of the torture chamber carried the tang of iron and old blood. Surrounded by dangling, barbed chains and empty, spiked iron cages that swung softly, letting out groans of old despair, the companions took a momentary breath. But they knew any glimpse of respite was false hope at best. To the east, a short, crumbling hallway choked with centuries of dust opened into a massive, shadow-filled shrine. An unnatural, freezing weight oozed over the threshold, an almost palpable miasma of wrongness. 

“So that’s the spooky room you lot go on about,” Cabo grunted, the massive orc’s voice echoing like a tavern bouncer as he flexed his massive, bare arms and marched forward. “I ain’t scared of no place of whores.”

“Horrors,” Aerys said slowly and carefully.  “We said it’s a place of HORRORS.”

Cabo stepped back.  “Well, that’s terrifying then.”

Aerys saw something skitter in the shadows beyond the door.  “Look out!  It’s a spider – the size of a fist!”

Sir Kezric raised his shield, his posture refuting the suffocating terror of the room. “No – it’s a hand, crawling of its own accord.”

This bothered Aerys even more. “Gah!  It’s a hand – the size of a fist!”

As they crossed into the shrine, the shadows came alive. From the shadowed corners and down the carvings on the walls came a swarm of rotting, severed hands, skittering across the floor like pale, bloated insects. Drifting lazily above them were  strange fibrous aberrations looking to be pale scalps dangling long strands of corpse-hair, floating through the damp air like foul, malicious jellyfish.

Sir Kezric strode in the lead.  He held his sword aloft and shouted his challenge.  “You are an offence in the eyes of my lady, Iomadae.  With her blessing I shall smite thee, in her great mercy!”

Cabo stepped up alongside him, holding up his own crude wooden club defiantly. “What he said!  Only in smaller words that I fully understand!  And inserting the name of my god where appropriate!!!”

Aerys was the first to react. A bluish-white glow filled his eyes, and spilled from his mouth. From his outstretched hand shot a dazzling arc of flame and heat, briefly throwing the dark chapel into brilliant illumination. One of the floating abominations burst into flame, writhing and dancing as it let out a high-pitched keening.  A smell of burning hair mingled with the cloy of rot. Nyx, his ferret, danced about on his shoulders fiercely chittering his disapproval of all things hand and hairlike.

The shadows of the chamber were no more silent than Tarlyn himself. With practiced, street-honed grace, the rogue kicked off the wall to tumble over a cluster of crawling hands, landing with little more than a faint scuffle of leather on stone to run his rapier cleanly through their rotting flesh. 

Nearby, Carmon swung his longsword in an arc that was as brutally effective as it was inartful. “If only those losers back in Otari could see this!  Somebody make a quick woodcarving!” He pulled his blacksmith’s hammer from his belt with his free hand to pulp another hand crawling across the wall.  It stuck there, fingers still wriggling feebly.

Vigla walked past the carnage, fascinated by the crude stone altar in the center of the shrine.  She ran her hand across the runes etched into its side, as if she could release the knowledge locked within the stone by touch alone.  Suddenly a cluster of hands dropped down from the vaulted ceiling onto her back and shoulders, the smell of rot and decay filling her senses. “Unhand me!” She shrieked.  “While that works very well as a pun, I also mean it literally!”  She desperately sought to remain calm and find the most effective way to escape, but the reek of dead flesh and the scratching of ragged nails pushed rational thought from her head.  She dropped her shortbow and pulled out her warhammer, flinging corpse hands in all directions.  “The hell with math!  I’m just smashing things!!!”

Tourmaline looked over the undead abominations with a look of disdain. “Pharasma judges all who cheat the grave,” she murmured, her dark, flowing robes swirling as she raised her hands. “Even random body parts.  And opossums, that feign death and make a mockery of it!”  She calmed herself, and looked for her god’s presence within her.  Glowing wisps began to flow from her, forming into the shape of a dagger before her chest.  Its blade angled upward, and it shot towards the ceiling to pierce the remaining fibrous creature as it drifted towards her.

As the last of the creatures fell, the party turned slowly at the hammering noise behind them.  Vigla stood on the shattered remains of the blood-encrusted altar, still screaming in rage as she continued to hammer the long-pulped form of a crawling hand.  She slowly ceased her destruction as she realized the group was silently staring at her. She blew a lock of red hair from her face, her last swing little more than a tap.  

“I find guided meditation helpful,” Cabo offered quietly.

“I totally agree with her,” Carmon grunted, using his foot to kick skewered hands off his blade.  “This was beyond disgusting.  When I’m mayor of Otari I’m immediately issuing an executive order outlawing all things hand related.  Handbags, hand wipes, handj…  Well, let’s not get crazy with it.

The party spent a few minutes treating their wounds.  Aerys picked up the flickerwisp that had been skewered by Tourmaline’s spell.  Catching her eye, he held the hairlike creature up to the back of his neck, letting the rest of its hairlike body drape over his shoulder.  He raised his eyebrows inquisitively.

Tourmaline shook her head.  “No.  Definitely not.  Never do a ponytail.”

Aerys wadded the creature into a bunch and held it to the top of his head.  “Manbun?”

“Stronger no.  More never.”

The party advanced south down a long, wide hall lined with heavy stone sarcophagi that silently watched them from beneath their ancient shrouds of webs. The glow from Aerys’ light spell made their shadows twitch and dance. At the end of the corridor, a swirling, glowing wall of sickly green energy barred their path, filled with the silently screaming visages of tortured faces. 

Tourmaline looked at this with revulsion.  “Belcora’s servants were forced to serve her even beyond death.  Even her own death.”

Aerys looked at the barrier thoughtfully.  “Although, most evil overlords offer nothing towards retirement.”

Vigla nodded.  “And if the scrolls we found are accurate, she also offered dental.  Another rarity.”

With the destruction of the shrine’s altar, the spectral energy slowly faded into nothingness, revealing a wide, descending stone staircase.

They stepped down into the dark.  The light from Aerys’ spell was a small bubble of warmth and comfort, immediately swallowed by shadow a short distance ahead and behind.  The crumbling walls, stained from centuries of dripping moisture, crawled by.

After several minutes of silent descent, their path opened into a breathtakingly massive circular chamber, their faint footsteps echoing back as they reflected off far, unseen walls. It was too vast for the sorcerer’s light to fully penetrate, leaving everything beyond an arc of bluish-white draped in absolute, silent blackness. But the light was sufficient to reveal what lay before them: a colossal, gaping pit that plunged straight down into the bowels of the earth, a stone staircase spiraling down its dark perimeter.

Suddenly, a wet, maddening cacophony tore through the silence. From the shadows to the southeast, a nightmare of pallid flesh slid into the light. A dozen different voices spouted nonsense words, or laughed and sobbed in a deafening lunatic choir. The formless, quivering mass of eyes, weeping sores, and dozens of gnashing human mouths writhed and flowed towards the party, leaving a vile, glistening trail stretching back into the darkness.

“Dis place is fulla whores!” Cabo spat.

“Horrors!” Everyone shouted.

“Tomato, tomahto, dey all smash,” Cabo shot back, stepping in front of Tarlyn. He swung his metal-capped wooden club, shattering a dozen of the creature’s teeth, blocking the creature’s surge. Sir Kezric was right beside him, his longsword flashing in the blue light, deflecting a lashing pseudopod with a resounding clang of his shield.  Blood flowed down its quivering sides, only to be lapped up its own mouths.

Before the party could surround it, a rasping sound like leather dragged over stone echoed from the southwest. Two more things of nightmare slid from the shadows. Lumbering, flesh-warped bags of stitched skin and exposed organs, they groaned in the agony of their very existence, their misshapen arms reaching out blindly.

The first creature, which Vigla announced was a Gibbering Mouther, suddenly convulsed. With a horrific, wet retch, it unleashed a violent projectile stream of acidic vomit arcing over it’s attackers, spattering on those still near the entrance.

The foul stench and burning slime hit Vigla and Tourmaline squarely. Vigla immediately doubled over, hands on her knees as she violently retched and vomited onto the stone floor. Seeing this, Tourmaline followed an instant later.  “The Lady of Graves demands a strong sympathetic gag reflex from all of her followers,” she managed to gasp in between heaves.

Aerys dodged around the collective pools of vomit, to pull back Vigla’s bright red hair and Tourmaline’s long black locks with either hand. “Purge the demons, ladies! Let it out!”  He then glanced suspiciously at Tourmaline.  “Well, I guess the mystery of where all the bacon disappeared to this morning has been solved!”

Recovering her composure, Tourmaline wiped her mouth with a grim scowl. “My thanks, friend Aerys,” she muttered. “And I gave everyone plenty of time to grab more bacon.” Again the sacred dagger of her goddess manifested before her, launching at the two distorted shapes that had just appeared. 

Vigla recovered enough to knock arrow to bow, her mind racing with angles and vectors, velocity and force.  Her fingers released, sending the arrow shaft sinking up to its fletching in one of the eyes of the gibbering mouther, causing it to shriek more nonsense.  A smell of ozone filled the air as Aerys clapped both gloved hands above him, bringing them out to either side in a dramatic arc. A ball of crackling electricity shot towards the fleshwarp that Tourmaline had just hit, jumping over to the other in a blinding arc. They danced and twitched in horrid, jerking flails, screeching their pain and hate.

Tarlyn seized the distraction, running towards them both and sliding on his knees between their flailing limbs, his rapier cutting gashes as he slid by. Carmen charged forward swinging his heavy blacksmith’s hammer into the side of the rightmost one. Judging by the splintering crack, despite the thing’s distorted appearance its ribcage was right where he expected it to be.  “Is anyone getting a woodcarving of any of this????”

With Cabo and Sir Kezric holding the line like an unbreakable wall of steel and muscle, the tide turned. The magical dagger of Pharasma sliced the last Grothlut apart, and with one final, earth-shaking swing of Cabo’s massive club, the Gibbering Mouther was reduced to a quiet, unmoving puddle of pinkish sludge, dotted with eyeballs and surprisingly human teeth.

Silence returned to the massive chamber, broken only by the heavy breathing of the party and the soft chittering of Nyx, whose list of things to disapprove of had greatly increased. Ahead of them, the great shaft with its spiraling stairs brooded, leading even deeper into Belcorra’s ancient domain.

Silently, Aerys, Cabo and Sir Kezric approached the edge of the pit.  Aerys stared down into the blackness for several long seconds.  “What’s this hole we’ve found, leadin’ us underground?” he mused.

Sir Kerzric looked grimly into the shadows. “Shaft.”

“I can dig it,” Cabo nodded. 

Tourmaline walked forward to enter the discussion. “Shut your mouth!”

Aerys glanced over his shoulder at her, shrugging. “Just talkin’ ‘bout shaft!”