Glenn dawdles by the portal, hoping someone else will take the plunge. Meanwhile, Cal stealthily steals the rope from his Glenn's pack ('borrowing' from someone without their permission is theft) and interrogated Gary about his discoveries. Gary's in no mood to dish (he looks like he's barely keeping down his gorge), but the conversation comes to an abrupt end when the half-orc starts waving his fists around in Cal's general vicinity. Perhaps it was best he got on with his plan and gave the others some space.

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The pacing knight on the other end of the portal doesn't seem too intimidating, so Garrmondo strides back through and draws attention to himself. There's a faint click just behind him, and Garrmondo glances over his shoulder — the portal's gone.

The knight in the purple cloak whirls on Garrmondo, reaching for his sword until he beholds an armored figure even more intimidating than himself.

"Your plan sounds solid, but I've tried knocking them down before. They get knocked down, but they just get back up again. I'm never going to keep them down.

Goddamn pesky halflings."

Neither the knight nor the girl seem at all perturbed by Garrmondo's sudden entrance. The girl issues an ostentatiously loud yawn, and resumes the game of tic-tac-toe she's scratched into the dust on the floor.

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Back in the museum chamber, the drizzle from overhead peters out. There's a faint click in the vicinity of the portal, and the whirling lights of the magic doorway subtly shift from blue to pink.

Puyet grumbles under his breath and stomps toward the portal to follow Garrmondo.

Cal Amah of Rhee may be many things, but he's no thief when it comes to comrades. Seeing as how the rope is likely not recoverable, I secretly drop a gold coin in the rogue's pack. Curiously, he has not noticed the loss of 10 pounds of weight - my sleight of hand is getting better every day.

I expertly tie the now-purchased rope around the massive staff in a bowyer's knot, and rush back into the portal room unraveling the rope all the way. Ushering the cleric, rogue, and gallant Gygax in front of the pink portal, and wagon right next to me, I tell them as I hand each of them a rope to yank...

Okay then. On three, we charge into the portal together after the orc, all right? We don't want to split up the party. One... two...

Tired of trying to make sense of the changeling's determination to not carry things as useful as rope around with it, Glenn just lets it take the rope from his pack without caring. Glenn opts to wait for the portal's inevitable change in color and target location as soon as anyone tries to go through it - as far as he can tell the only trigger has been the fighter's disappearance. Perhaps it will change back and Glenn can join Garrmondo, or perhaps yet another locale will present itself. Either option seemed better to Glenn than having more of his stuff soaked and/or pilfered by the poorly prepared changeling.

Gheth watched the scene play out as a probable king's bounty in artifacts slid in and out from the walls. Well, it was obvious someone had set himself up a lovely little trophy room, but Gheth was at a loss as to why.
He made a note of the portal's new color, and decidedly resisted having a rope put on him to follow into areas unknown. Instead, he used a simple knife to cut a foot long length off the rope he was given, and sliced that again into several smaller pieces.

"Maybe we should try this first, before we use our body parts?"

Experimentally, he throws a piece of the rope into the portal.

Cal and Puyet charge into the pink portal, dragging hapless Gary with them. The ropes the two are dragging behind them go taut, but there's no indication of the indestructible staff giving way. Oddly, the portal doesn't switch over immediately this time — perhaps the persistence of the ropes on both ends of the doorway prevent it from closing. Gheth tosses a scrap of rope through out of curiosity, but it doesn't seem to provoke anything other than a startled yelp from the changeling on the other side. He shares a raised eyebrow with the eladrin rogue, and they choose to cautiously wait for further developments.


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On the other side of the pink portal, Cal and Puyet find themselves in a vast cornfield. It's black as pitch out, and though the full moon shines down from directly overhead the cornstalks are all as tall as a man anyway. Visibility is, to say the least, minimal.

A chunk of hempen rope flies out of the portal behind them, smacking Cal in the back of the head. On the upside, the portal continues to merrily hum away behind them, bathing the roughly 10-foot radius of visibility in a soft pink light.


--------

The cloaked knight shrugs. "That there is only one way in or out is what makes this such a formidable redoubt, friend! The halfling fiends shall be forced through the chokepoint that the door represents, you see, and then — and then!

Still, it's not really safe out there. This whole region is just choked with vicious wolves, goblins, that sort of thing. I brought the princess here specifically in the hopes that forging through such threats would sap their resources. We shall soon see if it is so, eh?"

While the knight explains his plans, the massive stone door in the south of the room slowly swings open, admitting four halflings walking two-by-two. A chainmail-clad warrior with a shock of red hair waves a rapier in the knight's general direction before delivering an incoherent demand at the top of his lungs.

"SRDR VILN. GIVE PRCS ELSE DSTY."

The fellow next to him, clad in piecemeal armor made out of wooden planks, throws in his support.

"PRCS SARA HIDE. WILL DEAL WITH GRLD THEN TAKE HOME."

Behind them, two halflings in long robes flip idly through their spellbooks, both of which look to be about 3 pages long.

The purple-cloaked knight's shoulders sink as he whirls on the intruders. "Ah, yes. Halflings are significantly smaller than a 15-foot-wide stone door. This plan seems to have been fatally flawed."

The girl slaps her forehead in exasperation.

The redheaded halfling spots Garrmondo loitering in the rear of the chamber, and waves his rapier around excitedly.

"LEAV ELSE YOUR DEAD GRLD EVIL SRVT."

Can't see. But I know Puyet has low-light vision.

Ignite sunrod if he can't see either.

Cal's practically blind as a bat, but between the moonlight and the glow of the portal Puyet's superior vision allows him to at least bumble through the field without getting too many cobs in the face. As long as Cal's holding on to his rope, the portal should be stable. Hopefully the changeling can be trusted.

At length, Puyet stumbles into a small clearing in the middle of the field. A wide circle of cornstalks have been flattened into a carpet underfoot, and in the center of the clearing an odd little creature sits on a tree stump.

Perhaps a little taller than an average halfling, the little grey thing is clad in a simple robe. Its bulbous head seems too large for its body, and iridescent black eyes take up almost half of its face. It seems to be reading some kind of metal book, but it sets the book aside as it sees Puyet approach.

"Greetings, native. May I ask you some... probing questions?"

The half-orc presses on, leaving poor defenseless me standing all alone in a pitch-black corn field in Melora knows where.

Perhaps I can find the human meatshield though. It seems quiet enough to risk shouting.

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Gary, can you go back through and tell the others about this place? Ask them if they can stick something more stable than a piece of rope through the portal. Say, a mundane item like a staff or rod?

Puyet realized he was intruding, and with the small man's provocative question, he felt he might want to intrude in return. Puyet gave him a slightly hostile tone to let him know he wasn't up any for shenanigans.

"You can ask them, but ask them from a safe distance."

Whilst Glenn waits for the changeling and the half-orc to return, he is tempted to go quickly go back up to the room with the avalanche staff and take a closer look at it, but decides against it. Instead he looks around near the portal in the hopes of finding what made the clicking sound when it changed color. Perhaps there's a control mechanism somewhere nearby.

Swallowing his pride long enough to walk away from what was surely going to be an ugly fight, Garrmondo sidles past the angry halflings and out the door. It was probably for the best; the spellcasters were getting antsy.

"FIRE. FIRE. FIRE."

"SETL DOWN BVIS."

"SLEP?"

Outside the orb chamber, the rest of the structure is battered and crumbling. Sunlight streams in from massive holes in the walls and ceilings, and Garrmondo sees a dense forest beyond the confines of the temple compound.

A bunch of skeletons and goblins are just meandering aimlessly around the temple corridors, occasionally giving Garrmondo a skeptical once-over and then going on their way.

Anguished screams ring out behind Garrmondo in the orb room, but he can't really tell if it's the knight or the halflings doing the screaming. They were all fairly high-pitched.


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"Very well!" cries the little grey man. "Answer me this riddle of the universe, and be rewarded! For your wisdom will be repaid greatly, with this — "

The little man rummages around in the hip pockets of his robe before withdrawing some damp-looking green paper.

"With this 45 dollars! Tell me, native man: why do you guys have an appendix? We totally cut a bunch of you up and couldn't figure it out."

Cal shouts out into the night in hopes that Garrmondo's portal may have led to somewhere nearby, but there's no answer.


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Against his better judgment, Glenn cautiously prowls around the vicinity of the portal. Indeed, on the far side of the platform (between the portal and the wall) was a small red lever, quite difficult to spot from most angles. The lever was currently pulled all the way to the north-most setting, which a small etching next to the notch identified as "Shuffle." Other possible settings, from north to south, were "Lock", "Reverse", "Emergency Stop" and "Go To", which was accompanied by three tiny stone wheels set vertically into the platform. The edges of the wheels were covered in little etched diagrams: at the top of each wheel at the moment were an owl, a coinpurse, and a question mark.

Puyet wasn't sure what the green paper the wee man was waving around could be, nor did he have any idea what an "appendix" was. He wasn't sure what to make of the offer or the question, so he hollered for Cal to come accompany him. He didn't trust him much, but at the moment he was more trustworthy that this small cretin.

"I'm not sure what you're talking about, but perhaps my friend could tell you."

I am wracked with indecision, frozen in place thanks to my internal monologue

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The little grey man stuffs the paper back in his pocket, disappointed. "Your friend is either mute or mentally ill, it seems. It's a shame. Now neither of you will ever see this 45 bucks again. Or... or! This season bus pass for the Toledo-Nashville route!"

A bright beam of light shoots down out of the sky, illuminating the little man and his stump, and he begins to slowly float upward. He taps the side of his head with a finger, and mutters:

"No luck here either. I recommend we move on to Florida; I have heard rumors that they keep their elders sequestered there. Surely those wise ancients will know the answer to our mystery."

The little grey man gradually recedes upward into the night, gradually becoming nothing more than a little speck in the beam of light. Then the light beam vanishes, and far up in the sky there is a quiet humming that gradually fades away into the distance.

The stump remains, a silent witness to the night's failures.


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Having greeted each other with insults (as manly men are wont to do), the swordmage and the fighter take in their collective situation. While cagey about how it is that he got here in the first place, the genasi's reason for staying is fairly obvious: he can't get out. The many holes and gaps in the wall are just too high for him to reach, and the massive padlock on the door bears dozens of little nicks from the Gra-Fa-Zut's attempts to hack his way through. Perhaps Garrmondo has resources to bring to the problem that the genasi does not.

I have finally reached a decision after seeing little gray squat things fly without wings.

Retreat to the portal, screaming.

Seeing as the Changeling's plan failed, Glenn retrieves his rope from the far room just in time for Cal to run through the portal, screaming like a lunatic. Based on what Glenn knew of the creature from his brief time in its company, it'd probably been startled by a mosquito or something similarly vicious.

Glenn goes back behind the portal and flips the switch to the "reverse" position. Hopefully the group can pick up Puyet and go find Garrmondo before the changeling does anything stupid and surprises more wildlife into attacking them.