The Dungeon of Doom: From Whence Yonder Jellies Doth Ooze
 

Things have always been quiet in the border town of Hog's End... maybe too quiet. In 15 years there hasn't been a crime more serious than burglary, and the duke doesn't even employ anyone to keep the peace. So far as anyone can tell, troublemaking sorts just find it more to their liking to move along someplace else. If a few drunkards and perverts disappear from their rooms in the middle of the night, who's to question it? A man's got a right to go where he pleases.

Of course, sometimes a fella does need a little encouragement to get along...


You wake up in a clammy cell, the faint taste of metal on your tongue. There's precious little light — a single torch is ensconced high on the wall to your left, well out of reach. On the other end of the room, scattered bones lie before a door. Behind you, a spiral staircase winds upward into blackness.

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http://www.saxypunch.com/missile/motsognirtoken.png Motsognir the Subgenius
http://www.saxypunch.com/missile/gabrieltoken.png Gabriel Sledgehammer
http://www.saxypunch.com/missile/argumentustoken.png Argumentus of Hamfist
http://www.saxypunch.com/missile/fescuetoken.png Fescue Totengeld
http://www.saxypunch.com/missile/bobtoken.png Scary Bob

The Dwarven Paladin gathered up his helmet, as well as his wits, spitting out the taste of heavy metal that lingered on his tongue. Setting the scale armour back atop his head, he grumbled to himself. Something about Kord's divine wisdom setting obstacles in our path. He reached to his back, feeling his trusty Warhammer still slung there he grunted. "Well, at least he doesn't leave us unarmed."

It was about then he noticed he wasn't alone in the damp, unappealing room. The apparently still living on all sides of him, with the scattered remains of the obviously dead behind him. The bones did little to shake those who followed Kord, God of War. But these living vessels, seeming to be coming around as he watched, were a different matter entirely. Mind you, that blonde with the eyeliner was fetching enough for a human wench. Which meant he still wouldn't spit on her to put her out were she on fire.

My, but this was shaping up as an interesting day, indeed...

My first sensation was a dull throbbing pain behind my eyeballs. I lay in the dark with my eyes closed for a while, trying to remember what tavern I'd ended up in last night and cursing my eternal fondness for Sumerian Deathschnappes. I could feel the cold stone beneath me and assumed that, as on so many other occassions I had fallen off whatever fetid mattress had been my bed for the night. Still, I pondered in the darkness, the performance by the troubadours last night had been exquisite, Ogre Suicide epitomised everything that was great about modern bardery, the clothes, the make up and oh the music. Such lute mastery was rare these days with so many wannabes clogging up the scene.

The sound of groaning snapped me out of my memories and brought my acute elvish senses into focus. Something was definitely wrong here. I opened my eyes and was greeted by the sight of a stone ceiling, lit by a flickering torch. Silently and slowly, I turned my head to better survey the room.

Ye Gods! It seemed as though I was in some kind of cell. At first I thought my carousing had maybe landed me foul of the law but this appeared to be no jail cell as reaching out with my fingers I found the reassuring shapes of my bow and staff. The groaning I could hear seemed to be coming from one of the four piles of filthy rags which littered the floor around me. No, not rags, they were bodies and fresh too from the smell of them. Panic gripped me as I remembered flashes of conversation from the concert, of how I had been trying to impress a gorgeous young she-elf with tales of my dark, sorcerous powers and magiks that could raise the very dead. What had I done! Had I finally succeeded in my life's quest?

Picking up my staff, I raised my fingers to the tip and uttered the cantrip "Illuminos". The words were unneccesary but years of impressing naive maidens with grandiose parlour tricks had made the words a reflex action.

The creature in the corner appeared to be a dwarf, and a particularly ugly specimin at that. It's gnarled, warty face peered at me with the lifeless eyes of the newly ressurected. The most striking aspect of the dwarf was not it's diminutive stature or even it's hideous, pockmarked face but rather the pink handkerchief hanging from it's back pocket. The dwarf must, in life, have been of the Toffee Tunneler clan, famed for their love of tightly packed fudge and gardening uphill. I got ther impression that this was probably the kind of pretentious bore who referred to themselves in teh third person. Thank heavens it was already dead for everyone knows that reanimated corpses cannot speak.

I noticed signs of life (Or as I joked to myself, unlife) from the other corpses and unnerved by my apparent transition from Necromantic hopefull to full Reanimagus I backed into the corner, disturbing an old pile of bones with my foot. I glanced down and quickly searched through the pile in case there was anything useful there. In my experience (Granted limited to thouroughly enjoying the tales of adventure portrayed in the songs of Bleeding Cataracts, the best half-orc band in the Eastern Isles) when you wake up in a cell and there's a pile of dusty bones in the corner, they're always hiding something useful...

As you stumble into the bones, a cloud of dust blooms upward and the broken fragments swiftly align themselves into an ominous shape. The dusty skeleton lurches upward and its rusty blade cleaves through the air only centimeters from your startled face.

Loud noises stir Argumentus from his slumber, fists balled up and maybe ready? Doesn't know for sure really. He issues forth a terrible war cry:

"What?"

[I guess I wait now]

[edit] Waiting for Bob's action.

The bones were alive! Ducking the clumsy swipe I marvelled at my new found skills of necromancy but consternation quickly set in as I realised that although I had succeeded in bringing the soul of this long departed warrior back from the underworld, it was unresponsive to my commands and in fact appeared to be attacking me! Worse still, the other zombies were rousing from my slumber and I knew not whether they too would turn on me.

Knowing full well that discretion is the better part of valour and hoping that the heavily armed automatons around me would be less beligerent upon their awakening, I skipped away from the skeleton with the consumate grace all elves are blessed with. I positioned myself at the far end of the chamber to the skeleton, surmising that if all the awakening dead were as uncontrollable as the skeleton, they might at least be distracted fighting each other and allow me to make good my escape.

I crouched low, holding my staff ready to fend off any further attacks and waited to see what would transpire once the ritualistic powers had fully reanimated the bodies around me.

Gabriel scoffed as the elf skipped to the far side of the room, near the stairs. Well then, at least the fool-elf had some sense in his head. More than could be said for most in his daffodil-eating race. Drawing his weapon from his back, he hefted the hammer in his hand, stepping forward before slamming the sidearm against his shield and raising the weapon above his head while the sound still rang out through the room.

"COME SON OF THE RAVEN QUEEN. KNEEL BEFORE KORD!"

The Dwarf had found his voice, and his god, in this forgotten pit. Here, faced by the undead, he was at his best. He near glowed with his own sense of smug satisfaction. Or perhaps a divine light, it was hard to tell from behind.

He slid his feet apart, widening his stance, beckoning towards the Skeleton with a raised chin, and placing his heavy shield between himself and his foe, readying his hammer and smiling broadly. It's not that he cared whether this elf lived or died, but he was a Paladin of Kord, and he would act as such.



Draws Weapon
Moves close enough to his opponent to utilise...
Divine Challenge

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The skeleton visibly flinches at the sight of your holy symbol, then charges toward you as if enraged. Swinging wildly, its rusty blade caroms off your shield and flies into a wall.

Argumentus takes a step towards the nasty thing, but all that exertion makes him think of snack time, and so he checks his inventory...

What the.... why....racket....SHUT THE BLOODY FUCK UP. Trying to sleep here.... Oh man, there's good hangovers, and then there's better ones. Apparently I was shooting for the latter. And this taste...ugh, what in the underworld was I drinking. Definitely not my usual. The brothel lady must have convinced me to blow my sack on high shelf goods, as if she wasn't pricey enough...

I sit up, and attempt to gather my surroundings...to see an elf-lady prancing across a stone floor right past me.

Well, THAT'S definitely not the wench I took last night.

I look around some more, to see a bunch of fatasses, other than the lady-elf, lumbering around making a racket in a generally distasteful manner, and beyond them, something else. I get up and try to gather my surroundings more, but can't make sense of why in the overworld I would ever be in a place like this.

"Where is the broad I hired last night, fellows? I ordered breakfast, and I'm starving. And why is everybody screaming and the like. Can't you let a fellow bleed off his poison in peace?"

Recovering from my initial shock, I took stock of the situation. Whatever mystical feats I had performed in reanimating the skeleton seemed to have fallen short of blessing it with any degree of combat skill. It had squandered two perfectly good opportunities to kill me and was now banging away mindlessly at the shield of the zombie-dwarf. The dwarf itself seemed particularly animated for a zombie. Having read extensively on the subject in my quest for mastery of the afterlife, I was under the impression that reanimated corpses tended towards the shuffling and moaning end of the activity spectrum whereas this gaudily dressed stunty was mincing about and bellowing like a Turkish man in a public sauna.

One of the other corpses had now struggled to it's feet and was lumbering towards the skeleton. Slack jawed and with a low, sloping forehead, it looked as if at least one of it's parents had been a troll and the other, a first round elimination candidate on Thee section of chaine ye moste likely to breake ye firste, a travelling show beloved by the lowest common denominator of every village. One of the remaining corpses was stirring too although for now my attention was focussed on battle in front of me. A cold draft blew down the stairs behind me and for a moment, I considered flight into the darkness. I have long been of the opinion however that it is better the succubus you know than the balgorg you don't and who knows what horrors my nocturnal spellcraft may have unleashed en route to my current predicament? No, the only option it seems was to stand and face this necrotic foe. Suddenly, the words of one of the greatest songweavers of the modern age sprung into my mind and I knew what I must do, I tried so hard, and got so far, but in the end, it doesn't even matter...

I remembered the months of training I had endured in the tower of Ullathon the Dreary before embarking upon my quest for knowledge. The skeleton appeared to be the most aggressive of my potential assailants and it's clumsy sword strokes had almost ripped my pristine velvet cloak. Yes, I would defeat this loathesome skeleton and then asses the zombie situation afterwards. Stepping slightly to one side to afford me a clear view of the skeleton, I gathered my will. Stretching out my fingers and incanting the mystic word "Coolio!", I unleashed a deadly blast of searing cold towards the target, ice particles rending the very air in front of me as though I were a mighty ice gigas, roaring my defiance at the very sun.

Assuming Argumentus has moved:
Casts Ray of Frost at skeleton

Motsognir had awoken some time ago, and was simply waiting for the opportune time to get up and join the fray. He was apparently somewhat more adept at blacking out and waking up in unfamiliar surroundings than the four nancies currently trying to knock over the little bone pile that the effeminate one had woken up. Clearly, these johnnycakes knew a fair deal less about warfare than his usual companions. Standing up and unsheathing his battle axe, he trotted into the donnybrook like so many times before.

Draws Battle Axe
Moves Forward
Warlord's Favor

The Ray of Frost blasts instantly through the skeleton. Little icicles form all over it, and the weight pulls it down to the floor where it collapses once again into a harmless pile of dust and rust. Motsognir, still groggy, hacks away at the bones like a man possessed, cracking open the ribcage and revealing a cache of... spoons.

"That'll learn you," spat Motsognir, kicking the spoon cache haphazardly.

The dwarf lowered his weapon with a slightly arched brow. "Well that was... anti-climactic." He kept the hammer in his right hand but let it hang down near his ankles as he shifted in his heavy armour. It was only then that he noticed the Subgenius wailing at the corpse and reached out and tapped him with his shield.

"Stay your hand, Kinsman. I believe it is already dead..er." He coughed slightly, causing his beard to ruffle outwards beneath his mouth. "I don't suppose you've any idea how we got here? I seem to have misplaced my memories concerning last night." He directed the question towards Motsognir, though he offered Bob a nod in his direction on a job well done. Who knew skeletons didn't like the cold? Clearly a fairly wise spellspit, this one.

"No matter how we got here, I vote we take the stairs." He grunted and slung his hammer up to rest on his shoulder. "There's less dead things in front of it, and that bodes well for the future."

After watching all the commotion happen in nearly a split second while still rubbing the morning (was it really morning?) dirt out of my eyes, I realized that maybe I wasn't where I was supposed to be...not that I'm ever supposed to be anywhere, but that's another tangent.

I didn't know who these fellows were, and I didn't know if I should trust them or not, though by the smell of them, and perhaps myself, it'd be best to stay cautious.

"Hello there, brother," I spoke to the dwarf holding the hammer at his side, "I don't suppose I'm the only one who has no bloody idea where we are, by the sound of it." I turned and faced the rest of them. "How about you fellows?"

Most of the other men (and 1 woman), spoke nothing much, seemingly groggy, or paranoid and amassed in confusion. One of them did reply to me, but while I was listening, I subtely noticed in the corner of my vision there was a door, or window maybe, in the far corner of the dank room...???

A gruff grunt in response to the halfling. "So it would seem, little friend. Questions upon questions. Ah well..." he hefted the hammer off one shoulder and leaned it across the back of his neck. "Kord shall provide answers in his own time."

The dwarf glanced around yet again at the odd grouping around him. The pretty elf girl in the corner, the possibly autistic human with the massive hands, his kinsman and a halfling that he can only assume is a thief. Since most of them are. Lovely.

"I still say we take the stairs." He grumbled under his breath, noting the halfling's sudden interest in the door. "If this is a dungeon, I'd much rather be going up than staying on this level. Anyone here say otherwise?"

The skelatal foe was no match for my mastery of the arcane and collapsed back into a pile of inanimate bones. "Hah", I laughed, "The power over life and death is truly mine. Hahahahahaha". I had been working on my maniacal necromantic laugh for some years and now it was sounding really sinister.

I surveyed the remaining cadavers. Now all fully awake, they seemed rather lively for a bunch of people only recently resting in sweet embrace of death. I kept my staff raised, not knowing if these undead monstrosities would be as uncontrollable as the skeleton had been. No attack was immediately forthcoming however so apparently my powers of reanimation were more pronounced when applied to the freshly dead and whilst perhaps not immediately under my control, these zombies were at least non-aggressive.

I cursed whichever barman had continued serving me to the point of memory loss. My one triumph thus far in my career as a reanimagus and I could not remember a thing! Looking around my room, I surveyed the shambling oafs in front of me more closely, wondering where I could possibly have chanced upon such a motley crew of the dead.

The dwarf who had first risen was one of the ugliest specimens of his race I had ever encountered. Obviously my experience of the race was limited, dwarves are notorious for their lack of appreciation of the finer arts and as such, one rarely encountered any of them in civilised company. The mandolin player from Puddel of ye bludde was a dwarf but only the basest of scenesters would be seen dead at their shows. As well as being incredibly ugly, the dwarf smelled like an open sewer, I could only imagine the level of depravity this poor wretch must have lived though before his demise.

The lumbering human stood scratching his head and yawning. Looking at him, it was hard to imagine he had shown any more animation when alive than before he joined the ranks of the undead. The very act of breathing seemed an effort of will for him! Somewhere in the back of my mind, a sense of unease about the fact that this zombie appeared to be breathing was growing but I pushed the thoughts aside as foolishness. It was no doubt some muscle memory leftover from when the poor fellow had been alive.

The other two were still largely inanimate. One was a non-descript halfling, thoroughly shifty looking with beady eyes that suggested that in life, the owner would have robbed the last copper piece from his own mother as soon as looked at her. The other was yet another dwarf although details were difficult to make out as the creature was still hacking furiously at the inanimate bones of the newly redeceased skeleton.

Not sure what to do next, I stood facing the others, staff held aloft with the end still glowing from my incantation and took a deep breath.

"My minions from beyond the grave, I, Scary Bob the mighty necromancer have called you forth from the netherworld. Ye shouldst feel priviledged, as the first of my minions, ye shalt be the generals of my undead horde! Now my zombie underlings, let us go forth and explore this foul dungeon, and prey to the dark lords that we shall encounter plenty of fresh recruits to our new venture upon our path!"

Additional Spam:
It appeared that while I had been composing my speech, the zombies had begun discussing matters amongst themselves. Talking zombies! Truly I possessed dark powers unknown to all but the most powerful of dark mages!

The ugly dwarf was suggesting that we should take the stairs up and looking around, I could see no alternatives. Graciously, I stepped aside, leaving the stairs clear for the small folk around me to lead the way.

The dwarf momentarily forgot his diplomatic attempt to decide which direction to go when the elf launched into his speech. By the blade of Kord, this boy was stark raving mad. He stared, slightly slack-jawed for a few long moments before he shut his mouth and scowled darkly. Well, either stark raving mad or a complete ass-head.

"Scary Bob. Right. Let's ge-" he stopped talking, considering for a moment and finally just rolling his eyes and tromping towards the elf and the staircase. "It doesn't matter. We're taking the stairs. Lift your skirts and keep up." He grumbled under his breath in dwarven, tightening a hand around the holy symbol he wore wrapped around his wrist so tightly it imprinted on his palm.

His heavy footfalls echoed off the walls as he moved towards the base of the stairs, glancing up into the darkness. As a dwarf, his lowlight vision didn't make it very daunting. He actually smiled a little as he swung the hammer down to hang by his side, lazily swinging it in the firm grip of his right hand.

"Someone will need a light for the human if he doesn't have his own. Don't suppose you could conjure up a little illumination between commanding hordes of the undead?" The sarcastic remark aimed at the elf as he put his foot on the bottom step.

You march up the stairs for what seems like forever, but it is probably only about 5 minutes. At the top of the winding route you encounter not freedom but a massive stone slab, sunlight peeking through the edges. A small placard dangles from a rope wedged in the gap.

"I, uh, I knew it was already dead. I was just... making sure it doesn't come back again, you know? I mean, it's done it once already, I don't think a little frost will stop it forever."

Nice cover, ol' Soggy. They'll respect you after that gem. I've got to get their respect back.

"In any case, it looks to me like we're in a dungeon of some kind. By the Hells, I should know after escaping from so many of them! Ahahaha!"

By the sweat of רמשנאל, this isn't going my way.

"Erm, I agree with the stout one, we should make for the stairs."

Oh Hells, they've gone off already without me.

Motsognir trudges up the steps after them, all the while trying to think of a better explanation.

(I'm a human, you dick. And so is Brady, and knk's a dwarf.)

I lit my sunrod and muddled up the stairs with the rest of the group of mostly halfwits. I had already decided to ignore the broad. What kind of name was Scary Bob anyways....
"I would rather have honestly taken the door," I said, once we arrived at the stone slab. "We might still be inside this place, but at least I wouldn't have had to walk an eternity to get nowhere."

I shined my rod on the placard as the dwarf and I examined it...

The placard reads, in Common:

"Ye are sentenced to remain below for the rest of your natural life, for the immoral and unnatural crimes of

Theft
Cross-Dressing
Insulting the Duke
Destroying the Duke's Valuable Livestock
Attempting to Initiate an Illegal Duel

May Pelor protect you until you starve to death and rot."

Something else is scribbled beneath this, in a language none of you recognize.