Game Story, Part the Third

[featherynscale]

After two days of uneventful travel northwards, our bold adventurers reached the Sorenholt, a crumbling tower above the trees. After some discussion about the possibility of mad scientists or even transvestites possibly dwelling within, they gathered their cojones and knocked at the door. They were greeted by Jonathan, a long-suffering and cynical zombie butler, who, after seeing the seal on the message they brought from Hieronymous, the high priest of Pelor in Teranth, escorted them to the Sorenholt's library.

Or at least, escorted three of them. Sparky, having learned the peril of being in the highest point for miles around, stayed outside. He sat with the wagon in the ruins of a long square building at the tower's base. (Here remarks were made about dancing elephants, archaeologists, and a series of low walls.)

In the library, Goombah, Jessie and Phae met Nessa, an elderly elf woman who is the mistress of the Sorenholt, as well as Myra, the spirit of Nessa's half-elven sister who is now in residence in her own preserved skull, and Patrick, the three year old many-greats grandson of Myra.

Nessa received Heironymous' message, then questioned the adventurers as to where they found the suspicious bits of zombie. She produced a map marked with arcane symbols, and added the zombie-bits location to it. She then proceded to thank our heros for pointing out to her a likely location of the fifth gate, the existence of which her research had suggested, but she had not been able to confirm.

She explained to the wide-eyed crew that she was part of an ancient guild, The Watchers of Gates (yeah, some days you get good names, some days you don't so much), and that she was aware of the existence of four inter-planar gates in this area, and had suspected for some time that there must be another somewhere. She told them of a gate to Avernus, a gate to Mechanus, a gate to Elysium, and a gate that led through a loop of space to end back in the prime material, but on the other side of the world.

After much discussion and testing, the explorers contracted with Nessa to go to this gate, go through it, and report back on what they found on the other side. They spent the night in the Sorenholt, during which Goombah began to read a book about the philosophical nature of the planes, Phae slept in a real bed, Patrick crawled about and got into things, upsetting Nessa, and Sparky and Jessie were astounded that there were intelligent undead, who could, on the balance of things, be considered polite.

Phae woke the next morning to hear a conversation between Nessa and Myra as they passed in the hall outside her room. "It won't hurt him a bit," said Nessa, "in fact, he may even enjoy it." To which Myra replied, "I don't care what you say, I think it's cruel and unusual." Fearing that these two unusual ladies had something unpleasant planned for Goombah, Phae rushed to the library, where Goombah was asleep under a book, and unharmed.

After breakfast, they set out for the portal, Nessa carrying Myra's skull in a metal birdcage and Jonathan riding a pack horse carrying the squirming Patrick. They move towards the gate and the mystery which lieth on the other side.

**Cue Mystery theme music**

Comments

Your story and your crew are damn amusing. :)

[hotokegi.livejournal.com]

I'd love to play in a game like that. :)

Completely off the subject, but...

[hotokegi.livejournal.com]

This is a link to my poetry that I was talking about earlier. It's about everything I've written since high school, so some of it sucks a lot, some of it doesn't. :) Feel free to critique! :)

http://www.livejournal.com/users/hotokegi/32486.html