30 HetHert, Inundation, Year 4 of the Reign of Rameses II (October 16th, 1275 BCE)
In the morning, after an evening spent destroying the landscape around me in the doorknob, I rose. I had a decision to make--whether I was going to become a priestess, and if I did, of which of the two gods who had been subtly vying for my favor.
To make a very long story short, I chose Imhotep. It's something I'll keep to myself for a while, I think. It's nobody's business but my own--just like my other relationship with the god, which only Grrrbek knows about.
I was the last person out of the doorknob, and spent my time studiously avoiding looking at Raam. For once, we didn't have anyone chasing us, and we decided to spend some time in Reneb's tomb, exploring. Down we went, picking up some bits and bobs on the way.
We left one of our teleporting daggers with the undead guardian of the tomb, and we all jumped down the horizontal hole. That was fun, if unnerving. Terik looked around, and found that there were a number of tracks, all from the same person, some recent, some less so. Exploring around, we found a large room with a lake in it. The bottom was covered with necromantic magic, with a few bright spots of what seemed to be evocation.
We discovered in short order that the lake was covered with undead, held in suspension. Grrrbek hallowed part of the lake, destroying those, and then the rest woke up and came after us. We polished them off, then began to fiddle with those bits of evocation magic. They were trapped, and deviously so--I tossed a fireball into the water, one of the spheres triggered because of the heat, and the whole thing froze over!
On we went. Down the end of a long corridor, there was a room filled with cobwebs and spiders almost two feet across. However, when we went into the room, the spiders instead of attacking us lined up along the edges of the banquet tables in the room, almost as if they were waiting to be fed. In the center of the room was a plate with a scroll on it.
Pepy fetched the scroll while Terik made the mistake of hitting one of the spiders with his sword, wounding it. The spiders hissed at Terik menacingly. The scroll tuned out to be a Speak with Arachnids spell, and Pepy spoke with the spiders and found out that they were pets, and the plate would feed them all. They also said their mother was down the hall, and one of her jobs was to take care of "red eggs". Intrigued, we went to see. Pepy acquired a little spider friend, who rode on his shoulder.
The mother spider was enormous. She made no move to attack us, though, and we spoke to her. She asked us, "You are not Bden. How did you get here?" We explained, and talked with her for a bit.
The red eggs she was caring for were indeed red dragon eggs, and the mother spider said that she and her line had inhabited this place for three thousand years. She'd hatched four red dragon eggs in her time, but didn't know where the dragons had gone.
We left and explored some more, coming upon a large magical mirror that was showing us...the back of Grrrbek's head. Amunet identified it with the ring, and told us that the mirror would show any person or place on this level, and also would transport anyone to the location it was showing. We asked it to show us Bden, who was putting on armor and apparently gearing up for battle. Unwilling to let him sneak up on us, we jumped through the mirror.
I cast a cone of cold on Bden to start things off, and in return he fired two arrows into me. That wasn't the bad part. The bad part was the flash of extreme pain that then followed, and the next thing I remember I was lying on the ground with Mayet crouched over me, frowning. He'd killed me, the bastard. And then he'd dimension doored away.
(Evidently, I'd gotten the full brunt of a pair of fireballs at ground zero. That must not have been pretty. Isu was frantic, and she said, You are not allowed to do that again! I told her I'd try not to.)
We kept exploring, and Raam started to insist that Bden wasn't actually out to harm us. I, of course, was arguing vehemently with this. In retrospect, I was in a savage mood; I wanted to hurt someone. Bden, being an ancient pharaoh, would have suited nicely. I wanted someone to pay for what had been done to Usi.
Probably not the best mood to be exploring a tomb in, but there you go.
Unfortunately, Raam was right. Eventually, we found our way to a room guarded by an iron golem. Bribing our way past the golem, we found a room with a bunch of strange portraits in it--all of the pharaohs who had been brought back form the dead. The portraits appeared to be alive in some way.
Peribsen's picture was at the far corner of the room, away form the rest. We asked him what was going on, and he said that each picture had a piece of the soul of the pictured in it, and that they could communicate through the pictures. "An easy way to have meetings without having to travel," he said.
We asked him about Bden, and Peribsen's portrait said that Bden was not trusted very well by his grandfather Menes, and he'd been locked down here a while back. I sighed, aggravated. I hate it when Raam turns out to be right.
We moved Peribsen's picture back amongst the others; he said they'd be careful what they said until someone came down to move the picture back. Then we left, and continued on.
There was another lake room, this one with a siren in it. Pepy anted to test his will against the siren's call. He completely failed to do so three times, and on the third time we just let go of the rope we'd hauled him back by the first two times. He can't die, so he just walked along the bottom of the lake and up to the siren.
Sirens who are kissing people can't sing. Leaving Pepy snogging the green-haired wench, we did a quick run around the room, Amunet finding a secret door that led back into a junk room we'd passed by before. There were some potions that he grabbed. Pepy finally realized what he was doing as we left, broke free of the siren, and followed us.
A bit farther on was a room with a pair of large wings hanging suspended in midair. I want to inspect them, and I found myself posessed of a sudden, urgent desire to touch them. Recognizing it for what it was almost too late, i snatched my hand away and asked Imhotep if this was one of his things.
He told me that it was, and that the wings, once touched, would become part of the person who touched them. The desperate desire to touch them had been set by Menes, who thought it would be funny for someone to accidentally acquire wings.
Raam decided he wanted them, and put them on. They attached...and promptly disappeared. Aha, suspicion confirmed. Raam's real form is something else, and the spell that holds him in this shape just incorporated the wings.
I still think he's a girl.
Amunet found the key to get out of this level, and we discovered the stairs, and so up we went...
(I think I might need to apologize to Bden. Sigh.)
Quotes:
"I can't take pharaohs as a favored enemy?"
--Graham
"Get in touch with your inner six-year-old, Ray!"
--Laura
"Evocation's things like fireball, gust of wind, tiny hut..."
"Tiny HATS?"
"Give all the zombies a little beanies with propellers?
--Ray, Laura Graham
"I have a weapon called bling? Errr."
--Laura
"I animate the biggest bit..."
"We distract Terik. Waving shiny objects, or something."
--Graham, Derek (Terik was going to use his sword to raise the bits of Sitefnut as a zombie, then kill her and bring her back to life with the sword.)
"I thought you were supposed to be protecting me on this trip, Grandmother..."
--Mayet
"You are SO on my shit list, Raam. I'm not even talking to you."
--Sitefnut
"I have a 25 wisdom. You have to listen to me."
"Aaaah..."
--Raam, Amunet.
"I don't have truck with the undead."
"No, you only have truck with the dead."
"And I make them that way."
--Grrrbek, Raam
"My computer doesn't sing to me. I'm jealous!"
--Laura
"I have this urge to ruffle the fur on Grrrbek's head and scratch him behind the ears."
"Try it. I might like it!"
"But you're a god!"
"Yeah, well, that doesn't stop you with that other fellow, does it?"
--Sitefnut, Grrrbek
