From alt.pub.dragons-inn Thu Jan 27 09:26:17 1994 Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Path: netcom.com!netcomsv!amd!decwrl!olivea!sgigate.sgi.com!sgiblab!sdd.hp.com!think.com!hsdndev!cfanews!cfatrw.harvard.edu!rudnick From: rudnick@cfatrw.harvard.edu (Bret Rudnick) Subject: [VampQ] ...Into the Fire Message-ID: Sender: news@cfanews.harvard.edu Organization: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA, USA X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL0] Date: Mon, 24 Jan 1994 23:03:07 GMT Lines: 346 ============================================================ [VAMPQ] ...Into the Fire Admin [The cast of characters for the [VampQ] thread: Character Created/Managed by --------------------------------------------------------- Ja'nis arsmith@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Alan Smith) Bluestar Dreamer (in absentia) Gemini (Feline familiar of Bluestar Dreamer) Moria Runecaster Master Hawk Rathan Barbar Morning Reaper Ah (Blood spider created by Rathan) Turion "Mr. Sinister..." a salamander (Turion's Travelling Companion) Billy the Torch JGE103@PSUVM.PSU.EDU Matte Kudasai Matt Hebert Tomonobu Fujiwara rudnick@cfatrw.harvard.edu (Bret R. Rudnick) Synopsis: After retrieving specimens of the Vampire Orchid, the object of their quest, the group have been ambushed as they attempt to leave the Undead plane and get back to Generica.] Admin [As always, comments/questions welcome.] ============================================================ > Billy, with his invisible bracelet in place, had been > wandering along with the crowd to filch anything worthwhile > from the pockets of the locals. He had so far been > unsuccessful, and now complained about the deserted > streets through which they were being led at the moment. > "Don't worry, this is the fastest way out of here. > Besides, you don't want to run into Rommel again?" > There was a loud noise, like a crack of thunder. > "Is it a bit unusual for there to be storms in this > season?" Billy asked. > "Why, it's unheard of," replied Wrath. > "Wait a minute, how d'you know that?" Billy questioned > Wrath. > "Because I have lived here all my death. I'm afraid > it is time for us to part company." Wrath then snapped his > fingers and large numbers of the walking undead > entered on both sides of the alley. "Get'em boys." Wrath stepped through a door of one of the ramshackle buildings and disappeared. As the door closed, one of Bluestar's arrows thudded into it at the same time that a glowing blue rune exploded against the door. "Damn," the elves cursed. Matte immediately pulled a charm from her belt pouch. Several of the undead stumbled out of the alley as quickly as they could, but the walking corpses on this plane were more resistent to her magic. "This is going to be another long day." There was some humor in her tone, but her face showed nothing but stern attention to the business at hand. Tomonobu, Bluestar, and Ja'nis quickly drew swords and waded into the fray. The zombie-like undead weren't much of a challenge from a fighting point of view, but there were so _many_ of them. They were armed with clubs and nets, and set about trying to just capture members of the group, seeking to wear them down and avoid being cut to pieces. The three of them soon realized that they couldn't win unless they got some way of neutralizing lots of them at once. There was nowhere to retreat to, so nobody even suggested it. "Dammit!" Billy cursed. He realized once again that his lack of fighting brawn would keeping him from contributing productively to the skirmish. He decided to do what he did best. On that thought, he got down on his knees and crawled for safety. When he finally reached a clear area, Billy made up his mind to scout ahead while the others finished off the nasties. He didn't feel guilty leaving them. After all the party had been through, a few zombies should be no problem. With that, he ran off in search of a good route out of the chaos. Thunder roared as lightning struck the building at the end of the alleyway. The structure burst into flames as the internal supports gave way, so that the building collapsed on the surging horde. Moria turned to see undead with nets above them lean out of windows in an attempt to drop the webs onto them. She quickly drew a couple of Runes in the air and waited. A grim smile came upon her face as whatever bodily fluids pumping within the zombies turned to acid and dissolved them from the inside out. While the fighters dispatched the creatures one and two at a time, Matte moved as far from the fronts of the battle as possible. She began an incantation, and after a minute or so, the undead responded. The motions of the remaining opponents gradually slowed, as if they were moving through a heavy fluid. As Matte continued her chanting, the tide quickly turned against the undead horde. "Let's cut a path and get out of here," Tomonobu said calmly as he moved to do so. In no time, the group had reformed and left via the route they had come, hoping to find another quick way out of town. The zombies were left far behind. Cold fires burned in Moria's eyes as she weaved an intricate rune pattern with her arms and hands. A humorless smile played over her lips as a huge fireball erupted from the alley far behind the friends. A dry wind swept up, carrying the stench of decay and death away from the party. "Forget it," they heard the voice of Billy, panting toward them, as if he had been running very hard for some time. "I tried to scout a way out. Between us and the road to the Gate is a force of trolls and guards three times what we fought in the Great Hall of the castle. Unless you have some way of turning us all into fire breathing dragons, we had better search elsewhere." Tomonobu looked up and down the street for pursuers as he tried to think of an alternate plan. For the moment, the street was deserted. "We may have to try anyway, or seek some other roundabout path to the Gate," he said, "But I certainly don't --" "Rathan!" Ja'nis said, pulling her sword out as the demon-surfer and an angry insectoid turned a corner and practically ran into them, "The nerve! Why I-" The others raised weapons to destroy him. "Oh, Mother Pussbucket!" Wrath said, backing off and holding his hands up in a 'don't hurt me' gesture. "Gaaackkk!" The insectoid finally caught up with the demon and appeared to be taking grim satisfaction as he slowly choked Wrath from behind. Wisps of smoke rose from various sections of Wrath's body. Suddenly Wrath burst into flames and was reduced to cinders in moments. Then the insectoid fell to the ground and metamorphosed into the more familiar form of Rathan, the human surfer. A small voice piped up, "Boss, what did I tell you about over-exerting yourself?" "Listen, I did not create you so you could mother me. Besides, I like to lay face down in the mud; it's very comfortable and soothing." The rest of the group stared dumbfounded at the recent occurrences. The tiny voice piped up again, everyone now noticed that it belonged to a small red spider, "Could one of you help him up? He's had a real rough day." Tomonobu stepped forward to help Rathan to his feet, but was still on guard. "Your next words should be chosen very carefully --" "Here, let me explain. Back at the castle I fell behind the rest of the you. I suffered from a larger blood loss than I expected from such a small wound. Normally we would regenerate from such blows, but anyway as I was saying; Wrath, Pericles' grandson, the individual who just burst into flames, (and Ah, I told you not to play with hellfire, I could have handled it just fine with my pyrokinesis-" "but I only summoned a little bit-" ") used my absence to insinuate himself into the party to lead you into an ambush. I should have seen that I would have a Shadow here when I saw how similar the castle was to mine." "And so much here is like where you're from that it stands to reason that there be a 'you' here." Moria said. "That's called Plane Parallelism." Matte explained, "It even happens to Nexians. It arises from the interaction of- never mind. The point is that sections of planes duplicate themselves almost exactly on other planes, that must be what happened here." Everybody looked thoughtful. "I am glad that one of our companions did not turn on us." Tomonobu said, finally, "But we still cannot leave this plane." "Maybe we can." Rathan said, "When I was looking for you I noticed a Shadow path leading to other Shadows. There should be another Gate over there." He pointed, "But you may not like it." "Why not?" Bluestar asked. "Because it leads through Hell." * * * * * * * * Hurrying and out of breath to one degree or another, the party tried to make their way back through the village. The crowds had not diminished, even though it had begun to get dark, and after a short march, they found themselves trapped again in a mass of revelers. The tide of local traffic had pushed them into a sort of Town Square, and Matte overheard some of the conversation among those around her. It appeared that most of the throng was involved in it. "But how did they _get_ here?!" a pleasant-looking man dressed as a baker was asking. "How can we be haunted during Festival?" The mob was getting more and more agitated as the party looked on. A large creature resembling an ogre was speaking to them from a balcony, and he was beginning to have an effect. "Rommel!" Billy exclaimed. Wasn't it just like him to show up when the party least needed his company. Billy vowed right then to dedicate time after this quest to learn to better defend himself. That way, he could dispatch such menaces as Rommel Ogre before they became a problem. "The Living are here, make no mistake. Find 'em, smash 'em, their bones will break. They bring the curse of Life here too. Get em', kill em', or they get you!" The mob was getting more anxious as the clumsy speaker continued to work them up. Matte sensed things would get ugly again for them very soon. The ogre was holding up a stone and was trying to explain to the mob how they could tell the intruders from the natives. Without thinking the scenario through completely, the little exorcist scurried away from the party to try to prevent the ogre from identifying any of the party when she spoke up. "If he spots us we really _are_ dead," Billy warned. She cried out more loudly than one might expect was possible. "It's that mad doctor in the castle! He's the one responsible for all this!" Matte was careful to stay out of the ogre's line of sight as she spoke. She was much shorter than the surrounding creatures, so this was not difficult. The mob mumbled more loudly as her words were picked up by others. "Yeah! What about all those creepy plants!" It was astonishing how quickly the mob went with Matte's line of reasoning. The ogre realized that somehow they were turning away from his original purpose, but his dim wit could not form a response to it. "We got to smash da little bugs...." But the crowd was already focusing on the occupant of the castle, and had all but lost interest in the humans. "I say we put a stop to those experiments once and for all!" In a very few moments, the mob armed itself with props for Festival (pitchforks, torches, rakes, and rolling pins, for the most part), and turned as one toward the castle. The roar of the crowd had no words to it, but it was loud and angry. Matte smiled to herself as she flowed along with the mob. "Hey! We're moving again! And just about in the right direction. Now, that wasn't too hard." She brushed off her hands with a self-satisfied air. It was just about then that she realized that there was little chance she could find the others in all this. With a growing sense of alarm, Matte nearly panicked. What if the party reached the Gate without her? How could she catch up with them again? But before she had reached a state of desperation, though, she was grabbed from behind. "A most interesting solution to our problem, Little One. You must know these creatures well to manipulate them so." Tomonobu had finally caught up to her and reunited her with the rest of the party. "Oh, I don't know. They seem to be a lot more like us while they're on this plane. Well, more like our dark sides, anyway." "Your solution was considerably safer than mine, little friend. I think you give yourself too little credit!" Some of the anger appeared to have left Moria's eyes, but Bluestar could clearly see signs that it was not all gone. In a short time, the mob had reached the narrow path leading down to the castle. There was a small band of undead patrolling the path, but those were quickly overrun. The angry mob, its pitchforks and torches bristling, swarmed down the rough path toward Pericles' castle. The party managed to filter out of the group unnoticed into the brush by the side of the trail. The courtyard doors buckled quickly, and the mob of revelers disappeared into the arch. The sounds dimmed shortly thereafter, but explosions of fire and smoke reported their progress through the castle. In an amazingly short time, most of the castle was in flames. "Well, here we are." Ja'nis said, trying not to state the obvious. They were arrayed around a huge iron Gate set at the end of the descending trail outside Pericles' castle, where smoke and the odd jet of flame emerged, from no identifiable source. "Are we sure we want to do this?" "You have a better idea?" Bluestar asked. "Come, Ja'nis, you are a warrior." Tomonobu added, "Surely this does not frighten you?" Ja'nis cast him a look that said this damn well *did* frighten her, but said nothing. Matte took a deep breath. "From what I know of these things, this path should eventually get us back to Nexus. But if we go through other dimensions of Hell first, it could be rough going. There's no telling what we might run into. You shouldn't trust all your senses. The important thing to remember is to keep moving forward." Rathan spoke ominously. "One more thing of import. We will be traveling through many Shadows, uh Dimensions, of Hell. If you stop along the way you may wind up lost and therefore stuck in Hell forever. And I don't know if we will be able to find you again." "There is little sense in waiting," Tomonobu said, "soon enough those persons will be done with Pericles, and I doubt we would be able to draw them away again." He walked up to the Gate and, without flinching, stepped in. Slowly, one by one, the rest of the party did the same, and strode into the realms of Hell. -- |--------------------------------------------------------------------| | Who makes the rules? Someone else! -- Oingo Boingo | |--------------------------------------------------------------------|