From alt.pub.dragons-inn Wed Aug 24 10:11:35 1994 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:7574 Path: netcom.com!netcomsv!decwrl!src.dec.com!crl.dec.com!jac.zko.dec.com!leggy.zk3.dec.com!orb!not-for-mail From: spider@Orb.Nashua.NH.US (Spider Boardman) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [HouseStorming] Half a league, half a league, half a league onward.... Date: 23 Aug 1994 17:51:39 -0400 Organization: Duchy of Wabesylvan Obspauk Lines: 162 Message-ID: <33dr1b$os4@orb.nashua.nh.us> References: <1994Apr6.064811.73767@yuma> NNTP-Posting-Host: orb.nashua.nh.us ADMIN: The cast, characters, and techie crew of the [HouseStorming] Thread: Alan Smith ..........Palandun Lintesul Spider Boardman .........Selna Chris Meadows ..............Andrea, Sheryl and Jay. Andrea Evans ......Kadrys Penny Hutchison ............Leah and Errol Stephen Hutchison ......Miro Alfvaen ..............Eowyn/Teonyl Wolvie ..............Lance and Blaze Invaluable help: Colin Sebastian Roald Heather Loresch Kelly J. Cooper Liralen Li All characters are property of their respective authors, and this story is a group effort, copyright 1994 by Aaron V. (Alfvaen) Humphrey and Spider Boardman. Permission is granted for the distribution of this story on the usual alt-net channels and for archival but all other rights, including repost, are reserved to the authors. Background: Just after the storm Andrea and Sheryl bought a house which proved to be loaded with traps. So they gathered together the rest of the team to help them discover the secret to their new home. They split up into two teams after leaving the ballroom. This picks up the progress of the team heading toward the master bedroom. === === === === Teonyl watched as Selna cast a trap-detection spell from the base of the main staircase. Instantly, several areas lit up on the steps. Useful things, she mused. She caught herself making a mental note to mention this to the Florians when she returned. But of course she wouldn't be returning. Besides, magic was just used less on her world. She still wasn't used to its ubiquity here. It was considered useful as an untraceable assassination tool by the Florians, but not trusted for other purposes... She paused, following another line of thought. If trap-detections spells are more common here, then a master thief would take that fact into account in setting up his house. Therefore... "We should double-check these traps," she said out loud. "The ones we can detect may just be decoys for magically concealed ones. And there may even be concealed ones layered under the detectable ones." Errol and Kadrys exchanged glances, and then nodded. "Good idea," Errol said, approvingly. Teonyl recognized that voice. It was the one a master used to tell a student he'd passed a test. She was torn for a moment between embarrassment at having stated something so seemingly obvious, and satisfaction at having figured it out for herself. They began moving carefully up the stairs, disarming the obvious traps and checking for the less obvious ones. Kadrys discovered a concealed trap in the apparently clearest path; Teonyl herself found one under another previously-detected trap, and once again felt herself flushing with mixed emotions at Errol's approval. When they had climbed almost halfway up the staircase, the group took a break to allow tense nerves and numbed senses to rest. As he stood up straight for the first time in an hour, Kadrys began peering into the gloom. After a moment's distraction, he turned to his companions and asked, "Do you smell something?" Errol half-shook his head, and started trying to smell something. Teonyl's "No, wh--" was interrupted by Selna's sneeze. "The dust has been bothering me," she apologized. The mage then put her hands over her nose, and began drawing in air slowly. The inhalation and the subsequent "Hmm" sounded oddly distorted. Her pensive look gave way to a look of recognition as she lowered her hands again and stated "Wood rot." Errol nodded and confirmed, "Indeed yes... that's it! Wood rot!" "Well, how bad is it?" Teonyl asked. Instead of answering, Selna began chanting softly and quickly. An orange beam of light spread between her hands, dropped to the stairs, and spread to match their width and thickness. The light then went up along the staircase and faded after crossing the landing. In its wake, the next one-third of the total rise was still illuminated in varying shades from dull red at the edges to an almost fiery orange in the middle. "The darker parts have wood left," she explained. "Is there anything left solid enough to stand on?" Teonyl pressed. "Maybe the traps?" suggested Kadrys. Errol shrugged, "Ah, we didn't really want to walk up these stairs." After a quick consultation through the dragonets with Palandun, the team descended the stairs again and went around them, disarming yet more traps along the way. When they were beneath the upstairs landing, Kadrys and Errol rigged a rope ladder with their grapnels. They flung it up to the railing; it stayed. As they tugged on the ropes to be sure they would stay, however, Kadrys said, "This doesn't feel right." Selna, following his glance, sent a witch-light up to illuminate the balustrade. "There," Kadrys said, "You see that?" He indicated the top section of the ladder. Teonyl squinted, and after a moment made out the thin wires positioned to cut through the ropes when adequate pressure was applied. So they'd anticipated someone's taking _that_ shortcut, too. "How do you plan to get around that?" she asked. Kadrys raised his eyebrows and looked at Errol, who shrugged and looked at Selna. "My turn!" the latter agreed, and leapt for the ladder and started climbing. "NO!" Teonyl shouted, dashing under the rope ladder to catch her comrade, then gasped in astonishment when she didn't fall. "What the--How'd you..." Teonyl suddenly felt a bit foolish when she noticed that there was no sign of tension on the ropes and that Selna wasn't working hard enough to explain her upward progress. Hmph. Why couldn't she just _float_ up while levitating, like other mages? "Oh, I'm sorry," the elf said, looking chagrined. "I didn't meant to alarm you." Her expression returned to normal for a moment. "But thank you," she added with a smile. She then resumed her 'climb', finally abandoning the pretense of using the ladder when she neared the wire. Her staff floated up to join her, and she cast another trap-finding spell to cover balustrade and landing. The area itself was mostly clear, but the points at which the wire attached to the walls glowed a warning. Selna nodded to herself. "It doesn't look safe just to cut this, folks. Relax for a bit while I try to fix it another way." She produced a small shank of steel, and began chanting at it to make it bend in her fingers. She molded it around the rope to her left, armoring it against the wire. She chanted again to restore it to its proper hardness. She sighed then, produced another shank, and repeated the process for the other rope. "O.K., folks, I think this will hold it," she called. Errol jumped up and down on the bottom loop to verify the relative safety of the ladder, and then climbed up, followed by Kadrys and Teonyl. They quickly cleared the landing of its remaining traps. When they were done, Selna indicated the direction they were to go. "I've informed Palandun of our progress," she said, indicating a nearby hovering dragonet. "He indicates that the other team is doing fine, and confirms that this is the most direct way in." Slowly they made their way through the halls, the traps getting denser with every step, until eventually they came to what the dragonet-linked mapper called the door to the master bedroom. Kadrys whistled softly as he looked over it. "I've seen worse," Errol said. "So've I," Kadrys replied, "but it takes a real paranoid to do *this*." "Not *too* paranoid," Selna noted. "This is the real door." She cast another, longer trap-detection spell. The whole door, all the jambs, and the walls, ceiling, and floor for several feet away from the door lit up. "This," Kadrys said, "is going to take a little while." "Palandun's running out of paper," Selna reported after they had cleared the traps along the floor and halfway up the door and jambs. "Didn't he just get some?" Errol asked, pulling out a pressure trigger. "Yeah, but he sent it away. Seemed to be really happy to do it too." "Never met someone who didn't get along with paper before," Kadrys remarked. -- --Alfvaen(Web page:"http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~aaron/") Current Album--Loudon Wainwright III:Fame And Wealth Current Book--Edgar Pangborn:Davy "We meet with friends, we talk carcinogens" --Happy Rhodes