Report: The Mountain Ruins
General Summary
Stiks rocks back in his stool at the bar. Hailing the bartender he orders another drink, though he has yet to finish his current. It won’t last long, it’s been a rough stretch of days for his nerves. “We were just checking out some ruins…” He begins, talking to the bartenders back. “Just looking into bandit activity, it wasn’t supposed to be… We didn’t expect it to be so… dangerous.” The volume of his voice climbs as he gets into the story, still talking to the bartender whom gives no indication of interest.
“It started out a great day, the kid bought me a horse!” Leaning to the left he mumbles to a patron beside him, “A horse… Spooks is his name,” He chuckles to himself. “Eh well his NAME is Gerry, but, He spooks easy, little guy, so Spooks! hmm… should thank the kid again. ANyways it was like I said a great start to the day. I grabbed Spooks and met up with Vinny and Russel at the caravan to the camps, camp.. Ya know Russel? Bit of a goof that guy, not the sharpest tool in the shed..” Stiks chuckles again, then furrows his brow, as perhaps he doesn’t know exactly what that means. “Er…but can the man WRESTLE! And VINNY! Vinny, oh he’s a rascal, not much in a fight, but got trinkets for days.. He oooh he had a rock that had a GIANT Rock beast inside it.ooh but, ah thats later.. Like I was sayin’ the day started out good, we all rode with the caravan out to camp, Spooks in tow.
There we met some Knights… knights of um.. Well we met Sir Pinna, the Knight of Flowers… such a nice lady..” Stiks energy dips, and a somberness rolls over him, but for a moment. “Well she joined us to help in the endeavor of checking these ruins out. She brought a lot of magic to the party, we were a slim crew, so we welcomed the help.”
Stiks turns on his seat, clapping an unsuspecting man sitting next to him on the shoulder and turning him about to speak at him directly. “SO we set out, plodding along, gettin’ to know each other, lil chat. Nice day. Then we enter this small canyon like bit and BAM we’re ambushed by this freakin’ spider. HUGE!” Stiks spreads his arms wide to show the width, sloshing the remains of his beer to the floor. He looks at the empty vessel then drops it to the table and grabs the waiting beverage he’d ordered. “Ya big ass spider, that kept poppin’ around spot to spot. Every time I got a good wack in, pop, it's gone, behind us now. I guess it was a phasin’ spider or somethin’. Pain in my ass. But, we whooped it, no hair off our backs. SPooks! Ah spooks of course spooked and went off back the way we came, had to go collect him.
But we went till we found a hou…” Stiks pauses, as if remembering something, “ah a trail… mm an owlbear trail! Ohhh how I hate owlbears. Nasty creatures, big and angry bastards. SO we tracked em to its cave cause ya just can’t let these beasts be, fowl angry beasts, would just attack any innocent that went by so we took it upon ourselves, short detour, to handle the beast. It went smashingly.” He drops his flagon to the bar table hard for emphasis and chuckles. “Russel wrestled the beast, pretty impressive. And I wacked em good while it was prone. Made short work of it… yeah” Stiks trails for a moment, visibly thinking and sorting through some details in his mind. “Yeah and turns out there was a, a game trail from there to the ruins, easy to track.
We made easy time and came upon the ruins that Pinna believed to once be a temple by the looks. Smart one that flower, turned out to be very right. Well we took a quick rest there and scouted the surrounding area. Some cart tracks, obviously where the bandits had been coming in. I tied Spooks out back, didn’t seem smart to bring em in the temple. Which was a GOOD move, cause when we entered the ruins, a CHILL crept over us and out of nowhere we were set upon by ghosts and skeletons. Evil creatures!”
Stiks bellows the last line, standing and kicking out from his stool, becoming more animated and raising his voice to speak to the tavern at large now. A few turn to give notice, but this isn’t the first time Stiks has made a scene as such, and some ignore his antics.
“They came at us from all directions, but.. Scary as they were, they was pushovers for the most part. The ghosties were a bit tough to hit, but some good oil on the weapons helped us push through. Once we cleared the beasts we saw that there were crates in the back of the hall with these orbs, orbs that Vinny looked over and found that they would go Boom. and I mean Boom, nasty things. This, we thought, is what the bandits were coming here for…” Stiks pauses, catching a thought, but he internalizes it and continues, “oh then we found a secret door, sealed up and haunted. But I busted right through it!” He swings about his fists as if holding a club, miming the destruction of the wall. “And on the other side we found this old shriveled body… mmm and some ancient writing in a language none of us knew. Vinny though, sharp guy, managed to translate it, some gibberish about books.
So we press on, a back door to the hall leads us to this.. Sanctum. 5 statues in this round room around a strange altar piece with 5 dishes. But before we can explore further, SWOOSH!” Stiks stands straight up suddenly to emphasis, his hands going up above his head. “This giant winged skeleton creature appears and starts attacking us. Nasty necrotic energy and dark black flames wash out at us.” Stiks stalks around, arms overhead imitating the wings of the beast, lunging at one or two patrons as to spook them, in jest. “I go to thwacking the beast, no time to waste. Sir Pinna starts shootin’ em up and Vinny even joined in this fight. He’d been a bit quiet in our previous scuffles. I dunno that the guy had seen many fights. But we all did our part and put the beast down. Sir Pinna took a bit of a roughing up, the corrupt flames taking a toll. She was brave and tough and stuck through it though. And with the boney bastard handled we went about exploring the room.
Best we could tell it was some sort of temple to… well Celestine was there. Old statue of ‘er. So after thinking on it we decide to make an offering to Celestine, always appropriate to honor ‘er right! Well to our surprise after we put some items in the dishes that kinda corresponded to the writing on the wall behind ‘er, Ya know stuff like love and peace and stuff. This portal opens and a line of magical energy from the dishes to Celestine. We can see something through this portal, like it's inside the statue of Celestine or something, but when we try to grab it, the whole thing flickers and makes to disappear. So we stopped, we figured there's something else going on here. Ya know? We think, what is going on in this temple? SO we do some thinking and messin’ about and wouldn’t ya know we manage to light up the whole temple floor by makin’...” Again Stiks pauses here, as if trying to find a way to say something, “Makin’ some good guesses at the purpose of the place. But then! But then… ah.” Stiks mood drops, his energy sucked as a memory washes over him. Those listening look on, expecting some more dramatic display. Stiks looks up, trying to move past a lump in his throat to continue, but catches sight of someone entering the bar.
“Vinny! Vinny, come over here, I was just tellin’ folks of our venture to the ruins. I was just gonna tell em about.. About when the ceiling came down an.. and Pinna. And YOU!”
Stiks cringes internally, having called out to Vinny before he’d thought through what part of the story he’d reached.
Vinny was looking for something to drown his sorrows, to help him forget about the ordeal in the ruins and the consequences of their actions there. Recounting all that was the opposite of what he wants. But now he’s on the spot, so recount it he will.
He sheepishly shuffles over to Stiks at the bar and takes a seat next to him. “Yeah, the ruins,” he mumbles. He recalls that moment and sighs. “The, uh, ceiling came down and buried us. Stiks here, and Russell, came out pretty much unscathed. But not me and Pinna.” He cradles his head in his hand, feeling extremely lucky that it hadn’t been split open then. “We were both buried. One second we’re feeling pretty good about figuring out the temple, the next I’m crushed under tons of rock.”
“Stiks and Russell dug me out and revived me; I was just knocked out. It was a close call though.” He can still taste the mushrooms he’d ingested before they’d entered the temple. They had given him a little extra pep in his step. That small boon had probably saved his life. “Pinna wasn’t so lucky. If she hadn’t been so worn down from that angel thing, she might have made it. But she had, so when they dug her out, there wasn’t much left to uncover.”
“After we dug ourselves out of the rubble, we went down into the lower level of the temple, the one that had revealed itself right before the ceiling collapsed.” Vinny looks to his companion. “Did Stiks mention that? Anyway, we went down there. It seemed mysterious and ancient; we hoped we could find something in there that could help Pinna.” He gulps a little. Bending the truth a little usually came easy to him, but he was having a harder time of it now. “We found a scroll that would preserve her body a little longer, but nothing that could outright resurrect her.”
“Along with the scroll, we found some other artifacts and documents, which we eventually surrendered to the people back at the camp. And finally, we found a door. It was heavily warded, so it wasn’t something we could investigate further. Gravesend is going to have to send someone with more juice than us to crack that one.” Vinny omits the contents of the documents, per a certain warning they’d received.
“With everything scoped out, we made our way out. Unfortunately, collapsing buildings make a lot of noise, and we hadn’t been quick with our investigation. By the time we were crawling out of that hole, bandits had made their way around. Russell and I bolted out of there, but Stiks had to go back for his horse. The little guy put up a fuss, alerting the bandits. And then the chase was on.”
“One of the bandits seemed more formidable than the rest; he ran faster and longer. He almost caught up to us!” Vinny sneaks another glance at Stiks. “Did you know him by any chance? You two seemed uh...familiar.”
Stiks jumps up from his seat and rolls a fist “AH! The bastard was one of the cronies leading the raid on Blackwater. Russel an I both ran into him, but Russel was probably too busy with the dog to notice… anyways continue!”
Vinny continues, “Anyway, that lead bandit was catching up to us, and he hadn’t just had a building collapse on him. He was definitely in better shape than us....”
Stiks mumbles under his breath, “Speak for yourself…”
“We did not want to get into a fight with him. So when we got to a crossroads, I dropped a magic item I’d been saving to summon an earth elemental to buy us some more time.”
“We kept running until...until we couldn’t anymore.” The merchant pauses, casting another quick look at the fighter. He hopes that their stories still match up. “We hunkered down for the night. And then we woke up the next morning. The bandits hadn’t murdered us in our sleep, thank Celestine.“
Stiks gives two enthusiastic thumbs up to Vinny.
“So we made our way back to camp. On our trek, we came back to the crossroads, where we found a bunch of blood and a large hunk of earth - the dormant earth elemental. It looked like my gamble had paid off, at least for the night. We didn’t see any bodies, so I just hope those bandits don’t come back looking to finish the job.” Vinny pulls at the collar of his shirt.
“The rest of the trip back to camp went without a hitch. When we got back, we surrendered the artifacts and documents. We also told this whole story to the captain there. And then we, uh, gave them the news about Pinna. They arranged to have her body brought back to the capital so that she can be resurrected there. Thanks to the scroll, they should have enough time to get her there.” Vinny bites his lip and clenches his fists, holding in his misgivings about her escort.
Tersely, he finishes up his tale. “And then they had us return to town with the documents we’d discovered. We handed them off to the librarian, old man Kairus.” He turns over to Stiks, “Did I miss anything, pal?”
Stiks startles a bit, having started to drowse, recovers and stands tall, walking up to Vinny and laying a heavy but friendly hand on his shoulder. “Ya told it all Vin, ya glossed over how fast you can run. BORN SPRINTER this one!” He gives Vinny’s shoulder a squeeze, then just to Vinny remarks, “The way you hawk your wares I expected a bit more gusto in your story telling, but ya told a tale, and with proper consideration.” He gives Vinny a wink and guides him to the bar, “Come on now join me for a drink, FOR PINNA!”
Orated by Stiks and Vinny
Adventuring Party: Russel, Stiks, Vinny Maze, Pinna Bluebell
Date: 02OCT21
Report Date
02 Oct 2021
Primary Location
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