Session 4: Kaswink, Bottles, Agave, Paintings, Namina and the Cage Trap!
General Summary
Kaswink
As the party traveled down the new path they had found, Kaswink began to change ever so slightly. Every few steps making her more and more monstrous until fully transformed into her hybrid form. Rounding another corner her and Hysteria discovered a creature of similar ilk to her own feasting on some pour creature and positioned between the party and another door leading into the further depths of this maze. Kaswink acted quickly, sneaking up to the creature and swinging her kanabō straight into the unsuspecting doppelganger. The blow caused Kaswink to feel the head injury herself, nausea and more cranial discomfort joined by the shock of the creature turning to face her, injured, and having her own face. Kaswink disarmed the creature as it crouched, apparently frightened, and the rest of the party arrived to see the bizarre sight. Namina noticed that the aura of the two was very similar, though the doppelganger's was darker. You all provided some level of input to the situation, reminding Kaswink that this is not her, that she can choose her own path away from this, and additional supportive phrases. The creature provided only one word during the entire exchange, "someday" which was swiftly met with a headbutt. You all decided to avoid this creature, move around it, and escape into the door behind it.Bottles
Agave continued to help "navigate", constantly mapping your progress, and the party passed several empty rooms along the way before passing by a large room full of bottles. Many of these bottles were filthy, old, unlabeled, ranging from small medicine bottles up to massive decanters. You looked about for something of substance eventually finding a fancy crystal Decanter full of walnuts, weird. You all enjoyed some walnuts in this room, actively consuming them while DAN investigated to see if they were sinister in some way. Their investigations showed that they were as mundane as walnuts come, same with several of the bottles in the room. Although, while investigating through their juggling, a centipede did crawl out of one of the jars, wiggling about before being caught and dissected by Kaswink.Agave
Many twists and turns lead you through this maze until you eventually came across another couple of slightly more interesting doors: A door covered in fire and a door covered in desert plantlife. The party chose the plant door almost unanimously, though Kaswink took some further convincing after burning herself on the fire door. Throughout the halls that followed the plant door you saw many beautiful desert plants that, after some time, began to wilt and eventually begin to turn to piles of rot or dust. Agave attempted to force a flower to bloom from a less wilted cactus, though the flower grew only to wilt away like the others.A wall of darkness cut off your progress right as the last remaining plants proved to wilt away to piles of rot. Plans to progress through this darkness were made, and torches and magic proved to only create more darkness around this area. You joined hands, grabbed whatever long poles you had (Frode provided spears to all that needed them), and stepped into the darkness. The floor here was unlevel, almost like ridges that rose and fell over and over. The walls had a similar over-lapping feel, and seemed to be made of a different material from the other walls. Agave scraped some off to investigate finding it to be made of some sort of insect chitin. While walking through, some of you noticed that you could hear the sound of fire burning...there are torches lit in these halls. Kaswink managed to locate one, snuff it out, and with the absence of this light source the hallway became better lit leading her to extinguish all the torches in this hall.
Paintings
As the torches were extinguished, the party saw that there are more paths ahead, though even without the darkness they were still just as mysterious. A nearby doorway lead to a room with a rather fanciful tile floor and the walls were adorned with paintings depicting a desert scene. Several of you entered which caused the paintings to change slightly, though Frode held back...confessing that this place was entirely too much for him. Kaswink approached Frode, and they had a touching conversation about Ilmater, and carrying the burden together. Frode acquiesced and stepped into the gallery with Kaswink. The party investigated these paintings, noting the ominous nature of them and that, according to Frode, everyone's cursed. To help relieve the tension a bit, DAN juggled several of the paintings before attempting to return them to the walls with a flourish resulting in one of them being badly damaged. Kaswink peeled up the tile floor to see what was underneath and found that it was lined with the same strange pink bricks as the rest of the maze. The party spent some time theory crafting what the hell is going on. Frode is convinced this is hell, it was pointed out by Agave that the maze is folding on itself which Kaswink's butcher history connected to a brain. The idea that this might just be a foyer before the Spirit World was thrown around, and the idea that maybe this is some mountainous area in the Spirit World was also considered.Namina
The party continued their journey eventually reaching a downward slope in the hall leading into some dark water. Discussions were had about how to proceed and it was eventually decided that Namina would scout ahead alone with a rope to help guide the party to air pockets. Namina swam forward for a time before eventually encountering a child that had her back to Namina and was drawing in the sand. She wanted to know where "they went" and if Namina had "seen them". The child was separated from her family, though she didn't seem too keen on finding them again, she just wanted to go home and was repeatedly asking for help. As Namina swam closer she noticed that no matter how she was positioned the child was facing away until she attempted to comfort the child...in her heart this was basically helping her. In doing so, this caused the child to turn to face Namina, revealing a grotesque and rotting visage with sunken eyes, holes in her cheeks, teeth missing, and a centipede crawled up and out of her gaping mouth and around her eye. The child's voice screamed in Namina's mind as the ground shook and the dead began to crawl their way from the floor and walls. Namina panicked, considered for a moment how to proceed. "Should I swim up to my friends, or down into the depths?" She felt a tug from Kaswink as the rest of the party felt the same tremors, and she chose to swim back to her friends. As she did so the quakes continued resulting in the watery path of this maze being sealed off.The Cage Trap
Needing a new path ahead, the party backtracked until they made it back to the "Fire door" intentionally avoiding the paths that called out to Hysteria and Frode due to their own apprehensions. The fire door was extinguished and opened. The party proceeded down this path one after another as Namina meditated to find the nature of the hallway. It ended up being both good and bad..."it might hurt you but it's where you need to go." While walking down this hallway the until-recently nearby door became farther and farther away. Agave turned around to see what was happening with the rest of the group and ended up inside the distant room. Namina, hoping to join him, attempted to follow though eventually also turned to face the party and see her own progress only to end up in the room with Agave. They both also became trapped in cages hanging over the boiling blood mote of this room. Hysteria and Kaswink eventually found themselves in the same predicament, and Kaswink alerted Frode and DAN to the trap and instructed them to not turn around as it might result in falling into this mote.The fear of turning around keeping them from entering the room, DAN and Frode experimented for a bit trying to find an alternative way to enter. They found that walking backwards without turning around caused them to return to the door and bring the room back into a reasonable range. The tricky perspective proved to be quite confusing as Frode laid out spears every 30 steps only for DAN to see these spears and Frode's progress as something rather hard to describe, but Frode moved down the hall, laid spears every few steps, and...yeah. Meanwhile, as the rescue duo continued to examine the hallway, Kaswink attempted to free herself by grabbing onto the roof of her cage and launching her feet through the bottom. It made quite a loud noise and hurt her feet, but the cage proved to be otherwise resilient. After this attempt the other three cages lowered 10 feet towards the boiling blood while Kaswink's remained where it was. We left off with a confused pair outside the hall looking for a way in, and Kaswink attempting to get the other party members to swing towards her.
Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
Comments