Mountains of Madness, Part 2

[Sareth]

[OOC]Was waiting to get some info from Viking-Sensei. But I suppose the statute of limitations has expired on that RFI.[/OOC]

Pain. Much pain.

That was the first thing I noticed upon waking up. My body felt like it had been the recipient of the amorous attentions of a particularly energetic troll. Or at least, I imagine that this is what I'd feel like after such a situation, having never been in such a situation. Still, trolls did look to be rather strong and vigorous.

Okay, enough about the S&M potential of trolls...

I opened my eyes. Well, attempted to at least. It took a bit of doing. But eventually I succeeded. Of course, seeing did not necessarily mean good things. After all, the first thing I saw when my eyes DID open was the slightly out of focus muzzle of a killer rabbit. This, of course, got me thinking about things other than carnal relations with non-humans. With a vengeance.

I found myself pressed up against a wall pointing a gun at the thing before I realized two things. The first thing I realized was that I had moved from my prone position of the floor of the tunnel without meaning to. The second was that the Wabbit was deader than snot BEFORE I instinctively put several rounds into it.

Swearing, I reloaded as I attempted to make out the situation. My body seemed to be more or less intact. Nothing seemed pierced or broken. Just bruised. A lot. Note to self: Explosions in tunnels HURT. There were a number of dead rabbit bodies or parts of bodies laying around. Note to self: Explosions in tunnels are also highly effective. Mother was over there. She was breathing, I could see her ribs moving. And Nera appeared to be over next to mother.

Hmm... Kids were fragile things...

I crawled over to Nera and did an evaluation.

"I'll be damned... She's sleeping like a ba... Er, right."

To my surprise, Nera was fine. I guess all the rabbits, me, and mom took enough of the blast that she hadn't even been jostled. That was good.

Next, mom.

Again, she looked bruised, but otherwise fine. That's good. Last thing I need to do is kill my mother. She may be a pain, but she cooks a mean pot roast.

All that established, I dragged myself onto my feet. I needed to look around. Well, I knew what was back the direction I came from... Rubble. Very expensive and useless rubble. Leave it to me to blow up the goodies. So that meant that I needed to check out the other way.

Five minutes of pained walking, and I found myself in some sort of antechamber lit by the same blue glow that had lit so many other of the passages I'd seen down here so far. It looked like there may once have been some sort of gear or something, but it had been removed long, long ago. Now there was just some rubble, a few new passageways that could go anywhere, and...

*RRRRRRRUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMBLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEE*

And a volcano.

Right, might be a good idea to get the hell out of this mountain before it turns itself inside out. That *was* why Ayiee had sent us this direction, after all. But how do I find my way out?

*RRRUUUMMMBLLLEE*

A pile of rock fell from the wall, exposing a sign. I walked over to it. The sign was, of course, written in Dwarvish. That wasn't particularly useful to me. However, it also had two pictographs, one of which appeared to show some sort of cityscape. That had an arrow pointing to the left passage. The right passage was pointed to by an arrow above a picture of...

A cave mouth. And trees.

"Awesome!"

This was my chance. I could get out and away, and get back to my glorious life of crime. Mother should wake soon. She can take Nera back home, raise her all happy as a clam, I'd be free... Life would be good! I just need to take the passage to the right. Right and freedom!

"Dammit."

I turned around and headed back the way I came.

[AdamZero]

"V-V-V-----Venting process successful..." Aiyee stuttered as a few more Wabbits entered from the pile. "Energy reserves have reached critical levels. Gathering mechanism switching from radiation to convection." I blinked at the technobabble.

"Wah?" A wabbit leapt over me and Boris, lunging at the Blue being before she smacked it to the ground... and it started... shrinking... withering.... I remembered something I learned a while back, all energy on the planet came from the sun. Plants took raw sunlight and turned it into plant energy, same as Aiyee did, except she made it into golem energy, I guess. Animals ate plants and turned the plant energy into meat energy. ....and Now Aiyee was taking that meat energy and turning it into golem energy... sorta....

"Disgusting..." I heard a female voice mutter. Was that Aiyee? She sounded... angry.... kay....

"So mission accomplished? The volcanos not gonna blow sky high?" I asked, she nodded, her eyes glowing in a weird sorta dark way. "Right, so we have a way out of here?" Another nod, as a pale white light formed in the wall, and a glowing crystal tube-ish path opened up to guide us out of the operating chamber.

"Right, let's get the hell outta dodge."

We hightailed it, picking off the few wabbits that remained, the path leading in had been cut off by a rock shift, which had given a means for noxious fumes to start pouring in, great.

Now all we needed to get out of here and find...

"Jasmine?" I smiled, glad she was alive, a bit unnerved at the amount of blood on her, lucky it reeked of wabbit. Nera was out cold, and after some quick jabbering, Aiyee was carrying Nera, now suckling on the blue girl's finger. I didn't want to think about the source of the formula anymore, and Boris and Lucas were carrying Jasmine, with me in the front, in case anything bad came charging at us.

The only thing we met was Jamie, and she was really limping more than anything.

"Dead end?" I asked, kinda worried about this whole thing. "Take your time, Aiyee fixed the volcano, it's not going to explode."

"Correction, Subject Marcus."

"Wha?"

"Your inquiry at the command station was if I accomplished my mission, and that the volcano was not going to blow 'sky high'. I succeeded in my efforts to redirect the flow of lava toward the area the functioning facility sensors indicated as possessing the least advanced fauna."

I could almost feel Jamie frowning at the technobabble, I could feel the pain in my face from my own grimace.

"Dwaves, Elves, Humans, and Trolls." Aiyee amended. We nodded in understanding. "This area will still be overrun by molten rock during the venting process, as a spill duct for inevitable overflow."

We set back to our slow, wobbling, but hurried gait as far away from the center of the volcano as we could, Jamie leading the pack.

(ooc:woot, we can all get the hell out of here!)

[Graybeard]

"Come on, Scrobian, get back here!" Grope muttered to himself, in a tone that a more technological race would have equated to that of a semi truck laboring up a long, steep hill.

The frightening cloud from the Dwarven Forge had passed downhill to the east, and finally ebbed out, although the sky was still full of ash, traces of it being carried on the winds all the way to the new valley. Wisps of steam remained in its wake, and now and then a flicker of red on the bottom of the steam clouds suggested that there might be lava on the move on the surface. Had the flames devoured the troll camp? It was hard to say, but --

"Finally!" Grope exhaled noisily. The balloon was rising above the ridge. Now would come the agonizing wait to see whether the whole tribe had managed to escape the devastation. The children were feasting on the carcass of the cave bear; it was something of a breach of propriety, but under the circumstances, the females were allowing it, so that they wouldn't be in the same half-panicked state as the adults.

After what seemed like an eternity, even for a race that lived 800 years, the balloon finally reached the valley ...

... And Grope could see, well before it touched down, that the gondola had only a single occupant.

[Sareth]

"Owowow OW!" I heard myself say. I hadn't MEANT to say it. But apparently I'd taken enough abuse that my vocal chords had acquired a will of their own and felt the need to vent. The irony being it wasn't the vocal chords that hurt, so much as my eyes. After the time underground, the light flooding the tunnel was painful.

"Thank goodness," mother commented. "I thought we were never going to get out of there."

I grunted an agreement as I stepped out of the cave entrance and out onto the slope of the volcano. Holding Nera in my arms, I smiled, then flopped onto my back into the grass.

"OW."

Okay, that one was my idea, not my vocal chords. My back on the ground found a number of rocks that corresponded to a number of bruises to more than just my ego. This was just not turning out to be my day.

"Pbbbbbbbbbt!"

Nera proceeded to add insult to injury.

"Phew!" I exclaimed. I looked over at Ayiee. "Just what have you been feeding her?"

[Graybeard]

The balloon landed, and Scrobian got out of the basket, his face ashen. Grope had never seen a troll look like that before.

"They're gone," the younger troll choked out. "The whole village ... gone. Under that fire-cloud from the Dwarven Forge."

----------

"We've re-established contact with Jamie and Marcus," the techno-guy told Elke. "That's the good news."

"That's a relief," Elke said, understating it quite severely, actually. Jamie was the only participant in the extraordinary cock-up in the mountains that she herself was personally responsible for, and it had been made quite clear to her that if anything fatal was allowed to happen to Jamie due to her own inattention, the consequences would be ... dire. She honestly couldn't see how the little female time bomb's adventures were anything that she could interfere in. That knowledge wouldn't necessarily placate the other members of the Convergence Committee, however, and having Jamie back on the screen had to be an enormous plus. Knowing that Marcus was also in contact was a bonus too. Thus reassured, she could face the parts that weren't going so well. "And the bad news?"

"The elf and Jake seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Nothing at all from them. Word is that there's been a volcanic eruption up there where they were. I fear the worst."

In spite of herself, Elke chuckled. "Oh, there's worse than that, believe me." None of the other Eisenfaust people knew about Wilbur Hamael, and even some of the Committee people didn't know that the elf had been sent to find him. If Peter had heard that the elf had vanished, he'd probably be filling his pants. Nice to think that somebody else has worse problems than I do, and somebody in the Gewehr at that. Now if I can just manage to come back with a negative pregnancy test...

----------

I'm dead, Wilbur Hamael thought as the volcanic fire-cloud roared toward him -- and dissipated mere yards below where he'd taken cover, too exhausted to run any more. Well, maybe he wasn't dead. But what now?

[AdamZero]

"You really don't want to know." I grumbled at Jamie's question. I just want to get as far away from this volcanic wabbit warren as soon as possible." I looked back up at the mountain, there was ash leaking out of several spots, but it wasn't likely to be lethal at this distance... still...

"We should get Nera, and... well let's just get the hell away from here before some catches instant lung cancer... More gunk up there than all the cigars in Farrel." I headed downhill, it felt rather nice, like going south. Easy, and gravity gave just enough a push for me to feel I was easy going.

"Hey.... are those trolls?" I pointed at a pair covered in soot and ash, they seemed to be heading along a definate path, I reached out my senses, noticing a lot more in the nearby area. "Huh, guess they had to move their village... .wait...."

I took stock of the surrounding mountains and realized something.

"We're on the other side of the mountain range..... huh..... neato.... gonna make getting .... oh wait I don't have a home, whatever." I was tempted to follow the trolls, but recent encounters told me it wouldn't end well. "I'ma go kill a deer." I said, even though any wildlife with working feet had high-tailed it long ago. "Well... later anyway." I kept going down hill, the Trolls already out of sight.


(ooc: Cause trolls be fast, faster than ash clouds! *sips root beer*)

[Graybeard]

[OOC: I'm not sure what happened there, AZ. Could you clarify? Was that supposed to be Grope and the "rescued" trolls? Or was it refugees from the village fleeing on foot? Because if the latter, my original intention had been that the last remnant didn't make it, which was why Grope's nephew is so upset. It can be made to work either way, but I'd like to know what you had in mind. To buy a little time to resolve this: /OOC]

"That's all there is to it?" Layla said, surprised.

Soc smiled. "Oh, hardly. Remember that that thing is a 'teaching' setup. It comes pre-loaded with magical energy, what we call 'mana,' at a density a hundred times greater than what you find out in the world. Let's take a walk and I'll show you what I mean."

They stepped outside into exactly the kind of spring day that made Layla want to quit this Gewehr nonsense and just play mommy games with Zachary. The temperature was just right, the sky was cloudless (at least in terms of real clouds, not volcanic eruptions), the air fresh and clear, the smell of lilacs on the breeze. She paused a moment, taking it all in, and barely noticing the volcanic cloud on the northern horizon.

"My wedding day was like this," Soc smiled again. "My wife made us do it over at one of the elven ruins, said it made her feel like an elven princess. Pretty goofy, but it was sure a gorgeous day ... Anyway, sorry to spoil the mood, but I need to know how you experienced the magic when you silenced that bullet. What were you sensing?"

"It was a strange feeling," Layla said. "Like the air was thick, or something. I could feel it with my fingers, as though I was scooping your 'mana' out of the air and packing it into the bullet to make it quiet."

"That's one of the common ways of sensing mana," Soc said. "It's good that you sense it that way; it's one of the easiest to teach. Most common is for people to 'see' it, as though out of the corner of their eye. People that experience magic that way can 'see' it inside the box even with the lid on. Others 'hear' it, like a ringing in their ears or a low rumble or such. A few 'smell' it, usually as a scent of lemon, but not always." He chuckled again; Soc seemed like a happy sort. "I knew one guy who detected concentrations of mana because he thought it smelled like skunk. That was one of the more, well, reluctant magic users I've encountered."

Layla chuckled in her own turn. "I can imagine." They walked and talked, as Layla's healing moved one step farther along.

[AdamZero]

(ooc: whichever, maybe someone who was already running or maybe just Grope making sure there's no stragglers, your call)

We kept heading North, and I was trying to remember what sorts of towns were up here.... maybe if there were settlements..

"And I'm lost... .again... Awesome. I'm back on track!" I spun my walking staff out of Boris and made to hobbling down into the foothills. "Right so we go.... um... which way?


(ooc: So how north are we on this map are we?
I'm thinking were still south of the super river and the lake)

[Graybeard]

OOC: Thanks for raising this now, Adam; things were about to get weird with the geography.

The interpretation that seems to make sense is that the mountains where everybody has been adventuring are indeed just south of that trans-continental channel, for which the name "Waldhaxen Channel" has been proposed. That leaves a lot of northern Farrel for people to get lost in. I hereby propose that we adopt this interpretation as "canon," at least for the sake of Errant Road, and further postulate that the Waldhaxen Channel runs (incongruously, and probably not altogether naturally) right through the middle of the Mountains of Madness, so that there is a good-sized chunk of the range on the north side of the Channel. Characters, humans and trolls alike, who are heading north away from the volcano could be about to run into this thing and find it impassable -- there have been noises to that effect.

In that interpretation, somewhere along it there is something called the "Witch's Step" (I forget exactly where that was introduced, but the phrase is out there) that affords access down to the water from the high plateau that contains the southern Mountains of Madness, where the adventures to date have been. That's a reasonable thing for the merry crew to head toward, and beyond that, into the incredibly wild boonies of northwestern Farrel, on the far side of the Channel. Rinkaiel and something approaching "civilization" can be beyond that.

Does this make sense? In that interpretation, the recent adventures have been south of the Channel where it bends from northeast-southwest to east-west, just to the right of the last "i" in Tsuirakushiti. Okay?

[AdamZero]

ooc: So it goes worth mentioning that we're probably looking out over the continental lake, which, due to our recent adventure in this thread, almost certainly has dwarves to blame for it. (I"m just thankful nobody brought up a balrog, thank you everyone for restraining yourselves....... we'll have one NEXT time we're in really old dead dwarf mines.