Dor Leðúrēa 12445-12446. The tentacled horror persues and claims Galleron. Group escapes the ancient temple and explores caves and labyrinths seeking new ways up to the City of Dirápzir. Kendra finds group and leads them through the tunnels and finally to the great Orb of Dirápzir.

Continued from Time’s Swift Passage.

Day 12445

The sliding, clicking, slithering and sucking of the monster pushed down the dark corridor behind the dark blue temple wall. The light crystal glow seemed to throb like a heartbeat as the monster propelled its bulk along the passageway. Inside the temple, the group gained their breath, looking about desperately for a means to escape. Ferveo stood in the room’s middle, a fatigued and bloodied Galleron slung across his shoulders. The troublesome companion had angered the beast, and more than one of the group had entertained the thought of feeding him to it. It might buy them the time they needed to escape. The thing slithered and sucked closer.

Running away from the monster, the group charged into the lower halls where the changing-dead howled and banged at their dark prisons. Vorén examined the metal door at the staircase’s bottom but could not find a way to open the door before the mass of teeth and tentacles flowed into the chamber behind them. As the monster flowed through the corridors to trap them, the adventurers raced around the dead pits and back into the corridor where they’d entered. Ferveo, still holding the disabled form of Galleron across his shoulders raced around the stairs as the monster turned and flowed rapidly toward him. With a strength that would not be denied the toothed tentacles whipped forward and snatched Galleron’s body from Ferveo’s grasp. Galleron screamed. As he was pulled from Ferveo his skin began to change and he fell to the ground like a sac of fluid, his features distorting and disappearing as his body was transformed and absorbed into the monster.

Ferveo turned and ran.

The group raced through the dark hallways. Zuroolly stopped for a time in a chamber with rotting tapestries and pillows until it was discovered to be a dead end. Together the group continued around the perimeter hall until they could re-enter the old temple, leaving a trail of closed doors behind them. Somewhere behind the walls the tentacled thing (and Galleron, if anything remained of him) pursued. Closing the metal double doors behind them the crystal stones winked out one by one and the temple was plunged back into darkness.

Soon, they had found their way back to the Shurn caves where so many years had passed here, and finally back to the cliff face that they had climbed so long ago, though it stood unchanged.

Day 12246

Group enters the City of Dirápzir.

Continued in The Forest’s Edge Inn.

Characters

• Galleron
• Kendra
• Voren
• Zuroolly
• Kendra

Played: 09 May 2002