Anyway, as the time for opening the portal came near, we set off to the cellar with all our gear concealed in laundry bags. As we approached the stairway to the basement, we heard Lord Archibald and Lord Northumbray arguing. We hid in some convenient alcove, and eavesdropped. North. was accusing Archie of violating a deal they'd had, by which North. was supposed to get posession the Amp. Archibald said that North had not offerred nearly enough to trade for the Amp, compared to what the other lords were offerring, and that he couldn't have the auction appear to be fixed, even if it was. Since North didn't offer enough in return for the Amp, Arch had no choice but to give it to the hightest bidder, Mercury. North. grumbled that his plans were ruined because he hadn't gotten the Amp. Archie became very interested at this outburst, and inquired as to what North's plans for the Amp had been--he wasn't planning some sort of musical performance, was he? North grovelled and said, no, he swore he wasn't. Arch stalked off, leaving North muttering to himself and storming off in the other direction--our direction.
We followed Northumbray at a safe distance; indeed, he was heading for the stairway. We went down after him, carrying our "laundry," and saw that he'd gone into the second-basement level. The guards there were gone, and North was kneeling in the hallway, grimacing with pain. A dark, evil voice was chastising him. It said, "The Plan was set. We've been promoting this concert for months, years even, and you've upset it. We hereby remove our counsel from your court." North then staggered out of the hallway and left.
When the way was clear, we went down the stair to the portal room. All the maps and other tactical stuff were gone. We were in a hurry, and didn't have time to wonder. We put on some dark robes to "disguise" us. Vrba chanted the inscription, and the portal opened.
What it opened into bore very little resemblance to the thing Sanjay had described earlier. It was a hallway, but instead of polished black marble, the walls seemed to be rough-hewn stone. There was a goblin holding a large basket, standing on a ladder. He was spreading cobwebs all over the hall. When he saw us, he jumped down from his ladder and came over to us. He said, "Oh, no! Are you them?" BRB interrogated him to find out what was going on.
According to the goblin, we weren't supposed to show up for another 6 hours, when the concert was ended. We (or, at any rate, somebody from the castle) were supposed to show up and be eaten by giant spiders. BRB bullied the goblin into telling him where the concert was (down the hall aways), and we headed off. (Keef did ask who was playing; the goblin made some strange gestures with his arms, and said, "Metallica, dude!" Whatever.) We looked in the room where Sanjay had seen Elspeth; she wasn't there, and the room had been all decorated with stony walls and spiderwebs. There were also some things which looked like giant spider egg cases. It seemed like a good bet that Elspeth was at the "concert," and was probably going to be sacrificed at the finale--good thing we didn't wait for the next portal opening.
We worked our way down the corridor, looking in all the rooms, which were all decorated in a similar fashion. From behind us, we heard a shout in goblin (according to BRB, "AH! The spider's loose!") and then a scream. We interpreted this to mean that we'd better move a bit faster. We came to a large area which had a lot of deadfalls propped up by wood pillars, it seemed like somebody wanted to block off the far end of the tunnel, to make it look like a natural cave full of spiders which the castle portal had unfortunately opened onto. I guess the deadfalls were there to keep the spiders away from the concert.
After the deadfalls, the tunnell walls looked less like a natural cavern, and more rough-hewn. We ran into some more goblins. BRB tried to convince them that we were Drow; they didn't believe us. They, too, thought we were "them." After messing around with them for a few minutes, one of them made a connection, saying, "But if you're them, then that means the spider's loose!" and they all took off down the hall towards the deadfall area. A few minutes later we heard some goblin screams. We started moving very quickly down the hallway.
After a while, we met more goblins, and to save time, BRB said, "We're them, we're early, and the spider's loose. Go." They went, and we heard more screams VERY close by. At this point, we could feel fresh air from the end of the tunnel, so we ran, trying to outpace the spider. We made it, barely. It didn't want to come out of the cave, so we were safe.
As we neared the stage, we saw that, while they didn't have the Amp, they had what appeared to be a couple dozen amps! The whole show was being overseen by a bunch of black-robed figures. Lucky for us, we were wearing black robes, too! BRB did Locate Object to search for Elspeth. He detected her on the stage, near the big object, which was covered with a cloth. Keef got up on the stage to inspect the amps--some said "Fender" on them, and some didn't. I got up on the stage, and made my way towards the big covered object, as did Erose. Fortunately, the black-robes (they were Drow, of course) were concentrating too hard on running the concert to notice us. Meanwhile, Vrba was fiddling with one of the amps. After a bit, Sanjay joined him.
Just as we reached the big box, a bright light shone on it, and one of the musicians yanked the cover off. Sure enough, Elspeth was hanging from the front of the box. She was all cut up, and still naked. The band started a particularly loud number. The big metal snakes started moving. That was enough for me. I started climbing up the box, trying to reach Elspeth, so I could try to get her down. Erose climbed up the back. We managed to drag her up to the top of the box, and get her chains off. The box was filled with water, and there was something moving in the box. Suddenly, the something (a giant water snake) rose up out of the box, and dived down to take a big bite out of the box where Elspeth had been hanging. Erose and I determined that it wasn't a very good idea to stay there, and jumped down. We made it fine, but Elspeth got dropped. Oops.
Glancing around, I saw that all hell was breaking loose. The metal snakes were crawling through the audience, snapping up a person here or there. The water snake, deprived of its expected dinner, was wreaking havoc in the midst of the equipment and the black-robes. Erose slung Elspeth over her shoulder, and we took off. As we were running off, some Drow chased us. Vrba declared that it was against his religion to run from Drow, and he had to fight them. This clearly awoke some similar impulse in the Norsemen, because they all stopped running, and stood with Vrba. Erose unceremoniously dumped poor Elspeth on the ground, and drew her sword. I figured that lying on the ground in the middle of a battle was not the safest place for a grievously injured person, so I scooped her up, and made for the woods.
| Meanwhile, back at the fight, things were getting exciting. Vrba, acting under divine inspiration (literally--he said he'd had a vision from his god) had harvested some vital component from a few of the amps. He shouted, "Behold, foul fiends! The Electricity Fairy cometh!" and attacked one of the Drow with a component. The Drow exploded in a blaze of fire. The thing was instantaneously burned to a crisp. (This had the convenient effect of preventing Drow blood from getting on everybody, too!) Sanjay had one of the things, too, and used it on another Drow with similar effects. Vrba had a third one, and used it to finish off the last Drow chasing us, who Hal and Erose were fighting. | |
| The Electricity Fairy |
Meanwhile, I did what I could for Elspeth. Upon closer inspection, the carvings on her body were an incantation for summonning spiders to overrun the castle, and snakes to overrun the concert. She'd gotten pretty banged up, what with being dropped and all. I looked around for wood to use for splints. After a bit, the rest of the group showed up, and BRB healed her cuts. We fixed her up as good as we could. By this time, the chaos that had engulfed the concert had dissipated, and so we headed back that way, in the hope of finding some kind of civilization. We had no idea where we were, although it looked like we were still in Scotland.
We reached the stage, and found the band sitting around smoking and drinking. There were no living Drow in sight, although a couple of black-skinned limbs were sticking out from under the asphixiated water snake. Erose and Billy Ray got all agitated about the mess which the concert had caused and the sacrifice, etc, and the band's insouciance towards the whole thing. The band appeared to be quite dim and confused, saying that they did this at all their concerts. When pressed, it became apparent that they didn't seem to have much of a memory prior to this evening. BRB made a connection, and cast Dispel Magic. The band dissipated. Keef and I scavenged up a couple of non-broken amps, one of the ones saying "Fender," and one of the nameless ones. The former ones must be some of Fender's Lesser Amps, which we'd believed had all been destroyed. The others must be imitations of those. We decided that lesser amps were better than no amps, and, provided that they were not cursed, we could use them. Some of the others harvested the Drow-killing bits from some of the other amps.
Hal tracked the audience (not very hard, all things considered), and we headed off in the direction most of the people had run off, after building a travois for Elspeth. We travelled almost all night. Towards dawn, we began to recognise our surroundings as the area around Dave's castle, so we headed towards the castle. When we got there, we briefed Dave on what had happenned, and collapsed with fatigue (that is, everybody except Erose, who went to work off some aggression in the yards).
Dave thinks that we should all leave the country. We all seem to agree that that would be a good idea, and so he's going to arrange with Mercury, who's due to come through here in a few days, to get us passage back to Alfheim to get our stuff, and maybe even back to Steinhall.
Sum-up of all the plots and counter-plots, as Dave seems to think they fit together: Dave wanted to reinforce his holdings, and arranged to have some of his troops from Alfheim come over, through Northumbray's land. Northumbray and Archie found out about this, and arranged the ship-building and so forth, so that North. could take out Dave's troops, thus providing a show of strength, and putting Dave in a very dicey situation. North, however, was double-crossing Archie, and was in alliance with the Drow. He was going to slay Dave's guys, as planned, but then he was also going to assassinate Archie and his supporters, and then use his new troops and ships in an attempt to seize the throne. The Drow planned to assassinate Archie, his supporters, AND Northumbray and his supporters, and steal the Amp away when everybody was dead. When that failed, they fell back on the plan they'd stated to North, which was for North to get the Amp from them. When this failed, too, they terminated relations with North, and set up the fake spider-cave to attack his castle, and cover evidence of their presence. Whatever they expected to get out of the concert also seems to have mostly failed, since they didn't have the Amp, and their sacrifice didn't go as planned, either. We don't know what the situation has been with the spiders and Castle Northumbray, but since the tunnel didn't get blocked, it now looks like the portal to Castle Northumbray was opened from Dave's land. This isn't good, and neither is the fact that there are a couple of giant metal snakes ravaging his area. Poor Dave.
I would like to stick around and try to get to the bottom of this whole Keef-Archie business, I don't think Keef himself is healthy enough to be doing that, and I think it would be best for him to get away from this country for a while. His ordeal seems to have awoken something in him, and I am not sure that it is something that should be awake, as it were. He is definitely showing the signs which are said to be indicative of an elf whose past life is interfering with his present one. From all that's happenned, I am inclined to believe the whole Keef-Glimmer-reincarnated-as-a-human thing. I'm very worried, because almost every tale in which a person is haunted by a past life ends badly for that person. My inclination is to get Keef away from this place, and back in familiar surroundings, at least for a while. We can always come back. Also, I want to take advantage of the fact that, according to Dave's intelligence, Archie believes that Keef is dead, killed in the dungeon of his burned-down house. This, I think, was Lively's plan all along. For whatever reason, it's vital to her that Archie think Keef is dead. After helping us escape with him, she killed some other poor slob, or maybe used one of the corpses we left behind, and burned the place to cover up the substitution. Nigel was talking to us, and she obviously was following him. Erose and BRB told him that Archie's prisoner was not dead, just escaped, and thus, she killed him to keep him from reporting to Archie. Framing us forced us to leave town, and prevented us from having any more contact with any of Archie's people, at least in theory. At least, this is the only theory I can come up with that explains what happenned. (I guess random violence and maliciousness also would explain it, but I do prefer to believe that people have actual motivations for their actions.) I wonder why she wants Archie to think Keef is dead? I doubt it's out of the goodness of her heart. Oh well, I guess I won't be finding out any time soon.