Through the Looking Glass

I hope the photo of the scenario plans is clear enough to help with the following description of events...


Ehlessa's Narrative
Destiny goes upstairs to retrieve her javelins from our baggage. When she comes back, she pokes one through the mirror - which, surprise surprise, turns out to have no glass. To be fair, Sir Blanque had already sussed this while Destiny was upstairs, but it's fun to watch.

What is a bit more of a surprise is the attack of the two warrior statues to either side of the mirror. They are quite hard to despatch, but a really good javelin throw by Destiny mostly shatters the leg of one of them, and Marion does her slicey dicey dance. They go down under a flurry of blows from all four of us. We step through the mirror.

And nothing happens, or at least not for a while. We find ourselves standing on a featureless plain that stretches as far as the eye can see in all directions. I shrug; it doesn't really seem to matter which way we go, and we can't tell the direction anyway. As we walk a drizzle develops, turning into a downpour that puts out the torches. Not that we need them any more, since in a sense we are now outdoors. The mud reaches our ankles and still we walk. The mud slowly dries out and then the air becomes heated, scorching my throat; the ground cracks, then turns to basalt. The plain up ahead spouts lava, but fortunately a mirror can be seen, hovering in thin air ahead of us.

We stop in front of it, and see a small area with a large sealed door in a cliff face through the mirror. The edges to either side thin to grey insubstantiality. This looks like it, then.

We step through the mirror. Sir Blanque breaks the seal on the door and Destiny unlocks it. A corridor leads to a room with a large slab of stone on which lies the body of a man, strangely encased in what look like very old bandages. He is holding an ornate wooden box. This must be our first location, the Tomb of Carline.

He isn't very pleased at our arrival, and stirs. Initially the dead man just stares at us, but then he gets up and looks directly into my eyes, trying to affect me with some kind of mind force. However, I have been trained for leadership by the shamen and wise women of our people, and despite a frisson of fear I feel no ill effects. Marion and Destiny are trying to hit him with their weapons while this is going on, and not having much effect. I wonder what Sir Blanque is doing.

I shake my head to bring myself back to my senses and then slice almost entirely through the undead thing's mid-section, just as Sir Blanque sticks a newly lighted torch from his backpack into its leg. So that's what he was up to! The thing burns very easily, and the combination of my attack and the flames lead to its quick consumption. In its real and proper death throes it stares at us with hatred, doing a passable imitation of a silent scream. It also drops the box, which turns out to have one of those key things in it. One down, three to go.

As we exit the way we came, the mirror still hangs in the air before us. This time the scene is the middle of a corridor, one end of which leads into the now familiar grey mist; the other goes to a set of stairs going upwards, with a side corridor to the left that also has ascending stairs - we try these first. We enter what looks like a long gallery, at the far end of which is a statue of a centaur archer, wearing full battle armour and with a nocked arrow aiming right along the hall in our direction. A creature from our people's ancient stories! There is a door leading to the right, behind the centaur.

We duck back into the corridor, and Sir Blanque suggests that we try the other door in the corridor, because it might connect with the centaur's room meaning, in effect, that we could outflank it. This also means that we won't be subjected to its arrows, and I explain that according to the legends these things are superb archers.

Sir Blanque is right; there is a connecting room. However, it is full of refuse and, rising from the middle of the heap, there is another undead thing, this time wearing foul rugs and stinking of decay. It tries to touch me with its outstretched arms, but fortunately for me my new armour holds while the others do so many hits that the thing is ripped apart. I shudder; the touch of the dead could only mean trouble. We do, though, find another key on the floor of the room. Despite this encounter, we decide to carry on into the room of the centaur.

As expected, it comes to life, but despite its heavy armour, the impact of all of us taking it from an unforeseen direction pays off. This statue is destroyed without even getting time to loose an arrow at us. We find four pairs of masks: two of silver, two of gold, two of some alloy we can't identify, and a final pair made of platinum. One of each pair has male features, while the other has female. The silver and gold ones have arrows pointing upwards inscribed on their foreheads, and the others have arrows that point down. A great deal of discussion ensues and eventually I put the silver female mask on my face, more to stop the arguing than anything else. It feels really nice, comforting even, as it conforms to my face and then fades into nothingness. The others let out a gasp of surprise, with some wonder - apparently the thing has enhanced my looks, which I must admit does appeal to my vanity.

Some more discussion results in the others trying on the remaining silver mask (Marion), and those made of gold (Sir Blanque and Destiny). We reckon that the less expensive masks with the upwards arrows are good, so the others must be the opposite. We'll keep those to try out on some enemy at one point in the future. Marion's mask has the effect of sharpening her reflexes, while the other two report that they feel somehow healthier. Off we go to location number three.

This one is the Village of Children. A rather woeful sight greets our eyes, a recently pillaged village with a dead child lying in the doorway to the main hut, which is the focus of this particular scene. The child looks to have been slain by some sort of slashing attack, but Marion says something isn't quite right, almost as though the wounds have been painted on. The thing grimaces and attacks, turning into a nightmare six feet tall and wielding mace-like weapons where formerly it had arms - a shapeshifter! Marion goes for it in her usual style, and with her flashing knives forces it to dodge back into the hut. A stalemate ensues as it is joined just inside the doorway by a couple of friends that must have already been waiting in the hut; we stay outside as both Marion and I string our bows. Typical; after the previous encounter I had decided that the bow was superfluous.

Destiny says that she has read of such things, and tries to converse with them in Low Melnibonean. They speak a language that is very closely related, and it transpires that they are asking for safe passage - we can have whatever we came to find. We let them go free and the things slink off into the grey that surrounds the village. Inside the hut, we find key number three. "It is rather fortunate that Marion realised something was amiss," says Destiny. "Those things feed on the people they kill and then take on the ability to look like them." I think Marion has actually received a compliment from the Melnibonean.

Finally, it's time to meet Old Father Time, at least according to the scroll we found earlier. He is a seven foot skeleton swinging a massive two-handed scythe. Marion will have serious trouble trying to parry that with a knife, but it doesn't seem to bother her. She has already demonstrated some rather impressive acrobatic skills.

Skeletal Giant with Scythe, by Grenadier Miniatures. Courtesy of Campaign Game Miniatures. I went with the blue rags for a splash of colour.

We all wade into it, knowing that if that blade hits any of us things could rapidly get really bloody. We have nowhere else to go, so the plan is simple, if you could call it that: overwhelm it before one of us gets sliced. And I'm the one it almost gets. We slowly grind it down, with minor ribs flying in all directions. It gets a really good swing at my leg, but I just manage to parry it; my scimitar is knocked out of my hand by the force of the blow, and then Marion finishes things with one of her powerful dagger swipes, severing its spine through what is left of its ribcage. It disintegrates and the light goes out of its eyes.

In a room off the main action we find the fourth key and a superb quality target shield that goes to Destiny. Sir Blanque quite likes the looks of it too, but can't quite bring himself to part with his own - "A family heirloom," he says.

Off we go again through the mirror, and this time we end up in a room with twelve mirrored niches around it, each occupied by the paralysed form of a person. One of them is very similar in looks to Destiny, but with an entirely different style of clothing, and wearing what looks like beautifully tooled leather armour. On the floor in the centre of the room is a large pulsating glyph, although even Destiny can't figure out what it is for; "Alien magics" is all she says, shaking her head. There is also a large cube with a keyhole in each side face. It is covered in the same indecipherable runes as the keys. It's pretty clear what we do here.

Before we do, though, we disarm all of the impassively silent watchers, in case they do what has been happening a great deal recently, i.e. come alive and try to kill us. We then insert the keys - one each - and turn them clockwise at the same time. A palpable shimmer of force emanates from the cube as it and the keys disintegrate completely; any minor ailments we have picked up vanish from our bodies, and we all feel power surge through us momentarily. The people in the niches turn to dust, apart from the one who looks sort of Melnibonean.

He comes forward, and in the low tongue of that people he greets us. "I am Sorensenn, one of the Vadhagh. My people can live for may thousands of years, which is why the time dilation has not killed me as it did the others you saw here." He turns towards Destiny and bows. "It would appear that in a sense we are related, my Lady". Sorensen explains that in his limbo state he saw Auquhol try to operate the time cube. "But he made a fatal mistake. He did not turn all four keys at the same time. This led to a tremendous explosion." This is a word I've certainly never heard before. I translate for Marion as we go; she hasn't had an education like the rest of us.

Sorensenn questions us as to our own experiences. He then continues. "I think that despite his terrible end, the man you call Auquhol was not quite dead. His memories were caught and frozen at the moment of the explosion, and those most real to him are the ones that stayed. In a sense you have been travelling through his mind, his memories of the long quest that led to his acquisition of the four keys. When you return through the mirror, all should be returned to normal. Presumably we will all go back to out home planes, myself included. So I suppose this is goodbye."

Just as we go to leave he says to Marion "By the way, you can keep my dagger". This doesn't need translating for her, since she knows well enough what he means; she had liberated his excellent quality weapon for her own use while we disarmed the paralysed people in the room.

Finally, we step back into our own world.


Umpire's Notes
The attack of the Caryatids in the main mirror room was pretty good, but Cate as Destiny threw a critical hit with one of her javelins, so the players were able to finish them off quite handily.

I rolled randomly for which character Carline's mummy would target with its fear ability; it turned out to be Ehlessa, and she has POW 19. So that didn't work. I rolled a critical hit in retaliation for her, and at the same time Thomas as Sir Blanque thrust a newly lighted torch into its leg; the combination ended its miserable undead life permanently. It was Thomas' idea to light the torch.

The second member of the undead to be encountered was in the side room next to the centaur. Its touch was feeble, but even so it almost got through Ehlessa's armour. Just as well it didn't; it would have meant an automatic POW drain of a point. Basically, her newly acquired +1 armour saved her. The masks were funny, especially when I got a bit bored by the arguing and had Ehlessa as NPC put on one of them to end things - I've developed a bit of a habit of doing this to keep things moving. She gained a point of CHA, which I think officially makes her the most attractive person ever to come from the Weeping Wastes with Charisma 18. Marion got a point of DEX and each of the others gained a point of CON.

The Village of Children worked out really well. The plan was for the characters to enter the hut and then be assailed by three shape changers (one from behind them) but the one in the doorway failed its ambush. Eventually the things had to bargain their way out of trouble.

Old Father Time was really nasty - that scythe does a lot of damage. It all ended when I rolled a critical hit for him against Ehlessa. Her parry saved her leg from being sliced open, but left her temporarily weaponless, right in front of a very large skellie in a bad mood. At that moment Marion dived in with a critical hit of her own and saved the day. She is really vicious when she gets going.

As for Sorensenn, who knows if, someday, they might meet him again...? Of course, what the characters didn't know was that he and the paralysed others had been looking for the keys themselves, and ended up being frozen in time by the warding glyph after making the error of walking across it, thinking it would be something good. At least he was able to survive.

As for the various entities encountered here, I think that rather than add in their stats at the end of each diary entry, I might create a page for them here on blogger. It would be quite fun to compile them, and somebody out there may find it useful. Some of them are, of course, going to be very familiar to any experienced gamers, but even so it would be quite a good thing to have.