Chapter 3 - Creepy Catacombs

Feeling a little frazzled, I went to catch up with Kynan over drinks. He was suitably impressed with the outcome of my first major foray in to hobnobbing with the nobility. We celebrated my success and pay packet at the Hide and Horn where Seb was on fine form all night, regaling us with dubious stories about his own former mingling with the upper members of society.

While enjoying the night with my friends I got chatting to Fanir Okoth, the village herbalist. She had learned a recipe recently on what she expects will have been her last long travels that she wants to try. Unfortunately the main ingredient is Ghostroot, which only grows deep in the bowels of haunted locations. She thinks there might just be some in Surrender's End but it won't be around for much longer with a very short growing season. She agreed to pay me to go in there and try to snag some of the root. Unfortunately it sounds like it tends to grow amongst significant ghostly activity, which means I'll be in for a rough time in there. It was going to be a change of pace from mingling with the posh folk, but I felt like I could do with that change and agreed to take on the task, especially as it wasn't much of a detour on my way to Daggerhaven, and she wasn't in too much of a hurry to receive it so long as I managed to get some.

As soon as I got near Surrender's End, I began to wonder whether I was making a mistake going in there. A weird thick mist hung to the floor surrounding the perimeter of the old village, strangely thick like it was made out of a dense smoke that congealed and provided the slightest resistance as I walked through it. I tried not to squirm as I pushed through. While it was creepy as fuck to walk through, it should actually prove useful to hide within. I hunkered down and ventured in.

As luck would have it, the first building I came across was a small ruined hut that was still quite well intact. It even had a door that could be bolted shut and the main window provided an excellent scouting spot. I decided to wait and watch for a while, see if I cold see any activity and plan my next move.

My heart lifted slightly after waiting in that small hut and not detecting anything moving about. Perhaps all the rumours of this place were exaggerated. Perhaps there was nothing here worse than a bit of fog and a lot of rotten vegetation.
Still, I didn't want to tempt fate too much. Keeping low, I moved across to a large building, it's heavy stone door thankfully not bared, I pushed ajar it's hefty weight and slipped inside.
Inside I was in a long corridor with crumbled wall surfaces piling up at the edges. The occasional pillar looked like they were no longer providing much integrity to keep the ceiling up. Doorways lead to chambers on each side, some of them clear but the majority of them blocked by their own collapsed supports or the ceiling having fallen in from above. This place had definitely seen better days.
Keeping an eye out for further weaknesses as I tread, I pressed on through corridor.

Being careful not to cause any further damage, I carefully picked my way through the corridor. Occasionally I poked my head in to the rooms as I went hoping to find something useful, but this place had long been looted of anything of value. About half way along the corridor I noticed that the floor has collapsed in a room on the right side. Peering down, there was what almost looked like a deliberate ramp down to passageway under ground. This looked promising. I had heard rumours that this place had extensive catacombs underneath, and with any look this would lead in to them. It could have taken me ages to find a real entrance to this place, I couldn't believe my luck in stumbling across this so soon.
Stealing myself in the face of the unknown below, I quietly stepped down through the hole and entered the catacombs.

As I reached the end of the tunnel that led down, it opened out in to a large room, gloomy with very little ambient light. I lit my torch and peered through the dusty gloom. It looked like I had emerged in the middle of one side of a large burial chamber. Dusty bodies lay on thick stone slabs set in to alcoves along the walls, each looking ancient and gaunt. The slabs and most of the walls were adorned with intricate carvings, some depicting sorrowful mourning images of those left behind to tend for them, others depicting hopeful scenes of what the dead or their relatives hope is in store for the interned, all of them in various stages of decay and disrepair through ages spent unattended.

Searching through the room, there wasn't much of use to be found here, mostly funerary offerings left long ago, all of the valuables presumably stolen long before with the now brittle and decayed incense and lesser valued fabrics barely holding their own shape as they slowly succumbed to the ravages of time. I was about to call this room a bust when I noticed the ever present fog at the far end of the room swirling around a single spot on the floor.

Damn it! this place is fucking creepy!

I slowly approached it. It seemed stable, like an ever lasting bucket of water with a hole in the bottom, the fog slowly swirling round and round, but from what I could see, going nowhere in particular. I supposed that as weird things go, I could perhaps have expected worse things in a haunted ruin.
I tossed a small stone in to the vortex. Suddenly a large volume of the fog around the vortex rushed towards its epicentre, seemingly from nowhere yet always howling, a strong gust of wind engulfed the room as the air rushed and collapsed in to the middle of the vortex, almost pulling me over as I clamped my hands around my ears.
Then, as soon as it had started, it was done. Like a calm after a thunderstorm, the air in the room felt still and peaceful. For a brief moment you could see the floor of the chamber as the fog had been pulled in to the vortex. It was covered with what once must have been beautiful mosaic tiles, now faded and worn through ages of people moving over them tending to their loved ones. All too quickly the fog rolled back in over the the floor, covering it's beauty once more, perhaps for another hundred years until the next brave adventurer dared to step foot in there.

At the end of the hall a once ornate door, now barely hanging on to the stone frame in which it sat, lead to to a winding dark corridor. It was suspiciously lacking in junctions or entrances, a prime place for traps if my experience was worth anything. I was slowly inching my way through it, hyper vigilant for anything that may be lurking when I noticed a slight eddy next to the wall on the right hand side. I carefully patted down the wall seeing if I could spot any gaps that could explain the turbulence in the fog that otherwise settled quite uniformly across the entire floor. Sure enough, after a minute or two of investigation I found the trigger that released a very well hidden door just slightly from the wall. A hundred people could walk past it a hundred times and not see that door when it was flush with the wall.

Moving through the door, there was a parallel corridor that ran alongside the main one. I continued down the path winding this was and that for a few minutes before I came to a dead end, but this time a much more obvious switch on this side unlatched another door back in to the main corridor. Looking back around the corner of the original corridor I saw a very old skeleton trapped under a thick slab that had clearly fallen from the ceiling above them. It looked like I was very fortunate to have found the safe route through a trap kill corridor. Thanking my luck, hoping it would not soon run out, I entered a room at the end of the corridor.

In the room it was quite spartan. There were a few carvings on the walls, and what looked like an old broken vase or urn in a small recess in the wall. Other than that, it was entirely dominated by what I guessed was a large shrine to a long lost god. I doubted whether anyone alive today would still pray to this god. From what I could tell by examining the glyphs around the base of the shrine it might have been used to pray for guidance, though I couldn't tell if it was for the person praying or for their ancestors that lay in the burial chambers beyond. I took a few minutes to reflect on the guidance it may have provided over such a long time to so many people, hopefully it helped at least some of them, though I doubted it would aid me on my current journey. Any old deity that might once have watched over this place would surely have given up by now and gone to focus on somewhere else, or just faded to history as people stopped worshipping the old gods. Feeling calmer and centred after my brief contemplation, I pushed on with renewed vigour, determined to find that stupid flower, and hopefully learn more about this place and live to tell the tale.

I came in to a large room that it wasn't immediately obvious what the purpose of it was. I spent some time trying to understand some complex carvings in otherwise still surprisingly smooth and clean walls. Something about this particular room seemed to have prevented a lot of the wear that the chambers I had passed through so far had endured. Although the inscriptions were tricky to figure out, eventually I felt like I was making progress. As it was getting late, and I seemed to be a relatively safe space, I decided to make camp and spend a good portion of the remainder of the day deciphering what I could of the inscriptions covering almost all of the walls of this large chamber.

By the time I settled down for the night, I had deduced that this room was some sort of historical lore chamber. Most of the inscriptions concerned the burial rituals of the ancient folk interned here. The rituals were unlike anything that I was familiar with from modern times. It seemed that instead of burning their dead as we do nowadays, these ancient folk preferred to store their deceased under ground, with various wealth and sustenance offerings to maintain the spirit after death as it proceeded on its journey through the afterlife. It was quite fascinating seeing how differently they treated their dead, yet how similar the reasons for it were compared to contemporary practices.

There was a more worrying section in the far corner of the chamber. It seemed to be the oldest section of the inscriptions, and concerned with the capture and containment of something or someone. Exactly what that was was not entirely clear to me. I also couldn't tell if the burial of the dead in the same areas somehow contributed to the containment of the supposedly evil, none specific force, or was just coincidence of a later civilisation. I suspect that this place could keep many scholars very busy for their entire careers and still not divulge all of it's secrets. I went to sleep filled with reverence and honour for being likely the first person in a very very long time to have experienced this place.

Mercifully I managed a relatively comfortable night sleeping in the corner of the room, my dreams filled with mystery and unattainable answers about ancient peoples that I couldn't even begin to fathom. Feeling well rested, and enjoying as best as one can cold field rations, I was well prepared for another day of skulking around dusty catacombs.

As soon as I entered the next burial chamber, I instinctively ducked slightly, hunched my shoulders and peered round. There was a strong sense of foreboding in this room that enveloped me like a bad mood miasma. Something significant happened to the people in here and they were still not happy about it. Instead of the bodies being wrapped and interned on burial slabs like the previous burial room, here the bodies were all encased in large stone boxes. There appeared to be numerous bodies in each, it appeared that a lot of people died over a short period of time and they decided to bury inter them together.

In the middle of the room there was a large pedestal on top of which stood a stone plinth with carvings covering all sides. From what I could gather while studying it for a while, it was carved in numerous languages telling the sorry tale of a village that was ravaged by a plague. Three quarters of the people died before the realised what had happened. Apparently something evil had infected their water supply, which the entire village had consumed via their well, and while rumours abound from a natural disease to a deliberate poisoning by what they called the "old ones", it sounded like no firm answers were ever forthcoming before their wised elders that could have any chance of discovering the cause all fell. At that point, they interred their dead and abandoned the village, leaving this warning to anyone who would open the graves that they would do so at their own peril.

Getting the hint (and the creeps) I decided to back out of the room and find another path. It wasn't sensible to tempt that sort of fate. Some things no adventurer should mess with.

Sneaking down a corridor I came across an area of the floor that was clearly stained in old blood. Looking around I quickly discovered the mechanism leading from the loose slab stained in blood to the not very well hidden loose rocks precariously held aloft near the ceiling. It was crude, but looked like quite an effective rock fall trap ready to squish the unaware. While I was able to spot it without blundering in to it, It didn't look simple to avoid. I need to try to disarm it.

It took a while, but I managed to jam up the mechanism that would otherwise have resulted in me being paste on top of the bloody slab like the unfortunate soul that a long time ago had preceded me. It had been a while since I had to exercise my more dextrous skills, for a moment I thought it might have beaten me, but in the end it felt like a small victory to start the day off with. I was going to be a good day, I could fell it.

As I pressed further in to the catacombs the open halls narrowed and became less frequent until I noticed that I had been wondering corridors for some time. Not one to normally worry about such things, the distinct feeling of vulnerability that started to seep in to my thoughts felt like I imagined claustrophobia felt crossed with that unshakeable feeling I was being watched. The corridors seemed to branch off at random angles, following one of them I would wind around and eventually end up back at the same corridor just a short distance from where I had left it, other times I would swear that I had already been at the junction with another corridor yet I didn't see how that could possibly have been given the path I seemingly took. It was starting to feel quite disorientating.

Taking a moment to calm myself, I pondered who would have built a maze like this underground close to the burial chambers of their fallen loved ones. It was then that I remembered the seeming dual time periods this site had been active that I discovered in the lore chamber the previous night. Perhaps this maze was nothing to do with the later used burial chambers, but more concerned with keeping people out or something in the deeper sections of this underground complex.

At that point I noticed some small glyphs etched in to the wall as it met a junction with another corridor. Checking a few junctions behind and ahead, my suspicions were confirmed as I saw multiple paths consistently noted with the same glyph. Some walls had multiple as routes overlapped while others just had a single glyph, presumably leading a path to whatever the symbol meant, yet others had no symbols at all. It wasn't obvious whether these glyphs were etched as part of the design of the labyrinthine passageways or whether some enterprising adventurer before me had inscribed them as they mapped out the tunnels. Either way, I was very glad to have a way out.

After a while I began to notice a glyph that could represent vegetation. I figured that any denizens that managed to eek out a grim existence in these forsaken halls and passageways would need to farm something. Maybe I could find some Ghostroot there. As I continued to follow that glyph though, there was a worrying coincidence with a much more imposing looking glyph. I began to get a sinking feeling as they became the only two glyphs as I was clearly heading away from the main trunk of the maze. I hoped it wasn't to become my own dead end.

As I crept in to the next room my eyes were immediately drawn to a large patch of Ghostroot, it's deathly glow illuminating a soft sickly hue in a creepy puddle across the floor. I had found what I had come here for at last, a glimmer of excitement washed over me mostly due to the thought of getting paid. The plants were growing centred within a shaft of what looked like moon light casting down from above. Weirdly though, there was not access to the surface from here, I was too far underground. Weird.

That patch of Ghostroot was nestled off to one side of an impressive looking shrine. It looked like it had seen better days, most of the detail had been lost over the years, a few shallow scratches remaining to hint at what was depicted by some ancient civilisation. The whole room looked quite nice and would have been a pleasant place to stay if it were for the Haunt shambling around the base of the shrine. No small amount of panic surged within me. I had heard about Haunts like this, supposedly they persist after death tethered to the site where they fell or some object of their rage unable to pass on until their grievances have been resolved. They can be fought, but only dismisses them for a while until the return full of rage as if nothing happened to them.

I waited until it was behind the shrine and quickly crept up to the base of the shrine on the near side ready to pounce when it came back around.

It came around the shrine shaking with unbridled rage clearly pissed at something or someone, though thankfully it looked quite weak and pathetic. I almost felt sorry for the poor thing. Almost. I leapt up and across the corner of the base of the shrine in a perfect arc, daggers held blade down in my outstretched arms. As I reached it, it just had time to create a sickening screech as I plunged the daggers as hard as I could muster in to each side of it's neck.

The thing screeched in anger, howling with rage it flailed around throwing me off of it, yet no sooner had it tossed me across the floor like a child's toy, it resumed it's circling of the shrine as if nothing had happened. Against most other foes, a twin fang leap like that would have taken it down. There was something not quite substantial about this thing. I got the impressions that this fight was not going to be over quickly.
Not giving it a chance to decide any different, I lunged at it again with both daggers.

The daggers plunged in to the barely existent form of the Haunt, tendrils of wispy matter seeming to eject from it's body as if recreating spouts of blood from where there would have been arteries. It screeched loudly once again, it's barely contained rage seemed to contain desperate pleas of mournful anguish. I could feel waves of angry bitterness and desperate sorrow exude from this poor thing.

As I tried to pull the daggers out of it, it's demeanour instantly changed. It's haunting eyes locked on mine and it grabbed my arms, pulling me towards it. Starting to panic, I pulled away as hard as I could. I let go of the daggers, it could have them if it wanted them that much, I can always get new daggers. It shrieked at me again, it's mouth staying open in an extended wailing yawn. Looking in to it's forlorn eyes, I could tell that it knew it was sticking around much longer. It flailed around in desperate anger pleading in high pitched screeches that pierced my ears. Then, as if it had reconciled what was happening to it, it stood still, calm, placid even, then it suddenly rushed towards me. I tried to dodge out of the way but it collided with me before I could move. Though it did not seem to push me in any way, it wailed as it approached, enveloped me and then with an ever increasing pitched cream, exploded away from me in all directions like a Puffbulb made from dank death.

What the fuck!

I jumped backwards, flailing my arms all over myself as if trying to brush off the ethereal mater that had enveloped me, but there was nothing there. I spat on the floor as if that would make sure nothing entered my mouth, hoping to rid myself of the stale taste of dust that seemed to be both wet and dry at the same time. I just about got ahold of myself and started to calm down when I heard a panicked scream of terror. It was me, I was wailing in anguish though not yet grasping why. Then my mind was bombarded with images, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings of a life not my own.

For what felt like an eternity my whole being was bombarded with the life experiences of another person. As it unfolded I saw the pleasant early life of a boy lucky enough to enjoy a simple, kind upbringing with the trappings afforded a family of middle class craftspeople. I saw him laugh, love, hurt and mourn through the life experiences of the young boy developing confidently in to well regarded young man. He grew close to a woman with whom he settled down with and I felt the ecstatic joy and pride that he felt as he was told that his young beautiful partner was to bear a child. I saw his best friend, having been his comrade and closest confidant since childhood beam with pride as he was asked to be his best man as he married his childhood sweetheart that was to bring his progeny in to the world. As the child was nearing birth, I felt the worry and anxiety, natural of any new parent to be, culminate in an unwise plan to try to find treasures within Surrender's End. Of course his best friend through all these years agreed to accompany him, both of them hoping to make enough money to provide security for years to come. I felt the abject terror and betrayal as his best friend cut him down from behind after they had found the treasure under the shrine that I now stood near, his hollow words now forever etched in to my brain.
"I'm sorry Ghalen, I'm really sorry" he whispered as he slinked out of the room. I didn't even see it happen, cut down from behind by a coward.
I felt the utter desolation, the unbearable grief at knowing that his beautiful Zanita would not have him there help her raise their family. I also felt the uncontrollable rage and betrayal that his best friend through his entire life could be the one to take his family.

As the onslaught subsided I collapsed to my knees, tears streaming down my face, unable to move or speak or feel anything. I slowly crumpled to the floor in a foetal position, a slow anguished moan emanating from my lips without my control. I didn't just know what had happened to this poor sod, I had lived it, experienced it with every memory, with every sensation that the wretched Haunt had held on to for who knows how long. I cried myself to sleep.
Some time later I awoke, my brain having done something to protect me, I still felt keenly the sorrow of Ghalen, but I was now able to separate it form my own existence. I found his bones behind the shrine. They looked old, his clothes now tatters around his aged skeleton. Kneeling down next to him, I swore as solemn and sincere a vow as I had ever done in my life to avenge his death and tell his story to his beloved wife.

Unfortunately Ghalen's Haunt had been a little preoccupied with the anger, hatred and desire to utterly destroy his old friend. It hadn't actually told me who this friend was, what his name was or where he lived, or really anything that might be useful it tracking the filth down and ending his miserable existence. All I knew for sure was that there was a man call Ghalen who married a woman called Zanita and his parents were bakers somewhere. It wasn't much to go on, but it was better than nothing. I resolved to keeping an eye out for any family with the name Keeara, I hoped it wasn't too common a name amongst the baking populous of these lands.

Remembering what I actually came here for, I hacked off a huge clump of Ghostroot an put it in my bag. Strange to think that something so significant can come from such a mundane task as getting some herbs. I quietly made my way back out of the large underground complex, back through the large central building and out of the cursed village in to the fresh air of the Brightwoods.
After the last couple of days in the dank under dark of that wretched place, I decided against heading straight to Daggerhaven as I had originally planned. The original idea of a quick detour to get some herbs ended up being much more than I had anticipated. After that, I decided to head back to Shark Gate, get paid and drown my sorrows at Seb's.

I must admit, I was a little put out when Fanir said casually "Oh, dear. You needn't have gone to all that trouble. I just wanted the herbs if you managed to get them easily. I am sorry you went through all of that for little old me". Little did she realise just how much effort it ended up being. It just goes to show, sometimes shit happens.