Skulls' Crossing

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Episode no.	Episode 55
Date	2009
Game Master	Abbe
Characters	Dorothea Gloriana Honeypot Nell Velicia
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The villagers told us that the flood must have come from a dam upstreams called Sculls Crossing. I asked if it had been broken but they told us that it was a huge, old building from the old times and that it couldn't be destroyed, but if it was the whole town would be washed away. Still, something must be wrong there. We got ready to go there so we could see what had happened. I asked Kaven to make me some food for the trip while I readied my equipment for traveling. When we were about to go Velicia said we had to use her ritual to make strange horses appear from nowhere. They were faster than real horses and could run on water. We rode along the same road as to Fort Rannick but stayed along the river. It ran down a weird canyon. I couldn't tell why it seemed weird. It just did. Velicia wanted to ride over the water so when the road winded lower and closer to the water she jumped out onto the surface. I stayed on the road but tried ride through some rough terrain next to the road just to try it.

When we spotted the big dam from afar we stopped and Honeypot cast the telepathy ritual. We continued more carefully towards the dam. It was covered by sculls and had five especially big sculls that was some kind of ports for water. There was some damage done to it and water running through a shallow crack. There were some tiny creature moving about on top of it. We continued up the road. After a while it turned into stairs. They led into a tunnel. Now everyone except Velicia dismounted and sneaked inwards. The tunnel tuned and led to a 10 foot hight steep incline. Above we could hear some movement. It tuned out to be a bear. The others started climbing and said they also saw an ettin. There was fighting up there, but I couldn't see what happened. What I guess was the ettin talked in some strange language. Then a big bear fell down to where I was and the last of the others climbed up, except Velicia who teleported. I threw a knife into the bear and climbed up past it too. As soon as I got up the ettin cast a spell on us and awful black evil spirits attacked and I fell back down to bear. Quickly I climbed back up and and killed the ettin. The others soon killed the bears.

We searched the caves and I found bags that had belonged to rangers and some mostly eaten remains of smoked ranger. Gloriana said
"So that's what the ettin was talking about when he said something about bribed."
We continued along the tunnels and it led up to the dam. I sneaked up to the entrance, and then the others followed. There, we saw that the tiny creatures we had seen were lots of ogres out on the dam trying to break it with picks. One was shouting at the others. It seemed to be the leader and the others just workers.

We discussed how we should fight them. At the entrance or out on the dam. In the end we just ran out there surprising them. I missed with my dagger, but Gloriana killed several and Dorothea even more. She cast some strange magic that killed more than half of them. After we had killed their leader the few left ran. Checking the corpses we noted that many of them had torches and several still warm.

We now had taken the dam from the ogres, but there was the water flowing over it and if we couldn't stop it, it would probably break. I had no idea of how a dam works and especially not that huge, ancient dam. Velicia thought about it and said that she had heard about it before:
"It's guarded by trolls and an ettin..."
"We shouldn't have killed the ettin." Honeypot said.
"It wasn't any good guard if it's that easy to bribe with dead rangers." Gloriana said.
"Dead smoked rangers." Dorothea added.

We continued on along the top of the dam to what we thought to be a control tower. It was shaped like a scull. The builders didn't have much imagination. Everything was scullshaped. There were two double doors on each side of the scull. One had been blocked. The holes for eyes and mouth were open holes as strangely shaped windows. We climbed up to the holes, me to the eye to the left. It was high up but quite easily climbed and I did it stealthily. I hid behind a curtain of green plants that was covering most of the walls. Inside was what I would guess was a troll-ettin crossbreed. Not the most successful of creatures as it was quarreling with itself. Honeypot spoke up and tried to befriend it but it got angry and charged. We attacked it and soon it was bleeding heavily. Gloriana yelled threats at it and it gave up. We talked with it asking about the dam but it was very stupid and knew nothing of how it worked. We tried to tell it we were trying to help.
"We help. We killed ogres."
"Look outside."
"FOOD!" both of the heads shouted.
The troll left for the dead ogres out on the dam and we entered the room. From the door we could vaguely hear other trolls banging the door, shouting something in giantish. There was a window overlooking the canyon and the river, but I knew there were more windows out there. We tied a rope around my waist and I climbed out the window. It was easy to climb the wall as it was covered with sculls. I climbed over and peeked into another room. It was empty so I climbed in. After I had tied the rope inside the others got a real easy climb and followed. There was a big door but it wouldn't be any favorable situation if we had to fight our way through. I remembered more windows along the wall outside so I climbed out on the wall again and sneaked up to the next window. That room was also empty. We did the same thing again, but Dorothea didn't want to climb so she forced the door open. It was lots of hard work, but she thought it was safer. There were several big doors but only the loudest of sounds would be heard through them. On the double doors in the middle some text was written. The other said it was in giantish and said:
"Below dwells Wet Papa Grazuul. All hail to Papa Grazuul!"
First we looked behind one of the side doors. It was an empty hallway leading out and to the room where we thought the trolls was. There were signs of previous fighting. Probably the ogres had passed through there. We shut the door and peeked through the double doors. A set of stairs led down.

The stairs ended in another set of doors and behind was a big room with a pool with really icky water with some oily yellowish stuff floating in it. There was four more doors and some strange alcoves in the other end of the room. There also was some weird stuff painted on the wall between the alcoves. We went along the walls around the room and saw that in the alcove there were bars and behind them, a circle surrounding a demon. It looked very weak. I hid in a corner near a door. Velicia said that the demon was a pit fiend.

A sneaky troll suddenly attacked me from behind. I got really hurt when it stabbed me with a hayfork. I even got stuck but slipped away. Everyone charged it so I tried a new move by slipping in under the big thing and held on, stabbing it wildly. Velicia finally killed it and it turned into water and splashed down. It slowly poured into the pool.

The others read what they said was magical instructions on wall. Gloriana talked to the demon but got bored and went and opened the door to a room on the other side from the one Grazuul came from. I tried asking the demon how long it had been there but it didn't answer so I also got bored by the uncooperative demon and followed Gloriana. The room had a small model of the whole dam. I went over there and fiddled with it. It was a working toy, but sadly not controlling the dam but showing the effects of the controls. In the central room they finally figured out that creatures placed in the magical circles was drained of power. That powered an automatic system that regulated the ports or something. Dorothea muttered something looking at the wall. Then she stepped into the other circle. Things happened and the water started flushing through the pools. I noted that the troll "Wet Papa Grazuul" had been regenerating in one of the pools but was now flushed out. I hope it will meet the Black Magga. I checked the model and it had opened the small dam ports.

When we left we could see that the lake appeared to be artificial and was actually an old stenbrott from the time when the dam was built.