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The Story

Anyway, there we were with this frilly kid, when Ariel went to grab it and it slipped right out of her hands.  That is when we learned a few things.

First, the kid was a boy, not a girl.

Second, he had a bad attitude and had probably caused the wraith attack by stirring things up and poking around into magic that was collapsing.

Third, he had been enchanted so that no one could grab or take him.  Guess it makes sense as an anti-kidnapping spell, but sheesh, have you ever tried to get an unruly and misbehaved child safely through danger if you can't hold on to them to make them stay put or behave?  It was going to be a long and dangerous trip, if we survived.

The other enchantment placed on him made him a real know-it-all.  A knowledge rune spell.  This one gave him historical and informational details on things as we encountered them.  He would drone on about all sorts of things -- and he didn't know enough to understand what he was talking about or to sift out the useful information from the dross.  I couldn't tell if this was going to be useful or a pain.

We were at the dead end of what looked like an alley filled with trash and bones, closed over at the top, and walled by ruined buildings.  There were a couple three-flickering glass wraiths and we took care of them and decided to rest and think -- in spite of the kid giving us a lecture on how the bricks had been made that the buildings were made of and the nature of the moss and such that grew on them.  

A rest, even trying to ignore him, would have been fine, but some of the bones came to life (so-to-speak).

The entire place was uneasy, creepy.  The skeletons were a surprise, but fairly easy to deal with as long as you remembered not to thrust.  Thrusts seemed not to harm them at all, and magic was ok, but sure could have done more.

After we stopped that, we needed a rest to just get things settled and to decide where to go next.  We expected to be in for a long haul when we left the alley and needed to make some decisions.  Just as we decided to take some naps, with each of us taking turns watching out, that darn boy took off "to explore."  I heard him scream.  Some of the moss on the sides of one of the buildings came to life.

Great.  The wraiths I can see coming.  The bones seem to come to life only after there have been wraiths killed in the area or where there is a large pile of bones.  Spot a large pile, count on some skeletons.  But now we've got moss coming off the sides of the buildings.  Gargh, I hate moss.

On the other hand, we were on the very outer edges of the path to the city's heart.  We couldn't get back out the way we fell in -- that part had collapsed.  You could tell that the secret places we were in were fading away and collapsing.  There wasn't enough new life in them, though I did expect to encounter something or other that was actually organized and exploring.  I figured we could use some glamour to hide from anything like that and maybe learn something.

I did remember one thing from when I served a city, and took the counter-clockwise path -- the one that would lead us in to the center (and out from there) rather than the other direction.  It seemed pretty obvious, and at this juncture going the other way you could see was just climbing into collapsing mists and bricks, but we could have taken a lot of time trying to work through that treacherous maze if I hadn't remembered that lesson.  We might have found something useful in there, but we might have just wasted a lot of time.

We carefully followed the linking alleys inward, hiding from some spiderkin, fighting some more wraiths and skeletons, until we got to a cross roads formed where a building had collapsed and a pile of rubble opened a hole down to the next ring of the web that was the maze.

We had our first serious test there as the bricks came to life.

We watched it at a distance, but it wasn't pleasant to see.  Some spiderkin were trying to sneak past the big pile of rubble through the hole.  We had caught on that the spiderkin were looking for some specific colors of moss.  The kid had turned out to be useful, green moss was good against poison, orange moss washed out fatigue, red moss restored magic points. Ariel tried them all out since she is immune to poison.  Would have been nice to find some moss that healed injuries, but we did that with our magic.  We saved some of the moss up for the future, but pretty much cleared everything out in the six miles or so of alleyways we travelled, one after another in a crazy quilt of passages, small open places and tight places.

Back to the spiderkin. Those bricks suddenly stirred and formed into a small giant made of bricks and old vines.  It smashed the spiderkin flat.

At that point, I got a bright idea.  We had pretty much laid all the wraiths and bones to rest that we had met.  The only things we hadn't put at peace were whatever was in the tag end of the web and that thing made out of bricks (the spiderkin didn't count, they seemed to be trespassers just like us, though from another direction).  When I had been a city spirit I knew that coursing the passages usually required a complete circuit of the city at each level unless something was wrong. Something was obviously wrong here, not to mention the circuits were collapsing.  I just bet we could weaken whatever the brick monster was by making sure the rest of the level was at peace.  Ariel didn't want to walk the six miles back, but I figured I could fly that -- as long as I had that moss to chew on that cleansed fatigue.  Since we didn't have any other use for it, I took a bunch and made the flight.

It was easy to take care of things there.  I just set them on fire and walked on in.  There were some nasty things inside, but they all went up in smoke.  Hidden in a corner was a circlet, kind of like a halo in a picture, only you wear it on your head. I grabbed that and flew back.  Now we were ready for the brick creature.  I wasn't sure if it was a troll or a golem or a what, but we needed to figure out what to do about it.  Especially since the entire circuit was now starting to collapse.  Slowly, but steadily.  The collapse was weakening the thing, but at the same time, by the time it was completely weakened, we wouldn't be there, having been collapsed ourselves.

I tried some fire, but that just made warm spots.  Ariel tried some cold, but that just made cold spots.  We could see that where the spiderkin had struck at it they had done some damage, but we didn't think we were going to do that much more before it turned us into splatters.

Then we got a great idea.  If I hit it with fire and then Ariel hit the hot spot with cold, it shattered.  The darn thing noticed us too, but we had a start.  We would cast spells and move as it pursued us.  Suddenly I could hear the collapsing sound behind us.  I was ready to stand and fight but Ariel goosed me and we moved through glamor, standing and fighting but with the creature between us and the collapse.

I also discovered that the vines were prone to both burning and being cut.  The bricks might be really tough, but the vines were only tough.

We put up a flurry of blows that confused it for just a moment.  Instead of running, suddenly we were on it in an almost berserk attack.  For a bit.  Long enough for the edge of the collapse to catch at it, then we ran.  It turned to fight the collapse and was swallowed up in it.  Good thing we were running, the collapse started to speed up.  I burst into flames and started flying.  Ariel told the kid to grab her.  If he grabbed her his magic didn't make him slide off.  I might fly fast, but she is like lightening, so to speak.

We made it through as the rumble sealed the way behind us.

The bones are the remains of the first victims of the vampires, cast into hidden alleys that served as dumping grounds and abattoirs .  The spirits embody as wraiths, but the city is their limiting locus.  Sometimes the bones are restless.  Thrusting damage does the minimum to a skeleton, magic does half damage, crushing blows (a club, a staff, a mace) do.  There are also moss trolls (as trolls, but half the STR, CON and mass SIZ of normal trolls (same SIZ for reach). Encounters this area: Glass wraiths Moss Trolls Restless Bones (simple skeletons, unarmed but dangerous) brittle bones old bones Skeletons (armed) restless, but with weapons and some equipment enchanted, with armor and weapons Spiderkin -- exploring males light skirmishers recon patrol Spirit infested brick (kind of like a brick troll).  1/4 damage from fire or cold, 1/2 damage from anything but hammers and maces. Encounters in the tag end Spider Mites Giant Ticks (hungry/weak) "Dust Devils" (like small shades, only they attack with dust vs. CON, doing 1d6 if they succeed, 1d3 if they fail) Final Encounter Brick Troll.  No chaos gifts.  STR 10d6, CON 9d6, SIZ (mass) 8d6, SIZ (reach) 7d6, POW 6d6, DEX 5d6, APP 4d6, INT 10 (fixed), 12 points armor, 24 points vs. magic attacks unless they are paired opposites, then 0 points vs. magic attacks.

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