Canticle - Chapter Nine
Jul. 24th, 2024 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kalinara posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
i_read_whatSo last time, Cadderly got yelled at, Barjin was scheming, and Rufo was inexplicably described as much less "innocent" than Cadderly.
I'm still not sure I understand that one. I feel like I have to go back and reread and see if the guy did anything I missed or forgot about.
So we rejoin Cadderly as he wakes up in total darkness. He can't see anything, though he can smell dust and feel cobwebs. He tries calling for Rufo, but his voice doesn't really carry.
He's sore, his head hurts, and his tunic is crusted with blood. He has a torch, but it burned out a while ago. Damn, how long was he unconscious? Hollywood head wounds at work again, I suppose, because in real life the guy would probably be dead or suffering serious brain trauma.
Though this is a magic universe, maybe humans are sturdier here.
Cadderly's not immediately without recourse, and he pulls out a cylindrical tube that shoots out a ray of light. We saw that before! Nice Chekoving, Salvatore!
So bugs and things scurry away, and Cadderly looks around. Unfortunately, it's not great:
Cadderly examined his immediate surroundings with the light tube’s aperture wide open, mostly focusing on the shattered stairway beside him. Several stairs remained attached at the top, near the closed door, but most of the boards lay scattered about, apparently shattered by Cadderly’s heavy descent. No easy path back that way, he told himself, and he narrowed the beam to see down the greater distances. He was in a corridor, one of many crisscrossing and weaving together to form a honeycomb-type maze, judging from the many passages lining both walls. The supporting arches were similar to those of the library above, but being an earlier architectural design they were even thicker and lower, and seemed lower still covered with layers of dust, hanging webs, and promises of crawly things.
I wonder if Barjin can get back down here now.
Anyway, Cadderly notices a broken board, stained and splintered, next to him. He opens his bloody tunic, looking for a wound, but all he finds is a scab and a bruise. Cadderly, despite being a priest, hasn't really practiced medicinal arts, but he can tell that he must have had a deep wound at some point.
He wonders if Rufo came back to heal him. But there's no sign. He decides to set the riddle aside, congratulating himself on being young and strong instead. Or your player hit the respawn button, check your experience and gold, dude!
So he looks for a way to reconstruct the stairway, but has no luck. All the wood around is rotted and old, and wouldn't support his weight. Instead, he decides to go explore, noting it could be worse. True, at least you have a flashlight.
We get some more good, atmospheric description:
The walls were of brickwork in most of the passages, crushed under uncountable tonnage and cracked in many places. Bas-reliefs had worn away, the lines of an artist’s chisel filled in by the dust of centuries, the fine detail of sculptures replaced by the artwork of spiderwebs. Somewhere in the dark distance, Cadderly heard the drip of water, a dull, dead thump-thump.
Okay, I'll grant you, Salvatore, this isn't boring teenaged hijinx anymore.
Cadderly tries to figure out the catacombs. It's tricky though. The original creators had built things for an orderly purpose, but more people later on built on top and around, with new purposes and needs. So Cadderly's attempts to make sense of things keeps getting stymied.
There's quite a lot of description of winding tunnels and rat noises, and so on. Cadderly's trying to be brave and doing a decent job, but it's pretty fucking creepy. There's one point where he discovers some cool alcoves - which contain skeletons. Eek. But he has an idea of where he is now: the Crypts.
Cadderly's not a Drizzt. He's actually allowed to be pretty fucking scared here. He's trying to sublimate it, reminding himself that these are natural remains, of good men, and that one day, he'll be here too. He keeps his light trained forward and tries not to glance to the side.
Cadderly's imagination is working against him though, and he keeps imagining skeletons turning to watch him.
Aw, come on man, to misquote Regina Hall, "Would you run from Calista Flockhart?!"
(No offense intended toward Ms. Flockhart. But I do suspect Cadderly could take her in a fight.)
Cadderly does end up throwing a spindle-disk (the book probably told us what this is, but I forgot) at a rat when it's too loud. The rat dodges and the disks strike a skull, which flies off, bouncing off a wall, and landing between its own legs. Aw. Poor dead guy.
It does make Cadderly chuckle a bit at his own cowardness. He relaxes a bit until the skeleton reaches down and retrieves its head.
UM. OKAY THEN.
And indeed, the skeletons he'd past have risen and are coming toward him, arms outstretched.
...okay, admittedly, a GANG of Calista Flockharts is a scarier prospect than just one tiny woman.
He runs for it. Eventually he gets to a three-way intersection, there are skeletons already blocking the left path. He runs to the right, and the narrative tells us that he's too afraid to figure out patterns and that he doesn't realize he's being herded.
Poor dude. He ends up in another archway, this one without spiderwebs. It's a grander hall, no skeletons this time, but sarcophagi. Uh oh. Mummies are scarier than skeletons by far.
What level do clerics learn turn undead in first edition D&D? Or maybe second?
Ah, but here we go. He ends up running into a room, the door closing automatically behind him.
He was struck by the cleanliness of the room, so out of place in the rest of the dungeons. He recognized the place as a former study hall. It was similar in design and contained similar furniture to those still in use in the library proper. Several small cabinets, work tables, and free-standing two-sided bookcases sat at regular intervals in the room, and a brazier rested on a tripod along the right-hand wall. Torches burned in two sconces, and the walls were lined with bookshelves, empty except for a few scattered scrolls, yellow with age, and an occasional small sculpture, once a book end, perhaps.
Cadderly’s gaze went to the brazier first, thinking it oddly out of place, but it was the display in the center that ultimately commanded his attention.
A long, narrow table had been placed there, with a purple and crimson blanket spread over it hanging down the front and sides. Atop the table was a podium on which sat a clear bottle sealed with a large cork and filled with some red glowing substance. In front of the bottle was a silvery bowl, platinum perhaps, intricately designed and covered with strange runes.
I know you're freaked out right now, dude, but your first thought probably should be "Who lit those torches?"
He does have a head wound though, and a blue mist that makes everything feel blurry and dreamy. That can't be good.
So what's on the table?
There were designs, tridents capped by three bottles, woven into the blanket. He noticed that the bottles of the designs were similar to the real one atop the table. Cadderly thought he knew most of the major holy symbols and alliance crests of the central Realms, but that one was totally foreign. He wished he had prepared some spells that might reveal more of the strange altar, if it was an altar. Cadderly smiled at his own ineptitude. He rarely prepared any spells at all, and even when he took the time, his accomplishments with clerical magic were far from highly regarded. Cadderly was more scholar than priest, and he viewed his vows to Deneir more as an agreement of attitude and priorities than a pledge of devotion.
You can always pray and rest here, dude? But I do kind of like the acknowledgment that the poor guy SHOULD have prepared spells. I feel like anyone whose ever watched me play Neverwinter Nights would be laughing right now. Not that I've forgotten spells or anything...
And there we go...
As he approached the table, he saw that the silvery bowl was filled with a clear liquid—probably water, though Cadderly did not dare dip his fingers into it. More intrigued by the glowing bottle behind it, Cadderly meant to pay it little heed at all, but the reflection of the flask in that strange rune-covered bowl captured his attention suddenly and for some reason would not let go.
So yeah, there's definitely some mind influencing going on. And pretty soon, a voice in his mind starts telling him to open the bottle. He can't tell whether he should resist, though, to be fair, it does take a few commands before he finally does get it open.
And well:
That sound cut through the smoky confusion in the young scholar’s brain, rang out like a clarion call of reality, warning him of the risk he had taken, but it was too late.
Red smoke poured out of the flask, engulfing Cadderly and spreading to fill the room. Cadderly realized his error at once and he moved to replace the cork, but watching from behind the cabinet, an unseen enemy was already at work.
Oops. But I think the sequence was pretty well done. It's pretty clear that Cadderly wasn't stupid or arrogant enough to just open a random bottle. He was being influenced, and given that we saw Barjin influence Rufo earlier, it seems reasonable.
And I appreciate that Cadderly's first instinct is to immediately try to recork the bottle. Fair. Unfortunately, he's not alone. A man appears, commanding him to stop and using sleep and paralysis spells to make sure that he can't proceed. He falls unconscious and the scene shifts.
Barjin's our viewpoint character now. He'd been hiding in a cabinet with poor Mullivy, which is endearingly undignified to picture.
He examines Cadderly but decided not to take anything from it. We do get some character shilling though, where we're told that "unlike the other, [Cadderly] was strong of mind and will, and would unconsciously battle such a spell." He thinks missing items might cause Cadderly to figure out what's been blocked in his own mind.
Poor Rufo.
Barjin considers killing Cadderly immediately. And well, it makes sense. Why take the risk of leaving him alive at all? But he thinks Talona wouldn't approve, it'd be better to let the man see the destruction he'd completed.
Instead, Mullivy is ordered to carry Cadderly and get back to the wine cellar. They have a curse to complete.
The chapter ends here.
I'm still not sure I understand that one. I feel like I have to go back and reread and see if the guy did anything I missed or forgot about.
So we rejoin Cadderly as he wakes up in total darkness. He can't see anything, though he can smell dust and feel cobwebs. He tries calling for Rufo, but his voice doesn't really carry.
He's sore, his head hurts, and his tunic is crusted with blood. He has a torch, but it burned out a while ago. Damn, how long was he unconscious? Hollywood head wounds at work again, I suppose, because in real life the guy would probably be dead or suffering serious brain trauma.
Though this is a magic universe, maybe humans are sturdier here.
Cadderly's not immediately without recourse, and he pulls out a cylindrical tube that shoots out a ray of light. We saw that before! Nice Chekoving, Salvatore!
So bugs and things scurry away, and Cadderly looks around. Unfortunately, it's not great:
Cadderly examined his immediate surroundings with the light tube’s aperture wide open, mostly focusing on the shattered stairway beside him. Several stairs remained attached at the top, near the closed door, but most of the boards lay scattered about, apparently shattered by Cadderly’s heavy descent. No easy path back that way, he told himself, and he narrowed the beam to see down the greater distances. He was in a corridor, one of many crisscrossing and weaving together to form a honeycomb-type maze, judging from the many passages lining both walls. The supporting arches were similar to those of the library above, but being an earlier architectural design they were even thicker and lower, and seemed lower still covered with layers of dust, hanging webs, and promises of crawly things.
I wonder if Barjin can get back down here now.
Anyway, Cadderly notices a broken board, stained and splintered, next to him. He opens his bloody tunic, looking for a wound, but all he finds is a scab and a bruise. Cadderly, despite being a priest, hasn't really practiced medicinal arts, but he can tell that he must have had a deep wound at some point.
He wonders if Rufo came back to heal him. But there's no sign. He decides to set the riddle aside, congratulating himself on being young and strong instead. Or your player hit the respawn button, check your experience and gold, dude!
So he looks for a way to reconstruct the stairway, but has no luck. All the wood around is rotted and old, and wouldn't support his weight. Instead, he decides to go explore, noting it could be worse. True, at least you have a flashlight.
We get some more good, atmospheric description:
The walls were of brickwork in most of the passages, crushed under uncountable tonnage and cracked in many places. Bas-reliefs had worn away, the lines of an artist’s chisel filled in by the dust of centuries, the fine detail of sculptures replaced by the artwork of spiderwebs. Somewhere in the dark distance, Cadderly heard the drip of water, a dull, dead thump-thump.
Okay, I'll grant you, Salvatore, this isn't boring teenaged hijinx anymore.
Cadderly tries to figure out the catacombs. It's tricky though. The original creators had built things for an orderly purpose, but more people later on built on top and around, with new purposes and needs. So Cadderly's attempts to make sense of things keeps getting stymied.
There's quite a lot of description of winding tunnels and rat noises, and so on. Cadderly's trying to be brave and doing a decent job, but it's pretty fucking creepy. There's one point where he discovers some cool alcoves - which contain skeletons. Eek. But he has an idea of where he is now: the Crypts.
Cadderly's not a Drizzt. He's actually allowed to be pretty fucking scared here. He's trying to sublimate it, reminding himself that these are natural remains, of good men, and that one day, he'll be here too. He keeps his light trained forward and tries not to glance to the side.
Cadderly's imagination is working against him though, and he keeps imagining skeletons turning to watch him.
Aw, come on man, to misquote Regina Hall, "Would you run from Calista Flockhart?!"
(No offense intended toward Ms. Flockhart. But I do suspect Cadderly could take her in a fight.)
Cadderly does end up throwing a spindle-disk (the book probably told us what this is, but I forgot) at a rat when it's too loud. The rat dodges and the disks strike a skull, which flies off, bouncing off a wall, and landing between its own legs. Aw. Poor dead guy.
It does make Cadderly chuckle a bit at his own cowardness. He relaxes a bit until the skeleton reaches down and retrieves its head.
UM. OKAY THEN.
And indeed, the skeletons he'd past have risen and are coming toward him, arms outstretched.
...okay, admittedly, a GANG of Calista Flockharts is a scarier prospect than just one tiny woman.
He runs for it. Eventually he gets to a three-way intersection, there are skeletons already blocking the left path. He runs to the right, and the narrative tells us that he's too afraid to figure out patterns and that he doesn't realize he's being herded.
Poor dude. He ends up in another archway, this one without spiderwebs. It's a grander hall, no skeletons this time, but sarcophagi. Uh oh. Mummies are scarier than skeletons by far.
What level do clerics learn turn undead in first edition D&D? Or maybe second?
Ah, but here we go. He ends up running into a room, the door closing automatically behind him.
He was struck by the cleanliness of the room, so out of place in the rest of the dungeons. He recognized the place as a former study hall. It was similar in design and contained similar furniture to those still in use in the library proper. Several small cabinets, work tables, and free-standing two-sided bookcases sat at regular intervals in the room, and a brazier rested on a tripod along the right-hand wall. Torches burned in two sconces, and the walls were lined with bookshelves, empty except for a few scattered scrolls, yellow with age, and an occasional small sculpture, once a book end, perhaps.
Cadderly’s gaze went to the brazier first, thinking it oddly out of place, but it was the display in the center that ultimately commanded his attention.
A long, narrow table had been placed there, with a purple and crimson blanket spread over it hanging down the front and sides. Atop the table was a podium on which sat a clear bottle sealed with a large cork and filled with some red glowing substance. In front of the bottle was a silvery bowl, platinum perhaps, intricately designed and covered with strange runes.
I know you're freaked out right now, dude, but your first thought probably should be "Who lit those torches?"
He does have a head wound though, and a blue mist that makes everything feel blurry and dreamy. That can't be good.
So what's on the table?
There were designs, tridents capped by three bottles, woven into the blanket. He noticed that the bottles of the designs were similar to the real one atop the table. Cadderly thought he knew most of the major holy symbols and alliance crests of the central Realms, but that one was totally foreign. He wished he had prepared some spells that might reveal more of the strange altar, if it was an altar. Cadderly smiled at his own ineptitude. He rarely prepared any spells at all, and even when he took the time, his accomplishments with clerical magic were far from highly regarded. Cadderly was more scholar than priest, and he viewed his vows to Deneir more as an agreement of attitude and priorities than a pledge of devotion.
You can always pray and rest here, dude? But I do kind of like the acknowledgment that the poor guy SHOULD have prepared spells. I feel like anyone whose ever watched me play Neverwinter Nights would be laughing right now. Not that I've forgotten spells or anything...
And there we go...
As he approached the table, he saw that the silvery bowl was filled with a clear liquid—probably water, though Cadderly did not dare dip his fingers into it. More intrigued by the glowing bottle behind it, Cadderly meant to pay it little heed at all, but the reflection of the flask in that strange rune-covered bowl captured his attention suddenly and for some reason would not let go.
So yeah, there's definitely some mind influencing going on. And pretty soon, a voice in his mind starts telling him to open the bottle. He can't tell whether he should resist, though, to be fair, it does take a few commands before he finally does get it open.
And well:
That sound cut through the smoky confusion in the young scholar’s brain, rang out like a clarion call of reality, warning him of the risk he had taken, but it was too late.
Red smoke poured out of the flask, engulfing Cadderly and spreading to fill the room. Cadderly realized his error at once and he moved to replace the cork, but watching from behind the cabinet, an unseen enemy was already at work.
Oops. But I think the sequence was pretty well done. It's pretty clear that Cadderly wasn't stupid or arrogant enough to just open a random bottle. He was being influenced, and given that we saw Barjin influence Rufo earlier, it seems reasonable.
And I appreciate that Cadderly's first instinct is to immediately try to recork the bottle. Fair. Unfortunately, he's not alone. A man appears, commanding him to stop and using sleep and paralysis spells to make sure that he can't proceed. He falls unconscious and the scene shifts.
Barjin's our viewpoint character now. He'd been hiding in a cabinet with poor Mullivy, which is endearingly undignified to picture.
He examines Cadderly but decided not to take anything from it. We do get some character shilling though, where we're told that "unlike the other, [Cadderly] was strong of mind and will, and would unconsciously battle such a spell." He thinks missing items might cause Cadderly to figure out what's been blocked in his own mind.
Poor Rufo.
Barjin considers killing Cadderly immediately. And well, it makes sense. Why take the risk of leaving him alive at all? But he thinks Talona wouldn't approve, it'd be better to let the man see the destruction he'd completed.
Instead, Mullivy is ordered to carry Cadderly and get back to the wine cellar. They have a curse to complete.
The chapter ends here.
no subject
Date: 2024-07-25 12:59 pm (UTC)Or something. I dunno.
no subject
Date: 2024-07-25 02:23 pm (UTC)It's interesting how with Barjin and Cadderly, we're seeing different sides of bad clericking. That said, I'm not sure Cadderly's bad at it, so much as he's simply at like level 1 or 2 at best right now. I suspect he'll improve.
(It does make Aballister an interesting contrast to both, since he is a wizard, but seems to have more sincere religious faith than either of the two clerics at the moment.)