[SirFozzie]

Chapter The First: The Frantic Four and the Goblin Tower (part two)

So, having possibly given their location away, the party knew that speed was now of the essence if they wanted to properly investigate the tower... making a beeline for it.. to find it.. pretty much empty? The door stood ajar and no goblins were in sight!

They made their way inside, and other than a torch crackling away, the barracks floor was empty, except for a large winding staircase along the wall of the tower. Alexandras felt some kind of large arcane power above them, while even the non-magical Jeremy felt the "heebie-jeebies" that set his skin on edge. the party started slowly climbing the stairs.. and out of nowhere a pair of matched wolves leaped on Jeremy, nearly knocking him off the platform entirely (safety rails, of course, being a non-goblin idea). The battle was short, but Jeremy took several wounds before the party managed to dispatch the wolves. Jeremy noticed the shadow of something along the wall, and took it slowly.. a voice from above, speaking Common said.. "I seek parley..."

Well, Jeremy was born, but he wasn't born yesterday, and he did advance, slowly.. and was rewarded for his forbearance by seeing the vial of alchemist's fire flying in, throwing himself forward before it broke and spilled its fire on the wooden landing, setting it ablaze, and seperating Jeremy from the rest of the party.. Alexandras actually came up with a novel use for a cantrip as a couple rounds of rays of frost put the fire out enough for the party to join Jemremy, who was still edging up the stairs , fearing another vial of fire.

When Jeremy got to the room on the top floor, he found a Goblin wizard puttering at a glowing portal (!)

"Master told me right right rune codes. yes. STAR X "BENDY THING" HOOK ZETA KAMA FLAME HART.. YES.. YES.. SUMMON TRIBE YES YES"

The Goblin Wizard... really should have written down the code, because as Jeremy advanced towards the goblin and the portal, it shimmered to life.. but not the translucent blue the goblin wizard was expecting, but an inky dark black. A black that was darker then the void. The portal had been opened, but not to the location of the rest of the Tribe.. but to a place that should not be. A place that was. And a place immical to things on this side of the portal.

Inky black tentacles reached through the portal, questing for anything it could grab. The goblin wizard screeched in terror, and ran to a nearby ladder to the roof, throwing it open and climbing out as quickly as it could.

Jeremy decided that if he could remove the runes, the portal would close, and at first it seemed like his theory was correct as the portal shimmered, and closed for a milisecond (leaving the tips of several black tentacles writhing on the ground before dissolving into foul nothingness as they were severed by the portal's close), but the outer runes still glowed and the portal was forced open again.

Dagon had a semi-bright idea.. this was a portal to another plane of existence, similar to the one that his Fell Gods slept in, so surely if he called out across to the planes to Those Who Lie Dreaming In Shadow, they would help punish this pretender.

The GM allowed it, asking him to make a Knowledge (Old Religions) roll to positively identify the extra-dimensional source (as all good Warlocks know, the NAME of something is very important). Unfortunately for Dagon's player, he rolled a 1. Enraged, several large tentacles burst out of the portal and grabbed him, attempting to drag him into the portal.. doing a pretty decent amount of Void damage to the player. Apparently he had, misnamed his enemy and thus attracted its emnity.

Jeremy severed a couple more tentacles, and yelled at Alexandras "You're the Wizard! You have to know how to close it."

Right about then, Alexandras really wished she had taken better notes in the short lesson her ex-Master had given her about how Portals worked. She managed to piece enough together that two of the key rune locations was "Location A" and "Location B". By reversing them, she could end the portal, since there was no power source at the otherside to keep the portal open.

She grabbed the two rune stones, pulled them from their locations, and switched them.

If her Master saw it, he would immediately have told her that was.. not a good idea. If he could have couched it in futurish terms, it would have been called reversing the polarity. In modern terms, it would be like taking a modern race car running at 200 miles per hour, and then immediately trying to run it 200 miles per hour.. in reverse.. in one second.

In his unique terms, he would have smacked her up side the head and yelled "YOU FOOL, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE?" The remaining runes on the portal burst into flames so intense that they immediately started melting from the heat. The sense of arcane energy grew, and a crackling noise started issuing from the portal.

"Um.. what just happened?" Jeremy asked.

"Er.. ah.. I think we should. er.. run" Alexandras said.

The party was as united as always as they ran.. in different directions. Demeter and Dagon immediately started down the stairs, while Jeremy raced to the ladder and headed up where the Goblin Wizard had gone. Alexandras lived up to her nature, she also started for the stairs, but stopped at the top of the landing.. and looked back to the portal. "I CAN FIX IT.. ALL I NEED TO DO IS..."

BLAMMMOOOO!!!