Hope Devoured

The adamantine doors open to an enormous hall, 80 feet high, you can’t even see the ceiling. Three pillars support three bridges and there are 10 double doors, 5 on each side. As we carefully enter, I feel a draft of air coming from the doors on the far left. Eira tries a different set of doors, but they lead nowhere, there’s just a wall behind them. Looking a bit closer I can see some faint marks on the floor leading to the doors where that draft comes from, so we head in that direction. We open the doors and move into the hall behind. There’s a beautiful 20-foot fresco of dwarves battling orcs and goblins. It’s beautiful. Oh my god, this is everything, what a beautiful painting. I could stay here forever. Eira loves it, too, and Charlotte and Kallista are also totally into it.

When Pyotr starts to attack the painting, I try to grab him, but he’s too fast and burns me with some magic. Ouch! Eira lights up her hands and attacks Pyotr, too, and Charlotte does not hold back either. Why did he have to attack the painting? Grugni shoots at the painting, and I feel very weird all of a sudden. Why would I attack my friend over a painting? Charlotte explains this was a very powerful charm, and almost all of us fell for it, but now it is slowly draining from the painting where Grugni managed to hit it. Good, it seems we are safe for now. We rest a bit and heal up in anticipation of more dangers.

We move up the stairs from within the room next to this one and come to the bridges high up we saw earlier from below. There’s a beautiful mosaic here, but we learn nothing from it. At least it does not make us attack each other again. Now, here we have three bridges, one with a gap, the other two chipped and cracked in places, but at least in one piece. Eira picks the rightmost bridge and before she goes to investigate the door on the other side, we hook her up with a rope and secure her. She can’t open the door, so Pyotr follows her, and the bridge becomes more and more brittle. This is not good. He is not able to open the door either. After a bit of debating we remember that all of this is of dwarven make, and maybe only a dwarf can actually open the doors. That’s it! Grugni makes it safely to the other side and is able to simply push the door open. Both go in to investigate, and we hear a pling sound. They seem to be discussing something, and Eira sounds a bit pissed to be honest. Haha, what else is new! But suddenly there is a much louder clang sound, and something must have happened. I feel a lot healthier suddenly as if nothing could harm me. That’s probably fine, nothing to worry about. Everyone else feels much healthier, too, and no one is worrying, either. I guess I’ll book that as a win.

It’s much harder to get to the second door for Grugni despite our rope tricks trying to pull him to jump farther across the gap of the middle bridge. He almost falls down, but is able to hold on to the ledge. With Pyotr’s help, who had magically jumped across already, he gets back up. Also the middle doors open to Grugni’s touch. There’s some armored statues in there, and an inscription reading “Three secrets never before told will part Dumathoin’s lips”. Pyotr and Grugni try a few things, but get nowhere. I don’t understand why they do not simply do what is written there. Just tell a secret. I guess I have to help them, and I join them in the room. Well, I don’t really want to, but we have to get to the gold, so I will just tell what I have never told anyone before: that I don’t remember my childhood. A glyph lights up, which confirms we’re on the right track. Pyotr says that he did not share with us some of the loot he took because he wanted it for his street urchins. I’m not even mad. It probably wasn’t that much either. Another symbol lights up, great, so now we need a third secret. Eira is still elsewhere and Grugni is weirdly quiet, so I try to say another secret. I had gotten a job to kill an old man, but I just couldn’t. Something did not feel right. I tell them that I ran and fled the city from the mercenary group I was with until then. Pyotr looks a bit shocked. Maybe that is what they call oversharing? No symbols lights up. Looks like it was for nothing, although I’m sure I never told this to anyone. So Eira has to come over and tell a secret. She says she regularly drinks or sniffs the tinctures she uses when she works on the dead because that gives her a high. That sounds fun, although I prefer to just drink beer and liquor. Maybe I should try that some time. Oh, wow! It actually worked! The third symbol lights up, and we get access to a winding staircase down to some place deeper in the vault.

Before we go down though we want to explore the third bridge and room behind it. Grugni almost falls again, and Pyotr has to help him get up now for the second time. He seems a bit wobbly on his legs, I wonder if he skipped leg day a few times too many. Anyways, after a short while there is a blinding light coming out of the room, and they scream in shock. I think they’re doing something stupid, but emerge seemingly unharmed. In the end, the whole group makes it to the middle room and we prepare to go down the dark stairs.

I still feel a bit weird from telling the secrets, but no one really seems to make a big deal out of it. Good. I hope they forget about it again, I think, as I go down the stairs first, followed by Pyotr, Charlotte, Grugni, Eira, and Kallista. It takes a while, but after a hundred or so feet we start to see a faint light. Eira picks up a weird scent, something swamp-like and acidic just before we arrive at the bottom of the stairwell. I don’t like it. There’s a corridor with iron gates at the left and right end of it. We inspect the right side and wow! There is a huge pile of gold in a large chamber behind the gate. Just to be on the safe side we also inspect the left gate, checking for pressure plates and tripwires, and finally decide to open the gate to go in one after another. It’s quiet here, but I notice some of the gold moving. It’s almost as if something is buried in the pile of gold and breathing. I wonder what it could be? Eira motions for us to go back into the corridor. She looks really worried, and she gives us a short lecture about dragons. Oh well. Scary shit, but also… a real dragon!

In the end, we decide to go in, and hope to be able to negotiate. Help the dragon break free or something, and if all goes to shit we will have to fight or maybe flee. Suddenly the motion stops and it is even more quiet than before. I think the dragon noticed us. We start to negotiate, but that dragon is a real motherfucker. They have black scales, go by the name of Fate Flight - Devourer of Hope, and seem to be really angry. Something feels weird though. They said something weird, and I can’t really put my finger on it. It’s like when you look straight at something and don’t see it, but when you look out of the corner of your eye you can see something moving. Just shapes, no color. I remember now, they asked me: “Does the old man give you these ideas?” What old man? Can it be? The only thing that makes sense, and I can’t stop thinking about, is the that one old man I was told to kill. But when I raised my axe, I just couldn’t. There was a picture in my head, a feeling of familiarity. Another picture: a wolf, the smell of fur. I did not bring down my axe on him, and let that man escape instead. That’s when I ran away. And that man did not seem the least bit afraid. It’s strange. He reminded me of someone, or some place. Did I know him? Or the wolf? I just can’t remember. If this ugly beast knows something, I have to get it out of him. Damn it, why can’t I remember?