Difference between revisions of "The Danger Gang Polish Off Boothrotum Maybe?"

Latest revision as of 07:56, 7 July 2009

After a little rest in town, the Danger Gang feels ready to continue taking on this mysterious Jewish dungeon. Strangely, Karl doesn't remember the last eight hours or so. But the good news is, he's amped up to raid this crypt.

Once again, Zombres distracts as the others sneak past the Golem. They hear a strange clacking noise inside as it wheedles through the hole. They'll think more about it later. The other guys meanwhile fight a very large, very mean looking snake. They're a bit overwhelmed at first, but eventually they take it out. They proceed down the hallway from which the snake emerged. There they are confronted by a glowing, wailing man. He shoots out blinding beams of light and doubly, permanently blinding flashes of light. Gershom and Zombres are both permanently blinded. Though blind, Gershom fishes out a darkstone from his pack which hopefully will make future flashes less effective. Eventually they take him out, but they need to rest. They head back to the area right next to where they came in. They can see the golem eying them. He looks anxious to pick a fight, or maybe he would if his face could betray any emotion.

Luckily, Gershom is able to successfully cast Cure Blindness on both himself and Zombres. Who needs two arms? They continue exploring. Next thing they find is a rotting corpse. It resembles the wailing, glowing man they encountered. Most of his stuff is pretty rotten at this point. The only things they find intact are a couple of gold pieces, a letter, and a stone mace with a chip missing. The mace has a bunch of Egyptian symbols on it. The letter reads (in a jumble of Hebrew and Greek, with some Latin thrown in):

To his royal Majesty King Machr of Narbon, from his humble servant Kalonymos.
The emperor having lost much of his power through his silly feud with the sons of Amon, and,   
more fatally, through the massacre of the peers at Rosenvala, he has sent your humble narrator 
in search of some way of preserving the imperium. My quest has brought me to the distant
province of Illyria, here to seek something that we, if not he, has been missing for some
centuries. It appears that the men of Issakar have always "understood the times" and preserved,
in exile, knowledge that was systematized and guarded in some fashion by a man called Jabulon.
This is all stuff you will want to be appraised of, and will certainly want to investigate in
greater detail should the perils of adventuring cut short my sojourn on this world. The half
decayed and abandoned scrolls here give enough information that we can determine some few facts
already: that they have managed to safeguard their knowledge behind a series of shibboleths and
Hiramite handshakes, that they will not be coaxed into revealing this knowledge until the
conditions (including the immanentizing of the eschaton, the production of some proofs (the 
black ball? ha=Satan? the great comet? etc.), and defeating the Perfect Ely, whoever that is,
in single combat) are met, and that they, whoever they are, have left this place. Perhaps I 
will be able to find a clue to their current location lower down. 
I see that I have run out of henchmen, but I will post this letter as soon as I come back out.
No, seriously, shalom.
K

Gershom tries to figure out whether his ban on stealing mail extends to mail that was never sent from a dead guy to a dead recipient. He decides to intone it unto the heavens so that YHWH might be able to deliver it. Then while reading it, he learns that the letter was never posted, and is, therefor, not mail, so he stops worrying about it.

They decide that this place is dead, anyway (it's a crypt, get it?) and leave. Back in town, they learn that the Bronze Serpent is enchanted with Abjuration magics, the Mace, also Abjuration, and the bowl, Necromantic. They also learn that one of their crewmen, Luke, has deserted.

This is troubling, so they sail around tracking him down, and eventually find him looking confused in Korfu. They learn about a boat headed for a Shalom Israel tour sailing out of Korfu, and they give chase. They figure all this confusion lately might have something to do with disturbing a Jewish crypt, some kind of possessing ghost or something.

When they catch up with the boat, it turns out they were right. One of the two Jews on the boat is acting a little squirrely. Turns out he thinks the year is 630 AD. They start putting the screws to him, metaphorically. His name is Amos Ben Ytzak and he died a couple hundred years ago. He wants to rejoin the community of Jews that left Boothrotum. Nobody really knows where they went, so they suggest that the boat make a stop in Chrysopolis where Amos can hop into the body of some criminal or something so that this good, honest, Jew can get back to controlling his own limbs.

Before parting ways, they learn from Amos that the Lich that attacked the Jews at Boothrotum was named Alexander and he was an Arab. He was cursed by the devil Srmoyah. At least, that's what my notes say.

The gang goes back to rest in Korfu.