Magic World solo - Part XI - The swamp hag's lair

Tzingaal takes a single step towards the cave when a high-pitched scream nearly shatters her eardrum. The diminutive Fmurkhrez has lept forth from the iron band and hovers beside her in the air, beating its wings in frantic agitation.

"I cannot go in there!" shrieks the tiny demon. "The hag's placed wards over the threshhold."

"It's hardly surprising," sighs Mazgandrvehss. "I'll be glad of the company out here in any event. Well, madam, what are you waiting for? Get on with it."

Holding the lanthorn above her head, Tzingaal squares her shoulders and walks with much-feigned bravery under the stone lintel and into the cave. The entrance way was once lined with dressed stones, but centuries of roots pushing through have almost obscured them, so the tunnel appears to have been digged from the damp black soil. The lamplight reveals the insides of the tumulus but reluctantly, and the heavy smell of polluted earth threatens to steal the sorceress' breath.

Yet she creeps forward.

[Setup notes:

Q: Can/will/must the demon accompany her? unknown d6=5: O1 C2 - no, and... wards keep it outside

The cave will have 1d6+2=6rooms. There's a 1-in-6 chance for the Hag to be present in a room; she isn't necessarily home.

Rooms contents will be generated with my magic world skill challenge2.xlsx generator (link).]

Area 1
easy Nature interlinked with Physik -or- difficult Nature

A few steps further into the dark, and the ground dips slightly. A brackish pool fills the passage and extends much farther than Tzingaal could jump. The oily water gives off the overpowering cabbagey smell of decaying rodentia. The sorceress can smell something faintly acidic each time a bubble rises to the surface.

[Better of Nature or Physik (38%) or Nature/2 (27%), so going with the former: 04, special success: poisonous to the touch.]

She returns outside. "I need some branches. Oh, you're not going to help? Fine, I'll get them myself."

Having collected an armful, she returns to the passage and begins laying them out to form a makeshift walkway over the foul water, careful not to splash herself. She finds one armful wholly inadequate to the task, and makes several more forays outside past the quietly amused Mazgandrvehss.

[Nature roll (53%) 66, fail. So needs a Luck roll or branches will break under her weight. She also needs to roll Agility not to slip. Luck (90%) 05, success. Agility (55%): 54, barely succeeds.]

When she's confident the first part of her walkway is sound, she builds a second extension, and then a third. It's clumsy to walk upon, and she nearly loses her balance at several points, but in the end she has crossed to the other side.

Tzingaal must crouch as the next passage becomes lower and lower. No matter how low she stoops, the roots protruding from the ceiling brush against her hair like so many dangling worms. The sensation makes her skin crawl even after she's come into the first chamber, where she can at last stand straight. She unconsciously reaches up to brush the feeling away, and discovers with revulsion that there actually are worms in her hair, squirming round and burrowing down into her long red tresses.

She picks them all out and dashes them to the ground and after a final shudder takes stockof her surroundings.

Area 2
difficult Potions. If failed, Repair/Devise -20%

Wooden shelves made of disparate scraps have been set into the stone of the walls, supported by corroded iron spikes. Some of the sagging shelves hold minerals and bonesand and some are just beset with mould and mushrooms, but one holds a row of glass potion bottles, each labelled with hastily scrawled alchemical symbols.

Tzingaal suppresses her curiosity at the shelf of elixirs and passes by to the adjoining chamber -- she's not here to loot, after all!

[One of them is a Potion of Density, and weighs 5kg; picking it up would unbalance the shelf so that it would falls off its brackets]


Area 3
Hide reveals Move Quietly

The next chamber is either a storeroom or a rubbish tip, but Tzingaal is at pains to decide which. Nor has she time to make a choice, for a deep, heavy snuffling reaches her ears from the blackness of the exit passage, and shuffling, dragging footsteps begin to draw near. She shutters the lanthorn and conceals herself behind a roll of damp tapestries slouching against the wall.

[Hide (46%) - 33 succeeds]

Something slumps into the room in the dark. Tzingaal can hear its laboured breathing and the squelch of sickly flesh with each of its plodding, uneven footsteps. She's glad for the bitter smell of decaying fabric which almost covers the stench emanating from the unseen beast. After a seeming age, she hears it lumber past her towards the entrance.

She opens the shutter a sliver and slips out into the next passage. [MQ (46%) succeeds.]


Area 4
normal Listen reveals difficult Climb, which makes normal Search easier

She comes to a chamber of solid stone, cracked with the weight of years and the mound overhead, but still largely intact. More uneven shelves line the walls, though drier and without the fungal colonies of the ones she'd seen previously. More arresting, though, is the great door of gilded wood, carved all over in low relief with images of long-forgotten gods and their deeds. She tries the door gingerly, but finds it does not budge. She tries again with more force, and it moves inwards by a mere finger's breadth; it is locked tight. [Listen (31%) fails.]

She searches [46%] the shelves for a key [d%=18!] and finds one atop the crockery shelf under a dirty clay jug. And it fits the lock!

[Listen would have revealed a whisling hole in the rock; Climbing up to it would have been a better vantage point to see top shelf.]


Area 5
1d6=6, Hag present
Challenge: Trap (luckily not going to be poking about!)

A wave of sultry heat washes over Tzingaal as she pushes open the gilded door, and a dim light spills into the storeroom. The hag Gogoda is in the next chamber, busily adding powders and bits of rancid flesh to a bubbling cauldron. She is bent nearly double by the stoop in her back, but stands nearly as tall as Tzingaal despite it. Her pock-marked, grey-green skin is stretched taut over lumpy musculature and disended bones. Her groaning, tittering monologue ceases abruptly as she hears the door open and she turns to cast her baleful gaze over her uninvited guest.

Tzingaal is rooted to the spot with mortal dread as the hag limps over and sniffs at her like a piece of meat.

[UNE--
Conversation Mood: sociable
knowing - report - family]

"The Cabal sent you, didn't they? I wonder why...?"

"Because they were too craven to come themselves," says Tzingaal with a sudden burst of courage. "They sent me on this errand as expiation for betraying them."

"You're a sorceress, though. A full member, not just a lackey. Nor a thrall." [knowing - news - retainers]

"In truth I am -- was! I'd seen sense and left them. But one of them found me by chance."

"Bad luck. And now you're here."

"Now I'm here."

"But to what purpose?"

"They seek your answer on a conundrum which vexes them greatly. But--"

"My answer commands a great price." [scheming - negotiations - contacts]

"As well it should. But I would know other things than their answer, such as how to break the shackles binding me to the Cabal, or turn their works against them."

"Very well, I can help you to their undoing. But the price must be more terrible still."

"I hate them more than I fear you. Name your terms."

"I desire the cauldron of the necromancer, Gyvarr Yis."

* * *

Once Gogoda has outlined the substance of the task she is to perform, she gives Tzingaal a pair of wooden pattens for crossing the poison pool, from which her guardian beast has already cleared the makeshift walkway. As Tzingaal comes out into the overcast daylight, she finds Mazgandrvehss and the little demon engaged in an animated argument.

"So it's not just me, then," she says. The sorcerer is about to direct his ire against Tzingaal when the sight of the hag emerging behind her causes him to forget the power of speech. Gogoda ignores them all and and calls into the underbrush in a cooing yet grating tongue. A tiny black water snake slithers out of the weeds and waits expectantly, curled at her feet.

"This serpent shall be your guide to Gyvarr Yis's lair. Here," says the hag, pulling a copper ring over her knobby knuckles with some difficulty, "take this. It's the control ring for my pet knight. You may need his sword. He's past his prime, so I don't care if I get him back. Now off with you!"

Mazgandrvehss snaps to his feet and they wordlessly follow the the little snake off into the bog.

next post: the necromancers tower (when real life calms down and I have time to write it up...)