Notes and plans

The Never Ending Quest - Episode 21038


Fred spreads Checkers' map out on the floor of the wallhugger's lair, while she stands with her spear, vigilant against any intruders. The map looks something like a master mason's plans, with the intended purpose of each cavern and chamber etched in clean, percise script. He speaks, half to himself. "There is a room marked 'market', and here's a 'guildhall.' And here is a chapel. Checkers, this looks like it was once a large underground city."

"It may be," she replies. "I could follow the map to this point on the map", she said, pointing a small room at the fringe of a green part of the map that must have been busy when the city was thriving, for it was the nexus of several other parts of the complex. "Wouldn't that be the chamber where the mage is?"

"Yes. That looks to be about right. But I have no idea where we ran from there."

"I think that it is towards the southeast, towards the part of the map where it all goes black."

"I can read it, though. I see three large rooms in the area that you are pointing to, with the labels "Arsenal", "Ampitheater", and "Hostel." There are some smaller rooms between the crossroads and those large rooms, but I can't make sense of what notes there are. It looks like they are storage or utility rooms of some sort."

"Fred, there is something odd about this map, like there is something missing, but I can't quite express it."

"I know what you mean Checkers." Fred then realizes that there are no references to a dragon anywhere on the map. For some reason Fred feels that this is significant, but he cannot understand why.

Fred then furls Checker's map, and unrolls his own. It is now Fred's turn to stand guard. Checkers analyzes the map. After ten minutes, she summarizes what she finds to Fred. "This is obviously a hand drawn map, with a variety of handwriting, some of it more legible than others. There are notes, in both red and black, written on it. It appears to me that this map was either passed from one person to another or that two separate people on the same expedition made notes. We are in obviously in the branch that is marked 'dragon's chamber'. Belboz's cavern has the note, 'Gateway. Must hold this room if you are to get out alive' marked in red."

"Which room are we in?"

"It looks like a utility room to one of two big rooms toward the east - I only see two on this map. I do not know which one we are in. The one furthest south has the note, in black, of 'Fair passage to the Realm of Sleep. Rest and refreshment can be found here, but one can also find an early death. Found the dragon's minions, but no dragon.' The other room has notes in both red and black."

Fred glances at the map. "I think this room towards the east should either be the ampitheater or the arsenal, then. The note says 'No hostile beings here. These are the Chambers of Philosophy.' I wonder what he meant by that?"

Checkers responds, "The red notes are tough to decipher; they must have been written in hurry. I think that someone interpolated a word here - the Chambers of Natural Philosophy. So it may be like a museum or underground garden. Kind of suprised that they wouldn't just call it that, though. We may have to watch out for a pit somewhere - there's one more note - A VOID."

Fred looks at Checkers. "The Realm of Sleep could be the Hostel on your map. I have no idea what the Chamber of Philosophy could correspond to, but converting the Ampitheater to that use would make sense. It sounds like either one would be relatively safe, and we could rest and heal there.

Checkers disagrees. "I would think that the best course of action would be to leave the cave temporarily. Right now you cannot rush to attack and I cannot fly, so we are not working to our best advantage. Perhaps Belboz might even help us after getting rid of the wallhugger for him."

"Or he might kill us," Fred observes.

  1. They go back to the necromancer's room.
  2. They press on to the next room.

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11/1/2002 9:16:15 PM

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