Sirenya and Kitheras spend a few moments in the entryway discussing how to signal each other once they're in the ruins. The silence of the ruins makes them uneasy about using bird calls, and they eventually decide to use rodent squeaks. Sirenya casts invisibility on herself, and Kitheras wraps himself in his cloak of elvenkind. Then Kitheras touches the door to the Bhephel mansion. It sinks down into the ground, letting them out into the ruins, and slides silently up, sealing the mansion.
The duo work their way south through the tall grass towards the trio of buildings on the north side of the Street of Song, trying to come at them from behind. The forest that runs behind the mansion stretches south and bulges out towards the road, but they're able to see through it well enough to get a look at the three buildings to the west of the Way. All three are of the same construction technique, which is the first time you’ve seen such similarity in the city. They’re a mixture of a stone first floor and wood-and-daub second and third floors.
(#15) This building has been burned some time in the past. The wooden floors are all gone except for a few charred posts rising from the stone first floor. They didn't see a doorway on the northern side. They stopped about twenty feet away to the north, with nothing but tall grass between them and the building. There are two small windows on the northern wall, both of them empty. If there was glass or magic in them once, it's long gone.
Kitheras creeps up to the back wall and peeks inside a window. The building is a wreck; a good portion of the ceiling fell in way back when, and has since been silted over and has weeds growing. He sees a couple of chipmunks, but nothing else. He checks for tracks, but doesn't find anything.
(#16) The top floor of this building has been knocked clean off, and broken slates lie all around the base of the building. The ground floor seems to be in decent shape, but the wooden walls of the second story are very ragged. Like its neighbor, it has several windows on its north wall.
Sirenya steps closer, taking in the stone walls of both buildings. None of the walls on 15 and 16 are particularly great, and she can see several places where she could break through them easily if she had the tools and need, but they're in no danger of falling any time soon. At the same time, Kitheras finds a few tracks a bit north of building 16. Someone came through here within the last day or two. Human/demihuman shaped shoes, rather than a monster. But he can't tell anything else.
(#17) Trying to pick up the tracks again, Kitheras moves west. This building is in the best condition of the three. There are holes in the walls that look like they might have been made by catapult stones and much of the roof is gone, but it is otherwise intact. Its western face has many wide windows facing the stream.
Kitheras moves to look in one of the holes, while Sirenya moves further west and surveys the bridge. Inside #17 is a wide, open room that must take up much of the first floor. He can't tell much about what it's original purpose was, but he can see three massive humanoid toads spread out around the room. They have wickedly-clawed hands in place of a toad's normal forelimbs, and are watching each other and the windows intently.
The bridge was once a mixture of elven and dwarven construction, with a firm dwarven base and elven superstructure. Most of the superstructure has collapsed, but the pillars and floor of the bridge are sound.
Kitheras gives the "enemy sighted" bird call, and Sirenya creeps back to meet him. While she does, Kitheras casts his mind back, trying to place the creatures. They're very like the demon toads from the group's first escape from the ruins. Neldor mentioned them. They're tanar'ri called hezrou, and they're not weak. They backtrack, slipping through the alley between building 15 and 16.
(#18) The silence of the ruins wraps itself around them, and they work carefully to avoid catching themselves on the occasional brush or bush. On the south side of the road, two massive trees have been cut down and fallen parallel to the road. They have decayed somewhat, though not as much as you would have expected from the age of the cut. When they were standing, both trees supported a number of sizable wooden buildings; those buildings are now shattered and scattered all across the ground east of the stream and south of the road.
Kitheras steps off the road, checking for tracks in the grass while avoiding stepping into the building's ruins. Sirenya keeps watch on the crossroad. Kitheras doesn't find any tracks; no one seems to be particularly interested in the ruin building. They turn around towards the building on the other side of the Street of Song.
(#14) A massive stone building sprawls out along both the Way of Heroes and the Street of Song. It was once a truly grand building, and even now you can see fragments of elaborate carvings on the walls and bases and pieces of magnificent statuary around the grounds. The building’s southern face is crumpled and collapsed, as though a massive titan punched through it in four or five places, but the northern two thirds of the building is in good condition. A few faint notes of music drift out of upper story windows.
As a bard, Kitheras recognizes the music. It's fairly simplistic background music often played at banquets
((ooc: the elven equivalent of muzak.))
It's a massive building. Remembering that Talindra had said that there were a number of taverns at the southern end of the road, including the guildhall of the tavernmasters, they can easily see it being one of the two or three best inns in the city.
The southern third of the building is wrecked and collapsed, but the northern two thirds is in good condition. There's a grand entry-way towards the northern end of the building's east side, along the Way of Heroes. Walking around to the east side, they find that there are a lot of windows all along the building, only one of which still has any glass. There's a wide yard in back that might have been a stableyard, but is now just bushes and young trees fighting each other for space.
They don't see any creatures through the windows, but several rooms have flickering lights. The way the light moves, and the fact that they're odd colors, and some are moving through the rainbow, makes them think of failing light spells, not candles or lanterns.
Inspecting the grounds, Kitheras finds a few very old tracks (he guesses they're at least nine months old, maybe longer) in a few places all around the building where they've been protected from the elements. Fiends, all of them, and in a lot of different varieties.
Not wanting to set off a still-standing motion-sensitive spell, the two avoid peeking inside and instead continue north.
(#13) This building, set back from the road, screams dwarven architecture. It is a squat single story of heavy grey stone. It’s almost untouched, and ivy has mostly covered the walls. A stone door is still half-way attached to the main entryway. If there was a path to it from the road, the grass and brush long reclaimed it. A few windows, long, narrow, and horizontal, provide ventilation just below the roof.
Sirenya creeps forward and inspects the door. From a distance it looks barely functional, but when she takes a closer look it's actually hanging quite well, and the hinges have been recently oiled. Backing off, she let's Kitheras know and he searches for tracks. After a few moments he straightens up. Several people have been coming in and out of the building through the door. They've done a good job of covering their tracks, so he's not sure exactly how many. A handful, give or take. Everyone's in boots, so probably humans or demihumans.
Not wanting to disturb the house just yet, they continue north.
(#12) A small rise in the ground has had a sturdy granite building built into it. Never particularly large (maybe twenty feet square), it’s been half destroyed, the great slabs of stone broken and fallen. Beyond the half-fallen entryway you can see a room disappearing into the darkness.
Kitheras isn't able to find any tracks, and there are no windows to be seen. Uneasy about leaving another building unexplored, Sirenya moves forward. Her passage is so silent, not even the wind hears her. She steps carefully through the half-collapsed entryway. This building feels like gnomish work, and like good gnomish architecture, when it collapses, it settles into a stable form. Inside is a single room, half-collapsed just like the outside would indicate. The bright, cheerful painting (definitely gnomish) is in decent condition anywhere rain doesn't have a direct line to drip onto it.
There's a staircase leading down at the far end of the room. This would have been an entry hall and a place for a gnomish family to entertain surfacer guests. Two giant skeletal snakes, each at least twelve feet long, are coiled on either side of the staircase. They have human skulls instead of snake skulls, and a dull red fire burns in their eye sockets. They stand as still as statues, staring at the doorway she's standing in.
Sirenya freezes. When they don't move, she backs out just as silently as she entered. Once clear, she pulls Kitheras aside and tells him what's in there.
(#20) They continue to move south, through a large field that is lumpy enough that it probably has a couple of ruined and buried buildings. The building directly across the street from the group's previous base is built into three petrified trees with tall trunks and many-branching, inter-connected branches. There might have been a dwelling on the ground at some point, but if so it’s been completely destroyed and the wreckage is strewn about under the one of the three trees that has fallen. The other two still stand, and there are thickly built up with rooms and hallways over four levels that stretch up into the surrounding canopy. There is no obvious way up into the trees save for climbing.
((ooc: The trees are like this picture, only their trunks are much taller:
))
As they come around towards the Street of Song, they hear a screech high above them. Six gargoyles are locked in heated aerial combat with two giant... ribbons.
They're enormous flying eel-like creatures that continually swirl around like a giant corkscrew. The gargoyles attack with with claws and the eels retaliate by slamming their bodies into the gargoyles.
Well, that looks like none of our business, Sirenya thinks. Kitheras waits, wanting to see how the creatures fight and whether it draws any attention. They both duck into cover, where parts of the ruin provide concealment from overhead.
The fight is brutal and drags on for several minutes. Three of the gargoyles are shattered and come crashing down in ruin. But the remaining three are able to tear the two flying eels apart. They circle wearily in the air for a moment, chinks of stone occasionally shaking loose. After a moment they turn and start to fly towards the tree house. Before they can reach it, however, the most horrible giant fly out of the darkest of nightmares comes plummeting out of the air above them.
It shatters one gargoyle with a single blow. Its wings beating out an infernal buzz, it chases down and breaks apart the other two just as easily. It's seven feet long, sickly yellow, with a narrow, pinched human's face twisted in glee as it destroys the gargoyles.
Terror grips both Kitheras and Sirenya as they watch it move through the air, the loud hum of its wings sinking into their flesh. Both of them grit their teeth and force themselves to remain unmoving, though they want nothing more than to jump up and run and run and run until those wings are nothing more than a horrible memory.
The creature, oblivious to the effect it has on you, turns and flies into one of the large rooms on the third-highest ring. Kitheras stares after it, sorting through legends and Neldor's information. A few moments later, he nods. It's another tanar'ri, a chasme.
Giving the trees a wide berth, they circle around and head north again.
(#11) A grand marble staircase descends into rubble. It's this grand thing of marble, with several pillars that are half-collapsed. It goes down two steps and then is completely filled with rubble.
(#10) A couple dozen feet back from the road is a largish mound of dirt and debris. If it weren’t for two gaping holes on either side of the mound separated by about a hundred and fifty feet, you would think it was a normal hill. But it looks like someone has dug into it. Both of the entrances are facing the Way of Heroes.
To Kitheras, who has spent years acting as a scout and spy in the Sunset Vale, which includes the halfling village of Corm Orp, it is very reminiscent of a large, prosperous halfling dwelling. Either a rich family, or some sort of community building like a tavern. Though it's overgrown and decayed enough that it could just be a coincidence.
He checks for tracks, and finds a lot them coming in and out of both entrances. They were either left by very large humans, or something else that wears large, heavy boots. The tracks are fresh.
Perhaps this is where that large group of armored humans we saw as we were leaving the first time has hidden, Kitheras muses as he and Sirenya step away from the burrow and continue north.
(#9) Some of the group has actually been to this building before; it's where they kept watch on the mansion on the the group's initial exploration of the ruins. It's on the south side of the intersection and is still in pretty good shape. It looks like it was made by dwarves or gnomes; its walls are entirely stone and they're at least a foot thick. It's been burned out, and its roof collapsed, but the scouts were easily able to climb up to the top to keep watch. Inside there was nothing except the rubble of a fallen slate roof.
Not wanting to bother with something already explored, they crossed the street and kept moving.
(#8) At the corner of the intersection is a surprisingly well-preserved tree house. It looks almost exactly like those in Bristar, though it’s only a single story and only stretches along about two thirds of the tree. At a guess it has three, maybe four rooms. It’s about fifty feet up, and there’s no obvious way up to it.
Kitheras checks around for tracks, then slows his breathing and concentrates on listening. There aren't tracks around the base of the tree. He also doesn't hear anything from the building, though he does hear the sound a fight off towards the west. It's a bunch of indistinct roaring and doesn't sound particularly close.
(#7) Crossing around so that they'll be behind the buildings to the north, they leave the tree house behind and keep moving. This elegant building once spread out across a tall oak tree and the ground underneath it. The tree dwelling is almost completely gone, only a piece of a room clings desperately to the trunk forty feet in the air. Only four shingles remain attached to the single roofbeam, and they gleam silver in the light.
The building on the ground is in somewhat better condition. It’s made entirely of stone. Around back you can spot here and there the remains of a silvery plaster that once concealed the common granite. Pieces of statuary which used to line the southern wall have been mostly swallowed by grass and ferns, but enough peak out into the air to make it obvious that this was once a grand place. Piecing things together from what Kitheras can see engraved in lintels and from intact paintings, this used to be the Headquarters of the Society of Silversmiths & Fineworkers.
Though Sirenya is nervous about following where they'd watched the illithid pass, they keep going north.
(#6) This single-story house was once completely hidden behind an enclosing stone wall. Time and the Fall have thrown down the thick iron gate and broken enough holes in the wall that you can make out the relatively-modest dwelling, made mostly of stone and mostly still intact. They can't find any tracks, and Myth Drannor's oppressive silence is pressing down on them. The battle to the west has ended. Not even the birds are moving.
The wall has been damaged enough that there are gaps where people can slip through without needing to climb. Sirenya goes first, moving slightly to the side to clear room for Kitheras. Once they get inside the wall, where the wind can't circulate well, they both catch the unmistakable wiff of troll. They immediately back out.
Wanting to give the trolls a wide berth, they head north, fading into the forest that stretches down behind the walled house. Carefully and quietly they circle around the end of the street, crossing more than fifteen feet into the woods from where the Way of Heroes tapers off. The two buildings on the other side of the road have been much more heavily encroached by the forest.
(#5) The forest has partially consumed this building. Originally three or four levels, now the northern half is covered by ivy and has trees growing around and through it. Made entirely of wood, the carved and shaped planks seem to have merged with the trees and brush. Only the twenty-most southern feet of the building is relatively intact, its smooth curves speaking of elven design as much as its easy relationship with the forest.
The woods are really thick here; it's hard for Kitheras to tell anything definite about who might have been coming or going. Annoyed, they keep moving south.
(#4) This is a building that you have a hard time imagining in any other city besides Myth Drannor. It’s small and delicate, made of thin lines of silvery metal encasing panes of glass both large and small. Grass grows around it, and ivy stretches up both glass and metal.
Kitheras checks around and is very certain that no one has approached the building recently. Both of them creep up towards the back of the house, trying to get a closer look. The glass is crystal clear, without even streaks from rain. Inside is the remains of a bedroom; the wooden furniture having fared far less well than the glass and metal walls. They don't see any creatures. Nor are any panels of glass missing.
(#3) A petrified oak tree seventy feet tall houses in its upper branches the remains of a lovely tree house. Four wooden rooms are built on top of and around the tree fifty feet above the ground, and there are spaces along the trunk where others have fallen away. There is no sign of any stairs, ladder, or any other method of reaching the aerial rooms.
Looking at the petrified wood, Sirenya decides to try to make a closer examination. Quietly, she murmurs a
detect magic spell. Nothing happens. The power disperses without any effect. She glances down; her invisibility is still holding, so she hasn't wandered into a field of dead magic. The spell just failed.
Annoyed, she moves south. Kitheras follows.
(#2) This building is nothing more than a burned-out shell, three scorch-covered stone walls standing between three and five feet tall.
Both of them check the area for tracks. They don't find any around the building itself, but they do find several sets of tracks, well-concealed, through the grass and brush that fills the space behind building #3, along building #2's flank. There's a gap in the forest and they can hear the stream to the west; it looks like a small group of people have used this area as a way to get further west, deeper into the city.
Intrigued, they follow the tracks west, through the brush that fills the space between two copses of trees. The ground slopes downward slightly before suddenly dropping away to reveal a quickly-running stream. The water is maybe a foot deep and four feet across. The entire bank, as far north and south as you can see, has been replaced by shaped stone. To Sirenya's trained eye there are at least five different styles from three different races in the various patterns of stonework that have channeled and protected the stream.
Glancing on the other side of the bank, they can make out a few broken tufts of grass. There are similar marks on this side as well. It looks like people are jumping across the stream. It's a long jump, but a trained jumper (who isn't a gnome or halfling) would be able to do it.
Sirenya and Kitheras pull back into the forest. Kitheras kneels down so that they can have a quick, whispered conversation about whether to return to the mansion, or to take up positions to surveil some of the places they've found.
