The Catacombs of Wild Energy

[Fenric]

Below the ruined temple of Myrkul lies a series of dark, winding catacombs. These were once sacred to the dark god, but upon his catastrophic death, they were cursed with wild surges. Energy use of any kind within the catacombs is immediately accompanied by a wild surge. (( as wild magic )) Unlike a wild magic zone, however, these catacombs curse any extreme of energy: magic, psionic, technological... Even too bright of a torch is a danger.

[AmberVael]

Aesa teleports into the catacombs in an explosion of fire. She blinks at the flames, then conjures a bit of light in a poof of smoke. She makes a face and holds her nose as she continues fowards and out of the smoke.

[Fenric]

The air away from the side-effect isn't all that much fresher. The catacombs have not seen regular use in hundreds of years and are damp and stale. A few rats scurry around, and here and there the roots of larger trees pierce the ceiling and walls. The corridor is long and narrow, runninng straight ahead and behind for some distance. There seems to be an opening to the right, about fifteen yeards ahead.

[AmberVael]

Aesa keeps going, grass randomly sprouting up behind her, while she begins to shrink a little.
Apparently the sheer amount of energy normally around her is going to make things difficult here...

[Fenric]

A strange, distorted noise echoes up from the passage to the right. It sounds vaguely like speech, but it is garbled and unintelligable. The sound itself is irritating, and the almost-sense of the occasional word or phrase grates on Aesa's mind.

[AmberVael]

Aesa turns down that passage, deciding just to wander aimlessly until it got boring.
Darkness begins floods the passage in front of her (as the spell), and she thanks her trueseeing.
Some of the wall turns into nasty, blubbery flesh.

[Fenric]

The gibbering mouther attempts to send a wave of madness at Aesa (not really understanding how redundant that is). Flowers rain down from the roof all around and the thing oozes forward.

[AmberVael]

Aesa snickers and sends her classic swarm of forcebolts at it.
Faerie fire shoots at the mouther as well, while Aesa frowns as she starts hearing the thoughts of everything nearby.
Just to tick her off, Aesa begins shrinking. Again. She looks more like a halfling now.

[Fenric]

(( Dunno why I'm having such trouble spelling her name today ))

The mouther screams as the forcebolts pound it. The magical scream is unfortunately both invisible and inaudable, and therefore completely worthless. It bites at Aesa 5 times, each time carrying a magical disease:

The first bite turns the mouther bright pink
The second affects everyone in Aesa's party
The third leaves the mouther stunned for three rounds... guess that ends the biting.

[AmberVael]

Aesa gets bitten the first and third time, though she only gets tiny scrapes from its teeth. She shakes her head and keeps going down the passage, a blast of fire jetting out in front of her and hitting a rhino which happens to appear.
She steps over the charred animal and continues.

[Fenric]

Aesa comes to a largish room (( at least, compared to the corridor )). The stiff form of an illithid, turned to stone, stands just inside the door.

Various derelict torture devices adorn the walls; and rusted, useless implements litters the floor. The doorway beyond has the remains of a heavy door, and a relatively low-DC int check will tell her that beyond is most likely dungeons, not treasuries.

A dire rat sniffles around the far end of the room, but is intimidated by Aesa and keeps away.

[AmberVael]

Aesa sighs and goes back the way she came, a massive trail of butterflies floating out behind her.

[Fenric]

The gibbering mouther wakes up from its three-round stunning, and gibbers at Aesa again.

[AmberVael]

Aesa ignores it as she looks for another passage.

[Fenric]

Back at the original, long passageway, the way to the right continues another 15 yeards or so before there is a dark room, full of rubble. The way left, toward where she teleported in, ends in a "T". The place is softly noisy with drips, scrabbles, and squeaks: many rats and therefore things that hunt rats are all around.

[AmberVael]

Aesa uses a divination to try and determine which way will be more beneficial to go.
Of course, as that is a very open question, it may or may not lead her to the rod.
More grass grows, while Aesa starts sprouting leaves all over herself.

[Fenric]

Aesa is informed that going to the "T" and turning left is strongly beneficial.

[AmberVael]

Aesa ponders that for a moment, then decides to go left at the T.

[Fenric]

Aesa walks a few steps down the hall, and abruptly loses her foliage and returns to her proper height as she enters a small pocket of "normal".

Down the hall, many branches lead off to both sides. The hallway turns sharply left again some hundred feet ahead. If Aesa has a good head for direction underground, she would know that that turn will lead back to the dungeons.

[AmberVael]

Aesa frowns at this, and while in the pocket she uses a spell to create a number of small, arcane scrying sensors which she sends flying down the hall, searching the branches and checking down the turn in the hallway.
She is looking a fair bit tired now.

[Fenric]

(( OOoh... arcane sensors! I'll give you 6, since you didn't say. ))

One turns into a puppy, and barks. Aesa feels a strong desire to play fetch.
One turns pink, and relays information about the first hallway on the left which dead-ends in a pile of rubble. All the information is painfully pink.
One bursts into flames. The third hallway on the left looks like a vision of hell overlayed on a pool of still water.
One becomes invisible and inaudible. This does not help
One gets extended range and duration... we'll come back to this one.
One affects Aesa. She gets a close look at herself through the sensor's eye.

Now, back to that fifth one... It wanders up and down the hall, finally coming to a library down the third exit to the right. The library is an interesting place, but the wild energy seems even stronger in there than elsewhere. There is a focus of some sort for the energy in the middle of the room, but it is so strong that when the sensor approaches it, the spell is destroyed by wild fluctuations.

[AmberVael]

Aesa considers herself for a moment with the sixth one, then follows the lead of the fifth one.

[Fenric]

The chaotic energies in the room approach the plane of Chaos for sheer obnoxiousness, with the added bonus that they react to just about anything. Beling alive in the room is enough to trigger minor surges, and a spell might have disasterous consequences.

In the center of the room, a small black altar decorated with the holy symbol of the defunct Myrkul holds a statue of inky black obsidian. While not the cause of the wild energy, this artifact of the dead god has attracted and held more of it here than elsewhere. The floor literally crawls with weird threads of broken spells that twist and writhe with life of their own.

Across the room, a doorway that must have once been sealed and hidden with powerful magic leads to a small chamber. The threads of the hiding and sealing spells twist in the air like grasping vines.

[AmberVael]

Aesa looks at the statue covetously, but hesitates, wondering how exactly she could get it.
Her hands twitch and her eyes dart about the room, then she grins.
I think this will be worth it...
Focusing herself, she suddenly pulls the threads of fate around her, creating a small bubble of impossibility where every chance of wild magic simply acts normally.
Because of the energy, however, the area outside of the bubble roils with even more chaos.
Shaking from her expenditure of energy, Aesa quickly goes towards the statue to pick it up.

[Fenric]

The statue of Myrkul on his throne is cold and heavy, and radiates powerful evil. It is physically nothing more than a hunk of obsidian about 90 cm tall and contained within a cylinder of 15 cm radius. It weighs about 100 kg.

[AmberVael]

Aesa grimaces a little at the weight, then very quickly stows it away in an extradimensional space before backing off and dismissing her fate manipulation.
She catches her breath for a moment, the moves towards the unsealed doorway.

[Fenric]

The threads of broken spells reach out to her and try to attach themselves to her energy as she approaches the doorway. Aesa's spellcraft knowledge shows them to be the energy-gathering portions of the broken spells, and they will drain her like the touch of an undead monster should they connect.

Beyond the doorway, heavily bound and locked wooden chests rest on a series of stone pedistals. Something moves within the gloom.

[AmberVael]

Aesa considers them for a moment, then walks past them without fear, knowing that draining her of Seid was impossible, as was draining her of life.
She moves towards the chests without pausing.
((brb))

[Fenric]

(( Take all the drama of that bit away... ))

Inside the room, a Thing attacks. It is very much like a living spell, except that it is a living wild surge.

[AmberVael]

Aesa whirls around, quite startled.
She had been a bit focused on the chests, and she was tired, after all.
The black-winged Vala fumbles out her sword, not wanting to risk magic right now, not knowing what it would do- or how much she could even use.