[Let's Play] The Legends of Skyfall: Monsters of the Marsh

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to wait and see what it does. I do not think it wise to attack without definite confirmation that it is an enemy.

[deaddmwalking]

Agreed. Sphinxes are known for asking riddles. Let's see if it's true to form.

[Beroli]

Fixing you with its awful gaze, the creature speaks:
'You have freed me from the captivity of a hundred years, mortal, and I am in your debt.
If you have food upon you, show it to me.'

Show the Sphinx your food?
Lie and claim you don't have any?

Name: Andrew Bond
Sex: Male
Expertise: 13
Vitality: 17/20
Fortune: 14
Equipment: Sword, dagger, fifty feet of rope, some torches, flint, steel, tinderbox, 2 doses Potion of Healing (+8 Vitality), Ring of Fortune (double all Fortune gains), Centaur Amulet.
Provisions: 8 days, Centaur Leaves in effect until the end of day 19 (real food needs to be eaten when day becomes 20)
Travel time so far: 12 days, 5.5 hours
Deaths: Captured as a slave and worked to death, stabbed with a poisoned dagger, drowned when a dam collapsed, captured as a slave and sacrificed

[Thaluikhain]

Show food.

[deaddmwalking]

No reason to lie to this creature. Give it food.

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to show the Sphinx our hero’s food.

[Beroli]

You produce the rations you have on you. Amongst the variety of food is a large, hard biscuit. 'Take the biscuit and break it into four equal pieces', he says, 'then hold them separately before me.'

As you do so, he mutters several words in a language you do not understand over each. 'Guard those carefully,' continues the Sphinx. 'If you eat one piece before any combat my magic will grant you great strength. Now I must be gone to see what has become of the world since I was lured here and entrapped. Fare you well!'

And he disappears.

You wonder what has become of the magician who was powerful enough to hold a creature like the Sphinx. If still alive, he can probably expect an unwelcome visitor soon.

You now have 4 Tablets of Strength. You can swallow one of them at the beginning of any fight in which you are not surprised, and for the duration of that fight you will have +1 Expertise and +2 damage. You should not count on bringing them to further books in this series.

There is nothing further of interest in this room.

Go back South?
Go West?

Name: Andrew Bond
Sex: Male
Expertise: 13
Vitality: 17/20
Fortune: 14
Equipment: Sword, dagger, fifty feet of rope, some torches, flint, steel, tinderbox, 2 doses Potion of Healing (+8 Vitality), Ring of Fortune (double all Fortune gains), Centaur Amulet, 4 Tablets of Strength (+1 Expertise and +2 Damage for one combat each).
Provisions: 8 days, Centaur Leaves in effect until the end of day 19 (real food needs to be eaten when day becomes 20)
Travel time so far: 12 days, 5.5 hours
Deaths: Captured as a slave and worked to death, stabbed with a poisoned dagger, drowned when a dam collapsed, captured as a slave and sacrificed

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to go west to stand against fascism.

[deaddmwalking]

Go west young man!

[Beroli]

This passage, like the room you have just left and the passage to it from the main cavern, seems to have been hewn from the living rock and the floor is carpeted with thick dust. The marks on the walls indicate that simple picks and mattocks were used and you wonder what the miners had been seeking all those years ago. Not only that, but where did they put all the excavated rock?

Not having taken any particular note of the distance, you arrive at the end of the passage after somewhat less than two hundred feet. And the end of the passage is all it is. Digging seems to have stopped for no apparent reason one day, leaving an uneven wall at the end of the passage and a litter of rocks waiting to be cleared away.

You investigate the end wall, tapping and listening, but are left no wiser. Retracing your steps to the room with the Sphinx, you calculate this passage to be one hundred and seventy-five feet long.

You return to the entrance cavern.

Go North?
Leave?

Name: Andrew Bond
Sex: Male
Expertise: 13
Vitality: 17/20
Fortune: 14
Equipment: Sword, dagger, fifty feet of rope, some torches, flint, steel, tinderbox, 2 doses Potion of Healing (+8 Vitality), Ring of Fortune (double all Fortune gains), Centaur Amulet, 4 Tablets of Strength (+1 Expertise and +2 Damage for one combat each).
Provisions: 8 days, Centaur Leaves in effect until the end of day 19 (real food needs to be eaten when day becomes 20)
Travel time so far: 12 days, 5.5 hours
Deaths: Captured as a slave and worked to death, stabbed with a poisoned dagger, drowned when a dam collapsed, captured as a slave and sacrificed

[Thaluikhain]

North.

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to go north.

[deaddmwalking]

North sure. Let the Northern Passage be as a guiding light to us, leading us surely to our destiny.

[Beroli]

I typoed. North is where the Sphinx was. South is where you haven't been.

Guessing you'll want to go South, but feel free to say "no, if South is all that's left I want to leave" instead, and if that's the winning vote I'll retcon you ever seeing this:

The passage is ten feet high and wide. The walls have obviously been roughly smoothed with tools, and here and there are niches which probably held torches at some time in the past, as the walls and ceiling above are much blackened. The floor, which is thickly covered with dust, slopes down away from the cave for about thirty feet, then narrows to a flight of steps about four feet wide, winding downwards. The steps are four inches high and the treads about two feet deep.

After you have descended nearly a hundred feet, the steps lead out into a room some twenty feet square. The dust lies thick and undisturbed upon what seems to have been a living area for several workmen or possibly guards. There are tables and stools, hooks on one wall and the remains of some cupboards against another. In one corner a small cascade of water runs down the wall to splash into a pool, which must presumably have a hidden outlet, otherwise the cave would be flooded. Another corner is filled with a pile of old rusty tools - picks, mattocks, shovels, crowbars, sledgehammers, etc. All are now quite useless.

There are two doorways leading from the room. One is in the left-hand wall and is closed by a very solid-looking door, which is bound with much metal which looks surprisingly little rusted. It appears to be fastened by two massive bolts shot home into the solid rock wall. The other is in the opposite wall, and is only partly blocked by a door which hangs crazily from one hinge.

Unbolt the solid door?
Push past the dilapidated door?
Leave the cave complex?

Name: Andrew Bond
Sex: Male
Expertise: 13
Vitality: 17/20
Fortune: 14
Equipment: Sword, dagger, fifty feet of rope, some torches, flint, steel, tinderbox, 2 doses Potion of Healing (+8 Vitality), Ring of Fortune (double all Fortune gains), Centaur Amulet, 4 Tablets of Strength (+1 Expertise and +2 Damage for one combat each).
Provisions: 8 days, Centaur Leaves in effect until the end of day 19 (real food needs to be eaten when day becomes 20)
Travel time so far: 12 days, 5.5 hours
Deaths: Captured as a slave and worked to death, stabbed with a poisoned dagger, drowned when a dam collapsed, captured as a slave and sacrificed

[deaddmwalking]

I like the idea of unbolting the solid door. And if South is the direction that we're left with, I feel it was right to be distrustful, but given the options, we'll have to make a play for it.

On the food the sphinx gave us, we can eat it at any time and it applies to the next fight, correct? In that case, I'm for eating one now. I'm less concerned about running out of food since we appear to be entering the end game, and we won't have hours of paddling to do. So if we can get a combat bonus by eating now, let's do it. If we have to eat food again, let's plan on eating real food instead of centaur herbs. Again, if it comes up.

[Beroli]

You can swallow one of the tablets now and hope the next fight isn't with an 8 Expertise stag, if you want. But, note, you can also swallow one of the tablets at the beginning of any fight as long as it's not "you are suddenly in the middle of a fight and have no chance to do anything." You would have been able to swallow a tablet, had you had a tablet, before any fight you have seen so far (except a fight with a lizardwoman with a poisoned dagger, which never happened).

[Thaluikhain]

Unbolt solid door.

[Beroli]

You unbolt the solid door. You do not swallow a tablet yet unless someone wishes to second that vote.

Drawing back the bolts is no easy task. Although the metal fittings on this door have lasted better than any of the tools you have found, the bolts are still partly rusted and difficult to shift.

Eventually you manage to open the door and peer in. The door had been a good fit, keeping this room fairly airtight. As you opened it you caught the scent of decay, and now you can see why - there are a dozen bodies in here.

Most are skeletons, with only the shreds of rags draped around their bones, but one seems in some way preserved, as if only dead a few months. Then, to your horror, you realize it is moving - unsteadily it rises to its feet and takes a step towards where you are standing in the doorway.

It holds its arms stiffly extended in front of its body and, although the eyes are wide and staring you feel it is looking through, rather than at you. You are reminded of the stories of Zombies - undead creatures animated sometimes by magic and other times by memories or unfulfilled desires from beyond the grave.

Run back up the stairs?
Step back through the door you just came through and bolt it?
Draw your sword and get ready to fight?

Name: Andrew Bond
Sex: Male
Expertise: 13
Vitality: 17/20
Fortune: 14
Equipment: Sword, dagger, fifty feet of rope, some torches, flint, steel, tinderbox, 2 doses Potion of Healing (+8 Vitality), Ring of Fortune (double all Fortune gains), Centaur Amulet, 4 Tablets of Strength (+1 Expertise and +2 Damage for one combat each).
Provisions: 8 days, Centaur Leaves in effect until the end of day 19 (real food needs to be eaten when day becomes 20)
Travel time so far: 12 days, 5.5 hours
Deaths: Captured as a slave and worked to death, stabbed with a poisoned dagger, drowned when a dam collapsed, captured as a slave and sacrificed

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to fight it.

[deaddmwalking]

Okay, but let's pop a pill first!

[Thaluikhain]

Get ready to fight.

[Beroli]

You draw a weapon ready to fight, then consider. Will it be best to fight in here amongst the Skeletons, or outside in the living quarters amongst the remains of the furnishings?

Fight in here?
Step back through the door and fight out there?

Also vote on whether to swallow one of the tablets now. (One vote for is noted.)

Name: Andrew Bond
Sex: Male
Expertise: 13
Vitality: 17/20
Fortune: 14
Equipment: Sword, dagger, fifty feet of rope, some torches, flint, steel, tinderbox, 2 doses Potion of Healing (+8 Vitality), Ring of Fortune (double all Fortune gains), Centaur Amulet, 4 Tablets of Strength (+1 Expertise and +2 Damage for one combat each).
Provisions: 8 days, Centaur Leaves in effect until the end of day 19 (real food needs to be eaten when day becomes 20)
Travel time so far: 12 days, 5.5 hours
Deaths: Captured as a slave and worked to death, stabbed with a poisoned dagger, drowned when a dam collapsed, captured as a slave and sacrificed

[deaddmwalking]

Outside of the room sounds better to me. Half vote for stepping back. There's always a chance the undead are restricted to the room they died in...

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to use a tablet and step back through the door to fight.

[Beroli]

Retreating to the foot of the stairs, you swallow a tablet and stand ready to fight. The Zombie lurches from its ancient prison and plods sightlessly across the living quarters towards you, hands apparently reaching for your throat.

Luckily, your weapon is a cutting weapon; a blunt weapon would be unable to damage the zombie.

The zombie has Expertise 6 and Vitality 8. However, I still need to roll (for you, not it) as if you roll four tails it automatically does 1 strangling damage to you and forces you several steps back.

First result: 2 Heads, 2 Tails. The zombie takes 4 damage.
Second result: 2 Heads, 2 Tails. The zombie takes 4 damage and is defeated.

Hacked apart by the force of your blows, the corpse falls to the floor. There is no blood, and you can only wonder what gave it the power of movement. Looking down at the remains, you see with a sick horror that they are still moving. The various parts are trying to reunite into a whole being again.

'Pull yourself together!' you mutter hysterically, and hack afresh at the remains, separating arms, head and torso. Stubbornly, the parts start inching towards each other across the floor.

Stand and watch it reassemble itself?
Run up the stairs?
Bolt it in the skeleton room, if you fought it there?

Name: Andrew Bond
Sex: Male
Expertise: 13
Vitality: 17/20
Fortune: 14
Equipment: Sword, dagger, fifty feet of rope, some torches, flint, steel, tinderbox, 2 doses Potion of Healing (+8 Vitality), Ring of Fortune (double all Fortune gains), Centaur Amulet, 3 Tablets of Strength (+1 Expertise and +2 Damage for one combat each).
Provisions: 8 days, Centaur Leaves in effect until the end of day 19 (real food needs to be eaten when day becomes 20)
Travel time so far: 12 days, 5.5 hours
Deaths: Captured as a slave and worked to death, stabbed with a poisoned dagger, drowned when a dam collapsed, captured as a slave and sacrificed