| Trap Life (Bounty 7) |
| Summary: | Dovi and Alia go ahunting. It's traps, traps all the way down. Also acid…and misbehaving masonry. |
| Date: | 2020-04-29 (Date DCS was run. Backdated to fit with Rykers timeline.) |
| Related: | None |
| NPCs: | None |
| Players: |
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| A Ruin |
| Culniary School or Alchemical Mass Production…the world may never know. |
| 1876-04-20 |
Ludovic waits before a low lying squat building with a snapped off three story round tower. When Alia comes up he waggles his eyebrows at her and then starts yanking blocks from the wall before them. "Tadah." he announces once a hole has been created. "The door." He grins and then heads over to peer into the hole. "Huh." He brushes a couple of bits of rock away and then climbs into the room, poking about the weapon racks with the interest that only a military man can possess. "Some of these might actually be worth taking home."
-
Alia, having, shockingly, managed to find time away from the needs of the colonias, had followed an instinct that she had put aside, for a time, and that was the hunt for treasure. Well, not so much treasure, as the hopes that she might find something, anything useful in the coming battle. Not for the West, but for the world. And so, she had packed all of her most important and necessary things and followed in Dovi's wake as they had made their way out to the ruins. "Much easier than looking for the actual door." Which would probably try to cave in on their heads. "We should sort through them and set aside anything we want. We can pick then up on the way out."
-
There's a laugh from Ludovic. "Couldn't find a door anyway. All for the good thought right? If its been sealed up all this time all the paper might still be paper." He finishes poking around the armory with a murmur of "I'll look more on the way out." Before going over to a doorway that leads further in. A gentle shove against the wood proves its stuck and he rattles it back and forth in its frame a couple of times before simply going back, claiming a greataxe from amongst the gear, and getting through the door that way. Beyond there is another armory space but this one seems to have been focused on bows and similar tools judging by the racks and bits of wood, horn and sinew that remain. Beyond an archway shows the first hints of dusty stairs. "Tower seemed pretty small. So up first?"
-
Alia allowed Dovi the time he needed to go through the weapons. Honestly, she knew little enough about them that it would have been mostly useless for her to give her opinion. Instead, she poked around in the corners, trying to look for anything else interesting, until the room was as picked over as it was likely to be, and the door loomed ahead. But not for long, as she ducked in, "This is so much simpler with the right tool." And then, as it looked as though she might have to be the one to get through and have a look around, she nodded, "I don't want your shoulders to get stuck in the staircase. I'll go see it's safe." And up she went, taking care along the stairs, using the tip of her crossbow to tap the door at the top open, which was really all for the good, as a plate of spiked crashed down into where her head might have been if she had stepped through herself. It nearly did hit her regardless, only just managing to duck away and against the side wall, "Some sort of spike trap. It's alright now, but we'll have to pull it down or push it aside to get a good look around."
-
Ludovic laughs again at Alia's ducking quip. "This is why axes are the greatest of weapons and tools Alia." He props the massive axe down by the door, gives her a few moments to make her way up to the stairs and then follows behind. "Looks like we're gonna have to be careful. Ain't fair for you to take all the risk. So I reckon we should take it in turns?"
-
"Can if you want, it doesn't really matter to me. I think any time I go into one of these places, I end up beat up, no matter who I'm with." Alia, ducking beneath the spikes, went about rummaging through the old bedroom, but there was really nothing much useful to be found. And while she was doing that, Dovi was, she assumed, heading upward. "How many floors does this tower have?"
-
"Two more I reckon." Dovi says from somewhere half way up the winding staircase. "But it looked broken. Might not be anything up there." Again he spends a moment rattling at the door before taking the axe to it. Lockpicking at its finest. Then he strides in. "You'll like this! Theres" he yells from somewhere inside only for his words to get drowned out by the sound of collapsing masonry.
-
"Dovi!" It was the sound of falling stones more than the sound of the axe being used that got Alia moving, and small as she was, she was fair able to spring up along the stairs up to the room where…there was a pile of stone and no Dovi. Well, yes Dovi, but he'd been some help digging out, "I'm coming!" She was small, and not terribly mighty, but she was determined. "Come, I can help.
-
The library is now open to the elements. Wind blowing debris and a couple of scrolls around. "I'm over here." Ludovic says with an uncharacteristic hitch to his voice. "These vitch loving scroll racks fell on me." he's clearly pinned by the heavy furniture. Abed amongst a sea of old scrolls. "Shove a rock under that one would you?"
-
Alia moved immediately for where she could hear the sound of Dovi's voice, reaching for the first rock she could find. She wasn't strong enough to lift it, alas, and so she simply pushed it into position and then sat down, braced herself, and shoved it with her feet, "I'm trying!"
-
Once the rocks in place Ludovic just sort of gives a heave and shoves the entire thing off with his own strength. "What is it about these places?" he gripes, nursing at his left hand. "Its like they purposefully try to kill us." He grumbles softly and starts trying to one handedly wrap his left hand up. "Is there something here at least?"
-
"Stop, that let me look at it." Alia, now that she could squeeze in beside Ludovic, reached for his hand, setting her bag down on some of the rubble, so that she could clean his hand and bandage it. "Drink this, it will dull the pain until I can set it properly." She shook her head, "I didn't check, I will once I have your hand set."
-
"Pains not the only thing it'll dull." Ludovic waves the drink away but does let Alia do that medico thing with his hand. "Its fine. I've fought whole battles with worse."
-
"Clearly, you've been buying from the wrong alchemist. Do you think i would have offered you something that would dull your senses. In here?" Alia, though, did not bother to offer it again, she simply patched Dovi up as best she could and rose to her feet, moving to sort through what scrolls were still intact. "This one might be worthwhile, but it's too rainy up here, I'll have to wait to look at it. And we need to get into shelter before we catch our death of cold.
-
Ludovic just grins in amusement at her suggestion they might die of a common cold. "Fair enuff. But you get to be the first one to step down those stairs."
-
"Alright." Alia tucked the scroll away in the other bag she always brought on these things, so that she need not load up her hands and be left with no useful limbs. Although, as rare as it was for her to find anything, she probably needn;t have worried. "Alright, I'll take the stairs down. I don't think we're likely to find much of anything useful above ground, from the looks of it. And so, it was back down the stairs, careful as before and then to find the stairs leading below the ground level.
-
Ludovic pokes at the racks as Alia goes about the business of making the room safe. "done?" he asks after a bit. Curious despite himself as he goes over to peer at her work. "My turn then. Wish me luck!" Through a door hanging off its hinges he goes and finds.. a perfectly trap and monster free eating hall. The tables are all neatly stacked against the walls with the chairs layered atop. There aren't even any rotten snacks. A grin for her.
"Easy one. Your turn."
-
It was not a very creative trap, such as it was. It was a very thin board over a hole that would have dropped them down into a room below this floor. It might have worked, too, if Alia had not noticed that the rug was literally the only thing in the room not completely coated in dust. Alas. "I feel whomever trapped this place was extremely determined, but not very bright." And then Alia was leapfrogging Dovi, having found nothing useful in the eating hall and moved ahead into whatever passed as a kitchen in this place. Don't look in any of the covered pots.
"See what I mean?" Alia continued, as she ducked beneath the lintel, pointing up as a terribly clumsy attempt to rig up some pots and pan to whack an intruder on the head.
-
"Seems like they knew they were leaving." Ludovic says "Sealed it all up and left us an incentive not to meddle." He steps around the hole after peering into it. "That might not've even been a trap tho. Not that it would have mattered if we'd fallen in." The next door is opened with some caution. Whats next? Ah a dormitory of some sort. He pokes at one of the chests near the doorway, finding it empty of everything but a ratty old robe, and then moves further in, looking around curiously. Suddenly he stops and prods at the floor a few times with the butt of his hammer. The first tap does nothing. The second issued with a bit more force results in a trapdoor snapping open to reveal a nasty old pitfall trap. He grins at Alia and then hops across one of the corners. "I take it back.
Maybe they were serious about their trapping." He keeps going, reaching the kitchen beyond before Alia can catch up, but stops and lets her past with a smile once inside.
-
Alia shivered, as that way she simply could not help, as she felt Dovi take hold of his magic. But the sensation only brought a nod. If one planned to delve beneath the earth who better to bring with you than an earth sorcerer. "Let me see." She peeked over and down into the pit, frowning as she looked over to Dovi, "Dare I ask that they coated those spikes with?" No, Alia did not dare, she only stepped ahead to take the next too. Another kitchen, this in some better state of repair than the last. "I don't see anything in here, she called back, as she wandered around. Still patiently avoiding looking in the covered pots.
-
Through the kitchen, Alia wandered, moving on quick feet to try to beat Dovi to the next room. It was a stupid thing and dangerous but it was also a hallmark of the two of them. She was literally going to try to race him to the next room. In the middle of a ruin filled with traps and unsound masonry.
-
"Who needs to coat them with anything?" Ludovic asks her "Rust will do just as good. If the goals just to kill someone." He just chuckles as she zips past. "If you keep wanting to go first Alia. Just say."
-
"Say." Alia, having made it to the door, pushed at the handle, peeking her head inside, looking this way and that. Alas, for her lack of caution, as it was the swinging of the door that set off the trap, and a dart shot out from the wall, imbedding itself in her shoulder. "Ow." Alia sniffed, tugging at the dart before she tossed it on the ground. "Who would have thought you'd need such protections in your own private quarters." It's alright, come ahead. I see a few chests in here."
-
After pocketing a promising looking scroll in the lavishly appointed room Ludovic follows Alia into the kitchen. He gives a little tsk at her encounter with the trap. "You check the chests." The scroll he found is presented to her. "From the last room." And whilst she's occupied with those two tasks he cheekily goes and checks the next room along! This one is another lavishly appointed chamber and the earth sorcerer in him is immediately drawn like a swan to water across to a crumbling mural that glints with the lights of dozens of gemstones. "Darn. Wish i'd seen this in the day." He holds out his hand and the gems pluck themselves out the wall one by one to drop into his waiting palms. "That's right. Come to daddy."
-
Alia grinned, as she stuck a strip of cloth into the hole made by the art in her armor, coming in just in time to see Dovi pulling gems from the walls. "See how useful this has been already? Imagine all the fun things you'll be able to buy with those. Might be you'll find another horse to add to your stables." And while Dovi was collecting gems, Alia moved on to the next room. Trying to be a bit more cautious this time. She even fiddled with this or that, while Dovi was occupied.
-
"Wait!" Ludovic calls as Alia hurries ahead. "Theres something off about that door. I dunno.." He moves over, trying to keep hold of those gems as he goes. A couple slip away to fall on rotten dregs of once fancy carpet. Muttering he says "Yeah. Something. Lets just.." He shoves a handful of gems into his zupan and starts tugging bricks out from around the doorway again. Eventually the door just falls over into the barrack space beyond. "Whatever it is. Dont think its a problem anymore." Rather than hurrying into the barracks he turns to rescue those forlornly fallen gems.
-
"Oh!" Well, if it wasn't a problem, then it was nothing Alia needed to worry about, and she was soon poking about inside the barracks, turning over old mattresses, and rooting around in old foot lockers, "Nothing! And I can't see any other way to move forward, so we have to go back to the stairs, I think and see if we can go lower." Once she had waited for Dovi to collect the gems, the pair of them made their way back to the main stairwell, and deposited themselves into a denuded barracks. Shame. Not even footlockers to poke around in. Oh! But another library. "I'll go first. The shelves don't like you in here."
-
Ludovic chortles. "Dont think libraries like me anywhere." He claps Alia's shoulder when she stops to pick through the shelves and starts moving onwards.
First he encounters another old kitchen and after checking for any more unexpected trash disposal devices (that think he's the trash) moves on into the next space.
"Alia" he says a bit too quietly from a spot where he's frozen stock still inside an armory full of interesting looking bits of metal. "This is bad."
-
Alia took her time, as she roamed hither and yon through the library picking through the scrolls, looking for anything and everything that might be useful. She brightened, looking rather giddy, as she plucked a scroll from one of the tall shelves before she finally gave the rest up, as they mostly just crumbled to dust under her fingers. She followed after Dovi, coming up behind him, "What's wrong?" And then she stopped, looking at all the metal. "What do you need me to do?"
-
Ludovic has his head tilted towards the ceiling. "When I say go." He says "You need to run and keep going. The lots going to come down when you do." He sucks in a deep breath and a sizeable chunk of his magic. "Go!"
-
Oh. Clearly, Alia thought it was something to do with all of the shiny metal that could potentially skewer her and Dovi's good selves. But it was the ceiling she gave a dubious look. "Alright, let me get ready." And she did, tightening her bag, securing her loot and making sure that she had nothing that could fall or might trip her. "Alright, I'm going!" And then she was, dashing as fast as her legs could carry her, hoping it was fast enough to escape whatever danger it was that Dovi was holding back. Well, she knew what the danger was, it was probably the whole ruin coming down on their heads.
-
Stone sorcerers who see collapses coming are kinda cheaty. Whilst Alia is forced to charge through ducking rocks and rubble, Ludovic just sort of walks along behind them both making rubble and other detritus flow around him like water. It looks safe for him for the entirety of the armory space but a large piece falls in his path forcing him to leap past once he's in the bedroom just beyond, forcing him to jump aside, and proving that he really isnt immune to death by cave in either. A moment later he appears again, cast in a halo of cascading debris, and steps past the lintel that marks the edge of the danger field. "Safe as its gonna be now." he says "But i reckon if there was anything good in either of those rooms its gone now."
His eyes turn around the kitchen space they've come into. "Huh. These folks sure did have a lot of cooking spaces."
-
Alia pulled up short, right before that kitchen, standing just on the threshold, bent forward, hands on her thighs as she tried to catch her breath. "And suspicious, and murderous," she noted, as she lifted a hand, still gasping for breath and brushing stone dust out of her hair. "See that wall over there? I saw that earlier. I think the stone to set it off is right by that cooking counter." Pressure plate, you know.
-
Ludovic nods and then goes right over to put a foot on said pressure plate. His body tilted away from any expected explosions. There IS a snick. But nothing actually happens and he gives Alia a sheepish grin. "Maybe it turned something off?"
Lifting his foot with the same caution he says "If you're still determined to go first. You'd best keep going."
-
Alia took her time catching her breath, watching with attention as Dovi dealt with whatever the trap might have been. She even pulled a small flask of water from her bag and took a sip, offering it to Dovi on her way past, before she moved to peer into the next room, "What in the world were they doing here? This is…what, the fifth kitchen we're going into?" She continued foeward, creeping as she tried to see what was in the next room. "And how many libraries does a place need? I love books, but this is much, even for me." She took a moment, "Maybe they were teaching them to cook and wanted to make sure they didn't burn the food. Mess up your food, get a spike in the face."
-
Ludovic just sort of assumes Alia is going to be busy a while now they are in another library and slips past her. Another kitchen and he grins and goes right for the floor plate pointed out before. "you know." He calls back to Alia. "What if these arent kitchens at all." His foot goes onto the plate. It snicks. "what if they are for mixing potions and stuff?" His foot comes off.. And a jet of yellow liquid zaps out of a hole in the wall, narrowly missing him, and splatters against the opposite side. Bubbling away as it eats into the rocks. "Uh. Ok. That looks painful. You're so going next."
-
Alia took her time. So long in fact that she completely missed the acid, though the place was quiet as a tomb, and she did not miss Dovi's comment, "Well, yes, I suppose so. I mean, if this palce is as old as some of the places we've been to before, perhaps they didn't have work benches like we do now. Or they had access to such quantities of reagents that they could make them in big batches." She pouted, just a bit, as she came out of the library, "Nothing good at all." And then she did notice the acid, "You know, remind me to get a sample of that on our way out." But not now. Now she was off to the next room, "Looks like a priest's study of some sort." And in she went, moving quietly and carefully. She stopped at each of the bookcases, giving them a nudge with her crossbow. One of them wobbled, just a bit, and Alia took advantage, "Just a moment," and then pushed the shelves collapsing back on themselves, likely ruining anything, if there had been anything to find. Better safe than sorry.
-
Ludovic moves around the room, skirting Alia's efforts. "Reckon it'll all have boiled off by then. But we'll be going" He steps into the next room. "back any.w." His words falling off as theres another of those ominous rumblings. This time though its ended by him stepping back through the door he just went in, counting to three, and progressing into the torture chamber again. "Well. Theres nothing I want in here but that collapse did just open up a handy ramp. Come over. I'll hand you down."
-
"Alright." Alia, looking a bit sad, really, that she'd turned up nothing useful, made her way over to the hole in the floor the collapse had made. "Alright, hold on to me." She took Dovi's hands, climbing down as carefully as she could, and looking rather pleased with herself, "I'm down." Until she didn't, and the entire pile of rocks she was standing on collapsed a little bit more, pulling her down into the rockslide. At least she was, probably, still in the same room.
-
Ludovic pokes his head through the gap in the roof. "You alright? Do I need to backtrack and go around?" He squints after her. "I'll backtrack and go around."
There's silence for a good few minutes and then the clunking and huffing of a large man trying to force a jammed door to open. "Blasted. Hold on." SMASH. "Just a minute. Oof. Damn traps."
The door between the barracks Alia is in and the bedroom Ludovic just trampled through pulls open.
"Come on. The stairs are just on the other side of this officers room here. Least I assume its an officers room."
On a sideboard besides the bed, looking all pretty and surprisingly perfect, is a rather lovely statue of a pegasus. Ludovic doesn't seem to have noticed it. Instead focusing on trying to force the next doorway to give up and let him through.
-
Alia, when Ludovic found her, was trying to pick herself up out of the avalanche of rocks and looking quite the worse for wear, she didn't mind saying. She didn't look terrible mind, but she had more than a few nicks that were bleeding on her face and arms. Why the woman refused to wears sleeved armor, the world would never know. She offered a hearty thanks as she got to her feet and was perhaps a bit more cautious as she followed after Ludovic. Cautious enough and slow enough that she did notice the statue and soon, that ended up in bag of loot as well, way down in the bottom where it would not damage her precious scrolls. "Let me see." She clearly wanted to go through first.
-
Ludovic steps aside to let her go first. "Of course."
-
"Oh! Dovi, look! Another jeweled tapestry!" Alia, clearly delighted, forgot all common sense, as she stepped into the room, walking around the bed which stood at the center of the room. And just like that, out of nowhere the light fixture that had been hanging just over the bed crashed down, knocking her aside as it hit her on the shoulder, sending her tumbling to the ground. "Aren't you glad I went first?" Was her pained, but still rather amiable answer.
-
Ludovic moves over to gently pull her up onto her feet. "I am feeling a lot less bruised than I thought I'd be. Yeah." He dusts her off a bit and gives the tapestry mural a glance. "That's glass. Pretty though."
He's soon giving up on it to go test the next door. As Ludovic pushes open the door beyond he sucks in a breath. "Damn thats one hell of a trap." He takes a couple of steps sideways, carefully edging around the rather clearly delineated danger zones on the ground. "Looks like there's some sort of puzzle we gotta solve. Look." He points at the murals on the wall that still gleam like new. Murals that show stylised images of pseudo-religious scenes. A man filling a pot from a fountain. A man pouring the pot into a pool whilst another kneels in the liquid, his hands upraised. Two men bowing to the strange plinth as a third opens the cabinet. And on the final wall, the one with the door they used to enter, two bells ring.
-
Alia was grateful for the assistance, and she took a few minutes to get herself in order, before she stepped up to join Dovi at the door, curious eyes peering around the room at the murals which covered the walls. "I've never seen anything like this. But there must be a solution if we can find it." She glanced up at the much taller man, "Want to go in together, or one at a time?"
-
"Uh." Ludovic eyes it all. "Maybe we should start at the edges and try and do one at a time. That way I can yank you out if you fall in a vat of acid or something."
-
"Alright." Alia, before she stepped into the room, turned to find a safe place to leave her bag of loots as well as the bag she kept all her healing and alchemy things. "If something happens, make sure these get back to Darius. He'll know what to do with them." And then she stepped in, moving with careful steps towards the first tapestry, studying it intently, before she came close enough to touch it. It needed to be slow, as she threaded the stones which she could just make out as being triggers, "Avoid the ones that look too clean. I think they've shifted over the years, there's no dirt on them. Shaken off, maybe."
-
"Makes sense." Ludovic says as he watches her working. There's a telltale snick that means things could be good or bad. When the snick isn't followed by something terrible he assumes good and somewhat tentatively walks over the first death zone. Nothing happens. His shoulders relax a bit and he kneels at the edge of the next one. "Whats this say?" He asks, drawing her attention to some old tongue writing that wends around something that looks like a trigger stone. He waits for the answer and then says "Ahh. I think I know." He straightens and then steps right onto the labelled stone. It snicks too but not in an oh i'm safe now way but a rather more ominous one. Ludovic seemed to expect that though as he's searching the area above his head with a keen eye. Aha. He's spotted something and reaches up with both hands until his palms are flat to the ceiling. A deep breath. He pushes with the heel of both hands at the same time and…
Snick. The sound of another mechanism triggering. Presumably a disarm. Certainly when Ludovic removes his hands nothing happens.
-
"It says," Alia offered, as she moved away, with care from her own mural, leaning in, "Bring a ladder." She grinned, "No, I mean it." But Dovi knew what he was about. And he was tall enough that he did not need a ladder. And soon, Alia turned, making certain he had truly made his trap safe, for she moved on, eyes searching the walls, the floor, the ceiling. "Dovi, you know that room with the acid, I think…can you do whatever it was you did in there to that?" She pointed towards a panel on the wall beside the tapestry of the baptism scene.
-
"Mostly I just got out of its way." Ludovic says to her. "But I'll try." He pushes the panel as instructed.
-
Alia nodded, as Dovi took up his position by the wall. She threaded her way back to the bedroom, returning with what once must have been a wonderful mirror, which she carried over towards the opposite wall. "Okay, now." She could not afford the acid destroying the murals, if they were the key to solving this puzzle, and so, she used the mirror to catch the acid as best she could, though it was rather comical watching her try to avoid the splatter that did not immediate start to eat glass and wood. The former mirror was soon dropped to the ground.
-
"Right then. Last one I guess." Ludovic spends a good bit of time staring at the box on the plint that conceals the heart and the last bit of the puzzle before them. In the end he makes his decision. "Stand here Alia?" He sets her on a pressure plate. Then he fishes out that pegasus and places it on another. That least a third plate.
He stares at it for a bit and then says "Hold on" before vanishing into the previous rooms for a solid ten minutes or so.
When he comes back he has a sizeable piece of masonry in his arms which he maneuvers onto the last pressure plate. Practically holding his breath, wondering if the rooms going to explode, he waits.
But nothing happens. So he starts on the next stage. Placing his feet just so.. he starts to ease the silvery box open. It creaks a bit "No going back now.." He yanks the door open, sucks in a breath, and grabs the necklace within before leaping off the pressure points. An act which proves to have been entirely unnecessary because nothing happens.
"Well. Ain't this something?" He asks. Turning to face Alia with the necklace in hand and a big grin on his face.
-
"Ow." Alia winced, as she looked down at the speckles of acid on her poor pants. "Ah well. Alright." She had survived worse. And she followed in Ludovic's wake, once again, moving where he told he to move and doing what he told her to do. When she wasn't staring at the murals. Her attention returned once he called out to her and she moved into position. "Clever. It needed or expected four of us in here." Well, close enough. Dovi was basically two people and she was almost one. That was practically three. None of that showed on her face though, as she waited with held breath. And then. Nothing. Or everything?
At least it was success, "It is ruby, right? It's not just glass, like that tapestry?"
-
"Its ruby." Ludovic steps behind her and fastens the necklace about her throat. "Might as well enjoy it for a bit."
-
Alia laughed, despite everything, as the necklace was slipped around her neck, "Sort of makes you wonder how long Josephine's must be. It takes a lot of neck to wear all the things that are being brought back for her." She grinned, "Come on, Dovi, let's go home before something bad happens."