+----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | The Olympia Times Waning days year 8 | | March 23, 2015 | | | | turn 63, 121 players olympia@shadowlandgames.com | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Questions, comments, to play: http://www.shadowlandgames.com/olympia Olympia PBEM * * * * * * =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Player-contributed press =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Hopefully we got the trade! -- Brotherhood of Blue [lk8] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Rumors =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The weak light of my sputtering candle guided my descent down the stone steps. In the glow I could read the ancient runes carved in the walls, but of the ancient terrors inscribed there I must not speak. At the bottom I emerged into a cavern, its dimensions unknowable in the darkness. There was a phosphorous scent like none I had smelled before. From out of the gloaming, an unearthly chuckle beckoned me near. And then, in the dim circle of light cast by the dancing flame, I saw Him! A hideous shape, all white, clad in strange clothes from another time. Behind his black eyes danced an odd and evil merriment. He sat upon a throne made of human heads and yet the heads lived, nodding and gaping blindly in states of agony. Enjoying my horror, the creature opened his mouth, croaking out his declarations in an ancient tongue not heard in generations. "I am Ol.. Old.. wait, I am Oleg the mighty" I began to snicker But the creature fixed me with a baleful gaze, and I deigned to stay quiet, to let him have his say in hopes that he would afterwards allow me to return to the land of light. Perhaps sensing my foolish and naove dream, the creature chuckled. His breath, redolent of the decay buried at the bottom of a swamp, enveloped me, near driving me to my knees. He chuckled again, deeper this time. As my own gorge rose in horror, one of the skulls set in the throne began emitting soul-rending shrieks. The keening echoed off the farthest enshrouded reaches of the chamber. The creature, whilst never averting his black eyes from my own, reached down and plucked the skull. He dug his long talons into the skin, peeling it free of the bone. Then he twisted off the crown of the head as one would twist open a bottle cap, and drank deeply of the contents therein. Blood ran down the creature s chin as he devoured the skull s contents. He smiled at me then, his teeth coated with gore. I opened my mouth again to scream, but could only emit a muffled keening. The creature grunted and tossed the emptied skull away. I heard it clatter against stone somewhere in the darkness. Then he reached down to pluck another. Once again, the skinning of the death s head, the opening of its brain casing, the emptying of its contents. And still the creature seemed unsatisfied. Then he looked at me. A terrible light seemed to animate him now. He raised himself from that throne of madness and stood, this stooped and wizened thing. Deliberately, slowly, he began tottering towards me. Upright, he looked somewhat like a man. It was a man, or had been once. Now it was something else, something unnameable with claws that shrieked against the stone as it slid its postulous feet along the floor. I wanted to run, to flee this terror, to return to the surface world I would never see again. I thought of my family around the hearth, awaiting my return from my sojourn. Why had I left them to explore this darkness? Now the creature stood before me. He took my head in his claws. I felt the shudder course through me. Something warm grew below my abdomen, a foul-smelling dampness. The creature chuckled again, a deep and resonant sound, the closest I knew it could come to expressing joy. There were pinpricks of agony as talons pierced my brow and tore skin from bone. The creature peeled my face in long, precise strips. There was a flash of agony as the top of my cranium was wrenched free. He lifted my skull to his lips like a chalice of the damned. Which I suppose it was. There was a sense of the world draining as the contents of my brain case slid easily into the creature s gaping maw. He went quiet then, except for a horrible gurgling I recognized from times of pleasure, of meals and drink consumed in a happy world now lost to me forever. Having drunk his fill, the creature shuffled back to his throne, mumbling still more about terrors in a desert land I could not comprehend but which obviously pleased him in whatever corners of his dessicated soul still existed. He tossed my skull into the darkness, where it bounced several times and came to rest at the base of a pile of other skulls, the contents of which had long been similarly drained to sustain the life of this fearsome evil. That is the last time I drink mead mixed with ratspider poison - now I will never get to sleep. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=