Session 6: Climbing the staircase

Munta gave us a dried fish and some fish sauce which allows us to summon Scarlet Carp a boatman who has bonded with their boat by replacing their head with the boat bow head. They look horrific but in exchange for the fish sauce take us along the underground waterways. Apparantly the caverns and passages here are the cavities of fallen giants or gods and this explains their oddly organic appearance.

We arrived at the shore of the Stair safely but the area is abandoned and no-one is here, this isn’t wasn’t what we were expecting as we thought there would be some trade with the surface here.

We can the waterfall nearby and it echoes around the empty caves. There are curtains of webs, we had been told that the spiders are meant to be protectors of the Stair but have been behaving oddly.

We hear the sound of cockroaches nearby and investigate carefully, however it turns out the cockroaches are more interested in tormenting and eating one of their own who has got caught up in the webs.

Grogrun is disguisted by their behaviour and as before we feel our chances are best in the sudden assault. The cockroaches don’t try to fight but attempt to escape and warn someone they call “the wizard”. Using the last of our javelins and bullets we manage to prevent the roaches from escaping but even injured and our mercy their behaviour is disgusting and beyond redemption. They talk vile nonsense and it is impossible to understand what they are here to do and who they might be working with.

Climbing the stair

We were expecting a staircase at the Stair but it seems the first part of the journey is actually a climb. The waterfall descends over cliff-like walls. Yarold and Tahleela seem to be natural climbers and find a way they think is well-travelled and with the help of the ropes we are all able to make the ascent without danger.

At the top of the climb we see a passage that seems to have more conventional stairs in it, climbing the walls might be faster and safer but we decide to take the passageway rather than continue climbing.

Into the temple

At some point we found that the passageway was blocked, the strange sight of the bat sword allowed us to see that the obstruction is hollow so we topple it over and enter what seems to be a crypt.

The sound of the falling coffin used to block the passageway attracts the attention of monk who alarming seems to be able to project and spit fully-formed arrows from their mouth. However this strange ability means they can’t talk and it makes negotiating difficult.

We seal up the passageway again and the monk pushes out into the temple proper. It turns out this sits in a great chamber in the mountain where the roof has collapsed and allowed the sun and rain in creating a tiny climate where plants can grow. This is clearly the temple at the top of the Stair.

We hear a man crying nearby and follow the sound to find another monk who fortunately is able to speak. He seems eager to explain the situation but assumes that we know where we are and what is happening so lots of what he says doesn’t make sense to people who have been underground for days.

It seems the Temple is meant to be sealed off to outsiders due to a schism in the community. The former Boulder School has now become a Roach School so it is clear to us where the source of the disharmony is and what needs to be done to fix it. Presumably the only problem is that too direct an approach might allow this corrupt monks to use their dark gifts on us.

The essence of the problem seems to be that Udarada, a god-spider and patron of the temple, has fallen in love with the roach spirit Oddikay (who has been bad news wherever else they’ve turned up) there are echoes here of the love story Dee-Wee-Shree told us here.

We tell the young monk about the terrible deeds of the cockroaches and promise him that we’ll try and free the temple of their influence.