Saturday, November 05, 2022

When in Rome

• Oh yeah, we ended up in some catacombs under Rome
  • The door shuts behind us and the house key doesn't fit the lock
  • We appear to have lost very little to no time since we left our house
  • The bones are somewhere in the hundreds to a thousand years old according to those that investigated them
  • I cast Flicker-Flies, and it was easier than I'd expect, leading me to believe that while this place isn't an active freehold, it was one at some point
• We make our way through a couple doors, through a chamber piled up with coffins, and into a room containing the remains of rotted books
  • We find a singular intact book that appears to be an accounting ledger of some sort written in Italian
  • A few apothecary jars labeled in Latin, the contents long since decayed away
  • A very old pair of spectacles with a broken lens
  • A porcelain inkwell (which Agnes takes)
  • An hourglass whose wooden fittings have dry rotted away and the sand has escaped from (Agnes takes the glass)
  • Hand drawn old maps of the area around Rome (that are clearly wrong, but were well made at the time)
  • A set of seals (which Aoife takes)
  • A pair of heavy bookends
  • Agnes best guess is that these things are from the mid to late Renaissance
• We head through an archway and down a corridor to the south and into a room that is probably where some of the sarcophagi were cleared out of and set up some furniture, which has now all rotted away over the centuries
• Continuing south from that we have travelled upwards a bit and find our way into a room with an iron gate and a path that leads up to the surface to the sounds
• We don't go up, but continue exploring to the west and then north and find a small chapel, beyond which is a room higher up that is in better repair
  • There is a hearth from which a large wolf of lambent silver flame appears
  • It attacks us!
    • It is DANGEROUS
    • Moira uses a cantrip to purify it somehow, the white veins of flame burning away as their taken over by the healthy flames of a balefire
    • It tries to settle down into the hearth, but then it backs into a corner, as if there is something in the hearth it doesn't like
  • I root around in the hearth and get my hand on something cold, which turns out to be a metal key that looks similar to our house key
  • Once I've removed the key, the wolf goes into the hearth and settles down and turns into a balefire, and the room is now a small freehold
• We check the key, and it does open the door we entered through so we decide to go on exploring
• We head south from the door down a corridor lined with cubbies full of bones before turning east and into a room with an ornate tomb, flanked by two gargoyles, and the walls covered by frescoes
  • Blaze spots a vase in an ancient Grecian style with some sort of combat scene that looks similar to the one she had in our vision
  • The gargoyles attack when Blaze clambers onto the sarcophagus and grabs the vase
  • They're real tough, so after exchanging a few swings, we grab the vase and run
    • The gargoyles seem to not want to leave the room so we leave them behind
  • Agnes glanced at the inscriptions and mosaics in the title and recalls what amounts to a list of titles in Latin
    • Some Summer Court sidhe count, pre-Renaissance, middle to high Middle Ages, quite possibly pre-Shattering
    • It's quite possible that his body is still in the tomb, maybe incorruptible
• We go back to the corridor to the east which leads to a series of narrow corridors fill with bones
  • The bones are quite possibly those of fae, but we're not sure if the remains are chimerical or real
• The vase seems to depict Hercules wrestling a female figure
  • The female figure looks sort of vague
  • Similar in style to depictions of Hercules defeating Hippolyta, but not actually that
    • Most likely a depiction of the defeat of some other female figure
  • It's some sort of Treasure clearly, but we're going to take it home before we mess with it
• We head home through the door
• Moira and I go into the kitchen (which has a large locked door to the east)
  • Moira pokes her head through that door and sees a very Germanic feeling, witchy, fairy tale house
• South of the kitchen is a room with bunkbeds and a south or central American feel and a locked door to the south
  • I poke my head through that door and see a rough-hewn, sandstone tomb
• East of the kitchen is a bathroom
• Also south of the kitchen is a storage pantry containing food stuffs and a locked striped wooden door
  • That door leads to a deserty-vibed room with shelves and shelves of scrolls
• The locked arched metal door off the graveyard to the west
  • Opening it there is a sensation of what amounts to a chimerical air pressure shift (probably leads deeper into the Dreaming)
  • Inside is a cathedral of massive bones
• We rejoin the others who have congregated in the library
• Any of the keys we have will open any of the doors out of the courtyard space, but only the specific key for a door can open into the courtyard space from the place on the other side
• I pop my head out into our house until I can get cell signal to check the time
  • It's just a bit after midnight
• Blaze licks the vase
  • Nothing happens on the outside
  • But when she licks the inside "as soon as your saliva touches it" it turns to some sort of cement-like glue
  • Agnes discerns that the vase, when poured out, will immobilize non-living material (like maybe some gargoyles)
• I gather up the many books Agnes want to peruse, and we head back to the house to attempt sleeping in house during the day