We explored cave system, past where the black wall was. This wall had blocked us and sent us to the Nazi World (q.v). Now it was gone and was just another normal passage.
Light Touch [Jeff] went skulking down a long passage way, fitfully scouting, while we all waited and twiddled our thumbs. Despite his now considerable skulking skill, he was still ambushed by some zombies and skeletons hidden in illusionary alcoves. A short battle ensued each time, Light Touch was wounded, and these undead were defeated by us all.
We then adopted a rather ingenious method to detect these illusionary alcoves: normal senses could not discern them, but should one be blindfolded, one could search for these alcoves by prodding the wall with a stick - the stick would vanish into the wall. The hapless "one" given this job was John Wayne [Shane].
In a room down the end was yet another Evil Temple room - complete with altar and pews. Eight large candles, ensconced in elaborate faux-gold candle-holders, lit the room. These candles magically ignited when someone entered and extinguished when they left.There was also a large bell here. Next to this temple, though two doors, was a room filled with skeletons and zombies, about twenty of each, but they were totally immobile, and stationary, frozen and standing to attention. We guessed that if some idiot rang the bell, then they would all animate. Thankfully, in this case, our party contained no idiots (though, mentions in dispatches might claim otherwise).
Off another side passage was a plush bedroom, en suite and another passage. While investigating the bedroom, a leather-clad figure, human, suddenly appeared, grabbed me and held a knife to my throat. He wanted us all to surrender, or "the girl gets it". Though some quick negotiations and a substantial bribe ensured he left us, and left the complex, and made his way outside.
Down another side passage, we were met with some desultory arrow and quarrel fire. Peg Groups [Ian] volunteered to investigate, invisible, so left us. He didn't return after the appointed time. Oh dear.
Light Touch volunteered to check for him, but we instead decided a full frontal with some magical support.
After a fierce battle, we broke into yet another temple, this one with two altars. On one was tied the helpless and hapless Peg Groups - about to be sacrificed to some Chaos god. On the other on was a miniature black dome. As we were fighting our way through the horde (well, maybe five) of baddies, a large mechanical bipedal robot thing materialized out of mid air. It carried two mini-guns and these whirred to life firing, each, 110 bullets per second. But high-tech and the Shadowlands world do not mix, and the robot thing started to melt almost immediately as its molybdenum stainless steel started to corrode, and its plastics and kevlars started to disintegrate. Within a few seconds it could no longer fire, and stumbled about blindly, eventually falling over and melting into a pile of component elements in a colourful puddle on the floor.
More worrisome was another figure beyond this robot. This was an emaciated chap, in robe and hood, but connected to the black back wall by some tentacle or umbilical. He hurled magic at us, doing considerable damage, before severing the umbilical defeated him. After he had died, the back wall still quivered as if it was made of black jelly. No one dared to touch it. Peg Groups was freed during this battle.
Point to note: neither the Gatling-gun robot nor Mister Umbilical had a belly plate.
We also suspect that the black dome here, which vanished when we killed the nearby priests, was maintaining the large black dome ("Dome of Night") over the whole valley.
Having vanquished this cave system, we cured up and headed back to the Lord Loofah's keep to train.
One of the maps we had obtained (from Ah Hung [Steven]) indicated a large pentagram drawn on top of a map of the surrounding area. In the very centre of the pentagram was the Caves of Chaos. And one of the arm tips was the entrance through to Jacksons Bay. So we decided to check out the other arms.
The most northerly one was in the forest, but Griffon advised not to go there.
"They are a goblin tribe called Cliffers," he exclaimed with some derision. "Under Splint. Not a nice tribe. Lots and lots."
The southerly one looked safer: it was in the forest off the swamp (about a day's travel from the tower), so we could expect help from our friends the lizardmen.
We headed back into the swamp, met up with Druid Bent Rootsucker and his lion Binky, then met the lizardmen. They were only too happy to provide us with escorts for our foray into the forest.
That night, Bent went missing. There was a note stabbed into a tree nearby proclaiming "You may get your druid back in nine days. Any attempt to rescue him, or move deeper into OUR lands will result in his death".
Light Touch did an invisible look around and found Bent a prisoner of some orcs. Twenty of them. Not wanting to fight this number with our meagre resources, we asked our lizardmen guides for some help. They took off and soon returned with a veritable army of sixty lizardmen fighters.
So... Yeti [Darryl] made Light, Peg and Whizz invisible and they moved to stand next to the three orcs guarding Bent. Then the attack was launched, and the sixty lizardmen charged. The orc guards of course moved to kill Bent, but Light, Peg and Whizz soon put paid to that little plan. In a few minutes, all the orcs were utterly overwhelmed and slaughtered. We bid our lizard escorts farewell (they didn't like these woods), and moved deeper on in.
I had a tingling in the back of my head and it got stronger when we approached a clump of bushes. This was about at the spot on the map where the pentagram arm was. Sure enough, if one crawled into these bushes, one emerged ...
... in a white snowy forest, next to a lamp-post.
"Narnia?" exclaimed John.
Sure enough, we met a faun, and some other talking animals. The world was indeed run by a White Witch who placed everything into perpetual winter. There was a saviour called Aslan who had not been seen for many decades. And time was dilated here. There were a few differences from standard Narina - the Witch made use of ogres, tigers, and beholders (plus the usual evil dwarves and wolves), and the collection of "good" animals was a bit different. Also, we did not get the significance of the nine days that the orcs had demanded (with or without the four-to-one time dilation). And it did not appear that the orcs had discovered the portal.
Oh yes. The White Witch was an exact likeness of Carla, buxom and bold, though with cruel feral eyes.
A heap of good woodland creatures were being kept captive in the Witch's dungeons (presumably turned to stone - yes, she had one of those wands), under her castle, so we had to get inside.
