From the Journal of Caesar Boneparte, Human Illusionist.
I organized a gleaning expedition to Kaer Bamor. It was a horror infested broken kaer that has been cleaned out a few times, and now that the more powerful horrors have all been reported to be slain, lower circle parties are exploring it to pick up the gleanings that the higher circle parties never bothered with. In speaking to a member of one of these gleaning parties I learned that they came upon a stack of manuscripts by a playwright who lived in Bamor during the Scourge. These manuscripts exist in no other place in the world. The gleaner brought one manuscript back with him, but the rest were left because of their perceived low value and their fragile condition. Caesar read this one manuscript and believes it is a work of genius. Caesar believes that rescuing these lost works of literature and delivering them to the Cultural Preservation Institute of Travar will gain Astendars favor.
The entrance to Bamor is said to involve traveling through a flooded corridor, so I purchased 2 oiled leather bags cunningly crafted such that they will keep their contents dry even when immersed. I also obtained some (disassembled) crates and rented 4 pack goats and tack for them (The deposit was enough to buy the goats, but upon our return I was able to get the deposit back). I also made sure that everybody in the expedition had both cold weather gear and climbing gear.
Joining me on my little expedition were Keel the Eff Sky Raider, Teyo the Windling Swordmaster, Quillem the Dwarf Weaponsmith, and Garak the Ork Archer.
Our journey as far as kampung gajah was uneventful. At the T'Skrang town we stayed at the Cracked Barrel, run by its proprietress "Big Mama". They served excellent fish and chips, and apple cider. They had a band named "Deadfish Stinkin" that was marvelous. I tried to speak with a shaman named Cowaddle, but he was very high, and very probably crazy as well, so we did not get any good information from him.
Fortunately I was able to speak with a Highlander T'Skrang (I did not even know that T'Skrang who love the high and cold places of the world even existed). This dude, Briukuthi by name, was able to tell us much of the route that we needed to take. He was able to describe the location of several traps, and warn us that there were many traps bordering the road route, but that the center of the main road was (relatively) clear. He was a fount of useful information. He warned us of a place called the Fire Tunnel, of which I shall write more presently, but also told us that the tunnel could not be safely avoided. He also repeated the warnings not to go downstream past the kaer due to a landslide that had not only messed up the river physically (rocks and rapids) but also dumped a lot of astral corruption into it, causing it to become a lair of corrupted spirits.
Due to Briukuthi's descriptions of the trap locations, we had no problems getting to or through the Uzhok Pass. The old fort was still there. Some parts of it were still in good shape after all these centuries. There was an old shrine of Rashomon there, that now seems to be active to Raggok, and when I viewed it in astral space, I saw it seems to be actively pumping astral energy to something buried underground. Somebody probably ought to try to disenchant it, however none of us even knew how one would start the process.
Passing the Uzhok Pass, we followed the route of the old Fallo Via Caucavik. Much of the ancient stone-works was still in acceptable repair, but there were frequent rough patches and washed out sections. It had clearly undergon hasty repairs a few years ago, but those had almost universally fallen. Eventually we came to the place where the so called "Fire Tunnel" bored through a ridge. Something had seemingly destroyed part of the undead army there, and strangely the charred remains were mostly stuck to the roof, though bits of tar-like remains still after all these years continue to drip down the floor.
Briukuthi had warned us that the dripping was dangerous, so we held wooden shields above us as we passed through. However these simple precautions were utterly ineffective, as several huge blobs of goo fell and reformed into humanoid forms that attacked us. They were utterly unlike any undead I have ever heard of. Those they attacked started to suffer hallucinations or visions. I was mostly ineffective in the fight since I kept getting knocked down. When we got out we hurried down the road until we found a stream and (careful of traps once off the road) washed the goo off of us. We then spent the remainder of the day and the next camped in the culvert under the road. When most of us were feeling well, we continued on towards Kaer Bamor.
Arriving in the Bamor area, we could hardly recognize the place from the descriptions we had read. The journals all describe a hidden entrance, marked only by a single ruined town. What we found instead were high city walls. I marvel that they were built in such a few years, and struggle to imagine why anybody would do so, and then abandon the place again. In addition to the lofty city walls, somebody had also repaired several of the ancient docks and piers down by the river. We looked around and found tracks from multiple undead Thundra Beast that had apparently been pulling barges up the rapids below the city and unloading or loading stuff. They must have been laboring for years to build those huge walls, but when we arrived the place seemed abandoned again.
Teyo flew up above the city, and found some coverings on the hill above. We climbed up around the backside of the hill and found that there were over 150 of what appeared to be air shafts, but covered in human skin. Despite this, the Astral was not very corrupt. In fact it was either Heavily Tainted, or Lightly Corrupt. This seems to indicate that whoever had done all this work and used so many human remains as building materials (something that tends to produce corruption) might have been more insane than horror corrupted (by which I mean, "naturally" insane without the touch of a horror).
We cut one membrane away and descended into the kear, where we were quickly able to orient ourselves and make our way to the Theater. Backstage we came upon a small puppet stage and quickly all passed out. When we awoke we all appeared to be puppets, made of wood and painted clothing. Some of us had useless wooden swords and slings in our hands.
There was an audience of skulls, and three creepy puppets. Two were painted as harlequins, and one as a creepy clown / master of ceremonies. The MC introduced himself as "Astenders Muse", which was more ridiculous impiety than I could barely stand. He required me to pick one aspect of Love, and I chose agape, the love of all mankind. He then required us to cast ourselves into 5 roles, and perform a short improvisation about agape. After much confusion, I choose Synthesis, the seeker of Truth, Quillium chose Thesis the guide to truth. Keen played Lord Mainsplain, Teyo Lord Kantbebothered, and Garak Lord Entitlement. We all stumbled though an improvised scene where all our characters ruminate upon the aspects of agape.
The desecration and impiety of the situation made us want to retch. Finally Astender herself interviend and put a halt to the farce. She gave us a short speech about love that I shall always treasure, and cast us out of the nightmare realm that we had fallen into. We awoke back in the theater, and quickly packed up all the manuscripts we could find and returned to Kampan Gauga. There I made a quick divition of the manuscripts, half I had shipped to the Travar Institute of Cultural Preservation, and half we carried to the Great Library of Throal.
There is much to follow up regarding Kaer Bamor. The shrine to Raggok at Uzhok Pass needs to be deconsecrated. And who built the walls around the kaer entrance? How did they build them so tall, so quickly? And who reopened the docks? And why? and what are they loading and unloading? And then why did they leave again? Will they be back? There is much to follow up on. Statistics:Posted by ChrisDDickey — Sun Nov 28, 2021 7:01 pm
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