A Land Far Away

Wynna wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 12, 2021 12:36 am

While the humans amused themselves in a small room investigating the floor, Gio set about establishing priorities. They were clearly barking up the wrong tree, while he intended to right the tree bark...relieving it of the crystalline fruit troubling it.

While he fed rope through his hands, he studied the roots crossing through the empty shaft of this buried tower. They hung down from a ceiling of arched stone blocks, breaking in from multiple points. No light broke in with them, though there were a few places where the cracked ceiling showed gaps between stone and roots. The tangle they made in the center of the shaft was a mass of differing diameters, ranging from a few as thick as a warrior's arm to the merest whiskery fringe hanging off the others. Looking past the elven ranger clambering about without proper harness, he followed the thickest roots downward to where they plunged into the dark, cold waters below. Clever tree. Better at finding a drink than a Chauntean brewmaster.

Down there, the newcomer, Bellie, pottered around the circumference of the lower level, visible in and out of the roots, from altar to altar positioned around the water level.

Maybe the tree should have picked a better drinking hole, at that.

Gio lashed the rope to the most substantial root, one that descended like a pillar from the ceiling. Unless things went horribly wrong, it would make a suitable anchor. He tied a length of rope to a fallen stone, and tossed it as far as he could over a more central buttress. Falling, tightening the trailing line swiftly, the stone bounced when it hit the end of the its rope. He was able to hook it over with a crooked branch and lash it to the anchor point.

After that, Bobbular Fizzleguard was yer uncle. By the time he was done tying knots, a tightrope crossed from parapet to central rootball, with a webwork of handholds paralleling it above. A clipline hooked the harness to the upper ropes. If he'd done his work right -- and he always did his work right -- that should remove most of the danger for even the clumsiest tall folk. Even the armored priestess who'd spent most of her time thus far falling through the roots or climbing back up.

Most of the danger. If he'd done his work right.