August 18 - 11.00 PM - The other side

[robertod]

As soon as the disk is aligned, the prisms emit a strong white light which makes everything else around invisible. The light lasts a short time, like the flash of a camera, but for some incomprehensible reason this moment seems to last minutes.
When the light goes out, the investigators are in another place, in the dark. They turn on the flashlight and see that it works. The laws governing physics and human technology continue to function and have an effect on the world.
It is roughly square room, with a side of 40 feet, and with a ceiling height of six feet. They are in the middle of a circle engraved on the floor rock. Its diameter is about 25 feet. Four large stone boulders are placed at four equidistant points of the circumference. The boulders are twenty inches in height, and seems to be made of the same kind of rock as the walls and floor are, but they are detached from the ground.

They are triangular, prism shaped stones, similar to those they left behind in the tunnel. Here too, each prism has one of his angles directed towards the center of the circle. The four triangles are greenish brown, but in different shades of color, being one darker and, in a clockwise order, the other three gradually lighter.

The floor is covered with moss, algae, mollusks and fishes carcasses, suggesting this space gets regularly filled with sea water during high tide. Within the rock walls is a dampness that does not belong to the open air. The odour and humidity are different and difficult to describe, being somewhat unnatural. Three corridors start from the room, respectively from the North, South and West walls. The East wall has a huge metal door, apparently made of a sort of metal. It has the color and texture of iron, but apparently, does not show the slightest sign of rust. The lock is as big as the palm of one hand.
The room would be abandoned in complete darkness, were it not for a faint blue light coming from the West wall corridor. In the absence of other light sources, such a dimness give the impression of a strange and uncommon twilight effect occurring in the distance, far beyond the end of the West corridor. The walls and the floor appear to be made of the same strange stone, as if the room had been hollowed out from a monoblock. The ground covering is sparse, and those that grow are the flora of seaweed, interspersed with tufts of moss.

[Mr. Handy]

Kathryn finds being teleported disturbing, but compared to everything else she's seen, it seems downright mundane and understandable. She stows the disk back in her purse and inspects the lock's mechanism with her flashlight, seeing if it would be possible for her to pick it.

[VictoriaSilverwolf]

"Kind of like what happened to that John Carter fella," Michael muses, more than a little dazed by the transition. "I wonder if that Tarzan guy knew somethin'. Maybe we're on Mars."

Happy to let Kathryn fiddle with the lock, since he's pretty clumsy with his hands, Michael decides to take a peek down the west corridor, where the light is coming from. The blue light protected them before, so maybe it's a good thing. Could it be where the friendly Martians live?

[robertod]

The West corridor is short and leads the small group to a large hall. It is a huge space, apparently empty like a big arena, a squared area with a 150-foot side and a 40-foot high ceiling. It is illuminated by a strong monochromatic blue light, being emanated by a large pyramid on the ceiling, placed upside down, with its tip pointing at the floor. The floor has a long, 3-foot wide break that almost runs through the entire room from north to south. The light is concentrated in the center and prevents the group from seeing details of the walls. Three humanoid silhouettes with are standing at each of the two corners of the hall that are seeable form the corridor. They are standing still and do not seem to have noticed the investigators. Althought some light reaches their corridor, the characters can still hide in the darker part of it.

[VictoriaSilverwolf]

Michael makes a careful retreat back into the central room, to see how Kathryn is doing with the big door. He'll tell her what he saw to the west. Doesn't seem to be an immediate source of danger, but it would be better to get their bearing first. If they can't get the door open, he'll suggest they take a quick look at the north and south to see what they can see.

[Mr. Handy]

OOC,Can I roll Locksmith to try to pick the lock?

[robertod]

The investigators can't understand how this door could be unlocked. The lock is something profoundly different than what ever seen before. They can't even imagine the kind of key. Certainly the key must be large, given the size of the lock. It is however possible to peek into the hole. The room beyond is illuminated by the sunlight. Through the hole they see a short corridor which ends with a door open to the sea.

[VictoriaSilverwolf]

"Ain't gonna be easy to get out of this crazy joint," Michael says, pointing out the obvious. "We better check out the other two directions. Heads for north, tails for south."

He pulls a coin out of his pocket, tosses it into the air, and catches it.

Spoiler:

[dice]0[/dice]

"South it is." He heads in the direction.

[Mr. Handy]

Kathryn goes along to the south, gun in hand, trying to make as little noise as possible.

[robertod]

The cold damp air wraps around the group like a heavy coat of chain mail as they run through the corridor. The narrow corridor continues for 80 feet, then makes a right-angled curve.
Light reaches neither walls nor ceiling, confining vision to the small circle of flickering yellow cast by the flashlight. Cold humidity fills the air. The moss sits hedgehog-like on the stone surface, softly hibernating. Feels like walking through the dungeons of a castle which has been submerged under sea water for centuries. Every step in this corridor is a step towards the unknown. Something coming from the floor rock seems to pass through the body up to the intestines to generate a panic waves following each step. The tunnel goes on for another 80 feet, and finally leading the group to another room.

This room has a higher ceiling compared to the other the group has come from, about 40 feet over the head. A circular well filled with sea water lies in the center of the room. It is about ten feet in diameter. The water in the well seems pitch black. It would be still, were it not for the drops of water falling from the ceiling and making concentric circular waves on the water surface.
The strange and massive stone of the walls is adorned with its virescent mosses, soft to the touch, as if the rock has given life to the inanimate, as if the rock itself had something in its matter that allows vegetal grow.
Near the South wall are stairs rising to the top of the tower. They are three parallel flights of straight stairs joined by landing, with a 180 degree turn in the walk line.
Next to the North wall are two large glass elliptical cisterns, being the major axis about twenty feet. The cisterns reach up to the ceiling and are filled up to two thirds with greenish brown kelpy substance.
The cisterns are an artificial construction, but the materials used are unknown and unidentifiable. What appears to be glass is in truth much harder and more resistant, like a kind of transparent rock. There are no materials like this, in the whole history of human manufacture and industry.

The slurry is bubbling, and generating splashes that repeatedly wet the thin glass walls of the cistern. Without any source of heat being applied, the liquid particles are moving chaotically like microscopic living organisms willing to roam free. Bubbles appear and soon disappear with a pop. The pops noise is the sound dominating the room. It echoes and amplifies throughout the whole room, up to the high ceiling. The noise is repetitive and disturbing, and makes the room seem like a secret alchemical laboratory, which has finally produced something majestic and terrifying at the same time.
The lower part of the cisterns is made of something similar to metal, and a small pipe comes out and ends with a faucet. The tap can be can turned on, allowing the sludge to flow out onto the floor. Drops of dried and solidified liquid stained the floor, just below the taps mouth. Once dried, the liquid became as hard as the underlying rock.
Two cylindrical and transparent rock containers, one hundred inches high and fifty wide, are placed next to the big tanks. The containers are closed by a cover, made from a strange metallic material. This material is highly malleable, so that the containers are easily opened by folding the cover in specific points.

A white rubbery substance surround the lower edges of the cover. The same thing also cover the mouth of the glass containers, so that, when the cylinder is closed, the interior is isolated from the air contact.
Three corridors depart from the room. One going East, one going West and the last one heading North. A diffuse bluish light is coming from the North corridor and is beaming through the tanks, which made an eerie contrast with the slurry inside, and changing its color to dark blue. It is the same blue light the group saw when they were in the other room and, most likely, it comes from the same source, the big hall.

[Mr. Handy]

"I think this is where they brew their horrid stuff," whispers Kathryn. "I don't think we should mess with it, at least not yet. Later maybe we can drain it all, but we don't want anyone to know we're here yet. We don't want to go near it, and we don't want to go north toward the blue glow. Let's continue to the west."

[VictoriaSilverwolf]

"Suits me. Looks like most of this joint is deserted. Might as well find out as much as we can." Michael takes the precaution of sketching a rough map of the place with his pad and pencil, so they don't get lost.

[robertod]

The group goes west to take the other corridor. The corridor ends in another stone chamber. The temperature drops, sending violent chills down the spine. Then, the vision of something terrifying petrifies the them. The West half of the room is occupied by an unidentifiable number of unmentionable and terrifying big organisms, the same they have found in underground tunnels of the island. They are shapeless and senseless agglomerations of animals’ limbs and sensory organs. Such components seem to have been put together, after being randomly chosen within the whole marine animal evolutionary scale.
Since they are not a clear and definite form, it is not clear how many creature are there. Eyes of fish, fins, scaled skin and tentacles appear and disappear here and there. Where the mass does not generate something identifiable, it maintains a gelatinous consistency that resembles that of jellyfishes.

The different parts that make up the things seem somewhat autonomous, although there seems to be a general nervous system coordinating the interaction between some components
The creatures are constrained in a small space for their size. A grate with heavy iron bars, pulled down from the ceiling, the keeps things as prisoner in the West half the room. They form protuberances that move chaotically trying to conquer a little space through the bars.
Where an occasional mouth is generated, it cries as if desiring immediate nutrition, challenging the possibility of merciful feelings for something so monstrous that should be better off dead, or better, non-existent at all.
On the East wall is a big iron lever, which activates a mechanism inserted into the wall.
Corridors to the North and South depart from the room, while a corridor directed to the East provides a faint blue light that weakly illuminates the part of the room free from the presence of the horrible creatures.

[Mr. Handy]

"Keep that blue light handy," whispers Kathryn with a shudder. "I suppose that lever lets them out, but that sounds dangerous. The only reason to do that would be to send them after those things in the middle, but they have a blue light of their own. Let's head north."

[robertod]

The group arrives to another room, similar to the others in term of size. In the center is a small pool of sea water. It seems like the top of a deep well. The diameter is about ten feets. The moss clung to the stone wall like green snow, lying all over the surface.
Four rectangular stone blocks are arranged in the room, each one at one of the corners. They are as tall as tables, ten feet wide and twenty long. Next to the North wall is a stone staircase going up, being composed by three parallel flights of straight stairs joined by U turn landings.

One small cylindrical transparent container is placed upon each rectangular stone. Each one is closed by an iron cover. The cylinders seem to have been made to reflect this type of light preferentially. The blue rays reflect between one cylinder and the other so to generate a celestial aura in the center of the stone chamber. The result is something shocking that displaces the human mind. The sea citadel is something old that lives in communion with marine life, and at the same time, it is the result of an advanced alien intelligence, which has proved to be ruthless and terrifying with human beings.
The transparent material used to produce the cylinder has the solidity and consistence of rock. The iron cover is extremely malleable, so that it can be easily folded to fit the vase´s mouth and close the container.

The cylinder placed in the Southwest corner is empty, but the others have objects inside. The vase in the Northwest corner contains a scalpel and a roll of thread. Thin but robust filaments obtained from seaweeds fibers are rolled around a piece of rock. There are also fragments of reptilian and fish scales, along with some peace of stone tools, as thin as needles, which seem to have been taken from an archaeological excavation site. In addition to these objects, the cylinder contains a small stone vase filled with a whitish oily substance similar to a balsam.

The cylinder placed on the Southeast corner has a round disk made of stone, the size of a book. It looks like an exact copy of the one the group already has. This one too has reliefs that draw four triangles, whose tip is directed towards the center of the disk.Triangles have different colors, being one of these darker and the other three gradually lighter.

Three objects are inside the container of the Northeast corner. Each object is composed of two buzzing globes of shivering blue, one encasing each hand. Thisey are copies of the same object the creature used to repell the chaotic mass.
The room opens up to three corridors, one leading south, towards the center of the tower, and the other two going East and West.

Here too, a blue light comes from the corridor that leads to the South. The light is weak but increases in intensity when it meets the transparent cylinders. Three humanoid figures are walking throught the South corridor, leaving the hall and going towards the characters.

[Mr. Handy]

"Hide," whispers Kathryn ducking back down the hall and gripping her revolver. "Keep your light out of sight, around the corner if you can."

[VictoriaSilverwolf]

Michael nods agreement, moving as quietly as his bulk allows him to do. It's obvious that these Martians, or whatever they are, are performing biological experiments on Earth creatures, and he doesn't feel like getting cut up. Maybe he'll be really lucky, and they'll be willing to talk to human beings, but no sense taking chances.

This place is becoming a labyrinth. I feel like a rat in a maze. What this all has to do with bootleggers and a missing kid is beyond me.

[robertod]

While the characters are hidden in the dark in a corner of the room, four huge humanoid figures, with bulbous eyes and scaly skin, enter and head towards the stairs. They are the same race that inhabited the caves under the mansion of the Andersons. They walk dripping with salt water, walking awkwardly towards the stairs. Then, they lift the weight of their body, so unsuitable to walk on earth, with difficulty, step by step up the stairs.

[Mr. Handy]

"We'll want to avoid them," whispers Kathryn. "Let's go the way they came from, to the south, toward the middle. Now that they're gone, maybe it's clear."

[VictoriaSilverwolf]

Michael nods, just happy that the things that live down here have limbs. Things without arms or legs; that's what's really scary.