Chapter Four: The Manifest of the Harikan Squall

The bag stops moving while you all stand poised and ready around it.

As Mordred lifts the pack, a black centipede about a foot long uncoils from beneath it and quickly scurries off to find cover. Leth looses his arrow, bisecting the creature. Its two halves squirm independently for a moment as the arrow ricochets off into the wall.

Inside the pack is a hammer, four iron spikes, a wool blanket, a coil of rope, and a package of half-eaten, mostly-rotten rations.

The south exit leads to a 40' long hallway with an arched ceiling. There are painted reliefs on the walls of the hallway, although the paint that hasn't flaked off over the years is faded to a uniform dullish tan shade.

The relief on the east side depicts stout, bearded giant bearing the bodies of dead or sleeping men down the side of a mountain, to a valley where a strange figure with a horned head holds aloft a scale and a sword. The relief on the west side is a long table with numerous figures seated around it. The horned figure sits at the center of the table with his arms splayed out, with three human heads between them.

Nothing of Vad or Leth's historical knowledge sheds any light on the depicted scene. Mordred, however, recognizes certain universal elements of afterlife judgment things: the valley of death, the scale and the sword, the supper of the worthy. Whoever the Zapanim were or are, this horned figure seems to be a central figure in their faith, but it resembles no specific deity known to Mordred.

You all hear a scraping, clattering sound coming from the room at the other end of the hall.

The noise intensifies, growing louder and more cacophonous, and behind it all you begin to hear a rhythmic, xylophonic beat. The noise quiets down a bit, the xylophone hammers out a rapid pong-pong-pong-pong! then stops.

You hear footsteps.

A lone skeleton shambles into the hallway. It holds a crude stone sword in one hand and a small square cloth is fastened to its chest like a bib. The cloth is old and tattered and bears a painted portrait of a young woman's face.

The skeleton's jaw drops, as if in surprise, and it turns around and starts to stagger agitatedly back the way it came.