“Follow Gerald!” screams Getrude, waving him before her. “In here!”
“We don’t want to go in…” Merlissa begins, but Gerald shoves her in the
small of the back and she staggers into a cavern glowing with a blue light and
filled with resounding sounds of ominousness.
“Looks like a good place to search for a you-know-what,” suggests
Elfbow. “Glowing walls and all that.”
“The glow is coming from that object over there. Where that circle of
people are standing.”
Indeed, a small semicircle of austere and pious people were making
strange gestures around a glowing object in the corner of the cavern.
“Someone else who likes charades,” Elfbow observes, as Clerihew
edges towards them, and begins gesturing expansively.
“Woof?” asks Scruff.
“It might be,” Titchy scratches his stomach. “But I’m not keen on eating
things that glow.”
“Look here,” says Getrude, pointing to a plaque embedded in the glowing
stone. “What does that mean, elf?”
“Monstrum quondam, monstrum futurus,” says Elfbow.
“I know what it says, leaf-fondler. I want to know what it
means.”
“Exactly what it says, I guess.”
“It’s a stone,” says Titchy. “And there’s a sword in it. And all these
people are worshipping it. So, clearly, it’s a source of madness and the sign
says “Beware of the quondam in case you’re made futurous.”
Clerihew shakes his head in exasperation, mimes quickly to the others in
the circle, and then turns to Getrude, gesturing furiously.
“Five words. First word. A little word? ‘The’. Second word. ‘One’? No,
lots of ones. Two?”
“Twenty.”
“One and one and one and one and…”
“Ones? Once!”
“The once? Does that even make sense?”
“Third word. Little word. ‘And’? Yes – ‘The once and’. Fourth word. Two
syllables. Something’s coming. It’s not back there, it’s coming from the opposite direction, way over
there. Miles away. He’s peering into Merlissa’s crystal ball. First syllable. He’s holding
his nose. Something smells. Something really smells. Phew!”
“Second syllable. He’s eating something. More than eating. Chewer. Chew.
Phewchew?”
“The once and phewchew?”
“Fourth word. It’s big. It’s really big. It’s a monster! Oh, 'monstrum' means monster.”
“The once and phewchew monster?”
“Once and future, dolt. What was once a monster, will be a monster
again.”
“If someone pulls the sword from the stone, then they’ll become the
monster they once were. Only guessing, of course.”
“Look!” says Gnawbone, suddenly bright eyed. “Lever!”
“Don’t let him pull it!”
But Gnawbone tosses the simpering clerics out of the way, grabs the
sword and pulls. The cavern glow blazes into eye-shattering fire. There’s a
roar more raucous than a balrog trapped in a particularly toothsome balrog trap.
And, when the glow is gone, so is the sword.
So is Gnawbone.
***
A simple post this time: the four clerics are
Perrys, from their Crusades range. These are nicely characterful figures. I’ve painted them with
different robes, so they can probably have a role in almost any period,
including contemporary games. Here they are without the blue glow:
And now they take a curtain call:
The sword in the stone is yet another Terrain Crate
piece. This is proving a really useful set for the Chambers.
Scoring:
4 x 28mm figs: 20 points
Magical sword of incredible magnificence and
unknown puissance: 1 point?
Shrine: 20 points
Total points: 41
That's a pretty chunkily-sized sword, so I'll give it 2 points (my generosity may have been swung by your use of the word "puissance")
Tamsin
