fh_trips | Backpacking Trip: London Below, Friday Morning

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graduate backpacking 2010

Backpacking Trip: London Below, Friday Morning

There was time for either a bit of a lie-in or a hearty traditional English Breakfast (with leftover Yorkshire Puddings as well), but not both, because the trip to the location of the arriving portal was going to take a bit of effort.

[OOC: Last London Below post! Open, and the trip to the portal is open for any of our NPCs if so desired as well. ... Except you, Ligeia. *frowns*]

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Breakfast? Sleeping in? Packing up and deciding whether you should steal the mismatched towels? Go for it.

A trip through mostly-empty tunnels and a climb up some rickety steps to the street, then a few more alleys after that, leads you to Down Street.

Door politely rings the bell at the door of a building whose weathered plaque reads: The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Houses, The Vestigial Commission, Down Street.

While waiting for it to open, she says, "So about Down Street. It's, er... inside the house. And...really well-named?"

[For reacting to that bit of information, should you choose, or talking amongst yourselves.]

Edited 2010-06-11 15:14 (UTC)

He's very, very proper, and very, very silent, and he leads you by candle-light to an old-fashioned lift that's just big enough to fit about half of you, so it'll take two rather claustrophobic trips to get down to the basement.

[For chatter in the lift]

Edited 2010-06-11 15:21 (UTC)

This would probably be where Richard, if he's about, says goodbye and waits, unless he's feeling really brave today. He's not so great at heights, you see, and before you is a plank over a chasm so deep that you can't see the bottom (http://iambicnut.com/rpg/door/downstreetbridge.jpg).

Door walks carefully across and waits at the end, ready to offer encouragement if there's a problem, but crawling is an option, if your balance isn't all that great. So is telekinesis, if you happen to have it.

[Cross the bridge! Help each other out if you like.]

Edited 2010-06-11 15:38 (UTC)

Oh yes, there would be crawling, yes there would. Also, there would be Francine very glad she had not worn a skirt today.

Dinah stared, and then said, "And the scary thing is? I trust my air-walking better than I trust that plank."

"And this would be Down Street," Door announces with a bit of a grimace as she points down the many, many twisty flights of stairs. (http://iambicnut.com/rpg/door/downstreet.jpg)

You'll have to forgive her; it's not one of her favourite places.

[And down the steps you go! ...and go... and go...]

At the bottom of the steps (yes, there really is a bottom), there's a small windowed alcove, but the windows look onto nothing but a blue phosphorescent light; the only exit is a dark, mist-filled corridor of crumbling brick (http://iambicnut.com/rpg/door/downstreetlabyrinth.jpg) that twists so quickly you can barely see ten feet past the opening.

Door stops before the opening and holds up a small black iron figure of a bull. "The Great Beast of London Below used to live in this labyrinth; you could only make it past him and find your way out if you had one of these tokens, and even then, your chances weren't always great."

"That was before Richard killed it." She smiled a little, and those who were trading bets with the Marquis de Carabas were a) idiots, because really, and b) possibly thinking they might win anyway.

"The labyrinth is still a labyrinth, though, and we still need the token to find our way through. I've only got the one, though, and it's not going to work for so many people if we're walking separately, so join hands, and don't let go until we're out the other side. You don't want to be lost in there."

Door held out the hand that wasn't holding the tiny black bull.

[In a collapsey line, like you're signing in to class!]

Dinah, being one of the ones trading bets, was looking thoughtful and hopeful and maybe? Yes?

She reached out for Door's hand in one direction, and the hand of the person behind her in the other.

At the other end of the labyrinth, the corridor opens out into something that looks very much like an abandoned church, or at least a sanctuary. Hundreds of unlit candles dot the room.

"This is where your portal is meant to appear," Door says. "Why they couldn't have picked a place that's not across a gorge, at the bottom of a hundred flights of stairs, though a labyrinth and into a room that used to hold an angel prisoner and still has a door to Heaven in it (http://iambicnut.com/rpg/door/islington.jpg) --" She nods at the back wall. "-- Don't worry, it's not going to open -- I couldn't tell you. There are a thousand safer places."

Which didn't mean she hadn't sent the coordinates from the multi-passes on while she could still get a pigeon-message out, because if Portalocity could get through down here, then perhaps those World-Gate things from Carmela's dimension could as well.

The look on her face when she said angel is the bitterest and least cheerful any of them would ever have seen her wear, but it passes quickly enough, especially when the open aisleway that leads back towards that door is suddenly filled with the whirling purple light of a portal. "But at least it's here. Good luck, and tell Principal Winchester hello for me if you have the chance!"

[For any last goodbyes, or stepping on out of there!]

Edited 2010-06-11 16:17 (UTC)

This place -- unlike her own home -- was never not going to give Door the creeps, but she wasn't going to let that stop her from giving her guests a proper seeing off.