The Seekers’ Last Descent is the event in Ardis Vala in which the four Seekers of Ardis Vala were paralyzed and eaten by ghasts and ghouls in mausoleum 12 of the Barrowmaze. At the same instant, the barge of La Jabalina (“the Javelin”) entered through the precipice.
| Type | Event |
| Place | Mausoleum 12, Barrowmaze |
| Chronicle | AV |
| Victims | The four Seekers, among them Valerius Utrecht and Decio Balmora |
| Spanish entry | La última bajada de los Buscadores (Ardis Vala) |
Background
The Priscians did not kill the Seekers. They scanned them one by one, stripped them of weapons, rings, cloaks, bags, gold and gems, and escorted them to the surface in their underwear with five coins each. Only the Templar kept something: he offered a duel to the death rather than hand over his wife’s thread, and the sorcerers relented. Of everything gathered over twenty gestas, seven pearls, a bone whistle, unenchanted arrows and a sapling remained. The Seekers returned to the library and reported that all were alive.
They then learned that Helix was burning: something worse than zombies had led a night attack from the swamp that nearly reached the church. The abbot had gone south in haste because the attack had overwhelmed Los Condenados (“the Condemned”), the adventuring band he had sent on a mission.
The descent
The Seekers followed the earlier party’s trail to the oldest barrow, its mouth marked, where Los Condenados had left rope and pulley. They crossed a crypt of stone heads in niches; one was a suffering dark elf, said to be “an Ariadna” when seen from the side. One Seeker, who has spent years searching for a woman of that name among false Ariadnas, looked at it and said nothing.
Ten or fifteen meters down by pulley lay mausoleum 12: a heavily looted corridor, cells with broken doors, pieces of dead snakes. The elf searched the stone for secret doors; the paladin, lacking infravision, relied on a torch. In a pillared hall with a long corridor to the north, they caught the smell.
The fight
Four ghasts came first, ghouls behind. The woodsman opened with his bow. The paladin struck with a katana, fought two-handed with the lit torch, and killed one. But the stench had to be resisted and the claws paralyzed, and the paralysis spread from one Seeker to the next; the last one standing took seven blows at once. All four lay paralyzed, awake, in the dark, and the ghouls ate them. No miracle came. They died about a hundred meters from the entrance — the same company that had negotiated three times with an archmage, freed the first Khan of the elves from a coffin of light, and seen a fleshless city from a lookout post.
Aftermath
- Helix held out with the abbot and Los Condenados, a dozen strong and unharmed by ghouls.
- The sapling of the Weapon Tree was planted in secret, watched by a druid, at the edge of the caves of chaos.
- The Castle of Bones kept growing to the south, adding halls.
- Pope Alejandro Sixto was left with the world and the library.
At the exact moment the Seekers died, the barge of La Jabalina — a ship that had already founded a world — entered through the cut of the precipice on the same river. No causal link is asserted; the two events are recorded as simultaneous.
See also
- The Genesis of Sogol in the Ucronos
- River Ucronos
- Company of Ardis Vala
- Sogol
- Los Condenados — inherit the valley; their chronicle is set about 15 years later