Chapters 1-2 of Indiana Jones and the Urn of Nurhachi

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Posted by Goodsport from adsl-216-102-199-185.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net on July 26, 2000 at 02:06:01:


Chapter 1


---by Krede


Tibet, 1935


    The pink morning clouds shrouded the mountaintop of the beautiful Tibetan scenery. The sun was shining brightly, but it was cold and Indiana Jones could see his warm breath curling like smoke in front of his face each time he exhaled. Indy had been hiking for several days now and he was getting rather impatient with his Sherpa guide. The guide, who was an old man with an intricate pattern of wrinkles in his face, had promised that they would reach their destination in two days… at most. Indy had spent some days in the nearby Tibetan village frantically seeking a guide who could take him to the Palace of Nurhachi. The guides had not even given him a second look. Indy could understand why - apparently the palace was cursed, and in the superstitious minds of the villagers it was a place they would not go near for all the money in the world. The palace was said to be the final resting-place of the remains of Nurhachi, the first emperor of the Manchu Dynasty.

    Nurhachi suffered a revolt in China because of his gruesome reign of terror and had ultimately been forced to flee into the mountains of Tibet. When he died, his ashes were hidden somewhere inside his palace, and that was the prize Indy was after. Indy had almost given up when the old Sherpa guide had approached him and offered his services for a large amount of money. Indy had asked him about why he was willing to take him to the palace when no one else would, but the old man had simply ignored the question. Indy did not care; the important thing was that he had a guide, and thereby a passage, to the palace. His friend Wuhan had wanted to accompany him, but Indy had insisted on Wuhan staying in the village and arranging transport to Shanghai as soon as he came back. Wuhan had as usual obeyed him, and he needed to take care of Short Round as well. By taking care of him, Indy meant stopping him from following him up the mountain. This was a far too arduous a task for the kid, even though Indy knew he was pretty tough.

    Indy and the guide seemed to go nowhere; Indy had even suspected the old man for leading him into an ambush and had carefully memorized how to get back to the village. He had also kept his new Colt army revolver loaded and at the ready. Just as Indy was about to tap his guide on the shoulder and demand an explanation, the old man turned around and spoke in his cheery but heavily accented English. "Behold, tall one. We have arrived at your honorable destination. Now you pay old Zhaba." The old man looked impatiently at Indy and stretched out his open palm.

    "What? I don't see anything! Look, the deal was you'd take me to the place and all I see is mountains!"

    "But we are here, I assure you tall one! Look beyond the clouds, see? Look carefully!" Though Indy was starting to get annoyed, but he looked one more time - and as if by magic the clouds parted and Indy was struck with awe. In front of him on the other side of a shallow canyon was the palace.

    On top of a mountain, the large building rose majestically.

    It consisted of an outer wall and a main building, almost like a European castle, but the style was unmistakably Chinese. They had to walk some time to get around the canyon and up the mountain. It was almost afternoon when they reached the gigantic double doors of the Palace. Zhaba the guide was starting to get nervous, and Indy sensed that he was not going to get Zhaba to go with him unless he dragged him. "Might be for the best," Indy thought, "the old man would be nothing but trouble anyway." "Tall one," Zhaba called, "wait for you here, yes?"

    "Good idea. This might be dangerous," Indy mumbled back.


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Chapter 2


---by Krede


    Indy walked up to the double doors and expected to do some heavy lock-picking, but to his surprise he found them unlocked. This was usually not a good sign, as it meant that somebody had been there before him and maybe gotten away with what he was seeking. Indy placed one hand on each of the doors and pushed. They were heavy and Indy had to push with all of his strength. When the doors opened there was a surge of dust escaping from the innards of the palace.

    The doorway opened into a long rectangular hall with a high ceiling. It was remarkably bright inside, but that was because of the carefully carved windows that made it possible to light up the hall with sunlight. It was very quiet and Indy could feel the pressure of time weighing down upon him. It was a feeling he was very familiar with, just to breathe the same air as another human being had thousands of years ago made him remember what had made him choose archaeology as his way of living. And each time it made him glad that he did, even though it had meant losing contact with his father for almost fifteen years. For a few seconds he just stood there enjoying the feeling, but he knew he had work to do and time was of the essence; strangely enough, it always was for him.

    On one side there was a row of Chinese demon statues looking menacingly down on him. Indy shrugged and took a step forward. As he did he mumbled to himself. "Hmm… this is almost too easy. I better be careful." Just as he had finished the sentence, he felt the tile go down a quarter of an inch and heard a low 'click'. His reflexes took over and he jerked back, just as a long spear flung up from a hole in the middle of the tile. It would have virtually impaled him if he had not moved.

    Not daring to step back and catch his breath Indy sprung forward and lunged himself into a mad dash across the tile floor. Spears continued to spring from the floor inches from Indy's legs. After dodging a particularly high spear, Indy came to a halt. A spear sprung up from the tile below him and stopped just a few inches from his crotch. Grateful that it had not gone further, Indy rolled his eyes.

    "Jesus!" he mumbled and took a careful step forward onto the stone floor without tiles. "What the hell was that? Traps… in a palace?" This was certainly unexpected for him. Traps were common in tombs, but he had never expected traps in a palace. "They must have been built after Nurhachi died," he reasoned.

    Suddenly there was a creaking sound that made his stomach turn. His entire body tensed as the anticipation of another trap sprung to mind. Then the creaking stopped and Indy relaxed a bit. Without warning the floor split into two halves like a trap door and sent Indy, arms and legs flailing, through the hole. Again Indy´s reflexes took over and he managed to get his trusty whip untangled. With a single motion he swung it and the tip wrapped around the last spear that had nearly made him human shish kebab. It was just in time, the whip tensed and Indy´s fall came to a sudden halt. Groaning he sustained the pain in his shoulder as the whip stopped him from plunging into the darkness below.

    Stars and bright spots were dancing before his eyes. He forced himself to look down and saw a hole filled with spikes just a few feet below him. He realized that he had been luckier than others had been as the hole was littered with impaled skeletons. On one spike, someone's head had been impaled through the right eye socket, and the pale cranium was now looking up at Indy, grinning in silence.

    With a painful effort Indy managed to swing to a platform beside the hole. Indy's shoulder was still aching from the gunshot wound he had gotten earlier that year, during that awful ordeal with the Omega Book. He landed hard on the floor and almost sprained his ankle. As Indy untangled his whip from the spear above, he looked around for the first time. He was apparently underneath the palace now, because the walls consisted of carved bluish ice. The ice was mesmerizing to look at - it had the specific color of very old ice. It was transparent, but then again it was impossible to look through; new white ice made long vertical streaks down the surface.

    Indy´s heart was still pounding hard, both from the physical exertion and from the adrenaline flowing through his veins. Indy looked up at the trap door some fifteen feet above. "I can´t get up that way, there must be some other way out!" Indy turned and noticed a nook in the wall. In the nook a narrow passage was leading away from the spike filled hole and the small platform. Indy squeezed into the passage and went forward. Anything was better than staying there, and his bet was that Zhaba would not come to rescue him anytime this century. Indy hoped that Zhaba was still there, he could have left but Indy had not payed him yet and odds were that Zhaba's greed had a better hold of him than his fear. Indy had to go sideways to fit in the passage but it was sloping upwards and the walls were no longer ice but carved rock. Indy figured he was moving up into the lower part of the palace again. The narrow passage ended in a dimly lit underground hall. The granite walls were decorated with eastern style armor and weapons, consisting of crossbows, samurai swords and axes. They would make an excellent addition to the new Orient section Marcus was working on at the Museum, but Indy did not have the time or the capacity to bring that stuff back. At the end of the hall there was a staircase leading upwards. Indy made his way quickly to the staircase. The stairs were old and Indy almost tripped when a big chunk broke off under his heel.

    "Whoa! This place is fragile!" Indy exclaimed and decided that he had better watch his step. He ascended the stairs into a rectangular room. It was bare except for a pile of rubble and some wooden logs that lay scattered across the room. Indy noticed none of that, as his eyes were focused on the back wall and on the small shelf cut into the rock, which held a small jar of some kind. Indy was amazed at his luck. "I'll be... this is what I've been looking for!" Indy rushed over to the shelf and inspected the small jar. It was the Urn of Nurhachi, no doubt about it. It was definitely late Manchu Dynasty ceramic artistry. The greenish urn was intricately decorated with flowers, and a small bird with a rose in its mouth sat on the top portion of the urn.

    Indy grinned. "At last! Urn of Nurhachi, you're coming home with me, old boy." Indy opened his satchel and put the urn inside. "Lao will surely t...." Indy stopped as he felt something hit the crown of his fedora. It was a small pebble. Indy suddenly shuddered; he had not even thought that there could be a final trap waiting for the lucky bastard who would come so far as to find the urn. "You big idiot!" he hissed at himself. A loud cracking noise filled the room as Indy looked up and saw a wide crack in the ceiling. It was splitting the ceiling in two, sending dust and a rain of pebbles down upon Indy. Soon the ceiling would crash down and squash him.

    Indy looked around frantically, trying to find a way out. His first thought was to run down the stairs but a giant rock had fallen down and blocked the doorway. The shower of rocks increased and Indy knew he had to do something fast.

    Then his eyes fell upon a big wooden log lying on the floor, Indy knew that the idea that sprung to mind at that moment was insane and even suicidal, but it was his only option.


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Krede, we are anxiously awaiting your Chapter 3! :)





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