# Sagiro's Story Hour: The FINAL Adventures of Abernathy's Company (FINISHED 7/3/14)



## Sagiro

Piratecat mentioned to me that long threads are causing harm to the boards, so I've decided to start a new thread for my continuing Story Hour.   You can still find the old thread here:  Sagiro's Story Hour Returns.  More importantly, here's the link to StevenAC's .pdfs, which contain the entire story from its humble beginnings some 12 years ago.



_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 282*_
*No Obvious Compromise*

Dranko reaches out gently and bestows a small orison on the angel, expelling the accumulated dirt and grime and scrawled graffiti.   It shines, its clean white marble now incongruous in the dilapidated plaza.   Still dripping with rainwater it watches stoically as the party casts some protective spells.

A small goblinoid creature detaches itself from the shadows and approaches the Company.

“You’re early,” it barks.

“We’re unpredictable that way,” says Ernie.

“Not unexpected,” growls the goblin.  “You will leave your weapons and spell components here.”

Unsurprisingly this suggestion is greeted with derision. 

“Then you will not come in,” says the goblin.

“I am here to return the Maze,” says Aravis.  “You can take it or leave it.”

“We will take it when you come in, leaving behind your weapons and spell components, as I said,” insists the goblin.

“Your master’s intentions are clear,” says Morningstar.  “We will _not_ give up our weapons.”

The goblin rubs its wrinkled chin.  “The Night Master has instructed me to say that if that is how you feel, we will simply wait for you to die.”

“We refuse to stand here bandying words with servants,” says Ernie, growing frustrated.  “Now open that door!”

“I am not authorized to do that while you’re armed,” says the goblin.  “Eventually what afflicts you will kill you.  Then we will take what we need from your bodies.”

Kibi sighs, and cast _charm monster._  The goblin’s eyes grow a bit glassy.

“We have come a very long way,” says Kibi plaintively.   “We have everything that you want, and midnight is so late; we’re usually sleeping by then.  Couldn’t we just go in now?”

“Yes,” says the goblin, sympathizing.  “But I still need you to leave your weapons behind, or I’ll get in terrible trouble!”

“I think it’ll be okay,” says Kibi. 

“I believe you,” says the conflicted goblin.  “Look... let me go explain things to my master.  I’m sure he’ll see reason once I talk to him.  Please excuse me.”

As he turns to go, Ernie casts _true seeing_.   One of the cluttered walls of the small plaza is mostly illusion, falsely showing boarded up doors and windows, and making the one real door look like solid wall.   The goblin melts into magical shadows masking the entire thing, but Ernie clearly sees him open a small door and slip inside.  Dranko, _invisible_, follows, and just gets inside before the goblin closes the door.  

Once inside the shrine, the goblin turns a loud crank on the wall which slides an iron bar across the door.  Then he scuttles across the interior courtyard and disappears into the rain and shadow.  Dranko notices that the sunlight, already dimmed by the precipitation, is strongly muted here, reminiscent of the Ellish holy city of Kallor.   Worse, he can only see clearly to about thirty feet even with his darkvision.  Beyond that it’s like peering into foggy shadow, where no details are visible.

Dranko gives the goblin about 30 seconds before casting _silence_ on the iron bar and turning the crank.  Soon the door is open and the rest of the Company stands just inside the Shrine of Dralla.   Kibi casts _xorn movement_ and sinks into the ground along with Scree.

The last time Morningstar was here, the unholy nature of the place stifled her ability to cast spells.  She still feels the evil – it’s like an unpleasant pressure on her very soul – but she has grown much stronger since her previous visit.   Her connection with Ell is unwavering.

At Dranko’s request, Flicker disables the locking bar, so that Shreen’s minions cannot lock them in.  Morningstar casts _detect thoughts_ and senses dozens of minds, mostly in the upper floors of the buildings that surround the courtyard on all sides.   They’re animalistic, barely intelligent, and all of them malign.

Thinking they’ll want a safe zone in this den of evil, Morningstar casts _consecrate_ on a spot just in front of them.  There is a hissing, and steam rises from the affected area.  Soon after they hear footsteps approaching from the darkness beyond their sight.

“Who comes?” demands Morningstar.

A stocky human in black robes comes stumping out of the shadows, leaning on a staff.   He doesn’t seem to mind the rain that runs down through his stringy black hair.   It is not Shreen the Fair.

“I am Strug,” he says in a gravelly voice.  “I know who you are.  And you...”  

He stops and sniffs the air.

“What have you done?” he barks, appalled.   He gestures to the spot of _consecrated_ ground.  “You have committed blasphemy on our holy ground.  Remove it at once!”

“Will your master meet with us?” asks Morningstar?

“You have broken into our shrine, armed,” spits Strug.

“Yep,” says Ernie.

“Yes,” agrees Morningstar.  “Your master’s intentions were quite clear.”

Strug glowers.  “My master’s intentions are that you hand over the things you promised to him.  That is all.”

“We will not speak with your master unarmed,” says Morningstar.  

“And he will not speak to you while you are armed,” says Strug.  “He knows your treachery.   I am authorized by him to take possession of those things you have brought.   You will give me the head of the person Lapis, and you will give me the Crosser’s Maze.  Now!”

Dranko rummages in a _bag of holding_ and pulls out Lapis’s head.   He tosses it onto the ground at Strug’s feet.

“Now,” says Strug.  “The Crosser’s Maze.  Give it to me, and then depart.  Quickly.”

“That’s a problem,” says Ernie.  “And this is why we need to talk to your master.  The situation is more complicated than it seems.    He’s going to be wroth.  And that’s why we’re armed... in case he loses his temper.  We’ve seen his temper.   But the fact of the matter is, we don’t believe we can give you the Crosser’s Maze.”

“You lie!” accuses Strug.  “It is a _thing._  You will give it to me now, or leave, and come back when you are prepared to hand it over.”

Strug takes a step toward the Company, but stops short at the edge of the _consecrated_ area.  He hisses and glares.

“Before we continue with this transaction, I demand that you dismiss your blasphemy.”

Aravis says, “The Maze is not an object that can be...”

Strug interrupts him.  “For the moment I am not talking about the Maze.”  He gestures at the ground.  “Who has done this?”

“Do you agree that we can have our weapons?” asks Morningstar.  “If so, I’ll dismiss the spell.”

“You already have them,” concedes Strug, “so I suppose... yes.  Fine.  Drop this.”

It’s only then that Morningstar realizes that she _can’t_ simply dismiss a _consecrate_.  Worse, she has no _dispel magics_ prepared.  

“I don’t have the ability to dismiss it right _now,_” admits Morningstar.  “You’ll have to wait.”

“You should have thought of that before you committed this sin,” says Strug.  “I am familiar with the magic.  It will go away on its own tomorrow.  You can come back then.”

But Ernie does manage to _dispel_ the effect, and Strug smiles.  “Very good.  It seems you may be willing to act in good faith after all... but you will refrain from casting your spells again while standing on holy ground.  Now... the Maze.”

Aravis launches into a long and technical description of the Maze, but Morningstar cuts him off.

“The Maze is not an object,” she says.  “It exists inside my companion’s mind.”

“And I am not part of the bargain with your master,” says Aravis.

“Then perhaps you should not have put the Maze inside your mind,” says Strug.  “We will take both.”

“I didn’t put it in...” says Aravis.

“I don’t care how it got there!” yells Strug, cutting him off.  “We will take it... off of your shoulders, if necessary.  You and my master have an agreement.  If you now find it difficult to uphold your part of it, that is not our problem.  You will do what you must.”

“I am willing to renegotiate the bargain,” says Aravis.

“There will be no renegotiation!” screams Strug.

“Then your master will have no choice but to destroy the Maze,” says Aravis.  “If I am destroyed in the process, so be it.”

Strug grins slyly.  “But what of your friends?” he says softly.  “It will do great harm to them, in the long run, if you fail to fulfill your promise.”

“We fulfilled our part,” says Dranko.  “We’ve returned the Maze to your master.”

“Until the Maze is in my master’s possession, I dispute that claim,” says Strug.

“Okay,” says Aravis.  “Then I will give myself into your master’s possession, and then, having fulfilled the bargain, I will destroy the Maze...or else it will be destroyed if he kills me.”

“Are you willing to take the chance that Dralla will see things that way?” asks Strug.  “Perhaps it will leave the quest in a perpetual state of unfulfilledness, dooming your friends to a slow and lingering death of horrid rot.”

“I am willing to take that risk,” says Aravis.  “But I don’t think your master will risk the destruction of the Maze.  Your option, right now, is that you bring us before your master so that _he_ can make the decision, and not some lackey.”

Strug bristles.  “I am authorized to speak with his voice.  I am no lackey.  And you should show more respect while you are on my holy ground.”

“Wanting the Crosser’s Maze is like wanting the ocean,” says Ernie.  “You can see it, but you cannot hold it.  You cannot control it, and no more could we bring it to you, than we could bring the ocean.”

Dranko looks down at Ernie, impressed.  Then, to Strug: “What does your master want to do with it, anyway?”

“That is not your business,” says Strug.   Then to Aravis he says:  “Are you so certain that the Maze would not simply come away along with your head, after which it could easily be extracted and used?  I speak hypothetically, of course.”

“There is no point in discussing hypotheticals that cannot come to pass,” says Aravis.

“Indulge me,” says Strug.

“You didn’t indulge us when we asked what your master wanted to do with the Maze,” says Dranko.

“That was not part of the bargain,” snaps Strug, growing weary of this banter.  “The bargain was that we would help you – which we did – and then you would help us, which you are now stubbornly refusing to do.”

The Company is also becoming increasingly frustrated at the impasse, and they all know how it’s likely going to end.  They have a quick discussion over their mind link and decide that if they have to make threats of their own, they will.

“You're telling us that our only option is to deliver the head of our friend?” asks Morningstar.

“You have had ample opportunity to come up with an alternate solution,” says Strug.

“We did not have time to find a solution,” says Morningstar.  “The curse started to take effect almost immediately.  So we are here.”

Strug snarls.  “If you had honestly been making that attempt, the curse would have gone dormant!  Please do not lie again in so transparent a manner.”  

“We do have several other obligations...” says Morningstar.

“Which are not my concern!” screams Strug.  

Ernie has had enough.  “Look.  Here is the bald truth.  Taking Aravis’s head will not give you the Maze.  We have never physically held or possessed the Maze.  We do not believe it can be held or possessed, or removed from its host in any way save by the consent of the person who controls it.  And, having returned it to you as we promised, you have two other options.  Your Goddess can release us from our promise, or we can lay waste to this temple.”

Strug blinks in disbelief.  

“Are you threatening us?” he growls.

“I would consider it a negotiating point,” says Aravis.

_Are you threatening us?!_ repeats Strug.  This time his words are backed by the hoots and hollers of the myriad hidden creatures in the upper floors of the buildings.  

“We are much more powerful than the last time we were here,” says Ernie.  “We do not want violence.  But you are being extremely inflexible to the unfortunate truth that we cannot give you the Maze.”

Strug stares for a moment at Ernie, and at Morningstar, and Aravis.  

“Perhaps you are right,” he says at last.  “Perhaps we should discuss this with my master.  Follow me.”

He turns and walks away from them, across the muddy courtyard.  

“Finally,” mutters Ernie under his breath.

The Company begins to follow him, thinking that at last they’ll get some satisfaction from Shreen the Fair.  But Strug has no intention of taking them that far.  No, having been threatened by these double-crossing infidels, he has decided to take the risk that the Maze can be removed later from Aravis’s lifeless head. 

He raises his hand, and the assault from the darkness begins.  

...to be continued...


----------



## EroGaki

Heh, good tactics on The Companies part. Getting in with their weapons is definitely a good thing.


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

Indeed.  One of the most problematic sessions I've ever DMed really went off the rails because under a similar circumstance, my PCs agreed to surrender their weapons.  It meant they were negotiating from such a position of weakness that frustration was almost inevitable-- either I had to be unreasonable in how I played the NPCs, or they had to accept a really raw deal.  It was... not so good.

But yay additional Sagiro storyhour!


----------



## Kaodi

Holy... a new thread! When was the last time THAT happened?!

( Well, a cursory examination of the first post of the last thread tells me that is was January 21st, 2002, right after the Great Crash. Almost 6 1/2 years ago! Crickey! (R.I.P. Steve Irwin). )


----------



## darkhall-nestor

Sagiro

did you put a link to this thread in your old thread?


----------



## Sagiro

darkhall-nestor said:
			
		

> Sagiro
> 
> did you put a link to this thread in your old thread?



I have now.  Thanks!


----------



## blargney the second

I like the last little double-cross from Strug.  I'm going to have to use that sometime!


----------



## Hammerhead

I bet the party really wanted to throw down, but couldn't strike the first blow in good conscience. Sweet!


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Hammerhead said:
			
		

> I bet the party really wanted to throw down, but couldn't strike the first blow in good conscience. Sweet!




This is always the problem with heroes, isn't it?

No matter how evil you know your opposition is, you have to let them ambush you sometimes...


----------



## Piratecat

Strug is one squirrelly, backstabbing little bastard. He better get what's coming to him!


----------



## EroGaki

Blarg, double post...


----------



## EroGaki

The reactive nature of good is always something I've griped against. Evil is proactive, while Good waits for something bad to happen. Once innocent people suffer and die, then good gets to smite evil. Me, I try to be more proactive; if my character has word of an evil organization or cult gaining power, I strike before they can do harm to the world. If I had been in the Company's situation, I would have gacked Strug before hand. Good doesn't mean you have to let the bad guys get the jump on you.


----------



## RangerWickett

I'm posting to say that I'm still excited by this storyhour (and because I kept looking along the left column for 'threads I'd posted to,' which is how I normally locate your storyhour, and I couldn't find it).


----------



## KidCthulhu

EroGaki said:
			
		

> Good doesn't mean you have to let the bad guys get the jump on you.




That was Ernie's feeling about the whole situation.  Ernie's pretty much the group's moral compass, and he really was all for wiping the temple of Dralla off the map.  He didn't trust Shreen any further than he could toss him in a hot pan with garlic and chives, and wasn't about to let any of his friends die because of his treachery.


----------



## Joshua Randall

If I were playing one of the mages, I would have save-or-died Strug the moment he mentioned taking Aravis' head.

And then _quickened fireballed _ the rest of the room.

Who, me, twitchy?


----------



## Piratecat

This whole fight was weird. We didn't really feel like we had moral superiority here, not really. Speaking only for myself, it was unclear at what point we'd have conceded to the terms of the Geas. But then again, Dranko's not particularly the type to want to burn others in the name of his religion.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Who said anything about religion? I just like burning things. (In game.)


----------



## Atanatotatos

well, i guess Dranko prefers, you know, _licking_ things. 
...although he hasn't been doing weird stuff for a while... mmm


----------



## Hammerhead

Or peeing on his enemies.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:
			
		

> But then again, Dranko's not particularly the type to want to burn others in the name of his religion.





None of you are.  At the same time, the exchange reminded me how inflexible alignment often feels.  If I'm CN, but the character's in a situation where he might act like a chaotic good guy (or might act a little flippantly "evil"), I can't just necessarily do it without wondering about the fictional "axis" I'm supposed to be on.

I guess that's why the only D&D I have is reading this Story Hour...


----------



## EroGaki

Just a friendly bump. Bump!!


----------



## energy_One

Everett said:
			
		

> None of you are.  At the same time, the exchange reminded me how inflexible alignment often feels.  If I'm CN, but the character's in a situation where he might act like a chaotic good guy (or might act a little flippantly "evil"), I can't just necessarily do it without wondering about the fictional "axis" I'm supposed to be on.
> 
> I guess that's why the only D&D I have is reading this Story Hour...




I find alignment extremely useful, especially when I let my players know that alignment isn't strict, it's just strictly defined. After a certain point, if they aren't acting according to their alignment, I tell them what their alignment actually is. Until then, mechanics that act according to alignment act according to what their alignment supposedly is. I've known people to arbitrate this through point systems. That seems to work fairly well, but I can be a fairly arbitrary DM at times.

Didn't Dranko's alignment shift at some point, long ago?


----------



## Piratecat

Yup. He started off pure neutral with some chaotic tendencies, slid to neutral with good tendencies, then ended up solidly at neutral good. It was deliberate and made a lot of sense at the time. Morningstar is still true neutral, though, and she can be quite the pragmatist; she's not quite as concerned about "doing the good thing" as the rest of us are. She rolls her eyes a lot.

By the way, want some proof that Sagiro is evil? Something he did to Dranko in run 39, something like twelve years ago in real time, has just come back to ream bite him on the ass. Sagiro's a bad, bad man.


----------



## The_Warlock

Piratecat said:
			
		

> ...something like twelve years ago in real time, has just come back to bite him...




Sign of quality DMing there...I only waited 7 years in my campaign to catch the priestess with the Euryale Card save penalty from a Deck of Many Things draw she'd made and not researched...


----------



## Graywolf-ELM

I've wondered how the Crosser's Maze issue would be resolved for some time.  It doesn't seem to have been abused much from reading the story hour, where it seems that it could have been.  I still love reading about these characters, and this adventure, though probably not as much as the players enjoy participating.

Thanks again for enjoyable entertainment.

GW


----------



## Jackylhunter

Sorry, I mean I hate bumps as much as you, but this cannot stay on page 4.  
I mean, what has the world come too?


----------



## Piratecat

I'll tell you what it has come to. It's come to an egregious spoiler, that's what. Anyone remember back in Het Brannoi, when we were fleeing the tentacular and horrific cleaners from the Far Realm? Dranko threw an empty bottle with a note in it ("Dranko was here") into the void as we fled. I thought it was funny and kind of clever and utterly inconsequential in a throwaway sort of moment. Like throwing a note in a bottle off a ship into the ocean.

Well, last week, just as Dranko said "Ha! Suckers. My life is boring. No one exciting is trying to kill _me_," Sagiro said, "Funny you should say that."

And tentacles ripped through my chest, my abdomen, my back, and my eye as something inhuman started talking to me in my head. It began something like "As per the ancient pacts that bind our kind, I have accepted your offer and demand payment..."

And the tentacle emerging from my eye was holding a little glass bottle with a note in it.

They found me. 

Dranko is so screwed.


----------



## EroGaki

Holy Crap!! Now we must have an update!! You can't say that Dranko is dealing with Far Realm horrors and not provide an update! It's just.... wrong!


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Piratecat said:


> And tentacles ripped through my chest, my abdomen, my back, and my eye as something inhuman started talking to me in my head. It began something like "As per the ancient pacts that bind our kind, I have accepted your offer and demand payment..."
> 
> And the tentacle emerging from my eye was holding a little glass bottle with a note in it.
> 
> They found me.
> 
> Dranko is so screwed.




Is it wrong of me to want to collapse on the floor laughing at this? That is so, so RBDM on Sagiro - sir, my congratulations!


----------



## Piratecat

EroGaki said:


> Holy Crap!! Now we must have an update!! You can't say that Dranko is dealing with Far Realm horrors and not provide an update! It's just.... wrong!



Well, Sagiro probably won't get to this for some time. But I know he's working on an update!


----------



## Joshua Randall

Uh, "Dranko was here" is a pact?!

I've gotta be more careful what I say....


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 283*_
*Hostile Territory*

It’s an ugly battle, fought in the rain and the mud, and the Company feels stifled from the start by the limit to their vision.  Two large insectoid creatures leap down from the balconies, cousins of the beasts that the party encountered previously outside of Djaw.  These are larger, with sharper claws, more teeth and unyielding chitin.  A green liquid glistens on their plated hides.   These beasts squirt jets of some foul substance at Ernie and Morningstar, and when it contacts Morningstar’s skin, it saps her of strength.

Back in the darkness lurk several gaunt red-skinned humanoids, with writhing snakes protruding from their guts.   They attack with rays of negative energy, and one of these strips Aravis of _both_ of his prepared _maze_ spells.  Ouch!

In other words, as with so many of the Company’s violent encounters, this one looks particularly dire at the start – dangerous foes, limited vision, and that doesn’t even count Strug, who’s a formidable adversary in his own right.   Meanwhile, from the buildings around the courtyard, hundreds of cackling and hooting voices are cheering on their enemies, as if the Company is competing in a freakish nightmare sporting event in front of a hostile crowd.

And for all that, the party manages to turn things around pretty quickly.  For starters, Aravis uses _polymorph any object_ to turn Strug into a squirrel – and one that _thinks_ he’s a squirrel.  The Drallan servant-turned-rodent goes scampering off into the shadows, in absolute terror of the monsters all around him.

And beyond that, the Company’s regular tactics and powers prove adequate to the task of vanquishing evil – even when the ranks of enemies are swelled by a pack of ogres and swarm of stirges that land on Grey Wolf.    Oh, it’s an exciting battle, full of _blade barriers_, _cones of cold_, _walls of force_, snapping whips,  swinging blades and _summoned_ earth elementals.   The combined might of the enemies proves troublesome, and Kibi and Flicker are both hampered by the fact that, having been bitten by the gut-snakes of the reddish enemies, they lose the ability to see other living creatures, friends and foes alike.   But soon enough the last enemy is slain, and the Company stands – bloody, drained, and partially blinded, but victorious – in the drenching downpour.   

The hoots and hollers from the peanut gallery don’t grow any less after the victory.  Dranko blinks the water out of his eyes, and nods at Grey Wolf.

“I’m with you.  We should burn down this entire place.”

No one disagrees.  And through all the talk, and all the battle, there has still be no sign of Shreen the Fair.


* *


There’s no immediate consensus as to whether they should press on immediately after Shreen, or fall back and recuperate after the battle.  To buy time they activate the Lucent Tower right there in the shadowy courtyard, and pile inside.   They can hear the rain hammering on the roof.

While the familiars keep watch out of arrow slits, the party clerics try to figure out what odd affliction is preventing Flicker and Kibi from being able to see living beings.  They conclude that it’s neither a disease nor a curse,  but it turns out that _restoration_ removes the effect.  Since _restoration_ is on the menu anyway given all the ability score drain and negative levels suffered in the battle, it’s a moot point.  Soon enough the party is back to normal.

“Now what?” asks Flicker, once his full sight is restored.

“Now we go and kick Shreen’s ass!” says Dranko.  

But while the Company is taking a quick inventory of their remaining spells and resources for the day, the familiars report a large green insectoid creature walking out of the darkness toward the Lucent Tower.  

“Could be coming with a message,” says Ernie.

The creature taps one knife-sharp appendage against the Tower’s solid crystal exterior, then backs off a few feet.

“Guess it wanted to see if the tower was an illusion,” says Dranko.

Ernie heads to the top of the tower and hits the thing with a _searing darkness_ cast from a wand through an arrow slit.  The monster leaps back, angry, and then skitters off into the shadows.  (The party’s vision is still limited in the unnatural gloom of the shrine.)

Then there’s a burst of motion from the darkness all around them, and swarms of small creatures assault the Tower.  Bats, birds, stirges, insects, rodents and other vermin hurl themselves at the crystalline walls to no avail.  A few dozen flying insects manage to get in through the arrow slits before the party shutters them, and Aravis mops these up with a _flaming sphere_ before they can cause any harm.   Five minutes later the swarms retreat.

Dranko peers through an arrow slit, hoping to spot the next wave of the assault.  What he sees is that the previous wave hasn’t actually subsided.  By looking as close to straight down as is possible, he sees that the exterior wall of the tower on that side has a patch of stirges, clinging with sticky feet to the crystal.  

“Gods, this sucks,” opines Flicker.  “Shouldn’t we be kicking Shreen’s ass by now?”

Aravis raises an eyebrow.  “That reminds me.  How’s the worship going, Flicker?”

Flicker looks over at Aravis.  “You haven’t granted me any spells yet.  Frankly, I’m disappointed.”

“Ok, fine,” says Aravis.  “What spell do you want?”

“How about _true strike_?”

“Why don’t we start you out with a cantrip?” suggests Aravis.

“A cantrip?  What kind of God are you, anyway?”

“Hey, I only just found out I _was_ a God.  Give me a break!”

“Excuse me,” says Dranko.   He points outside.  “Stirges.”

They discuss their options for a moment or two before Dranko comes up with a plan himself.  

“Here it is,” he says.  “You guys put some spells on me to protect me from fire.  Then I run out there into the courtyard.  All of the stirges will come to land on me, at which point I’ll use my crown to cast _paroxysms of fire_.  One of you mages will back that up with a _fireball_.  We know it takes a few seconds before they start sucking blood, and they’ll all be toast before they can kill me.  What do you think?”

Everyone thinks he’s nuts, is what.  But when they start to discuss it, they come around.  It should work!  All it will take is Dranko’s nerve and some fire magic.   And after the stirges are gone, the party will come out of the tower, fold it up, and make a break for the door leading to the interior of the shrine.  

Before he can talk himself out of it, Dranko walks casually out the door of the Lucent Tower and looks out.

“Oh, crap.”

It turns out there’s not just a small patch of stirges on one side of the tower.  Nearly the entire thing is covered, and Dranko barely has time to flinch before thirty or forty stirges descend upon him.   They blanket him hair to toes, and he feels over twenty proboscises plunge into his flesh.   He cannot see past the shroud of bodies and wings; all he hears is flapping and buzzing.  The plan had been for him to use his Crown of Fire first, but he panics.  Over the mind link the others can hear him:

“FIREBALL!  I CAN’T SEE ANYTHING!  FIREBALL!”

Aravis sticks a wand out of an arrow slit and blasts Dranko.  A few stirges survive, but Dranko regains his composure and uses the crown.  One of the remaining creatures starts belching flames spasmodically in every direction, and soon all of them are dead, lying in a sickening charred heap around Dranko’s feet.  

He twitches.  “We will never do that again,” he thinks to the others.  “But now that I did... let’s go!”

The Company hurries out of the Tower and Dranko commands it closed.   They dash across the courtyard to a small wooden door that leads into the surrounding buildings.  It’s locked.  Ernie gives it a good kick but it doesn’t budge.   Around them they hear the sounds of flapping, buzzing and chirping as the swarms of small creatures again head toward them, so Morningstar casts a protective _wind wall_.  Even as Aravis casts _knock_ and they all rush through the door, hundreds of small creatures are swept up and away by the wind.

The door opens directly onto a small downward staircase.  Morningstar casts _locate object_, looking for Shreen’s holy symbol, and gets a reading:  down and to the left.  They head down the stairs into the darkness, single file.  The sound of the pelting rain fades as they descend.  Kibi pulls out his _lantern of revealing_ to light their path; its illumination extends out thirty feet and then stops, choked off by the unholy darkness of Dralla.  

Down, down into the black.  Morningstar feels an ever-increasing pressure on her psyche, a burning hostility settling on her.  She casts _true seeing_, and it takes unusual concentration and effort.   They pass small alcoves, empty rooms and hallways, following Morningstar’s location spell.  The place seems quiet and abandoned, except for the... is that squeaking?

Rats!  From behind them comes a crescendo of skittering feet, and a veritable wave of large and deformed rats comes crashing around a corner behind them.  Kibi quickly casts _repulsion_ with a ten-foot radius, and the swarming rats smash into the invisible barrier, piling up against it, the ones in back crushing the ones in front.    Morningstar casts _darkbeam_ (with great difficulty, as her connection with Ell is weakening) and soon enough the rats are destroyed.  

Finally the Company finds itself in a small empty room.  There are light patches on the stone walls that indicate recently-removed artwork or tapestries; it looks like this whole place was recently packed up and moved out.  Is it possible that Shreen has fled ahead of them?  But no... there is sound coming from a dark space adjacent to this room.   They can’t see what it is; their light doesn’t extend out far enough through the doorway.   But the sound is disconcerting; a mixture of grinding stone and squelching flesh.   Morningstar’s spell tells her that Shreen is in that direction, perhaps even making the hideous sound.    

“Are we ready to spring the trap?” asks Dranko.  

Ernie casts a _greater dispel magic_ out into the darkness, just in case.   The sound continues.

“Shreen!” shouts Ernie.  “Come talk to us yourself!  We’ve brought the Maze, but we _cannot give it to you!_.

No reply.  

“Chicken,” Ernie grumbles.

Morningstar follows this by firing a _darkbeam_ toward the source of the strange noise.  She feels a painful jolt in her hand, and the stifling oppression grows worse.  But nothing fires back.

With nothing else for it, they move cautiously into the room.   They see that, like the previous room, this one has been stripped of furnishings and objects.  Only one notable feature remains:  a hideous morphing statue set atop a simple stone altar.  It looks like a deformed bear with lobster claws, but as they watch, it changes, the living stone oozing and reshaping into a six-legged jackal.  And then some kind of multi-eyed squid.  The statue reforms into one abomination after another.

On the opposite wall there is another door, and a faint light is coming from the space beyond.  From that space comes a voice, the rising-and-falling, broken-glass-and-velvet voice of Shreen the Fair.

“Stop wasting time and GET IN HERE!  We’ve waited long enough for you to finish this nonsense.” 

“Well,” says Kibi.  “Your guy outside said to wait twelve hours before coming in, so you can’t have been in _too_ much of a hurry.”

“He was very offensive,” adds Ernie.

“And then he attacked us without provocation,” says Dranko.

“I’m not going to treat with you while you’re standing out there,” says Shreen.  Come in.  COME IN!  And don’t try anything.  You’ll regret it, I promise.  But we want to talk with you NOW!”

They go in.  

...to be continued...


----------



## Atanatotatos

Oh, joy! An update!


----------



## Fimmtiu

That is the second-best system for stirge removal that I've seen. (First is _iron body_ and a tennis racket, of course.) Thanks for the update!


----------



## EroGaki

Nice!! Thanks for the update, Sagiro!


----------



## StevenAC

Piratecat said:


> Strug is one squirrelly, backstabbing little bastard. He better get what's coming to him!






Sagiro said:


> Aravis uses _polymorph any object_ to turn Strug into a squirrel – and one that _thinks_ he’s a squirrel. The Drallan servant-turned-rodent goes scampering off into the shadows, in absolute terror of the monsters all around him.



You're a bad man, Mr. Piratecat -- hiding a spoiler in plain sight like that...


----------



## Graywolf-ELM

Good Short-hand.

GW


----------



## thegreyman

So I was rereading some of the Companies older adventures, and saw a correlation that may not have been brought up.

Way back when, Aravis visited an old Keeper known as Vhadish in order to learn how to seal up the planar gate.  Vhadish told Aravis that he had to use the gate to seal up a hole that some Black Circles had dug into the Hells.  That was about 650 ish years ago.

Fast forward to Het Branoi, where they find out that some Black Circles were using an Eye to dig a hole to the Abyss to try and locate their BBE God.  

Was it ever postulated that these two events may have been closely linked?  How old are the Hets?  I know Vhadish was dismissive of the "Demon Plague" (that scholars thought was misnamed and should have been "Devil Plague"), but could they have been mixed up, and it WAS demons?  

If they were linked, was the effect of Vhadish sealing the gate to throw the entire insides of Het Branoi out to the Far Realm?  Kinda like like the Black Circle pressing up against the planar fabric causing stress (stretching a rubber band), and Vhadish sealing it, releasing stress (snapping the rubber band).  

Does this mean that Aravis's sealing of the planar gate between Abernia and Volpos catapulted Volpos out into the Cosmos someplace?  Specifically, I don't want to think of how horrible it would be for the Emperor to get an alliance with the Cleaners and start sending out tentacled, evil-gooped minions to wreck havok...


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 284*_
*Belshikun*

It’s not exactly what they expect.

For one thing, rather than one more hastily-evacuated chamber, this one feels like a living room.  A damp, decrepit living room to be sure, with rotting furs on the ground and mold growing on the walls, but there’s a fireplace with a lit fire and two misshapen stuffed chairs.   It resembles a dilapidated underground hunting lodge.

For another thing, Shreen the fair is not the most commanding presence in the room.  Oh, he’s there, slouched in one of the chairs, ugly and hunchbacked and smoldering with sullen rage.  Behind him are two of the demonic humanoids with snakes protruding from their bellies.  But in the other chair...  a humanoid of indeterminate kind, cloaked in unnatural shadows.  Two bright blue eyes burn beneath a black hood like fragments of a star.  Wings of coherent smoke rise behind him.  Two of his four arms grip a deep black battleaxe, held blade down but menacing nonetheless. 

“Please.   Be at ease.  I wish only to talk to you.”

Where Shreen’s voice is silk and smashed cinder blocks, this creature’s voice is guttural but distinct, grating yet potent.   Grey Wolf looks from one chair to the other, and over the mind link he thinks:  “Ah.  Something that can kick Shreen’s ass.”

Morningstar can’t take her eyes off the shadowy figure, and soon realizes what about it troubles her.  While undoubtedly evil, it reminds her, in terms of its bearing and guarded might, of the Avatar of Ell that has trained her in Ava Dormo.  Her throat goes dry.  

“We’ve come to deal honorably with you,” says Ernie.

“Good,” says the black creature.  Then turning to Shreen, it says:  “We tried it your way.”

Shreen looks distinctly uncomfortable, but works up the courage to speak.

“They were going to betray us!” he barks.  “Dralla told me.  They were never going to give it to us willingly.  We had no choice but to try to take it by force!”

“There is a difference between not giving it to you, and betraying you,” explains Ernie.  “We cannot give it to you, because we don’t know how.”

“Perhaps,” says the blue-eyed shadow.  “But I know how.  I only wish to negotiate in good faith.  I do not want to harm you, or make you an enemy.  I am... dissatisfied by Shreen’s clumsy attempts.  I  know about the Maze.”

Over the mind-link the party considers casting _dispel evil_ on this being, as a prelude to attack, but decide to hear him out.

“May I ask who you are?” says Aravis.

“I am Belshikun,” replies the creature.  “I am a... servant of Drosh”  

The Company has heard the name before – Drosh is a Kivian deity, though the don’t recall his portfolio.

Shreen squirms a little more in his chair.

“I wish to take the Maze from you,” Belshikun explains.   Shreen will agree...”  And here he looks pointedly at Shreen  “...that that will satisfy the condition of your bargain.  You will no longer be afflicted by Dralla’s curse.  I know how it can be done.  One of my Lord’s followers long ago was a Walker of the Maze, and wrote extensively of it.  We now require its use, and you promised to return it, so our interests are in alliance.  You should not be harmed by my taking it, and it will be easier for us if you are alive.  But, I should add, not strictly necessary.”

“What do you want with the Maze?” asks Ernie.

“It is a way to... leave ahead of the storm,” says Belshikun.

“What storm?” presses Ernie.

“You will have to learn that for yourself.  We mean to explore its use as a means of travel.  There are places we wish not to be.”

“Is this storm something that’s coming here?” asks Dranko.

“Everywhere,” says Belshikun.  “Good luck with it.  The rest of our agenda is not for discussion.  It is enough for you to know that we desire it.  And Shreen will hold your promise fulfilled if you give it to me.”

Kibi turns to Shreen.  “Will you hold your promise fulfilled under any other conditions?”

“If you give it to me personally!” spits Shreen.

“But that’s not going to happen... is it?” says Belshikun, turning his baleful eyes on the hunchback. 

“No my lord... you may take it... I only beg to come with you.”

Belshikun chuckles.  The members of the Company hear his voice briefly in their heads as he speaks telepathically.

“When I have what I have come for, I will leave, and you may do whatever you want afterward.  But you may find it... tedious... to deal with Shreen on his own holy ground.”

Belshikun looks at Shreen and smiles.  Shreen smiles nervously back.

“Now,” says Belshikun.  “Do we have a bargain?”

“Not necessarily,” says Dranko.  “See, the fact is, we made our deal with Shreen, and just because he’s willing to give it up to you, doesn’t necessarily mean that’s okay with us.   No offense.  Two: there’s the possibility that it won’t matter if Shreen accepts that we’ve fulfilled our promise.  We could find magic that could break it.  Three:  According to the word of the promise, just by being here with Shreen, we’ve fulfilled it already.”

“That’s for Dralla to decide,” says Belshikun, turning its head to Dranko.  The half-orc can see no features inside its hood, save the eyes.  “It is Her interpretation that matters, and I think you will find that you have not yet met Her conditions.  To address your first point, I will be a much more responsible caretaker of the Maze than Shreen ever would be.”

Shreen looks insulted but says nothing.

“Who’s the ‘we’?” asks Aravis.

“The followers of Drosh,” says Belshikun.

“Are your Gods and the other Kivian gods related to the Travelers of Charagan?” asks Aravis.

“They are... irritating guests,” answers Belshikun.  “Our Gods were here long before they arrived.”

“Does this have anything to do with the Enemy?” asks Ernie, referring to the great Adversary from whom the Travelers fled.

“You’ll have to decide that for yourself,” says Belshikun.

“I’ll take it as a yes,” says Dranko.

The Company has a hurried meeting of the minds over the _telepathic bond_.  Should they give up the Maze?  Dranko thinks it’s a bad idea to give the Maze to this being.  Aravis doesn’t care so much about that, but wants to be sure that doing so will fulfill the promise to Dralla.

Belshikun interrupts.  “I find your telepathic conversations rude and boring,” it declares.

“I wish to consult with my Goddess about the wisdom of this decision,” says Morningstar. 

“Impossible,’ says Belshikun.  “since I will not let you leave without making your decision, and you cannot commune with your Goddess here.  If you need assurances, I will promise you in Drosh’s name of my good faith.  I would not dare lie.”

Thinking rather than speaking, Dranko retorts:  “Like the assurances you made to Shreen?”

“I have made no promises to Shreen,” Belshikun replies via telepathy.  “I have been very careful about that.”  

To all of them, still telepathically, Belshikun continues:  “I can promise you safe passage from this place once that transfer has been made.  And that I will leave, and not use the Maze in any way to harm any of you.  I am offering you a way out, that you can fulfill the promise you have made and not suffer for it.  The alternative is, I will take it my force.  I strongly doubt you can stop me.  And if you do stop me and escape, you will suffer Dralla’s wrath.   The choice is yours.”

He runs a finger along the haft of his night-black axe before adding:  “I would not find combat with you entirely dissatisfying.”

Kibi thinks back:  “Can you make assurances that you won’t use it to harm...”

“WHAT ARE YOU SAYING TO EACH OTHER?” Shreen screams.  “I know you’re communicating.  Just make up your mind, please.  MAKE UP YOUR MIND!”

Morningstar shoots a dismissive glance at Shreen and turns back to Belshikun.  “What assurances do we have that anything you’re saying is the truth?”

Belshikun laughs – a nasty gravelly sound.  “You, of all people, should understand the power of making promises in Dralla’s name on Her holy ground.   I do not underestimate your abilities, or the strength of your deities.   I do not wish to make enemies of them.  I wish to leave them.”  

“I still don’t understand,” says Aravis, “how  you – a servant of Drosh – can release us from a promise we made to Dralla.”

“It would be Shreen who technically releases you from the promise,” says Belshikun.  “But consider this also:  Drosh _created_ Dralla.”

“I wonder what the Black Circle would think of all this,” muses Morningstar.

“The Black Circle,” spits Belshikun.  “I assume you loathe them as much as I.  They are the enemy.”

“They are bringing the storm, aren’t they?” asks Ernie.

“They are its leading edge,” says Belshikun.

“We’ve killed a lot of them,” says Dranko.

“Good!”  Belshikun sits straighter in his chair.  “I will make you a promise, as part of your agreement to give me the Maze.   I will do what I can to find information, or materials, that you might find useful regarding the Black Circle.”

“Make a decision!”  Yells Shreen, reaching his tolerance for discourse.  “MAKE A DECISION!”

“Won’t you shut up?” says Ernie.

Belshikun leans over toward the cringing Shreen.  “You should listen to your betters,” he says quietly.  “Shut.  Up.”

Shreen quivers and fumes.  One could almost feel sorry for him.

“One thing I’ll need to do before we discuss this any further,” says Aravis, “is speak to someone I know in the Maze.”

“You should not attempt treachery,” warns Belshikun.  “You may go into the Maze, but your familiar will remain with me as a hostage.”

“Pewter?” thinks Aravis.

“You own me big time for this, boss,” replies Pewter, as the cat leaps into Belshikun’s lap.  “Oh, he’s gross!  Ew!”

Aravis drops into the Maze, and navigates its strange inner world until he finds King Vhadish XXIII.  They meet on the lawn outside Vhadish’s mansion, the golem guardians standing at attention.

“I am very sorry to disturb you,” says Aravis.

“Yes, I am also,” response Vhadish. 

Aravis explains their current situation, and the possibility that he’ll be giving up the Maze to a powerful evil being.   When he finishes, Vhadish stares for a moment as if waiting for Aravis to get to the interesting part.

“And what is it then you want of me?” he asks at last.

“I want your advice, as to whether you think this is a wise course of action.  Also, to point out that I have made a promise to you, and if I give up the Maze, I won’t be able to keep that promise.”

Vhadish steeples his fingers.  “This creature – the Maze is stronger than it, and will outlast it.  The Maze itself is in no danger, if that’s your concern.   Creatures greater than this Belshikun have possessed it, and creatures more vile.  The Maze persists.”

“I’m not worried about the Maze,” says Aravis, “but about those in the Maze, such as yourself.”

“I’m not concerned about him, honestly,” says Vhadish, looking bored.  “As for your promise, well, I have thought about that.  Frankly, you’re unlikely to live long enough to become facile with the Maze, to the point where anything you could do wouldn’t be easier done on my own.  Perhaps I’ll find a way to get my promise out of you regardless... the universe is a funny place.  But, if you want to give the Maze up, I’ll... suspend your promise until I find a way that I can possibly extract it... wait... here’s a thing.”  

Vhadish perks up, then continues.  “Tell Belshikun, this servant of some Dark God of somewhere that I can’t bring myself to care about, tell him that the condition is that he has to inherit your promise.  That I can ask him a favor, and he will have to do what I ask.  I’ll gauge his abilities, and the speed at which he learns to use it, and... oh, I don’t know, maybe I’ll have him go and fetch me a steak or something.  Fair enough?  Now, if there’s nothing else, I’m quite busy, and you’re not all that interesting to talk to.”

He smiles at Aravis.

“I appreciate everything that you’ve done, and I won’t waste any more of your time,” says Aravis, letting Vhadish’s condescension slide off of him.

“That’s true,” agrees Vhadish.  “Good luck!”

Aravis does one other thing while in the Maze.  He uses its powers of enhancing observation to take a good look at Belshikun.  He tries to gauge the creature’s martial and magical prowess, and while his analysis isn’t exact, he gains the impression that in a battle between Belshikun and the entire Company, Belshikun would, by a small margin, have the upper hand.  

While Aravis is journeying, the others endure an awkward silence.   Morningstar tries to make small talk with Shreen.

“We did bring Lapis your regards before taking her head, you know.”

“Well, that’s something,” says Shreen.  “I had considered you... in a more friendly way than Lapis.  At least you did not come to see me the first time with elementals laying waste.   It’s a shame that you decided that you wouldn’t GIVE ME THE MAZE LIKE YOU PROMISED!”

“We were coming down to talk to you, when your guy turned on us,” protests Dranko.

“I know what your plan was!” says Shreen angrily. “Do you think my eyes are blind?  Do you think I cannot also talk with my Goddess, and learn what you were going to do, or not do, with the Maze?  You came here with betrayal in your hearts.  I considered that a first blow.  But it’s all immaterial now.”

“I’ll say,” agrees Dranko.  “You called in your buddy here to take charge.”

Shreen splutters with rage,  To Belshikun he asks:  “When you’re done, can I kill them?  Master?”

Belshikun turns to Shreen and answers, “I doubt it.”

“You can try,” says Ernie.

Shreen lets out a short but abrasive cackle.  “You can’t kill me in this place, but eventually, I can kill you.  It may TAKE A LOT OF BLUDGEONING!  But I’ll batter through that eggshell you wear, and see your brains dashed upon the floor!”

“How come we can’t kill you?” asks Dranko.

“I am unkillable, Dranko Blackhope,” says Shreen quietly.

“Really?” presses Dranko.  “How did you arrange that?”

“You’ll find out, if you’re stupid enough!” says Shreen.

Ernie asks Belshikun, “is he blowing smoke?”

Belshikun shakes his head no.  

“It’s still pretty simple,” says Dranko.  “If he’s unkillable, we just bury him alive.”

“That’s kind of cruel,” says Ernie.

“Remind me which part of this isn’t Shreen the Fair.”

“Fair combat is fine, but I’m not on board with torture and live burial,” Ernie insists.  

“I’m on board!” Flicker pipes up.

Aravis returns, his head snapping up, eyes open.

“Have you made your decision?” asks Belshikun.

His cold blue eyes meet Aravis’s star-fields, and the wizard smiles.

“If your decision is to fight me, let’s get on with it,” says Belshikun.  His voice almost sounds eager.

Over the mind-link Aravis shares his assessment of Belshikun’s might.  The Company has more hurried internal debate about what to do.  To buy time, Dranko asks,  “After you guys leave, who fills the hole?”

“Someone new must become the lord of Death and Undeath,” says Belshikun.  “I suspect Myr Madar will take over in our absence.   He’ll probably make a mess of things, but he’ll do it.  Someone will have to.”

“What more can you tell us about Drosh?” asks Morningstar.

“He is the God of Death and Undeath,” says Belshikun.  “What is there to explain?”

Morningstar feels in her gut that this is a bad idea.  Instinctively she glances down at the red mark on her hand, a reminder of the deal she made with the Winged Ogre, when she was named the Slayer.

“Who will be using the Maze?” asks Kibi.  “One of your minions?”

“If I give up the Maze, it will be to a superior,” says Belshikun.

“Then how can we be sure whoever that is won’t use the Maze to harm us?” asks Kibi.

“You’ll just have to take my word for it.  I do have a certain authority.  If you’re asking if I can promise that Drosh himself will not take it from me and put it to His own use, I cannot.  But if He does take the Maze, I can assure you He would not use it to do anything to you _personally_.  He is a God, and you are beneath His notice.”

“We are not beneath Dralla’s notice,” Aravis points out.

“Here, you are not,” says Belshikun.  “Here, nothing is beneath Her notice.”

“But the curse affected us outside of this place,” says Aravis.  “I’m not convinced that we’re beneath Drosh’s notice, given that we’re not beneath Dralla’s.”

“Anything is possible,” admits Belshikun.  “But you are enemies of the Black Circle.  If Drosh ever does notice you, it will be in a favorable light.”  

The dark being turns to Morningstar, eyes glittering.  “I’ll tell you this, Morningstar of Ell.  Dralla is Drosh’s daughter, and He loves Her dearly.  Your goddess is Her enemy.  It occurs to me that you might plan, in the future, to bring hostility to Dralla’s mortal children.  It will not go well for you if you do.   Perhaps you should stay on your side of the ocean.”

Morningstar meets his veiled gaze.  “We’re already here.” 

“That may not last very long if you attempt to push things, but that’s for you to decide,” says Belshikun.

The Company engages in one last mental debate, and they make their decision.  They will give up the Maze.  But Aravis wants to extract some promises first.

“We are prepared to give you the Maze,” he says.  “But first:  will you promise, that to the best of your abilities, you will prevent the Maze from being used to harm us or our causes?”

“I don’t know all of your causes,” answers Belshikun,  “but if I think the Maze will be put to a use that you would disapprove of, I will counsel against it.”

“And will you promise on the names of both my God and yours, that taking the Maze from me will do me no harm?” asks Aravis.

“I promise, on Drosh’s name and those of your Travelers, that if I perform the ritual correctly, it will do you no _permanent_ harm.”

“Ummmm,” says Aravis.  “Please explain that last statement.”

“I will be performing rituals that I have only read about, but have obviously not performed,” says Belshikun.  “And it is possible, even if I do everything correctly, that your mind will suffer some damage in the very short term.  It will be nothing that your allies cannot heal.”

“And, finally,” says Aravis, “will you promise to take upon yourself all obligations that I have incurred, in connection with the Maze?”

Belshikun draws a short breath.  “Explain these obligations.”

“I have made promises to a creature within the Maze, a former keeper named Vhadish.  I am at his beck and call, should he desire a service.”

“Are you saying that I would be at this Vhadish’s beck and call?” hisses Belshkun.

“I cannot in good conscience give up the Maze to someone not willing to take on those obligations,” says Aravis, barely repressing a smirk.

“In your opinion, what sorts of duties would I be required to perform,” asks Belshikun.

“I have no idea.”

The servant of Drosh stays silent for half a minute before answering.  “I will agree, as long as his requests will not put me at great personal risk.”   

Aravis nods.

“Now then,” Belshikun growls.  “Is there anything _else?_  If you continue to heap conditions upon our transaction, I will be inclined to turn to violence instead.”

Aravis shakes his head.  “I am satisfied.  You may take the Maze.”

Belshikun turns to Shreen, nearly forgotten during the past few minutes.  “Shreen, do you understand, that after I take possession of the Maze, you are to let these people go unharmed?  I don’t want to have to return here, to inflict discipline or punishment.”

“Of course I understand,” snarls Shreen, clearly not happy with the arrangement.  “I’ll give them safe passage out.”

Telepathically, Belshikun reminds the party:  “He will rightfully fight back, if you become hostile during your exit, and I will not interfere in that case.”

Out loud, he says only:  “Aravis, step forward.”

He reaches out a shadowy claw to Aravis head, and begins to chant in a strange tongue.  After about a minute of this, he hisses:  “Enter the Maze, Aravis.  Now!”

Aravis tries and fails.  Something is clinging to his mind, and it breaks his concentration.

“Try again!” says Belshikun.  “Concentrate!”  

With a mighty effort of will, Aravis drops into the Maze, appearing at the window that looks out upon the doubled multiverse.  Belshikun is there with him, beside him, writhing in pain.  Aravis indulges in a moment of schadenfreude.  Soon Belshikun’s agony subsides, and he stands up straight.  For a moment he gazes in wonder upon the majesty of the cosmos in miniature.

“Fascinating,” he breathes.  “Now, Aravis.  You will hear my words in your head as a continue the ritual.  I will speak a Word of Power... you will know it.   When that happens, you can make the transfer.  Simply imagine the Maze in my possession instead of yours, and it will be so.”

Belshikun continues his chanting, and after almost five subjective minutes utters what Aravis thinks is some esoteric variant of _power word_.  Aravis begins to imagine the Maze moving from himself to Belshikun, but stops.  With a thrill of anticipation and danger, he has a wonderful, terrifying idea.  He breaks off a small piece of his own consciousness and life force, and sends it into the Maze on its own, and only when he is sure it has gone undetected, does he imagine the Maze in Belshikun’s mind instead of his own.

Belshikun groans and writhes before yanking his hand away from Aravis’s head.  As the Company watches, the star-fields fade from Aravis’s eyes, and the metal tracery does likewise from his skin.   At the same time, Belshikun’s blue glittering eyes fade to black, with a field of white pinprick lights.  Aravis comes back to his body, head pounding and dizzy.

“I see I will need great concentration and study,” says Belshikun.  “Drosh will guide me.  Thank you, Aravis.  You have done me and my master a great service.  We will not betray our promises to you.  We too wish to see the Black Circle smashed.”

The creature takes deep breaths, clearly awed.  “The universe is in my mind.  I must go and begin to explore.”

“Give Solomea our regards,” says Dranko.

“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” says Belshikun.  He vanishes.

A piece of Aravis goes with him.

...to be continued...


----------



## Atanatotatos

Just. Great.


----------



## EroGaki

Well. Things are getting grim. Why do evil people always get immortality?


----------



## Fimmtiu

Must be nice to have eyes again! It's been a long, long time.


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Aravis is a smart cookie - that kind of planning is exactly the sort of thing that a good DM can reward in the future. And as we all know, Sagiro is a good DM!

I assume he took some sort of XP penalty or something to do that?


----------



## Sagiro

> I assume he took some sort of XP penalty or something to do that?



He lost one point of intelligence.


----------



## Jackylhunter

Sagiro said:


> He lost one point of intelligence.




Ouch, that had to hurt for an INT caster.  

Does this mean Aravis is now an Immortal part of the maze?  Will creatures traveling in the maze be able to talk to "a Aravis" like Aravis talked to Vhadish?

Anyway, thank you for the updates Sagiro, you rock!


----------



## Joshua Randall

If Shreen doesn't get his butt kicked, I'm going to be sorely disappointed. 

But on a more serious note, I wonder about the out-of-character discussion (if any) around this transfer of the Maze. Did Sagiro say something like, "You've had this powerful artifact / plot device long enough; time to give it up so we can move on to other things in the game"? Was Aravis' player content to give up the Maze, or did he feel like he was getting screwed? What did the other players think?


----------



## darkhall-nestor

Not up to date

But it looks as though Aravis could spare a point of intelligence


Aravis Telmir Race Human 
Class/Level 
 Wizard 15

  Intelligence 26 (20)    +8  


How soon does leaving a piece of himself in the maze come into play?


----------



## Abciximab

If it were me, I wouldn't have minded giving up the artifact, but I'd be bummed about losing my "Cool Look".


----------



## Artoomis

Abciximab said:


> If it were me, I wouldn't have minded giving up the artifact, but I'd be bummed about losing my "Cool Look".




That's funny... my character, a bard, gave up a powerful artifact because it negatively affected his looks.

That was unacceptable.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 285*_
*Room Disservice*

Dranko turns menacingly toward Shreen.

“You promised not to attack me!” the hunchback screeches.

“We made no such promise,” says Aravis.  “Understand, Shreen, that you now live at my sufferance.”

Shreen narrows his eyes.  “You cannot kill me, Aravis,” he says softly.  “But I will let you go.  You would be most unwise to attack me in this place.  We would TEAR YOU APART!”

Morningstar is unimpressed by the theatrics.  “Shreen, look at me!”

Shreen does so, almost against his will.

“Do not get in my way,” says Morningstar simply.  “I do not fear you.”

“You should,” croaks Shreen.  “YOU SHOULD!”

“But we don’t” says Dranko.

Kibi rolls his eyes.  “Why are we still here?”

Shreen couldn’t agree more with the sentiment.  “Go,” he hisses.  “Leave, and NEVER COME BACK!  Just.  Leave.”

The Company does just that.  For all of Shreen’s bluster, nothing attacks them as they make their way back to the surface and thence to the Plaza of Glory.  Flicker looks back on the door before it closes.

“With any luck, the Church of Kemma will come back here with a thousand soldiers and just wipe this place off the map.”


* *


The streets are mostly empty, the folk of Djaw preferring to stay out of the driving rain.   The only people out and about are slaves.   Dranko tries vainly to keep his cigar lit but soon gives up.   All of the Company is covered in mud and gore, streaking and running in the torrent.   Aravis doesn’t seem to notice; he looks dazed.

“Are you okay?” asks Morningstar.  None of them know exactly what happened in the Maze, or what Aravis sacrificed in that final moment.

“No,” answers Aravis faintly.  “Not really.”

“I think we need a good night’s sleep,” says Dranko, glancing worriedly at Aravis.  “Him especially.”

For a while the Company makes small talk.  Flicker talks about maybe joining a Farangi team, now that he could _teleport_ across the sea for matches.  Ernie wonders if meat-on-a-stick vendors stay open in the rain.  No one wants to talk about the Big Scary Thing.   Dranko makes a tentative foray as they approach the Golden Goblet.

“Hey,” he says.  “Is anyone else concerned that the Kivian God of Death wants to flee Abernia?”

Everyone else nods, but no one says anything.

“Uh, ok.   ‘Cause that’s kind of been bothering me.”

Ernie adds:  “The phrases ‘rat’ and ‘sinking ship’ keep running through my head.”

More silence.  Morningstar changes the subject.

“I think we should go back and kill Shreen the Fair.”

“Wouldn’t that be murder?” asks Dranko.  

“I have plenty of reasons – legitimate reasons – to kill him,” Morningstar points out.

“In the name of scientific inquiry,” says Flicker, “we should go back to find out if he really is immortal, by stabbing him a bunch of times!”

“I like the way you think,” says Dranko.

“The thing is,” says Morningstar, “for all that I’d like to kill Shreen, that Belshikun creature _wanted_ us to kill him, and I _really_ didn’t want to do what he wanted.”

“Maybe he was using reverse psychology,” says Kibi.  “Anyway, if he tries something else in the future, we can kill him then.  It sure won’t take much provocation.”


* *


Balthazar greets them at the door of the Golden Goblet, and sees the blood and grime smeared on their skin and clothes by the rain.

“Goodness, what has happened?” he exclaims.  “Do you require medial assistance?”

While declining Balthazar’s tender of healing, they do gratefully accept his follow-up offers of hot baths, tea and food.   Almost before they reach their private building, servants have prepared the baths and set out whiskey, tea, cakes, bread, figs and cheeses.   Soon everyone is cleaned up and refreshed, though still spoiling for a fight.  When a servant knocks sometime later and asks if they require anything else, Dranko’s answer is:  “Do you want to attack us, so we can burn off some aggression?”

The servant blinks, but then says smoothly, “If you’d like, we can hire you a sparring partner and you can duel in the yard.”

“No, no, thanks, but we’re good,” admits Dranko, slumping back into his chair.

“Is there a Farangi match anytime soon?” asks Ernie.  

“I don’t know,” says the servant, “but I can procure the schedule for you easily enough.”

When evening comes around the Company is still lounging in the large commons of their building.   Tensions have eased somewhat.   It turns out the next Farangi match isn’t for three days; the games are delayed for inclement weather.  They make small talk until bed, touching on subjects such as how to end Dwarvish enslavement without riling the Djawish establishment, and wondering what’s happened to their old adventuring companion Tor.  Dranko goes to sleep with the intent of visiting Saum Derry’s farm the next day, to reclaim the Candlestick of St. Jenniver, a holy Deliochan artifact.


* *


Sleeping alone in his room, alternating between sweet dreams of Yoba and nightmares of Shreen, Ernie wakes at 3:00 A.M. to discover that his throat his being cut.   He tries to scream but his mouth is filled with blood, and he manages only a feeble gasp before the assassin plunges the dagger deep into his heart.  He falls back into darkness.

* *

Dranko is woken up by the sound of a screaming cat.   Before his mind is fully aware, his adventurer’s instincts take control of his body.  He’s out the door in seconds, naked but with his whip in one hand and his holy symbol in the other.   A bubble of force starts to form around him once he’s in the hallway, but he slams his body sideways into the wall and escapes the _resilient sphere_.  A black-clad spellcaster some ten feet down the hall mutters a curse beneath a mask.

Dranko glares at him.  “I am very, very cranky.”

Pewter’s screams are the direct result of a nearly-successful assassination attempt on Aravis, happening concurrently with Ernie’s assault.   Because of Pewter’s last-second intervention, Aravis’s assailant only manages a grievous wound to Aravis’s neck – a poisoned wound that immediately saps him of strength and vitality.   With no strength even to lift his arms, all Aravis can do is utter a voice-only spell; he and Pewter _teleport_ directly from his own room into Morningstar’s bed.  

“Poison,” he croaks.  Petwer continues his furious caterwauling.   Morningstar, already awake from the noise and Dranko’s hasty exit from their room, screams “WAKE UP” at the top of her lungs before casting _heal_ on Aravis.   Having done that she leaps from bed and stumbles out into the hallway to join her husband.  

“Two in the hall ahead of us,” warns Dranko, but Morningstar can’t see anyone.  Apparently the assassins are _improvedly invisible_.  

The second assassin casts _greater command_ on Dranko and Morningstar, but both of them resist the compulsion to halt in their tracks.

“Still cranky,” Dranko warns.

Kibi comes crashing out of his room into the hall, beard tangled, barely awake.  

“Invisible bad guys down there,” says Morningstar, pointing down the hall.  Kibi casts _glitterdust_ and one assassin gains a sparkling outline.

Dranko, wearing a magic eye-patch that lets him see the invisible, snaps his whip at the closest assassin and trips him before following up with more cracking blows.    Aravis, freshly healed but lacking his spell components, doesn’t have many battle options.  He casts _contagion_ and sends Pewter to deliver it to the glittering assassin.  Morningstar casts _invisibility purge_, and Kibi sees a third assassin pop into view right behind him.  Like the others, this one is dressed all in black, face covered.

The assassin who failed with the _greater command_ has better luck with a _flame strike_ brought down on Kibi, Morningstar and Aravis.

Grey Wolf, sleeping soundly enough that the noise hasn’t yet woken him, is instead jolted to alertness by the sharp sting of a poisoned dagger slipping beneath his collarbone.   His monkey familiar Edghar is clinging to the assassin’s face, which is probably the reason he’s only injured instead of dead.  Grey Wolf leaps to his feet and returns fire with _enervation_ before backing hastily toward the door of his room.  He can feel the poison afire in his veins, filling his limbs with lead.  

Kibi turns and casts _hold monster_ on the assassin next to him, but the spell fails.

“Why doesn’t that ever work?” he cries, much aggrieved. 

Yet another assassin comes rolling smoothly out of Flicker’s room, which doesn’t bode well for the little halfling’s fate.  The attacker pelts Dranko with daggers, while another one tries (and fails) to bluff Morningstar into dropping her guard.    Dranko has a second to thank Delioch that the poison didn’t take, before one of the spell-slinging assassins points at him and utters the single word:  DARKNESS.   Dranko’s sight fades to black as the _power word: blindness_ takes hold.

“Crap!  Blind!” Dranko yells.

“I’ve got a scroll that’ll get rid of that,” says Morningstar.

“Wonderful,” says Dranko.  “I’ll just read it then, shall I?  Ernie!  Get your ass out here!”

Aravis yells at Dranko to get out of the way.  Dranko does so, dropping to the ground and rolling toward what he hopes is an open door.  It’s enough to get him out of the way of Aravis’s _prismatic spray_, and while the spell fails to affect one assassin and does minimal damage to a second, the third one caught in the effect is turned instantly to stone.

Morningstar positions herself centrally in the fight and casts a mass curative, much needed at this point, especially since she herself, along with Aravis, Dranko and Kibi, are blasted with another _flame strike_.  

Grey Wolf’s attacker does manage to bluff him, and delivers a painful sneak attack.    Grey Wolf manages to stumble out into the hallway, hoping to get into a better casting spot, but he’s struck by another assassin’s poisoned blade.  His remaining strength is completely sapped and he falls to the floor.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” yells Dranko.  “Ernie!  Flicker!  NOW!”

Kibi decides that if Ernie won’t come out, he’ll have to go in and get him.  Grabbing as many nearby party members as possible, he _dimension doors_ into Ernie’s room.   Ernie is there, lying in his blood-soaked bed, horrific wounds on his chest and neck.

His chest, though, is slowly rising and falling.  Somehow, though unconscious, he is alive.

Dranko feels the cutting edge of an assassin’s blade, and his own blood pouring out from many wounds.  Blinded, weakened, drained, injured and naked, he laments his plight out loud. 

“I’m blind and naked!  Can’t you give me a break?”  

He hears the closest assassin chuckle beneath her mask.  But he also readies an _ice storm_ from a magic ring, intending to drop it on the next enemy he hears casting. 

Aravis casts _disintegrate_ at Dranko’s attacker but misses with the beam, and instead vaporizes a chunk of wall.  Morningstar has better luck with a _darkbeam_, tagging the enemy cleric.  Better yet, when the assassin tries to follow up with _heal_, Dranko hears the sound of casting and drops an _ice storm_ on his head.  The cleric drops.

“Did it work?” asks Dranko?

“Yes!” says Morningstar.  “But we still should get out of... Dranko!”

Another assassin appears out of the shadows and stabs the blind half-orc repeatedly.   Dranko drops to his knees, vision reddening.    Aravis reaches out and grabs him, then _dimension doors_ the two of them into Flicker’s room.  Flicker, like Ernie, is unconscious but breathing despite a seemingly-mortal wound. There follows about ten seconds of cat-and-mouse _teleporting_, as the Company tries to grab as many of their possessions as possible before a group evacuation, while the assassins continue to hunt for them room to room.  Kibi manages to forestall some of them with a _wall of force_, and eventually everyone in the party is gathered around one of the two standing wizards.   With no time or means to coordinate their retreat, Aravis _teleports_ himself, Dranko and Flicker to Saum Derry’s farm hundreds of miles away, while Kibi whisks the rest of them to the Church of Kemma right there in Djaw.


* *


Saum Derry hears a knock on his door at three o’clock in the morning.    He grabs a club kept near the bed and stumps to the door.

“Who the hell’s our there?” he calls.  This had best be good.

“Dranko.  Remember me?”

Saum scratches his head for a second.  Does he know a... ?  Oh, for Quarrol’s sake!

“You!” he cries.

“Yeah, me.”

“Hold on.”

Saum unbolts the door and opens it a crack.  He sees Dranko and Aravis, with Flicker laying on the ground.  All of them are covered with blood, and Dranko’s wearing nothing except his eye-patch.

He blinks.  

“It is you,” he manages to stutter.  “What happened to you?  What happened to your friend?  Is he okay?”

“Someone just tried to kill us,” says Dranko.   “Can I have my candlestick back?”

Saum blinks again, rubs his eyes.  

“That?  You want it back?  Sure, if you want.  But...”

He looks pointedly at Flicker.

“Someone just tried to kill you?  Here?”

“No, in Djaw,” says Dranko.  “We figured we needed to get somewhere far away.”

“Ah, I get it,” says Saum.  “You’re in Djaw, thinkin’ ‘where can I go that’s safe?’ and you figure, ‘How about Saum’s farm at three in the morning.’  Right.  Well, I was going to get up in a couple hours anyway to feed the chickens.  You wanna come inside?”

“Nah,” says Dranko.  “We don’t want to get blood on your floor.”

“We can clean it up,” says Saum.  “Look, you need rest, and some patching up.  Come in.  We’ll take care of you.  I’ll wake the missus.”

Inside the farmhouse, Dranko heals Flicker back to consciousness.  

“I had the worst nightmare,” Flicker says groggily.   “I dreamt I had my throat cut in my sleep.”

“You did,” says Dranko.  “Assassins attacked us in our rooms at the Golden Goblet.”

Flicker looks offended.  “We ought to complain!”

Dranko can’t help but laugh.  “Yes.  Yes we should.”

...to be continued...


----------



## el-remmen

I love that you can lay the smackdown on such a powerful party and force them to flee for their lives.

Good work!


----------



## Jackylhunter

"Dranko glares at him. “I am very, very cranky.”"

Oh yes...Dranko was itching for a fight before...Now he's been forced to run away!  Nekked!  Someones gonna pay...=)

Thanks for the update, can't wait for more.


----------



## StevenAC

Sagiro said:


> “Crap!  Blind!” Dranko yells.
> 
> “I’ve got a scroll that’ll get rid of that,” says Morningstar.
> 
> “Wonderful,” says Dranko.  “I’ll just read it then, shall I?  Ernie!  Get your ass out here!”



If I'd been drinking something when I read that, you'd have owed me a new keyboard, Sagiro.


----------



## Tony Vargas

> Another assassin appears out of the shadows and stabs the blind half-orc repeatedly. Dranko drops to his knees, vision reddening.



Which might seem like an improvement compared to being blind...


----------



## Innocent Bystander

I'm really surprised no one was outright killed.  Without much effort one can get an assasin's death attack DC into the low 30s.


----------



## Sagiro

Tony Vargas said:


> Which might seem like an improvement compared to being blind...



That does deserve a , but not for the reason you think.  The _power word blind_ ran out a round or two before that attack on him, and I forgot to mention it.

As for *Innocent Bystander's* point -- the assassins could have killed a bunch of them, but given Ernie and Flicker's odd conditions, it's likely that whoever hired the assassins wanted the Company taken alive.

(Also, it's just not my style to introduce a situation to the game where, with a couple of good die rolls, I could kill PC's without them ever even knowing they were in danger.)


----------



## Innocent Bystander

I've been reading your story since day one and I figured you weren't that kind of DM.  That's what surprised me about the situation.  I forgot about the paralyze option of the death attack.  I guess that begs the question who hired them.  An old enemy, or a new one?

I've personally never liked and have never used save or die spells/attacks on my players.  It's one thing to beat them to near death in battle but it's another to have one bad roll kill a character that they've put so much thought and effort into.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Sagiro said:


> (Also, it's just not my style to introduce a situation to the game where, with a couple of good die rolls, I could kill PC's without them ever even knowing they were in danger.)



I shall have to ask you to hand in your Killer DM Card as you exit the premises, then.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 286*_
*Long Memory*

Dranko uses a healing wand to get himself and Flicker back to reasonable shape.   Dranko looks around and notes that the farmer (to whom they gave a large sum of money following the battle in his barn) has moderately nicer things in his house than the last time they were here.  His barn has also been expanded.     Still, Dranko hands over another 100 gp to Saum.

“For your hospitality, and the Candlestick,” says Dranko.  “But this time, I’ll ask that you use this money to help your friends and neighbors.”

“As you say,” says Saum, smiling.  “Now, you three be all right down here?  I’d like to grab a bit more sleep before sunup.”

Saum heads back upstairs, and the three of them – Dranko, Flicker and Aravis – make themselves comfortable.   But Dranko soon starts to feel dizzy, and then his innards spasm and he vomits up a gout of blood.

“It’s the poison,” he gasps.  “Still in my system.”

Aravis scrawls a quick note for Saum (‘We have to leave.  Dranko not well.’) before _teleporting_ them to the place he’s most sure can provide the healing they need – the Church of Kemma in Djaw.  Good luck, then, that the rest of the party is already there getting patched up.   Dranko is barely conscious and with no strength left in his body, by the time one of the priests there is able to restore him.

Morningstar asks that a message be sent to the Golden Goblet, requesting that the scene of the attacks be left undisturbed so that she can use her _thought captures_.   An runner is sent.  Also, having examined Ernie, one of the Kemman healers opines that it was a property of the blade used to inflict the wound, that kept the halfling from dying.  Whoever attacked the Company very much wanted them alive.

So, there they are, somewhat healed and with no one killed, but still extremely upset – not merely because of the assassination attempt itself, but also because they were unable to escape with all of their belongings.  Flicker is out most of his magic items, Morningstar is missing almost everything save her weapon and shield, and Aravis was unable to grab a number of valuable possessions before their hasty flight.  Nothing motivates a group of adventurers quite like the theft of their stuff.

But after a few minutes of collective fuming and vows of revenge, a Kemman acolyte offers to take the party to see something he thinks they’ll enjoy.  They cross a small courtyard beneath the stars, then through some dormitories and across another yard, toward the stables.  They can see from a distance that a lantern has been lit in one of the stalls, but when they go inside it turns out that there’s no lantern at all.  One stall is glowing with a warm, yellow, and wholly supernatural light.

“Was that Thunder’s stall?” asks Ernie in a reverent whisper. 

“It was,” the acolyte nods.  “It’s been that way for quite a while now.  Thunder vanished from his stall, and left this glow behind.”

They all take a moment to stand in silence, bowing their heads and thinking of One Certain Step.

“Soon there will be a pilgrimage of horses,” says Dranko, “to come here and worship at the stall.”

“I think you overestimate the intelligence of the average horse,” says the Acolyte with a smile.

“We loved Step,” continues Dranko.  “What he did for us was more valuable than any treasure.  So, the fact that he and Thunder can be together in the afterlife?  Not too shabby.”

“It is no less than he deserves,” says the acolyte.  “One Certain Step was an excellent example of Kemman virtues.”  

“How do I get him nominated for sainthood?” asks Dranko.

The acolyte quirks an eyebrow.  “You don’t have that authority, though of course you may write a letter to the High Priest.  It would be weighed with all other evidence, decades or centuries hence.”

“No way to get him fast-tracked?” presses Dranko.  “No?  Oh well.”

Then another thought occurs to him, wholly unrelated.  “Hey, you know, in the future we should all wear big metal neck-cuffs to bed.  No more slit throats!”

“There are a lot of other arteries an assassin can choose, you know,” says Flicker.

“What’s an artery?” asks Dranko.

“Weren’t you paying attention to your lessons?” asks Flicker.  “An artery is a vein with extra blood!  You stab it and the blood comes pouring out even more than usual.  There’s one in your thigh, and one in your groin.  We learned that right in here in Djaw!  It was when we... uh... when... er...”

The Kemman acolyte is staring at him.

“We’re just leaving,” says Grey Wolf.

They thank the Kemmans profusely for the assistance, leave a large donation to the church, and head back to the Golden Goblet.  There’s a great deal of bustling activity when they get there, with guards and servants swarming even though it’s still an hour before dawn.   The party is greeted by a huffing Balthazar.

“Are you okay?  I am so sorry!  So very sorry that this happened!”

“So are we,” agrees Ernie.

“Assassins!” says Balthazar, wringing his hands.  “In our very inn!”

“Were any employees hurt?” asks Dranko.

“No, thank the Gods.  One of our guards saw someone dressed in black disappear into thin air, but he did not investigate, because we had orders not to go in to your building.  That was the word that was sent – no one should disturb the scene of the attack.”

“Excellent,” says Morningstar.

“We will of course refund your money for your stay, and you are welcome to stay in other rooms, if you wish.   Our magical protections were dispelled by your assailants, but they have been reactivated.  No one has ever managed to dispel them.  Your attackers were clearly professionals!”

“We might not pay for tonight’s stay, all things considered,” says Dranko.  “But we’ll still pay for all the other nights.  The service has been fantastic.”

“I am glad that things have been fine until tonight,” says Balthazar, wiping his brow.

“You are clearly a man of means and connections here in Djaw,” says Dranko thoughtfully.  “Someone must know the names of the oppressive powerful guilds of assassins that could pull off something like this.  I know you don’t, being an honorable man, but perhaps you know someone who knows someone who could tell us something?  Because this was, as you say, a professional job.”

“Everyone knows of Vinceris,” says Balthazar.  His spits on the ground after speaking the name.  “He is the God of assassins and other unsavory types.   There are cults to him in the city, though I know nothing of them of course.”

“I need to know how I can contact an agent of Vinceris,” says Dranko. 

“I’m sure I don’t know anyone who could do that,” assures Balthazar, horrified at the thought.

“Of course not!” says Dranko.  “But, like I said,  you might know someone who knows someone who knows someone.... could you ask around?”

Balthazar nods, but Dranko senses he’s not actually going to do it, from sheer terror of the possible association.

“Is there anything else I can do?” asks Balthazar.  “We have prepared new rooms for you, and the magical defenses have been restored, and we will post extra guards around your building.  Again, I apologize.  There have been a small number of incursions onto our grounds in the past, but they have always been detected and thwarted.”

“Thank you for your quick response,” says Dranko.

“If there is any more trouble around us, please don’t send your men into harm’s way,” adds Ernie.  “The attackers will be extremely dangerous; we will handle them.”


* *

Morningstar casts three _thought captures_ – all that she can cast tonight – in Aravis’s room.   The first reveals a mundane thought from an assassin:  _I hope the other two do their jobs well_.

The second collects a thought from Pewter:  _Oh my gosh, an assassin!  Gotta make noise!  Gotta makes noise!  MREEOWWWW!_

The third is related, and again from the assassin:  _Oh, for the love of... he’s got a familiar!  Dammit!_

“I can try more in the morning,” says Morningstar.  “But we should all get some sleep.”

The last thing they do before turning in is a quick check (thinking as little as possible) of their rooms, which confirms that the assassins absconded with all of their abandoned gear.

In their new rooms, Grey Wolf (with apologies to Edghar and Pewter) uses the _Mordenkainen’s Cube_ to create a _faithful hound_ to keep watch.


* *

Aravis wakes the following morning and notes immediately that he is free of the rash.   In fact, not a single party member is afflicted.  It seems that Belshikun was true to his word.  But something is clearly troubling him over breakfast (especially sumptuous, even by the standards of the Golden Goblet) and he toys with how to broach the subject. 

At last he simply says to the others, “I got a warning from the Maze last night.”

Dranko freezes, a forkful of scrambled egg inches from his mouth.  “How?” he asks.  “You gave it up!”

“Well,” says Aravis, almost sheepishly, “this might have been a bad thing to have done, but... I left a piece of myself in the Maze before I gave it to Belshikun.”

“What piece?” asks Ernie.

“Like a finger?” asks Flicker.

“No, no,” says Aravis.  “A piece of my mind.  Which might have been dangerous, I admit.  But last night I had a vision from the Maze.  Whatever it was that warned me about Parthol’s _simulacrum_, it talked to me again.”

“Is something coming to kill us again?” asks Flicker, looking around worriedly.

“No, no, there was no warning.”

“Are you going to share it with us?” asks Dranko.  “I mean, what it was he _did_ say to you?”

“I was sitting across a table from myself,” says Aravis, “and it... it seemed to confirm that giving up the Maze was my only good option.   He... I... I said to myself, that if from inside the Maze I could help myself, I would.  Or something.  It was disorienting.  I can’t explain any better.”


*>> Here’s the handout I gave to Aravis*
_In your vision, you are sitting at a wooden table in a small tavern... somewhere.  Across from you sits a double of yourself.   The double speaks; he’s in the middle of explaining something to you.   There’s a dream-like quality to the scene, as if something about it isn’t real.

“...turned out to be the only way.  It still is.  It’s hard enough for anyone in here to contact the Keeper, let alone someone who was never a Keeper himself.  But I don’t regret what I did, or that I’m stuck here now.  You got my warning about Parthol, oblique and filtered and vague though it ended up.  It’s amazing, really, that you heard anything at all.  And on that subject, I can’t help but wonder if you... the real you... will ever know what I’m saying now.

“The Maze is an amazing place to be stuck, I must say.  So much to explore, so many avenues of inquiry to follow.   I’ll help you as much as I can, Aravis.  Two heads are better than one, right?  Every secret of the multiverse is here, if we can figure out where to look, who to ask.  I’ll warn you, though – if I find a way to get back to my rightful place, I’ll be sorely tempted to take it. I was enjoying myself immensely.”_

After breakfast Morningstar goes back to the scene of the previous night’s attack and casts more _thought captures_.   She gets nothing useful; the thoughts she gets from the assassins are all repeated mantras:  _I will strike swiftly and silently.  I will strike swiftly and silently_.  There’s nothing that would lead back to their employer.

The Company schemes, and settles on two more avenues of investigation.  Flicker and Dranko will seek a meeting with the Faceless, the thieves’ guild of Djaw.  Meanwhile Ernie will fly around above the city on his flying carpet, using _locate object_ on one of the party’s missing items.

Thinking that he ought to get someone’s permission before flying around, Ernie seeks out a guard captain.  Not wanting to discuss the party’s personal business, he tells the guard that he’s thinking of buying property, and wants to do some aerial surveillance before making any decisions.  

The guard stares at him.  It’s rumored that the Falcons (as the Djawish city guard is known) have the ability to see into men’s souls.   This may or may not be true, but either way, Ernie is a terrible liar.

“Ernest,” says the guard patiently.  “I don’t sense that you’re a bad sort, but you’re not leveling with me, are you?  Why is it, really, that you wish to fly over the city on  magical carpet, criss-crossing back and forth?”

Ernie blushes.  “Well, for one thing, I really like riding on the flying carpet!”

“Yes, I’m sure it is an exhilarating experience,” says the guard.  “But that’s hardly all of your motivation now, is it.”

“Er, have you heard about what happened at the Golden Goblet last night?” asks Ernie.

“No.”

“A party of powerful adventurers – of which I am one – was attacked by assassins of Vinceris.”

“Go on,” says the Falcon.

“I’d like to locate them, and they have some items that we could locate with a simple spell.”

“Ah,” says the guard, smiling.  “So you’re going to fly above the city with this spell cast, hoping to find your stolen possessions.  Very well.  I suggest you postpone your reconnaissance for another hour, so I can make arrangements that you not be shot down as a spy.  How long do you expect to be airborne?”

“Um, about two hours, I think.”

“And how high above the city will you be?”

“Two hundred feet.’

“Please inform me when you are about to start, and again when you have finished.  You can meet me here in an hour.”

Ernie breaths a sigh of relief.  “If we do locate them,” he asks, “would you be interested in...”

“Yes,” interrupts the guard.  “Yes we would.”

But for all of that, Ernie spends his two hours scanning for their missing loot and finds nothing.   Either the assassins have moved the stolen goods out of the city, or are storing them somewhere that’s shielded from the spell.

Aravis tries a different tack.  He collects some dried blood from one of the assassins and uses it to _scry_.  That doesn’t work either – his scrying sensor doesn’t even appear, which indicates that something is blocking the spell, possibly a _private sanctum_.

Flicker and Dranko do have success in setting up a meeting with the Faceless.  The rendezvous is set for midnight at the garden of living topiary, which is well-lit and well-populated.  

That afternoon finds the Company lounging at the Golden Goblet, reviewing the day’s failures.  When Aravis grumbles about his personal disappointment, Ernie suggests that he try scrying for their old adventuring companion Tor Bladebearer.   And this time he gets his sensor, and to everyone’s surprise finds himself looking at Tor.

(Tor, you may recall, left the party to infiltrate the Delfirian military and serve as a double-agent.  He figured he’d pretend to be turning coat, and find a way to feed the Spire information about Delfirian battle plans.  For a while it seemed to work; the Delfirians accepted him as a long-lost son, and were pleased at his exceptional martial prowess.   He’d occasionally lead forays into Charagan, where he’d drop off secret reports of Delfirian plans.  But over time, the Spire’s military strategists came to realize that he’d been compromised.  His reports, while technically accurate, were often suspiciously incomplete or misleading.  Eventually Tor stopped communicating altogether, leading the Spire to believe that he had been killed, imprisoned, or actually converted to the Delfirian cause.)

And now Aravis is looking at him – a tall, youthful figure in a Delfirian military uniform, sitting at a table on which is spread a map of the terrain between Delfir and Bederen.  Sitting across from him is a dark-haired woman Aravis doesn’t recognize, also in uniform.  The two are discussing military strategy, and Tor addresses her as “Davarian.”  

Aravis shares all of this with the rest of the party.  They’re delighted that Tor’s alive, but dismayed that he’s seemingly become a Delfirian for real.   While Aravis draws them a sketch of the woman he saw, the others try to remember why the name “Davarian” is so familiar.  

“Wait, I remember,” says Dranko.  “It’s Tor’s great-great-great grandfather.  Davarian Firemount.”

“It can’t be that Davarian,” Ernie protests.  “Tor killed him inside of that evil Delfirian throne, or at least left him trapped in there.  Also, Davarian was a guy.”

“Here’s the woman I saw,” says Aravis holding up a well-drawn portrait.   There are several gasps from various party members.  It’s Thewana, Abernathy’s one-time apprentice!

“But she was killed,” says Flicker.  “She and the Archmage Grawly.  And they never found out who did it.”

“But remember what we did with that throne?” asks Dranko.  “We gave it to Abernathy and Thewana, so they could drain the power out of it.”

“Davarian was still in there,” says Ernie.  “He must have jumped bodies into Thewana while they were sucking out its magic.”

“And then he just bided his time, and eventually killed Grawly and faked Thewana’s death.”

“And now he has Tor,” concludes Ernie.

“F***!” yells Dranko.  He throws a glass against the wall in anger.  Kibi just looks confused.  “What are you talking about?  What throne?  Who’s Thewana?”

Dranko explains the whole thing:  their long-ago mission to Seablade Point, the weird pseudo-dream battle between Tor and Davarian, and their retrieval of the ancient Delfirian throne for Abernathy.   Thewana was Abernathy’s apprentice until the old wizard’s death, after which she was sent by the Spire to serve as Grawly’s apprentice.  Ozilinsh, Grawly’s old apprentice, replaced Abernathy as the Archmage of Tal Hae.

When Dranko is done explaining, Ernie splutters. “We’ve got to go find him and save him.  Can we scry again and teleport to him?”

“What if he doesn’t want to go?” asks Dranko.  “What if he’s evil?   Also, can we deal with him some time when we’re not getting stalked by assassins?”

The others agree.  One thing at a time, and the assassins are currently priority #1.


* *


The rest of the day passes without excitement.  Ernie visits the two legitimate magic dealers in Djaw and asks them to keep an eye out for the Company’s stuff.  As the midnight meeting with the Faceless draws near, Dranko casts _omen of peril_ and gets a response of “safety” for the next hour.

The Moving Garden of Djaw is laid out like a simple and low hedge maze, through which roam a number of animated topiary.   There’s a large mammoth, several small dogs and cats, and even an alarmingly lifelike topiary grass reaver.   Kibi frowns as he sees an iron-collared dwarven slave trimming the hedges.

A nondescript man on a bench waves to them as they pass.

“It’s kind of you to see us,” says Dranko, approaching.

“I thought we were done with you,” answers the man.

“Yeah,” says Dranko.  “Well, we have a slight problem, and were hoping you might help.”

“In fact,” says Ernie, stepping up with an affected swagger, “my colleague here has a business proposition for you.”

Dranko glares at him, and over the mind-link thinks:  “Ernie?!”

“What?” thinks back Ernie.  “I’m trying to sound tough!  Isn’t that what tough negotiators say?”

“Not helping,” thinks Dranko.

“Ooh, look!” says Ernie out loud.  “A topiary gryphon!”  He wanders off.  Dranko turns back to the man, whose expression is unflinchingly neutral.

“We were attacked last night by a Vinceris strike team,” says Dranko.

“Not our business,” says the man flatly.  “Do you have anything else to talk about?”

Dranko is taken aback.  “Yes.  Well.  I’m well aware that you’re not responsible for it, but we were hoping you could put us in touch with someone from the church of Vinceris.”

“I’m afraid we can’t.  Can’t help you.  Anything else?”  The man stands, as if he’s already wrapping up the meeting.  

“Our main goal here is that no more assassins come after us,” says Morningstar.

“We know they were professional assassins, but we don’t technically know their religion,” adds Dranko.

“Let me make something very clear,” says the Faceless man.  “We have an agreement.  We will not meddle, will not inform, will not spread rumors, will not spread truths.   We are entirely uninvolved in their business in every way, and that is how it’s going to stay.  I am going to offer you no assistance in any attempt to track them down.  They would learn that we meddled, and that would be the end of us.”

“On a separate note,” says Dranko after a deep breath, “they stole a bunch of our stuff.  If these items reach your fences, can you tell us, so we can buy them back?”

“If we see them, we will learn the prices and contact you.  Now, this interview is at an end.  Good night.”   He leaves, and as expected, none of them can remember what he looked like.

“Well,” says Dranko.  “Another waste of...”

“Excuse me.”  A scrawny young woman has approached, seemingly out of nowhere.  She can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen years old.  “I couldn’t help but overhear.”

“What can we do for you,” asks Morningstar, her voice calm.

“Not all of us are so rigid in our thinking, and may see an angle to make a profit.”

Dranko turns his back on her.  Sure enough, he can’t picture her face.  He turns back.

“This can be very profitable for you,” he says, “and I appreciate your flexibility.”

“What do you want, and how much will you pay me for it?” asks the girl.

“What we want is to find out who hired the professional assassins who tried to kill us.”

The girl nods.  “I’ll have to be discrete, but you pay me enough, and I can get you a name.”

“How do you want to handle it?” asks Dranko.

“Some amount up front for my trouble – this is a high risk operation – and the rest when I get you the name.  How much were you thinking of paying?  Remembering, of course, that I’m not only risking my own life, but potentially the entire Faceless organization.”

“So you’re going to share the reward with the rest of the Faceless?” asks Dranko.

“Of course not.”

“Then we only have to worry about paying you then, and that’s not really relevant.”

“You misunderstand,” says the girl.  “If the Faceless find out about this.... let’s just say my risk is doubled, so the reward should be substantial.”

“We don’t do this much,” says Aravis.  “Just tell us what it’s worth to you.”

“I was thinking 5000 Miracs now, and another 5000 when I get you the name.”

That sounds about right to Ernie and Aravis, but Dranko can’t help but haggle.

“I was thinking half of that,” he says.

“I wasn’t,” says the girl.  “I was thinking all of it.”

“Are you willing to submit to a truth spell, to verify you intend to hold up your end of the bargain?” asks Morningstar.

“Nope.  No chance,” says the girl.  

“So we should just give you the money and hope for the best?”

“Yep,” the girl agrees.  “That’s pretty much it.  Or I can just go my merry away.”

“How about we give you a third of it now, and two thirds of it afterwards?” suggests Dranko.

“Deal,” says the girl.

As Dranko hands over the money, he tries to surreptitiously pluck a hair from her jacket, thinking Aravis can use it for scrying.  Over the mind-link, Kibi offers dryly:  “You’ve only been married for a few months, and you’re already trying to get a piece of a nineteen-year-old.”

But the attempt fails; despite Dranko’s finely honed skills at sleight-of-hand, the girl spots the attempt and slaps his hand away.

“There was a little but of fuzz on you,” explains Dranko.

“Yes.  Of course.”

“Do you we have something we can call you?” asks Dranko.

“No.  Where will you be in 48 hours?”

“The Golden Goblet.”

“I’ll send word, and tell you where to meet me.”

“You are aware,” says Morningstar, “of what happened the last time the Faceless crossed us?”

“Oh, yes.  I’m not going to double cross you”

“Nice of you to say so,” grumbles Morningstar.

“If that's the case, then we appreciate you taking the risk for us,” says Dranko.

“I’d better get started,” says the girl.  “Have to earn the rest of that money!”

She turns, leaves, and seconds later they can’t remember her face.

“She probably knows who it is already,” says Dranko.  “I bet she’s just going to lie in a hot tub for a couple days.”

“And yet, it’s still worth the money if she gets us a name,” says Ernie.


* *


Two days later, just after lunch, a note arrives at the Goblet with an address located in a seedy neighborhood on the far side of the city.   Though expecting some kind of double-cross, the Company makes haste on foot and arrives to find an old man with a bushy beard sitting against a crumbling stone wall.

“I have a letter for you,” slurs the man, getting to his feet and shaking the dust from his grubby clothes.  “But you’re supposed to hand over somethin’ first, somethin’ valuable.  Don’t open the letter ‘til I’m gone, too.”

Dranko gives him a small bag with 6600 miracs’ worth of gems and coins.  The old man hands them a stained and folded piece of paper before ducking down an alleyway and into an unmarked doorway.

Dranko unfolds the note as the other crowd around.  It contains only two words:  “Lord Blueface.”

For a moment no one speaks.  Then Ernie blurts out “Who the heck is Lord Blueface?”

“People we’ve never even met want to kill us now?” asks Aravis, throwing up his hands.

“And couldn’t they have told us anything more?” complains Dranko.  “Like where he lives, or... what...”

He stops talking.  A thought comes into his head.

“Wait a minute,” he says.  “Remember that second potion we told Lord Dafron he had to drink, in order to cure him of the Powder addiction?  What color was that going to turn him?”

Aravis’s eyes grow wide.  “Blue,” he says quietly.

“Oh, yeah,” says Dranko.  “That was _absolutely_ worth five thousand gold pieces.”

...to be continued...


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Can someone remind me about Lord Dafron? I'm afraid I don't remember him.

Other than that - another great update! Loved the detail of the escape plan/revenge plan, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how the party do without their main items!

Did anyone consider trying to use some portable wealth to buy some new ones? Seems odd that they managed to put together several thousand gp for bribes when the rest of their stuff went missing.


----------



## Sagiro

Tallarn said:


> Did anyone consider trying to use some portable wealth to buy some new ones? Seems odd that they managed to put together several thousand gp for bribes when the rest of their stuff went missing.



Just to clarify:  the party still has the vast majority of their stuff, as they made of point of scooping up everything they could before teleporting out.  Stuff that's missing is:

- Almost all of Flicker's stuff.  He's borrowed some spare weapons from other party members.

- Most of Morningstar's magic items, though she still has her armor, weapons and shield.

- A handful of Aravis's misc. magic items, though he still has his spellbooks and components.

Everyone else is still fully equipped.  It helps that Morningstar casts a custom spell every night that allows folks to sleep comfortably in their armor.   Most of the party does this as a matter of course, out of general adventurer paranoia.


----------



## jensun

Doesnt Aravis have 7th level spells?

I was always under the impression that by this point standard operating procedure fro your average group of (justifiably) paranoid high level adventurers was to always sleep in a MMM.


----------



## Sagiro

jensun said:


> Doesnt Aravis have 7th level spells?
> 
> I was always under the impression that by this point standard operating procedure fro your average group of (justifiably) paranoid high level adventurers was to always sleep in a MMM.



Aravis has always tended to reserve his 7th level slots for offense and/or _greater teleport_.  And while he will often use _Leomnud's Secure Shelter_ or even _rope trick_ while on the road, remember that, on the night of the attack, the Company was staying in what might well be the most expensive and luxurious inn in the known world.  The party was not about to forego the comforts of the Golden Goblet, paranoid or not!


----------



## Jackylhunter

Good stuff, gotta love it when those loose ends turn into snakes that bite the party on its collective Arses...=)


----------



## Sagiro

Tallarn said:


> Can someone remind me about Lord Dafron? I'm afraid I don't remember him.




Lord Dafron is a corrupt member of the House of Law in Mirj.  He was running an extortion racket (long since thwarted by the Company) wherein his alchemist partner was making a dangerous and addictive substance ("Powder") that he would trick wealthy people into consuming. 

Through a prodigious feat of sleight-of-hand, Dranko slipped Powder into Dafron's own drink, forcing Dafron to admit the scheme.  The party confronted the alchemist (actually a Rakshasa, who had slain the original alchemist but who was continuing to work with Dafron for reasons of his own) and learned the formula for the antidote.  

When the party sent a bottle of the antidote to Dafron, they included a second bottle with instructions to drink that as well, to make the cure permanent.  In fact, the second bottle would have no effect save to turn the imbiber's skin blue for a few days.  

To top this all off, the party started rumors in Mirj that Dafron had been "cursed by the Gods for his double-dealing," and also that Dafron may have been engaging in illicit activities with certain barnyard creatures.  

No wonder, then, that Lord Dafron is in a revengin' mood.


----------



## StevenAC

Sagiro said:


> When the party sent a bottle of the antidote to Dafron, they included a second bottle with instructions to drink that as well, to make the cure permanent.  In fact, the second bottle would have no effect save to turn the imbiber's skin blue for a few days.



A slight continuity glitch here -- the original notes (see session #86 in Part One of the collected Story Hour) stated that the potion would turn Dafron purple, not blue.  But "Lord Purpleface" would have just sounded silly, of course.  

Sagiro, I remain in awe of your ability to bring back old plot threads and integrate them into the current story without any hint of railroading.  In this installment alone, we have three old threads coming back into focus in an entirely natural and believable way.  Firstly, there's Lord Dafron being behind the current assassination attempts on the party.  Then, that mysterious warning from the Crosser's Maze to Aravis about Parthol's simulacrum (session #121 of Part One) is now revealed as coming from the part of Aravis left behind in the Maze when he gave it up.  (Interestingly, something along these lines was speculated by various people at the time.)

Finally, and most satisfying of all, the solution to the mystery of Grawly and Thewana is revealed, _and_ it explains what's happened to Tor as well -- just brilliant!  Although I suspect that in this line, you meant Aravis rather than Kibi...







> Kibi just looks confused. “What are you talking about? What throne? Who’s Thewana?”



...since Kibi took part in the battle with Davarian, and certainly knew Thewana.

It sent me thinking back to that confrontation with Solomea in the Crosser's Maze (session #109), where the party were given a list of eight questions, from which they could pick one to be answered:


> 1. Why did Califax warn you not to trust Praska?
> 2. Why are people trying to kill Grey Wolf?
> 3. Who killed Grawly and Thewana?
> 4. Why are rats and ravens attacking Aravis, and why do cats think he’s “like a cat”?
> 5. Where is the body of Sagiro Emberleaf?
> 6. What is the purpose behind the schemes of the Sharshun?
> 7. What is the full meaning of Step’s poem?
> 8. Who is ‘P’?



In the event, the party chose to ask for the answer to question #8, which alerted them to the threat from Parthol Runecarver.  But in each of the other cases (except for #1, which I don't think has been answered at all, and #4, where we have some clues, but not yet a full answer), it's possible to see how, had the party chosen that question at this pivotal moment, they would have received information that would have sent the story off in a different, but equally satisfying direction.  A really masterful piece of plotting.

On another note, the Collected Story Hour site has finally been updated with the latest chapter of the Company's adventures.  This is Chapter 1 of Part Three -- I decided (with Sagiro's approval) that the Company's return to Tal Hae after restoring their proper timeline was a good point to mark a second major division in the story.  I've slightly reworked the formatting of the end of Part Two so that it reaches a natural stopping point, so anyone who's previously downloaded that last chapter (Chapter 9 of Part Two) may want to grab it again for completeness' sake.


----------



## Sagiro

StevenAC said:


> A slight continuity glitch here -- the original notes (see session #86 in Part One of the collected Story Hour) stated that the potion would turn Dafron purple, not blue.  But "Lord Purpleface" would have just sounded silly, of course.



Well, yes, but it was a blueish purple.  



> Then, that mysterious warning from the Crosser's Maze to Aravis about Parthol's simulacrum (session #121 of Part One) is now revealed as coming from the part of Aravis left behind in the Maze when he gave it up.  (Interestingly, something along these lines was speculated by various people at the time.)



This supposition, while logical and cool, is not _necessarily_ correct.  I would have had to know, way back then, that Aravis would leave a piece of himself in the Maze.  While I've been able to anticipate some of the PC's actions, that would have been a feat of prognostication well beyond my means!  (In fact, Aravis's decision took me completely by surprise.)

What going on with that vision/dream is, the piece of Aravis's mind in the Maze is having a conversation across the table with a mysterious benefactor, _who looks like Aravis because that's the only way s/he is able to communicate with him_.  So, there are actually three "Aravises" involved:

1. The mind-fragment Aravis who's now loose in the Maze
2. The benefactor, also in the Maze, who uses Aravis's voice and likeness to communicate.  This might actually be some aspect of Aravis, as time is somewhat meaningless in the Maze, or it might be someone else in the Maze who wants to help out.
3. The actual Aravis, not in the Maze, who (apparently) is receiving reports in vision/dream format from his wandering fragment.



> Finally, and most satisfying of all, the solution to the mystery of Grawly and Thewana is revealed, _and_ it explains what's happened to Tor as well -- just brilliant!  Although I suspect that in this line, you meant Aravis rather than Kibi......since Kibi took part in the battle with Davarian, and certainly knew Thewana.



Correct.  Good catch!  Yeah, I'd been sitting on the Grawly/Thewana thing for a while, but they discovered it completely out of the blue.  So, now they've added "rescue Tor from the Delfirians" to their huge to-do list.



> It sent me thinking back to that confrontation with Solomea in the Crosser's Maze (session #109), where the party were given a list of eight questions, from which they could pick one to be answered:
> 
> 1. Why did Califax warn you not to trust Praska?
> 2. Why are people trying to kill Grey Wolf?
> 3. Who killed Grawly and Thewana?
> 4. Why are rats and ravens attacking Aravis, and why do cats think he’s “like a cat”?
> 5. Where is the body of Sagiro Emberleaf?
> 6. What is the purpose behind the schemes of the Sharshun?
> 7. What is the full meaning of Step’s poem?
> 8. Who is ‘P’?




Right now, in real time, the game is about 20-25 runs ahead of the Story Hour.  And as of today, the party pretty much knows everything about all the questions except for #7.  (Though, technically, no one knows where Sagiro's body is now, or even if it exists at all!)  And, on reflection, there are nuances of the Sharhsun's plots that the party doesn't understand, though it's safe to say that "changing time so the Emperor was never defeated" was far and away their main goal at the time the eight questions were presented.  Of all the questions, that one -- #6 -- would certainly have had the most drastic effect on the game's ultimate direction.  



> On another note, the Collected Story Hour site has finally been updated with the latest chapter of the Company's adventures.  This is Chapter 1 of Part Three -- I decided (with Sagiro's approval) that the Company's return to Tal Hae after restoring their proper timeline was a good point to mark a second major division in the story.  I've slightly reworked the formatting of the end of Part Two so that it reaches a natural stopping point, so anyone who's previously downloaded that last chapter (Chapter 9 of Part Two) may want to grab it again for completeness' sake.




Thanks as always!  Your .pdf's are still my most valuable tools in maintaining continuity and remembering details from years past.

-Sagiro


----------



## Joshua Randall

Sagiro said:


> And as of today, the party pretty much knows everything about all the questions except for #7. [the full meaning of Step's poem]



Er, wait. I thought that in light* of what happened towards the end of the party's Het Branoi adventures, we did know what Step's poem meant.

_* Get it? In *light* of? _

Here is Step's poem; or technically... well, read on.

One Certain Step meets the party:
[sblock]Step had a dream some weeks ago about that he believes concerns the party: he saw a dense jungle, and a small bamboo hut hung over with vines; he saw a jet-black tower inside a ring of rock, with a gate of giant ribs; he saw two great swinging anvils, with small figures running between them; and he saw a huge black circle hanging in the air, with armies of evil pouring through them.  

Still dreaming, he saw a scared text of Kemma, pages dry and cracked and long unused. He saw the book open, and words blazed out of them, but he could not read them. The next morning when he awoke, he went to the church library and found the book from his dream. In it he found an obscure poem whose meaning had never been gleaned, but which he believes is referring to the party.[/sblock]The poem itself:
[sblock]read the signs as the shadows flow 
see a fearsome emerging foe 
light must rive the last of five 
but don't expect to come back alive 

read the signs, you are not alone 
those from lands that the foe called home 
are fighting the war on a distant shore 
to barricade the circle door 

know them then by their mix of blood 
man and holbytla and child of wood 
know them each by their foreign speech 
in the court of cats on the day of reach 

tell them the door is close at hand 
the foe can come forward in any land 
his armies will roll through a skysteel hole 
and turn their home to a bed of coal 

go with them to your certain doom 
and be the one in the lightless room 
if the light will thrive you must contrive 
to go with them to the last of five[/sblock]Everything in the poem seems to make sense, in the way of things once you know all the answers. (Which of course the players didn't at the time.) So what, if anything, remains to be explained?


----------



## el-remmen

StevenAC said:


> On another note, the Collected Story Hour site has finally been updated with the latest chapter of the Company's adventures.  This is Chapter 1 of Part Three -- I decided (with Sagiro's approval) that the Company's return to Tal Hae after restoring their proper timeline was a good point to mark a second major division in the story.  I've slightly reworked the formatting of the end of Part Two so that it reaches a natural stopping point, so anyone who's previously downloaded that last chapter (Chapter 9 of Part Two) may want to grab it again for completeness' sake.




Wow. Steven I am impressed with the work you have put into archiving this story hour. Good work!


----------



## Sagiro

Joshua Randall said:


> Er, wait. I thought that in light* of what happened towards the end of the party's Het Branoi adventures, we did know what Step's poem meant.
> 
> _* Get it? In *light* of? _
> 
> Here is Step's poem; or technically... well, read on.
> 
> One Certain Step meets the party:
> [sblock]Step had a dream some weeks ago about that he believes concerns the party: he saw a dense jungle, and a small bamboo hut hung over with vines; he saw a jet-black tower inside a ring of rock, with a gate of giant ribs; he saw two great swinging anvils, with small figures running between them; and he saw a huge black circle hanging in the air, with armies of evil pouring through them.
> 
> Still dreaming, he saw a scared text of Kemma, pages dry and cracked and long unused. He saw the book open, and words blazed out of them, but he could not read them. The next morning when he awoke, he went to the church library and found the book from his dream. In it he found an obscure poem whose meaning had never been gleaned, but which he believes is referring to the party.[/sblock]The poem itself:
> [sblock]read the signs as the shadows flow
> see a fearsome emerging foe
> light must rive the last of five
> but don't expect to come back alive
> 
> read the signs, you are not alone
> those from lands that the foe called home
> are fighting the war on a distant shore
> to barricade the circle door
> 
> know them then by their mix of blood
> man and holbytla and child of wood
> know them each by their foreign speech
> in the court of cats on the day of reach
> 
> tell them the door is close at hand
> the foe can come forward in any land
> his armies will roll through a skysteel hole
> and turn their home to a bed of coal
> 
> go with them to your certain doom
> and be the one in the lightless room
> if the light will thrive you must contrive
> to go with them to the last of five[/sblock]Everything in the poem seems to make sense, in the way of things once you know all the answers. (Which of course the players didn't at the time.) So what, if anything, remains to be explained?




I've said too much already.


----------



## Everett

Joshua Randall said:


> Everything in the poem seems to make sense, in the way of things once you know all the answers. (Which of course the players didn't at the time.) So what, if anything, remains to be explained?




No idea.  But they wouldn't be visiting Thunder's stall if there were nothing left to discover about Step's story line, now would they?

And WHY, oh why do cats think Aravis is "like a cat"?  Been waiting years for it.


----------



## StevenAC

el-remmen said:


> Wow. Steven I am impressed with the work you have put into archiving this story hour. Good work!



Thanks!  Slightly startling to realise it's been well over five years now since the site was first created...


----------



## Piratecat

The fight in the inn was spectacular, a ludicrous avalanche of desperate tactics. Ernie and Flicker were in the -20s or -30s for hit points, but the daggers that the assassins used kept the victim alive and unconscious at that point. 

Interesting fact: I seem to remember that Dranko got sick at Saum Derry's because I remembered, and failed, the poison's secondary effect a minute later.  It brought his constitution (or maybe strength? I forget) down to single digits or zero, enough that I think I was going to die as soon as a buffing spell wore off. They _really_ got our attention.


----------



## Aravis

jensun said:


> Doesnt Aravis have 7th level spells?
> 
> I was always under the impression that by this point standard operating procedure fro your average group of (justifiably) paranoid high level adventurers was to always sleep in a MMM.




Aside from what Sagiro has already posted on this, Aravis does not have the MMM spell.


----------



## Piratecat

And we're bitter about it. He's such a slacker, I swear. In fact, when we played last night and slept overnight in a rope trick, Flicker was complaining about this very thing.


----------



## Aravis

Piratecat said:


> And we're bitter about it. He's such a slacker, I swear. In fact, when we played last night and slept overnight in a rope trick, Flicker was complaining about this very thing.




Okay, Okay!  I feel really bad now.  I promise, I will learn MMM and use ALL of my 7th, 8th, and 9th level slots for it...you know, just to make up for being such a slacker and a selfish lout.


----------



## Joshua Randall

*Sagiro*: "The massive army of extraplanar ickiness swarms towards you, and--"
*Aravis*: "I cast _magnificent mansion_. We all pile in."
*Sagiro*: "But... the bad guys..."
*Aravis*: "Screw them. We're comfy in here."
*Sagiro*: "Uh... fine. Eventually you'll have to come out."
*Aravis*: "I've got 8 copies of it prepared. I'll just keep recasting them every couple hours, one inside the other*, then resting and refreshing spell slots. We're safe in our infinite recursion of _mansions _and there's nothing you can do about it."
*Sagiro*: "Nooooooo! All my years of work, wasted!"



* In all seriousness, I don't see anything in the spell description that says you can't do this. Other than the fact that it's suuuuper cheesy.


----------



## Aravis

Joshua Randall said:


> * In all seriousness, I don't see anything in the spell description that says you can't do this. Other than the fact that it's suuuuper cheesy.




Now that I have stopped laughing, that sure would get that look from Sagiro that we sure do enjoy.

It does beg the question about what happens to an extra-dimensional space when the extra-dimensional space that it was cast within goes away...I am sure the answer can be found in Onions...


----------



## Davek

Aravis said:


> Now that I have stopped laughing, that sure would get that look from Sagiro that we sure do enjoy.
> 
> It does beg the question about what happens to an extra-dimensional space when the extra-dimensional space that it was cast within goes away...I am sure the answer can be found in Onions...




I think as DM I would allow it, but when the party finally does exit the last MMM they would not be where they started (some random extradimensional place)


----------



## Lord Pendragon

Aravis said:


> It does beg the question about what happens to an extra-dimensional space when the extra-dimensional space that it was cast within goes away...I am sure the answer can be found in Onions...




If memory serves, doesn't placing one extra-dimensional space inside another cause both to be destroyed, and form a vortex into the Astral Plane?


----------



## Piratecat

A brief aside, although the story hour won't get there for two years. I was reminded this week why I'm so unbelievably pleased to have Sagiro as a DM. We were trying something important, and we thought we'd taken every possible precaution to stop the bad guys from thwarting us. They still showed up half-way through our plan. It was frustrating, and we chatted with Sagiro about it after the game.

So that night, in classic story-hour form (and at the top of his writing game), he wrote a storyhour-esque account of exactly what the bad guys did to figure out our plans and prep accordingly. Our characters don't know all this, of course.  But the players do. And now we have a little insight into the minds of the bad guys (making us hate them *that much more!*), we no longer feel like the ambush is unwarranted, and we got a great cut-scene out of it.

Moral of story: I'm totally going to steal this technique, and I can't wait for next game.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 287*_
*What Happened to Lord Dafron*

In their rooms back at the Golden Goblet (which they now enjoy gratis) there is much to say about Lord Dafron, most of it heated invective.  Flicker is all for hunting him down and killing him, and this is not an unpopular sentiment.  Ernie notes that the assassins were _trying_ to keep them alive, probably to humiliate them later, so perhaps they should respond in kind.

“I don’t care if he’s humiliated or not,” says Morningstar.  “As long as he stops interfering with us.”

Dranko looks thoughtful.  “I wonder if the blue skin we gave him ended up permanent?”

Aravis gives him a sheepish smile.  “I wasn’t all that experienced an alchemist way back then,” he admits.

“Let’s just kill him,” Flicker repeats.  He’s still shaken by his close shave, and the image of a dagger through his heart.

“He’s a Lord,” Dranko reminds him.  “If we kill _him_, their government will want to kill _us_."

“What if the other Lords hate Dafron as much as we do?” asks Kibi.  “He was extremely unpleasant.”

“It won’t matter,” sighs Dranko.  “If you kill one Lord, the other Lords get nervous, thinking you might do the same to them someday.”

“What if he doesn’t ‘get killed,’ Aravis muses.  “What if he just ‘disappears?’  I could send him to another plane.”

The discussion takes a while to wind down, as they weigh all sorts of options, ranging from a stern talking to, to a _mark of justice_, to a painful execution.  They reach no firm conclusion, though whatever they decide, the first order of business is to learn more about him and his current whereabouts.  Since the day is still relatively young, they decide to send Dranko and Aravis on a scouting mission to Mirj.  Posing as a pair of well-to-do servants, and loaded down with defensive spells and protective magic items, the two of them _teleport_ to the city of Mirj, 150 miles northwest of Djaw.  The others remain telepathically linked.

Using his natural talents of fast-talking and information-gathering, Dranko soon gains an audience with a customs official who helps keep track of the city’s imports and exports.   The official, an unctuous man named Stenin, looks up from his desk.

“How may I help you?”

Dranko clears his throat.  “I have been tasked by my master to find out about a gentleman he wants to do business with.  There are some questions about his, um, reputation, if you know what I mean.”

“Of course, of course,” says Stenin, sensing an easy profit.  “A merchant?”

“It’s a Lord,” says Dranko.

“Oh!” says Stenin, sitting up straight.  “A member of the House of Law!  I can help you, though sensitive information will be expensive, you know.”

“I expect as much,” says Dranko with a smile.  “His name is Lord Dafron.”

Stenin scratches his chin.

“In the House of Law, you say?” he asks.

“Is he not known to you?” asks Dranko.

“Understand, I have only been in this position for the last six months, and the name is not familiar.  Excuse me for a moment...”

Stenin waves over an older gentleman, busy at another desk on the opposite wall.

“Stenin, what is it now?”

“Bynum, these people wish to do business with a Lord Dafron.”

Bynum strokes his moustache, a drooping gray patch of hair that hides his mouth.

“Oh, you do, do you?” he says, quirking a smile at Dranko and Aravis.

“You are clearly amused, and I don’t understand why,” says Dranko, all innocence.  “What am I missing?”

“Tell me,” says Bynum, “How did your master learn of Lord Dafron, and come to want to do business with him?”

“I am not privy to that,” says Dranko.  “But if there are questionable aspects...?”

Bynum forces a straight face.  “Lord Dafron... is no longer a member of the House of Law.”

“Oh dear!” exclaims Dranko.  “How is that so?”

“I believe he was voted out by the other members of the House,” says Bynum.

“Has he lost all of his money?” asks Dranko, aghast.

“I don’t know what has happened to him.  I suspect he is no longer allowed in the Upper City.  There were rumors... interesting rumors... “  Bynum trails off with a sly grin, shared with Stenin.

Dranko understands.  “Would forty miracs continue this conversation?”

Dranko, Aravis and Bynum slip into a storeroom, used to temporarily house merchandise confiscated from smugglers.  

“You understand, all of this is off the official government record,” says Bynum.

“Of course!” says Dranko, who would never think otherwise.

“Though there’s not much more to tell.  I never saw the man, but the rumor I heard most often was that he... engaged in inappropriate activities with...um... livestock.  And contracted a terrible condition.  Reputation is everything in the House of Law, and the other Lords grew dissatisfied with the taint on their own reputation by association with the man.  And since he also apparently suffered some hideous physical affliction as a result, his business prospects began to dry up as the stories spread... one even that he had offended the Gods, and his affliction was a curse, which is why his skin turned colors.  That was about a year ago, and I don’t know what became of him after that.  But you should tell your employer that he should find a new business partner... perhaps even Lord Traber, who has taken Lord Dafron’s seat in the House.

“So his mansion and belongings...” prompts Dranko.  

“I don’t know what happened to his personal effects,” says Bynum.  “But his mansion in the Upper City was most likely auctioned to someone else, the proceeds going to the House of Law.”

Dranko makes a show of tearing up his forged agreements.  “My payment for this meeting was very well spent.  You have doubtless saved our master tens of thousands of Miracs.  Here...”

Dranko hands Bynum another 10 Miracs.

And with that, Dranko and Aravis depart the customs house.  Ernie pipes up over the mindlink.

“Well, that explains his anger.  We really ruined his life!”


* *

Dranko spends the rest of the day combing the Lower City of Mirj for more information about Lord Dafron.  It’s a cold trail since the topic is a year old, but he gathers a handful of rumors, none of them proven:

-	A card-shark opines that Dafron is still hiding in the Lower City, but no one has seen him since his expulsion.  At night he sneaks out of doors, wearing a hood to hide his still-blue face.  If he were recognized, he’d get torn apart by a mob after all of the public executions he authorized as a Lord.
-	A cook’s assistant in a seedy tavern claims that Lord Dafron has long-since fled the city, and he’s planning revenge, probably in Djaw.
-	A servant for an alchemists’ guild says Dafron has expensive diviners on personal retainer.  No one knows why, but it proves he has kept at least some of his personal wealth.
-	A butler claims that Dafron made him a very generous offer to be his personal servant, but he turned it down, not wanting to offend the Gods.
-	A local sell-sword heard that Dafron hired One Strong Shield, a well-known and expensive bodyguard from Djaw.

As evening falls, Aravis and Dranko _teleport_ back to the Golden Goblet.  The party discusses their new pile of intelligence.

“He must have retained at least _some_ wealth,” figures Aravis, “since he was able to hire highly-competent assassins.”

Kibi strokes his beard.  “I had been thinking the best revenge might be to get him thrown out of the House of Law,” he says.  “But I guess we’ve already done that.”

“I almost feel badly,” says Ernie.

“He was a horrible, horrible man!” exclaims Dranko.  “Don’t you remember how horrible he was?”

“And don’t you remember how he tried to have us killed?” adds Flicker.  

“He’s living only for revenge,” says Dranko.  “He’s hiring diviners to find us, and a bodyguard in case we find him first.”

“That’s what’s so sad,” says Ernie.

“If we deprive him of his ability to harm us,” says Aravis, “that being his money, I don’t see any reason to kill him, too.”

“I do,” says Morningstar flatly.  “All he’s ever done is harm other people.  Even if it’s not us, he’ll eventually find someone else to prey on.  It’s what he’s done his whole life.”

“If we kill him now, he goes to Hell,” says Dranko.  “If we let him live, he could atone and go to heaven someday.”

“Just what I’m trying to say,” says Ernie.

“And in the meantime, how many people will he harm who can’t defend themselves like we can?” asks Morningstar angrily.  “How many chances does he get?  How many more lives do we let him ruin?”

Round and round they go, reaching no consensus.  Aravis tries to _scry_ him, but gets nothing; Dafron is almost certainly in the confines of a _private sanctum_.  Done for the day, the Company relaxes for the remainder of the evening, but for security’s sake they don’t actually sleep in the Golden Goblet.  Instead they _teleport_ out into the wilderness between Djaw and Mirj, open up the Lucent Tower, hide it with _mirage arcana_, and surround the whole thing with a _private sanctum_ of their own.  So protected, most of the Company goes to sleep.   Morningstar first goes into a trance and visits her temple back in Tal Hae – easy to do now that Posada’s Boundary is dissolved.  She warns them that Drosh, Kivian God of Death, was scared enough of _something_ to flee Abernia.   It seems like something they should know.

Then, almost on a whim, she tries to find Lord Dafron’s dreams.    Against the odds she discovers them, recognizing his unpleasant mental signature.   He is dreaming, and the dream is disturbing:  over and over again, someone is plunging a dagger into Dranko’s chest.  After many stabs, with Dranko’s body lying in a bloody stew, Dafron leans over him with a fancy teacup in hand.  “Would you like more cocoa?” he asks.  Morningstar senses he’s happy.

Thinking that she should tell someone about this, and figuring she should keep her dream-visitation skills sharp, she finds Ernie’s dreams as well – pleasant, chaste dreams of Yoba.  She tries to intrude, to tell Ernie that Dafron still dreams of revenge, but makes a muddle out of things.  Finding Dafron was more of a strain than she realized, and she only manages to change Ernie’s dream into a nightmare in which he’s _stabbing Yoba._.  He wakes with a shriek, and this rouses everyone else from sleep.

Morningstar tells the others about Dafron’s dream, and what happened with Ernie.  “He dreams of murdering Dranko, and he’s extremely happy about it.”

“He’s stabbing Dranko?” says Aravis.  “Why wouldn’t he be happy?”

Dranko, sleepy, misses the context.  “Wait a minute!”

Ernie is still horrified by his modified dream.  “Someone check me!  Am I evil?”

Aravis glances at him and gestures idly.  “No, you’re not.”

“Hey!” Ernie accuses.  “All you did was wave your hand.”

“Ernie, you’re not evil,” Morningstar assures him.

“Check yourself, if you’re worried,” says Dranko.

“Does that work?” asks Ernie, both alarmed and groggy.

They all go back to sleep.


* *

Aravis awakes with a clear memory of an extremely vivid dream – another communiqué from the Crosser’s Maze.

*>> The handout I gave to Aravis:*
_You are back in the tavern again, sitting across from yourself.  You have the distinct feeling that, in the Maze, much subjective time has passed since the last time you were here.   Also your double’s face seems to shimmer and shift slightly, as if someone – you? – is struggling to see what he really looks like.  You get the distinct impression that it’s not you.  It’s someone you’ve never met, but you did meet them, once, in a strange place that’s much like where you are now.  It’s very confusing.  

“...found something for you,” says your double.  “It’s disturbing.  I won’t go back there again – too dangerous.  And I don’t know what it means.  Here, I’ll share it with you.”

Your shifting double reaches forward and grasps your hand, and you are wrenched into another vision – a vision within a vision.  In the inner vision, there is a place of black madness, and something is trapped there.  There is an exit from that place, but it is closing rapidly, a hole that is sealing itself, and the being trapped there won’t escape in time.  In its anger it reaches a hand through the hole, and the hole closes, and the hand is severed, and so detached it flies through a great void, falling, falling through the ages...

You snap back to the tavern, sweating, shaking.  Your double has been speaking again, and you only catch the last few words.  There is a wistful expression on his face.  

“...miss the ocean.”_

Aravis has a hard time explaining it to the others.  He figures that the part of him that remained in the Maze is talking to someone, and that someone is providing him information.

Dranko guesses that the dream is about whatever horrible enemy the Black Circle was trying to contact in Het Branoi.

“And that hand,” says Ernie.  “Maybe the hand is the source of the black goo.  It landed, and got all... spattery.”

Aravis disagrees, thinking that the hand is a metaphor – but for what, he doesn’t know.


* *

Ernie casts _find the path_ to ‘Lord Dafron’s sleeping chamber.’  Unsurprisingly, the direction indicated is directly toward Mirj, and they _teleport_ themselves back to the nasty little city, disguised as a merchant lord and his retinue via a _veil_ from Kibi.

The _find the path_ is pointing up toward the Upper City.  The party makes its way through the narrow, dirty streets of the Lower City, enduring the smell of sewage and filthy beggars lurking in the doorways of dilapidated buildings.   Ernie’s spell takes them into a particularly squalid neighborhood of houses crushed up against the thick stone wall that separates the Upper and Lower Cities.   It indicates the doorway of a grimy hovel.

Morningstar casts _detect thoughts_ and gets nothing inside, so in they go, not being particularly quiet or stealthy.   Ernie’s spell leads them into a tiny kitchen, and the foot of a free-standing stove.  He moves some dirt aside with his foot and reveals a rope handle, which when pulled lifts a trap-door in the floor.   There’s a ladder leading down into the darkness.

Morningstar detects a thought, some fifteen feet below them.   A man is thinking:  “Oooh, noise!  Better go!”  The thought cuts out, and the party hears hastily-retreating footsteps followed by the sound of a slamming door.

“I suggest we hurry,” says Aravis.

The party slides down the ladder as fast as they can, hoping to catch the person and stop them from raising an alarm.  It’s dark at the bottom, so Aravis pulls out a magical torch.  They’re in a small room not more than ten feet on a side, with three doors leading out of it.  _Find the path_ and conspicuously fresh footprints both indicate the same door, so through they go.   Morningstar picks up no sign of the mind she detected, which is not surprising given that her spell wouldn’t go around corners.   They go down a short hallway and reach a second door, which the spell indicates is trapped, but with a small catch beneath the knob.  And this door opens into a very strange room.

It’s nice.  Someone has taken an old smuggler’s storeroom and lined the floor with expensive stone tiles.  There’s a freestanding claw-footed bathtub, and exquisite artwork and tapestries on the walls.  Thick carpets cover up most of the dirt floor.  

Another door out, and a short hallway beyond, adorned with fine paintings and more tapestries.   Someone has taken great pains to convert an old smuggler’s hideout into an opulent dwelling, with limited success.  

Another door, locked.  _Find the path_ indicates that a key is needed to open it.  Flicker moves forward to ply his trade, but Aravis preempts him with a casual _knock_ spell.

“You know,” says Flicker, “I’ve worked for years honing my craft, to the point where I can pick almost any lock you can imagine.  And he does it with a little spell.”

“To be fair, he also trained for years,” says Grey Wolf.

“Well, no, not really” admits Aravis.  “Not for the ‘knock’ spell specifically.”

“Think of it this way, Flick,” says Ernie.  “You can do it all day long.  Aravis runs out of spells.”

A thin, reedy voice comes from the far side of the door.

“Hm.  Come in?”

Flicker pushes the door open.  Beyond is a posh living room, over twenty feet on a side.  It has a fireplace, rich carpets, a writing desk with a beautiful antique chair, and a table with the leavings of a recently-eaten meal.  The walls are hung with tapestries depicting bucolic outdoor scenes, and more tapestries hang on the ceiling, these combining to show a blue sky with puffy white clouds and a cheerful sun.   In a way, it’s heartbreaking.

On the far side of the room, a man in a fine silk robe sits hunched in a padded chair.  His skin is a mottled shade of blueish purple, and conspicuously lumpy.   

Kibi drops the _veil_, and Lord Dafron’s eyes grow a bit wider. 

“Ah, yes,” says the former luminary of the House of Law, his voice resigned.  “Well, come in.  Let’s get this over with.”

“Didn’t your diviners tell you we were coming?” asks Aravis.

“No,” says Dafron sadly.

“You don’t pay them enough,” says Dranko.

“But I guessed you would find me, sooner or later.”

“You also don’t pay your assassins enough,” adds Ernie.

“Apparently not.”

Aravis sees that there is a door right next to Dafron’s chair, a door to which Dafron cannot help but glance every few seconds.  There is no bodyguard in sight; the room is empty save for the pitiful blue man.   Aravis strides quickly into the room and casts _arcane lock_ on the door.

“Don’t worry about what’s in there,” he assures Lord Dafron.  “It won’t bother us.”

“I guess it won’t,” says Dafron, his shoulders slumping further.

Dranko looks around the room through his magical eye patch, expecting to see someone invisible, but there’s no one.  But Morningstar recasts _detect thoughts_, just to be sure.

As she does so, Dafron straightens up and declares:  “I guess you have me _dead to rights_!”

And on that signal, the waiting assassins drop down from their hidden niches above the tapestries on the ceiling, and attack.

...to be continued...


----------



## wedgeski

Terrific, and even a brief commentary on one of the more publicised complaints about 3E wizards.  Someday I'd love to get a inside-look at the mechanics of a campaign like this: what sort of prep. you do, and for how long, how much of the developing plot is planned, and how much improvised at the table, and so-on. With such a nicely-written Story-Hour, it's easy to forget how difficult this stuff is to do well.


----------



## Atanatotatos

Yea... I wonder how the party woul look like in 4e... 
Anyway...


> Your shifting double reaches forward and grasps your hand, and you are wrenched into another vision – a vision within a vision. In the inner vision, there is a place of black madness, and something is trapped there. There is an exit from that place, but it is closing rapidly, a hole that is sealing itself, and the being trapped there won’t escape in time. In its anger it reaches a hand through the hole, and the hole closes, and the hand is severed, and so detached it flies through a great void, falling, falling through the ages...
> 
> You snap back to the tavern, sweating, shaking. Your double has been speaking again, and you only catch the last few words. There is a wistful expression on his face.
> 
> “...miss the ocean.”




Now this is creepy...!


----------



## Tamlyn

Sagiro said:


> _*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 287*_
> *What Happened to Lord Dafron*
> 
> 
> _“...miss the ocean.”_




I'm blanking on his name, but what about their sailor friend who sacrificed himself to help make peace between the two sea-gods? He certainly would be willing to help Aravis.


----------



## energy_One

Tamlyn said:


> I'm blanking on his name, but what about their sailor friend who sacrificed himself to help make peace between the two sea-gods? He certainly would be willing to help Aravis.




If they could somehow reach him in some meaningful way...


----------



## Aravis

Tamlyn said:


> I'm blanking on his name, but what about their sailor friend who sacrificed himself to help make peace between the two sea-gods? He certainly would be willing to help Aravis.




You are thinking of Makel.  I sincerely doubt that is who is speaking, but we shall see...


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 288*_
*No Remorse*

The tapestries themselves are part of the trap –  they have weights sewn into their edges and come down like nets.  Most of the Company avoids them, but Kibi and Ernie become covered and entangled.   

Two of the assassins drop down on either side of Morningstar and strike her with vicious sneak-attacks.  The damage is gruesome, but there is a silver lining:  thanks to Ernie’s _heroes’ feast_, she (like all the party) is now immune to the virulent poison that drips from the enemy blades.

A third assassin – a spellcaster – strikes Aravis with a _dimensional anchor_, and the wizard glows green.   

“No escape this time,” he hisses through his black mask.

Lord Dafron himself rises smoothly from his chair, and makes a motion like he’s drawing a sword.  He doesn’t seem to _have_ a sword – it looks like he’s now brandishing a piece of paper – but he swings at Aravis and strikes him with an invisible blade.

“I don’t think that’s Dafron,” Aravis thinks to the others over the mind link.  

“Probably the bodyguard with an illusion,” thinks Grey Wolf.

Yet another assailant zaps Morningstar with a wand, and she too becomes _dimensionally anchored_.   It looks like the previous enemy’s assessment is correct, and the party will not be _teleporting_ away this time.

To end the surprise round, a cleric among the assassins casts _greater command_, but the Company proves highly resistant.  Only the weak-willed Flicker succumbs to the order to *Halt.*  (It turns out the caster himself also has to make a will save, as the spell is turned around by Dranko’s _necklace of mind-spell inversion_, but he resists.)

Dranko, recovering first from the sudden attack, slides into a flanking position and lashes with his whip.  Alas, the more experienced assassin is not perturbed in the slightest by his tactical position, and Dranko is unable to strike with extra precision.  

One of the assassins next to Morningstar smiles behind his mask, and slips his short sword through a joint in her armor.  Already heavily wounded, Morningstar drops unconscious to the tiled floor.   Another assassin attacks Grey Wolf, and though he only manages a single hit, it’s excruciatingly painful.  Yes, these are clearly the same trained professionals that nearly killed them just days earlier.

Grey Wolf thinks he has the answer.  He uses his Spellsword ability to load _greater fireburst_ into Bostock, and Bostock’s ability to Maximize it.   He strikes true with the blade, and a roaring pillar of fire erupts from the point of impact, enveloping the assassin.  But when the fire clears, his enemy is only mildly singed, having evaded the entire effect.  Damn!

More painful indignities are visited upon Aravis, as he’s struck blind by a _power word_ from one of his foes, and then slashed by “Dafron,” with a sword blow that also leaves him fatigued.

Ernie looses both a _spiritual weapon_ and _Beryn Sur_ out from beneath his tapestry, while Kibi casts _xorn movement_ and escapes into the ground beneath the floor.  Seconds later he pops up on the other side of the room and casts an _earthbolt_ into a concentrated knot of enemies.

The other assassin standing over the unconscious Morningstar takes a casual swipe across her throat before moving over to Aravis, a sure killing blow to the Ellish priestess.  But Dranko staves off her death with _close wounds_, bringing her back from the brink into the realm of the merely unconscious.  

Kibi is targeted with another wand-fired _dimension anchor_, but it’s negated by the dwarf’s _mantle of spell resistance_.   Grey Wolf is not so protected, and joins the ranks of the _anchored_.  

It’s one of those moments in battle where things look extremely grim.  Surrounded by trained killers, with their main cleric down, Flicker _commanded_ into inaction, Grey Wolf badly injured, and Aravis blind and near death himself.   And with multiple party members locked down, there will be no hurried escape under fog cover, as is the party’s preferred means of getting out of this sort of scrape.

“Pewter,” thinks Aravis through his pain.  “I need you to be my eyes.”

“You got it, boss,” answers his familiar.  “And I know where you’re going.   Your best bet is to step straight back and turn right about thirty degrees.  You’ll get just about all of them.  And Grey Wolf, but that can’t be helped.”

“Grey Wolf,” thinks Aravis.  “_Prismatic spray_ coming.  Duck!”

Aravis follows Pewter’s instructions and casts his spell, catching seven of the assailants in the blast.   He knows it’s a gamble – three of the possible beams are easily evaded by assassins of this caliber.   But luck is on his side today:

One assassin is driven insane.

One assassin vanishes, sent to Astral Plane.

One assassin starts foaming at the mouth, turns a sickly mustard color beneath his mask, and drops dead.

One assassin becomes statuary.

Of the remaining two assassins, one is mightily sickened by poison though manages not to die.  Only the leader – a no-nonsense woman named One Swift Death – is entirely unaffected by the spell.

The man posing as Lord Dafron (who, as the party surmises, is really the hired bodyguard One Strong Shield) considers himself lucky to merely be burned by acid.

And Grey Wolf comes out just fine, resisting the spell’s calcifying energies.   Following his fantastically efficacious blast, Aravis uses his _tongue stud of potion quickening_ to gulp down a healing draught.

So, in three short seconds, the battle has gone from near-certain disaster to practically the mopping up phase.  Dranko heals Morningstar back to consciousness, Flicker snaps out of the _greater command_, and Grey Wolf wraps up a number of bad guys in _dancing chains_.   The most effective attack the enemies manage to launch for the rest of the battle is a _feeblemind_ – but that is cast by the insane guy, directly at the bodyguard!  One Strong Shield starts to drool.

Empowered _cone of cold_ from Kibi.  Pewter-guided _lightning bolt_ from Aravis.  Massive sneak-attack from Flicker.  One of the wand-wielding assassins, soon finding himself the last villain standing, throws his hands in the air and drops his wand.  

Grey Wolf looms over him.  “You should start thinking of a way to stop me from taking your spell components.”

The assassin looks confused.  “I do not have any spell components on me, good sir.”

Grey Wolf, whose spell _assassin’s senses_ requires assassin fingers as components, begs to differ.  He starts to count them:  “One, two, three...”

The assassin goes pale.  “What do I have to do?” he asks with some desperation.  

“Let’s start with our stuff,” says Grey Wolf, “the stuff that you gentlemen acquired from us during out last encounter.”

“I know nothing about that!” the assassin protests.

“Then start knowing!” says Ernie.

“I cannot!” the prisoner implores.  “I would, if I knew anything!”

Dranko clears his throat.  “It is fair to say that we are displeased,” he says darkly.


* *

They do their heavy questioning under a battery of spells:  _zone of truth_, _detect thoughts_ and _discern lies_.  Dranko gets right to the point.  

“Where’s Dafron?  The man who hired you?”

“I don’t know anything about the man who hired us,” says the assassin (whose name is Two Graceful Leaps).  “I was taking my orders from her.”  He points to the body of One Swift Death.

“Where was she getting her orders from?” demands Dranko.

“Our employer,” Leaps says, honestly.

“Then tell me about him!”

Leaps sighs.  “I already told you.  And while I know you will kill me, the truth is I cannot, because I don’t know anything about him.”

The various truth spells indicate that this is so, so Dranko tries another tack.  He motions to One Strong Shield.

“Tell me about this man who’s dribbling.”

Two Leaps glances at the feebleminded man-at-arms.  “Our leader, Swift Death, told us that our employer would also have his own man working along side us.  That is him.  I don’t know any more about him.”

“How is that you knew we would be here *now*?," asks Dranko.  “How long have you been waiting for us?”

“We have been waiting for some time -- since the previous attack on you failed.   I was not present at the previous encounter; in fact, this was my first assignment.  Swift Deaths said:  ‘take this wand.  Point it at our targets, and zap.’  I am sorry I cannot tell you more.  Though I have a question for you:  if I continue to answer all of your questions, and truthfully, are you still going to kill me?”

“We don’t know,” says Morningstar wearily.

“You see,” says Dranko, “we don’t kill people as a business.  We kill people because they annoy us.”

Two Leaps looks solemn.  “I am familiar with men of your profession,” he says.  “You roam around the countryside, looking for deeds to do, often involving the killing of people.  Sometimes you are paid for this, yes?”

Gods, it’s going to be one of _these_ discussions.

While some in the party take part in the interrogations, the others set themselves to the looting.  Grey Wolf wasn’t kidding about the fingers, but figures dead ones will do.

*“That is unseemly”* Bostock declares.

Grey Wolf sighs and pulls out a dagger.

*“I was not referring to my own personal involvement,” *the sword clarifies.  *“I find the harvesting of body parts distasteful.  Perhaps you should not be casting a spell that requires human digits.”*

“It makes me a better attacker...” Grey Wolf begins to protest.

*“I’m not sure it’s worth it.  And while I’m on the subject, your barbed chains are also disturbing.  Are you aware that they are possessed of a somewhat evil necromantic nature?  You have great fighting prowess, and formidable arcane abilities, but perhaps you should choose your spells from among the less unsavory.”*

Grey Wolf rubs his temples.  

Flicker, one of the most efficient looters on Abernia, stands and frowns.  “Our stuff isn’t here,” he says, annoyed.

Back to interrogation.  Morningstar steps forward and gets in the assassin’s face.

“Here’s our dilemma,” she says.  “We’ll let you go, and Ernest here will count on this experience having changed you, and he’ll hope you live a life of doing good deeds.  On the other hand, our experience tells me that you’ll probably just go back to being a hired killer.”

Reading his thoughts, Morningstar hears this:  _If the Guild discovers that I’ve fled, alive, from a job, they’ll hunt me down and kill me._  She shares that with the others.

“You don’t have to flee,” says Flicker.  “We could kidnap you!”

“Intriguing,” admits Two Leaps.  “Where would you take me?”

“We could drop him off on some other plane,” suggests Aravis.

“Look, give us a reason why we shouldn’t kill you,” says Dranko.

“Because,” says Leaps, “after today I’ll make sure you never see me again.”

Reading his thoughts, Morningstar knows that while this is technically true, his first order of business would be to get back into the good graces of the Assassins Guild.

“Are you in the Assassins’ Guild?” asks Dranko. “And if so, how did you join?”

Leaps nods.  “I was invited, because of my success as a cat burglar.  I said yes, because the pay is good, and there are poor consequences for saying ‘no.””

“What’s your name?” asks Aravis.

“Two Graceful Leaps.”

There’s more mind-link bickering among the party, most notably between Ernie (advocating mercy) and Morningstar (failing to understand why Two Leaps is still breathing.)  Sending him to prison is a poor option in Mirj, where the jails are as porous as the bribes are numerous.  In the end they reach a compromise:  Aravis casts _polymorph any object_ and turns Two Graceful Leaps into a cat.

That taken care of, they move on to the slack-jawed One Strong Shield, still under an illusion spell that makes him look (presumably) like Lord Dafron.  Morningstar casts _memory read_, targeting the memory of “the last time he received orders from Lord Dafron.”

The memory takes place in the very room they’re already in.   Lord Dafron sits across from him.  Strong Shield in his normal aspect is a tall, broad-shouldered, battle-hardened guy who takes pride in his conditioning.  

“Do you understand?” says Dafron.  “We will go over this one more time.  You are going to be made to look like me.  They will hopefully come right in, and will probably try to arrest me.  They are do-gooders, and are unlikely to simply attack you unless provoked.  The team will be hiding in the room upstairs.  Between you and them, and their new recruits, you should have enough combined might to take them out.  There will be a lot of chaos.   The people you will be fighting alongside are very good in close quarters.   Plus, they will be slowly draining away the strength and vitality of your enemies, as their blades will be poisoned.   Do not touch them, or get nicked.  Do you understand your orders?”

“Yes I do,” says Shield.

“Are you happy with your payment?” asks Dafron.

“Yes I am.”

“Very good.”  Dafron stands.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me.  You may be waiting here for some time, as we don’t know exactly when they’ll be showing up.   You may be bored for a day or two.  If I learn anything more, I’ll let you know.”

Dafron leaves through the same door that Aravis _arcane locked_ right before the recent melee.  

Aravis now unlocks that door, and Morningstar goes first so that she can cast more _thought captures_.   Ten feet down a short hallway she bumps a low tripwire that triggers a scything blade from a slot in the wall.  It slashes across her stomach.

“Morningstar!” yells Dranko.  “That’s so cool!  I’ve never actually seen one of those before.  Now, hold on...”

He heals her.  

They proceed with more caution, Flicker out in front this time.   Two more _thought captures_ don’t reveal any recent or emotional thoughts.  As they move down a particularly long stretch of tunnel, Kibi senses that they’re passing under the wall, and into an area below the Upper City.

They find another well-furnished study, and a particularly opulent bedroom.  A third room is actually being used for storage; two large trunks have been pushed up against a far wall.  One contains about half of their missing stuff, and has a note along with it that says “O.S.S.”  The other trunk contains the rest of their pilfered belongings, along with some gems and trade bars.   Both trunks are lined with lead.

After about half an hour of moving slowly through the extensive tunnel network, they come to a stout wooden door that looks different from the smuggler doors.  After Flicker disarms a poison needle trap, Dranko casts _omen of peril_ before they open it.  Seeing an hour into the future, the result is “safety.”

So emboldened, they walk through and into a large basement – better maintained and well-built than the smugglers’ rooms.  It’s full of furniture, paintings, statues and similar upper-class decorations.  Morningstar casts another _thought capture_ here and gets one:  _I hope that Lord Traber follows through on his promise._   A second spell gets a second, more optimistic thought:  _I know they’re going to succeed this time.  They have to!_

There’s a staircase leading up out of the basement.  Before they ascend, Dranko turns to the rest of the Company.  

“What are we going to say to Lord Traber when we find him?” he asks.

Aravis has a simple answer.  “That he can tell us where Lord Dafron is, or we’ll expose their deals.”

At the top of the stairs, Dranko slowly pushes a door open.  A man dressed like a butler is standing there in a wide, well-appointed hallway.  He stares at Dranko, but without showing alarm.

“Ah,” he says after a second’s pause.  “The Lord has been expecting you.  Will you please come this way?”

The butler turns his back on the armed and bloody half-orc and walks away down the hall.  Morningstar casts another _detect thoughts_ and finds that the butler, while thinking that this is all highly irregular, has strict orders from Lord Traber.  Some group of strangers would be coming up the stairs, fresh from battle, and whomever was in that group should be escorted to the Lord’s office.

They arrive at a large oak door and the butler knocks.  “Lord Traber, you have visitors.”

“Well, let them in.”

They recognize Lord Dafron’s old office right away, though the furniture is different, as is the man behind the desk.  Lord Traber is a large and powerfully-built man, with sandy blond hair and a deep voice.

Morningstar’s _detect thoughts_ picks up a stray mental note, coming from behind a wall.

_I can’t believe he just let them in here!_

Lord Traber looks at the assembled Company.  “I assume you are here for Dafron.”

The thought changes:  _What the hell is he playing at?_

Lord Traber smiles and gestures to the wall.  “He’s hiding in a hidden closet, right there.”

_My Gods!  No!_

“I admire a pragmatist,” says Dranko.  “Are you aware of the smugglers’ tunnels connecting your house to the Lower City?”

“Yes, of course,” says Traber.

“And by handing over Dafron,” says Ernie, “Your position here will be more secure, regardless of your association with him.”

“Association?” says Traber.  “Hardly.  He just ran in here and begged me to hide him in the closet.”

_That lying son of a %$#!_

Flicker easily finds the catch to the concealed closet door, and pops it open.  In a little cabinet, cowering in the back, skin a sickly blue and splotchy, is Lord Dafron, hunched over and wild-eyed.

“Poor little guy,” says Kibi.

“Oooooooh, no!” says Dranko.

“I beg you not to kill me!” pleads Dafron, in his distinctively high and nasal voice.

“Where are your assets hidden?” demands Aravis.

_My assets?  Ah, crap.  They’re going to worm out of me where I’m keeping all of my stuff!_

“Just understand,” says Dranko.  “Your assassins are dead.  Your bodyguard is drooling.  And we are very displeased.  You can buy our favor by telling us where you keep your assets.”

“You are going to kill me anyway, and I don’t wish to tell you,” says Dafron defiantly.

“That’s a shame,” says Ernie, “because you could have done some good with your assets.”

“I spent almost everything I had, to see that you were destroyed, in return for what you did to me,” spits Dafron.

Morningstar nods.  That’s the truth.  

“You ruined yourself!” says Ernie.  “With your own greed, your willingness to subject others to addiction, and pain, and suffering.”  

“And that business with goats!” adds Flicker.

Dafron’s eyes narrow.  “I knew it was you, who spread that vile rumor that got me kicked out of the House of Law.”  

Ernie answers.  “Dafron, if you had been a good man, and had the respect of your colleagues, do you think they would have been swayed by something as small as an unfounded rumor?  Do you think you would have fallen so low if you hadn’t stepped on so many people on the way up?”

Dafron is hardly listening.  He gestures to his own ravaged skin.  “If _this_ hadn’t also happened, there would have been no substantiating evidence.  You are the ones responsible, admit it!  Which one of you was it that mixed that vile concoction?”

“You mean the one that cured you from the addiction to your own drug?  That one?” asks Dranko.

“I am the one who cured you,” says Aravis.

“Tell me,” asks Dafron.  “Was the ‘extra’ potion – the one in which you used... wild bluevine... was that part of the cure, or an extra knife blade in the back?

”It wasn’t supposed to be permanent,” says Aravis.

“I have a sensitivity to wild bluevine.  My father had it as well.  By the time the healers arrived, its effect was part of me, and there was nothing left to cure.  I _was_ blue.”  

“And a fine shade, I might add,” says Aravis.

“And the rumor?  The absurd, humiliating rumor?”

“That was me,” admits Dranko.

“See?” screeches Dafron.  “This was not my responsibility.  It was yours!”

“You brought it on yourself,” says Aravis.  “If you had not created the powder, you would never have drunk it, and would have had no need to drink our cure.”

“Irrelevant!” shrieks Dafron.

Ernie disagrees.  “Extremely relevant!  The person you are, the things you do with your life, are all choices you make yourself.  And you’ve made nothing but bad choices.”

“Yes, yes apparently I have,” says Dafron, more calmly.  “I made enemies of those who would seek to humiliate me in the worst possible way, and take away from me everything that had meaning in my life.  And now that you’re here, go ahead.  Kill me.”

Morningstar, reading his surface thoughts throughout this exchange, is all for that.  None of his thoughts show even the slightest iota of guilt or true remorse.  There is only anger and humiliation.

“We’ll give you this choice,” says Dranko.  “Tell us where you keep your remaining wealth, and we’ll at least kill you here, quickly.  Otherwise, we’ll just hand you over to those in the Lower City, and they can dispense your justice.”

“I see,” says Dafron.  “Having destroyed me is not enough for you.  You have to compound my suffering until the very end.”  

“I don’t mean to interrupt this touching reunion,” says Lord Traber, clearing his throat.  “but I am having a meeting with some visiting merchants here in about ten minutes.   Can you resume this somewhere else?”

“We’ll only need five more minutes,” Dranko promises.  Morningstar casts _memory read_ on Dafron, targeting the memory of “when he last saw the main part of his remaining wealth.”  She gets a memory of a warehouse, and thinks she could _find the path_ to the place later.

Dafron, who relives the memory along with her, becomes wholly deflated. 

“Fine,” he says.  “Take what little I have left.  You’ll find it’s not much.”

“You could have chosen another path,” says Morningstar.  “Even now, you could show a little remorse.”

Dafron stares back at her, eyes now gone vacant. 

“There is no room left in my heart for remorse.”


* *


Back in the smugglers’ tunnels, the Company dispenses justice.  In the manner in which he executed so many others, Dafron is hanged by the neck until dead.


...to be continued...


----------



## el-remmen

Another great update!

However, I caught two small errors:




Sagiro said:


> A third assassin – a spellcaster – strikes Aravis with a _dimension door_, and the wizard glows green.




I believe that should be _dimensional anchor_.



Sagiro said:


> “You are going to kill me anyway, and I don’t wish to tell you,” says Dranko defiantly.




I think that should be Daffron who says that.


Oh, and _Tongue Stud of Potion Quickening_?  What the heck is that and how does it work?  In my last campaign, one of the BBEG had a _Tongue Stud of Hell Breath_. . .


----------



## Jackylhunter

Very very cool, thanks for the update!


----------



## RangerWickett

So now there's a cat burglar assassin cat on the loose? Ye gods, but this party sure does love creating enemies who can come back and bite them in the . . . ankles later.

A note marked O.S.S.? It doesn't match any of the names I recall. 

I want an NPC contact to show up, named One Cool Customer.


----------



## Piratecat

RangerWickett said:


> A note marked O.S.S.? It doesn't match any of the names I recall.



One Strong Shield, the bodyguard posing as Lord Dafron. (Note that Dranko's Kivian alias is One Slippery Slope, but this time it wasn't him.)

This was a brutal game, and we didn't leave it feeling at all heroic. Very conflicted, very bittersweet. We wanted to reform the bastard or at least bring him to some sort of justice, and in a way I guess we did. But he was sad and pathetic and eaten alive by his own bitterness, in a way that was very real for us.

We were glad we survived (go, Aravis!) But when we think back on great victories, this isn't one of them.


----------



## wedgeski

RangerWickett said:


> I want an NPC contact to show up, named One Cool Customer.



LOL! Joke du jour.

A great update, and such a textured finale to Dafron's sorry little tale.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Methinks Lord Traber came out of this whole nasty business the best off.


----------



## EroGaki

Justice is served!


----------



## Sagiro

This update, and likely the next one or two to come, encompass a period of relative downtime.  But don't worry -- the action will pick up soon after, and in a big way.

I have fallen farther behind the running game than I thought.  The following update is from run #195, and the next session (this coming Thursday) will be #223.  Time-wise, I am almost two-and-a-half years behind.  But I will continue to chip away, one post at a time.

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 289*_
*Five Silent Crow*

To make a further statement, the Company takes the body of Lord Dafron and hangs it from the public gallows outside the gates to the Upper City.  The next morning it draws a crowd of curious onlookers, some of whom remember the rumors from a year earlier.  There is little sympathy for his fate.

The _feebleminded_ mercenary One Strong Shield is divested of his wealth and magic items, gotten roaring drunk in a seedy Lower City tavern, and then _healed_.  When he finally sobers up hours later, and pieces together the likely turn of events that brought him to that place, he counts himself lucky to be alive.  After all, Lord Dafron had warned him of the bloodthirsty and merciless nature of the foes whom he expected to come calling.

Two Graceful Leaps, the assassin-turned-cat, turns out to have had some kind of magical protection against mind-effecting spells.  That protection, while insufficient to prevent his _polymorphing_, was enough to safeguard his human personality and intellect.  Under further truth magic he pledges to the Company that he will turn a new leaf, and not rejoin the assassins.  Aravis instructs him to go forth, do good deeds, and redeem himself.  

Morningstar looks mildly disapproving.  “You’re entirely too comfortable playing at being a God.”


* *

With no pressing agenda, the Company decides it’s time for some rest, training, magic-item creation, and information gathering.  The Golden Goblet in Djaw offers them a discount for an extended stay, and kindly extends to them the private use of several function rooms.  With Charagan and Kivia now only a _greater teleport_ away from each other, the party spends the next few months fairly evenly split between the two continents.  

Three days after their arrival back in Djaw, a letter arrives for them – as a group – at the Goblet.   It is an invitation to lunch that afternoon at the Enchanters’ Hall, and it is signed “Five Silent Crow.”  

“Hey, I remember that guy!” exclaims Dranko.  The others do as well – Five Silent Crow was an old and dying wizard who underwent an experimental magical procedure to transfer his mind into a golem.  An unfortunate turn of events led to him “waking up” inside the golem’s head, but with no body attached.  The subsequent centuries-long stay in an abandoned closet had driven him completely insane.   The Company had delivered his golem-head to the Enchanters’ Guild in Djaw and hadn’t thought much about him since then.  

On paranoid principle Dranko casts _omen of peril_ before they leave for the lunch date, and is relieved at the result of “safety.”  The city is alive with exotic sounds and smells, and warm for early March.  Kibi is unable to enjoy himself; the city’s many dwarven slaves are not something he can let slide.   The Company draws its usual allotment of stares, being both obviously foreign, and heavily armed and armored.  

The trip to the Enchanter’s Hall takes them through the Court of Cats, and Aravis is understandably popular.  Pewter perches on the wizard’s shoulder and proclaims:  “Loyal subjects!  The God of felines is among you!”

Morningstar rolls her eyes.

“I should grant my worshippers the Miracle of ‘no hairballs,” says Aravis with a smirk.

“Wouldn’t that kill them?” asks Ernie.  “I mean, if they couldn’t cough up the hairballs?”

“See?” says Morningstar with a wry grin.  “Not so easy being a God, is it?”

Aravis admits the point.  Probably every God’s first lesson is that of Unintended Consequences.

Soon they reach their destination – The Enchanter’s Guild is a cluster of tall marble building inside a circular iron fence.  A human slave greets them politely at the door, his red iron collar conspicuous around his neck.

Five Silent Crow is expecting them.  The slave leads the Company into the main building on the Guild grounds, a three-story library with an airy interior.

“Mr. Crow, your guests are here.”

“Good!” comes a voice from behind a bookshelf.   “Send them in, please.”

Inside the library’s main atrium one table in the middle – far from any books – is set with a large and inviting meal.  And then Crow comes into view, his golden emerald-eyed head resting upon a human body.  He holds a book in a well-manicured hand.  Something about his movement isn’t _quite_ right – it reminds the Company a bit of Eddings’ illusory eyes.

“Mr. Crow, how nice to see you!” exclaims Ernie.  “And they found you a way of moving around!”

“I’m actually doing it myself,” says Crow.

“That’s delightful!” says Ernie, impressed.

The book floats out from Crow’s hand and comes to rest lightly on the edge of the table.

“The body is only an illusion,” admits the wizard.

“Really?  It looks absolutely real!” says Dranko.

“Thank you,” says Crow, affecting an awkward bow.  “I am still working out the kinks.  It doesn’t ambulate about in exactly the way people expect.  I had done it most of my life, and you might think I’d remember, but constant control over this kind of illusion takes hard work and practice.  And I keep my head aloft through a modified telekinesis, which also requires some concentration.  At least the golem’s facial expressions are part of its innate enchantment and need no upkeep.”

“And how do you _feel_?” asks Morningstar.

“I feel wonderful!  I have been doing great research here, all thanks to you.  Would you like to sit and eat?”

Hours pass as they trade stories and reminisce.  Crow wants to hear all about their adventures following his rescue from the golem city of Repose.  He remarks once on Step’s absence and bows his golden head on learning of the paladin’s fate.

Ernie asks him what he’s been doing with his time (other than mastering his body), and the answer is surprising.  

“I have been working on achieving immortality,” he says, some pride evident in his voice.

“Aren’t you already immortal?” asks Dranko.

“Alas no,” answers Crow.  “The spells that keep my consciousness and personality inside this metal head will start to fail in ten or twenty years.”

“Can’t they just pop you into another head?” asks Dranko.

“It is my mental essence that is collapsing,” Crow explains.  “Even the most advanced artificial head will not be sufficient to the task.  The enchanters here tell me it is a minor miracle I have already lasted this long.   So, I am working on ways to extend my own life.  There are ways I could do it now, but they involve me becoming a lich, which I am not prepared to do.”

“Good!” says Ernie with a laugh, “because we’d hate to have to come and smite you.”

“Don’t you need a body to become a lich?” asks Dranko, fascinated.

“There are types of liches that do not need a body,” says Crow.

“Really?” exclaims Aravis.  Ernie looks over nervously at his friend.

“Aravis, I don’t want to smite you either.”

“Not that I’m an expert on necromancy,” says Crow.  “I have Shredded Veils for that.”

“Who?” asks Grey Wolf.

“My assistant.  Veils!  Could you attend me, please?”

A pale, thin, and downright creepy wizard comes stalking from an anteroom, his robe predictably black.  Ernie has to resist the urge to smite him on instinct.

“There are some necromantic elements to any extension of life,” says Crow, “and since Veils here is an expert on the subject, he has been assisting me.”

Ernie forces himself to be polite.  “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Veils.”  

Two Shredded Veils nods.  “I understand that you are the ones who rescued my master and ended his terrible ordeal.   We are all in your debt.  Five Silent Crow is a great thinker.  We are enriched by his presence.”

Dranko asks of Five Silent Crow:  “Why do you _want_ to live forever?”

Aravis answers for him.  “Because there’s so much to learn!”

Crow nods at Aravis in agreement.  

“But what if the same thing happens to you again, and you end up trapped in a closet for centuries?”

The light gleams unsettlingly in Crow’s emerald eyes.  “What are the odds of that?” he asks.

“But,” says Ernie, full of genuine concern, “if you live forever, you’ll never get to heaven!”

Crow doesn’t answer, and his golem’s expression is hard to read.  

“Ah,” says Five Silent Crow after an awkward several seconds of silence.  “Your water has run out.  Ingot!  Ingot, come here please!”

A dwarven slave walks over to them, and Kibi’s brows knit into a thunderhead.

“Yes sir?” says Ingot brightly.  “What can I do for you?”

“Can you fetch more water for our guests please?”

“Of course, sir.”   He turns to leave, but does a double take at seeing Kibi standing there – a dwarf without the collar.

“How do you do,” says Kibi.  “My name is Kibilhathur Bimson.”

“He’s a dwarf who’s _not_ a slave,” says Dranko helpfully, prompting Ernie to step hard on his foot.

Ingot grows sullen.  “Good for him,” he growls.

“Good for everybody!” says Dranko.

“I should get your water.”  Ingot stomps away.

“We’ll set him free,” says Ernie.  Kibi turns on him, eyes fierce.  

“When?”

“As soon as we figure out how,” says Ernie.

“Excuse me,” says Five Silent Crow, annoyed.  “You’ll do no such thing!”

Ernie looks Five Silent Crow right in the emeralds.  “If you’ll excuse me saying so, Mr. Crow, it seems a very cruel thing that all of the Dwarves in Djaw are enslaved.”  

“If one regrets being a slave,” says Crow dryly, “then perhaps one should have not committed a crime.”

“But aren’t all dwarves enslaved just for being dwarves?” asks Kibi?

“Of course not!” says Crow.  “The dwarves who are slaves, like the human slaves, are either serving out a sentence for crimes committed, or possibly working off a debt.”

“Have you seen any dwarves here who _aren’t_ slaves,” challenges Kibi.

“Well, no,” admits Crow.  “But it would be an uncomfortable place for a free dwarf to live, don’t you think?  And they have their own kingdom.”

“Five Silent Crow,” says Dranko, “For someone who is such a great thinker, I wonder if maybe you haven’t seen enough of the world.”  

“Who told you these things about how slavery works?” asks Kibi.

“It’s simply the law, and commonly known.  Ingot here would not be a slave if he were neither a debtor nor a criminal.”  

“Where are these laws written?” demands Kibi.

“They are the laws of the Jewels of the Plains,” answers Crow, sounding honestly taken aback.  “It is how slavery works.”

“Is there a term?” asks Kibi.  “A limit to how long they serve?  

“For minor crimes and small debts, I understand the term is limited,” answers Crow.  “For major crimes or significant debts, it is for life.”

“And all the dwarves have major debts, or are severe criminals?” asks Morningstar.

“As far as I know, yes, the dwarven slaves are all criminals, serving for serious crimes.”

“In that case, there must be a record somewhere of what crimes they’ve committed,” says Dranko.

“Do you know if they are found guilty here in Djaw, or in their own homeland?” asks Aravis.

“In Gurund, I assume,” answers Crow, clearly growing annoyed.  “They’d then be turned over to the Guild of Chains.”

“Thank you, Mr. Crow,” says Ernie quickly, before his colleagues can press the matter.  “We had not known that, and your answers are very illuminating.”

Crow’s golem face smiles indulgently.  “He’s a fine fellow,” he says, gesturing after Ingot.  “He works very hard.”

“I hope you treat him well,” says Ernie.

“Of course I do!  He’s still a person.  But I’ll thank you not to free him in contravention of the law.”

“I’m sorry this unpleasantness has crept into our relationship,” says Dranko.

“Not at all, not at all,” says Crow, waving one illusory hand the air.

Ingot comes back with water.

“This enough, sir?”  His tone is not so friendly as it was.

“Yes, excellent,” says Crow.  “If I need you again I will call for you.”

“Yes sir,” he grunts, and leaves quickly.

“Ingot is quite remarkable for a slave,” says Crow brightly.  “Do you know, he’s even literate!  I have him doing work copying non-magical scrolls and texts; his handwriting his most pleasing.”

“You are an unusual collection of people here,” says Dranko.

If Five Silent Crow notes the same about the Company, he keeps it to himself.  “Yes.  I suppose.  The Enchanters do give me the run of the place, though many of them find me quite the curiosity.  But that’s understandable.  And they give me access to all of their research materials, and as you might imagine there are numerous enchantments and theories thereupon which are vital to my work.”

“What do you think is your best bet for immortality?” asks Dranko.

“There are few avenues of magical inquiry which could prove fruitful.  There are two main ways.  One is finding or creating a new material that will slow or stop the degradation of my mind.   The other is to actually work on the mind itself, and (pardon the pun) make immaterial what it’s encased in.  The matter than makes up my personality and intelligence – the essential particles – would stop degrading on their own.”

Dranko grows excited, thinking that maybe gartine could be the answer to his problems, but Five Silent Crow has already explored that possibility.  “By its very nature,” Crow explains, “gartine slows _everything_ down – the passage of time, but also the thoughts of the mind inside.  It would send me into a kind of pseudo-stasis, and while such a head would endure for a long time, it’s not really what I’m looking for.”

The meal has ended by this time, so Five Silent Crow finally gets to the real reason for the lunch invitation.

“When I found out you were in town, I asked the Master of the Hall, Two Blue Rock, for a favor.  I have convinced him to let the wizards among you have the run of the spellbooks here.  And they have a full collection – not only enchantments.   Don’t go crazy, mind, but understand that they have been willing to indulge me thus far.  I have vouched for your fine character.”

“Right,” says Dranko.  “Pants stay on.”

“Yes,” says Crow uncertainly.  “Pants stay on.  Is that...um... usually a difficulty?”

“Just for him,” says Grey Wolf, shooting Dranko a glare.  “And we greatly appreciate such an opportunity.”

...to be continued...


----------



## energy_One

Thank you, Sagiro!


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> Pewter perches on the wizard’s shoulder and proclaims:  “Loyal subjects!  The God of felines is among you!”




Yes, but...


----------



## el-remmen

Sagiro said:


> This update, and likely the next one or two to come, encompass a period of relative downtime. But don't worry -- the action will pick up soon after, and in a big way.




Hey! I love the "downtime" stuff.  Heck, seems like every third installment of my own story hour is about the PCs talking to _somebody_ (maybe that's why I get so few readers posting ), so a little break from the heavy-hitting spell action should be a good temporary change-up. 

I don't remember this golem-head guy though. . . Anyone want to fill in the details of where/when this was?


----------



## Aravis

el-remmen said:


> Hey! I love the "downtime" stuff.  Heck, seems like every third installment of my own story hour is about the PCs talking to _somebody_ (maybe that's why I get so few readers posting ), so a little break from the heavy-hitting spell action should be a good temporary change-up.
> 
> I don't remember this golem-head guy though. . . Anyone want to fill in the details of where/when this was?




When we were looking for the Crosser's Maze we were told to look in the City of False Life.  We thought that might have been a city of Golems known as Repose.  That is where Ernie got killed by a Golem.  In one of the buildings there we discovered Five Silent Crows' disembodied head in a closet.

Aravis


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 290*_
*Information*

The discussion as they leave the Enchanters’ Hall largely concerns the Guild of Chains.  There is general agreement that something is rotten about whole arrangement, and that they could probably dig up some dirt if they went back to Gurund and got hold of specific criminal records.  Ernie opines sadly that if there is something amiss, it’s likely an open secret among the parties involved; after all there’s money to be made, and slave ownership is popular among the upper classes.

Regardless, the party spends the next three months engaged in a number of different activities, often splitting up and separated by the gulf of the ocean.   Here is a summary of their activities through early June:

1. Aravis receives another communiqué from his aspect in the Crosser’s Maze:

_Your dream is a vision, clear and cold.  You have discovered a vast and lifeless city, and there are tombs here, underground crypts not meant for mortal remains.   Through the Maze you have arrived, but you are not meant to be here.   Gods fought, and Gods died, and here are Gods interred.

“They called it Naslund, the Great Necropolis,” says the voice of King Vhadish XXIII, who stands nearby.  “But who will tend it, with its Caretakers gone?”_

He relates this to the others, and they ponder the introduced mysteries.  

“Brush up on your turning,” suggests Grey Wolf to the party clerics.  

“Wait... Gods died?” asks Morningstar.  “I mean... I never envisioned that they could have bodies that would need burial.”

“If Gods can fight, Gods can die,” says Dranko.

“Many of your human gods fled from the Great Enemy,” Ernie points out.  “Why would they have fled, if they couldn’t be killed?”

“I’m not disturbed by the thought that Gods can die,” says Aravis – which is an ironic comment for a couple of reasons.  

“Think of it, though,” says Ernie.  “If you can take a dragon’s toenail and use it for powerful spell components, what could you do with a God’s body?”

“And imagine the loot that might be buried in a God’s tomb!” adds Flicker.

“Er... maybe it was just an actual bad dream?” suggests Kibi, not at all comfortable with the topic.

Aravis sighs.  “I wish it were, but this was clearly a vision from the Maze.”

“I wonder,” says Morningstar, looking thoughtful.  “If the Caretakers were the ones who just left – the ones we gave the Maze to...”


2. Dranko checks briefly on his grandfather (who is still in good health), but spends most of his free time administering the Undermen in as visible a way as possible.  He consults with Lucas Blackwell about their nascent trading company, reviews some new recruits, talks with Greta Smith about the state of the Guild treasury, and learns to his delight that the Undermen sponsor their very own adventuring party – a group of mid-level heroes who style themselves “The Overmen.”

He also finds the time to visit Harmon, his old mentor at the Tal Hae church.   Dranko tells his friend the entire tale of his adventures, including the particularly disturbing news from their encounter with Belshikun.

“One of the Gods in Kivia is fleeing,” he says as a closing remark.

“From... the Adversary?”  Harmon can’t mask his skepticism.

“We don’t know,” admits Dranko.  “But we think so.”

“I really doubt that,” says Harmon.  “That the Adversary would have only found us now, after all this time?  And if he has, we’d all be dead.”

“You know how when you go into a cave, you carry a canary,” says Dranko, “and if the canary dies, you know you’re going to die too?”

Harmon grunts and shakes his head.  It’s too much for him, really, but he presses on.

“So what God fled?” he asks.

“The God of Death,” says Dranko.

“The Kivian God of Death has left his people behind, and the world, you say.  But the Gods live in the Heavens.  Are you saying that the Kivian Gods are abandoning Heaven?”

Dranko exhales,  “I don’t know.  We don’t know.”

“These things are far beyond my knowledge and experience,” says Harmon.

“Well, there’s also the demon who wants to destroy my soul.”

Harmon sighs.  “Dranko, didn’t’ I tell you that if you didn’t watch your tongue, someday you’d lose it?”

“Hey!  I did the right thing!”

“Yes.  You are extremely brave, forthright, and luckier than any man has a right to be.  And if he does decide to come after you? What are you going to do?”

“My plan,” says Dranko, “is to become as saintly as possible, so the church will send in its most powerful heroes to save me.”

Harmon chuckles.  “First, my understanding is, you _are_  ‘the most powerful heroes.’  Second, when are you going to start acting saintly?”

A little guiltily, Dranko says, “Er.... well, I have a bunch of people who are ready to spread rumors about how pious and good I am.  Does that count?”  

Harmon says nothing for a moment, his expression growing more serious.  “Dranko, can I talk to you about something?”

He stands, crosses the room, and closes the door.

“Dranko, I’ve been hearing things.  Disturbing things.  That... you’ve been associating with the... Undermen.  Is that true?”

“Why would I be doing that?” asks Dranko. 

Harmon is not fooled.  “I know that you’re a good man at heart.  Be careful when you deal with such an unseemly lot.”

“If I _were_ associating with them, it would be with the ultimate goal of trying to redeem and improve them,” says Dranko.  “We all serve Delioch in our own way.”

“Do not become ensnared in their unsavory dealings!” warns Harmon.

“As of right now, I feel that I am in control of the situation,” says Dranko.

Harmon cracks a smile again.  Is this really the same half-orcish scamp who terrorized the clergy all those years?  “Dranko, you know that I will always trust you to do the right thing.”

“And that’s why I look up to you more than just about anyone else in the world,” says Dranko with a grin.  “You have been a beacon of goodness to me.  Do you think I should tell Tomnic about any of this stuff?”

Harmon is surprised by the question.  “Of course you should!”

“Will he believe me?”

“He’ll know if you speak the truth, Dranko.  He is the leader of our church.”


3. Morningstar visits several churches throughout Charagan, feeling out the delicate political fabric that her journey and subsequent elevation made inevitable.  In specific she is concerned about how the ranks of newly-minted Daywalkers are being integrated into the church proper.   Technically it’s over and done with, declared as Law by High Priestess Rhiavonne.   But while most of the rank of file sisters are relieved that the tension of Schism has been relieved, there is still grumbling from some quarters and more political maneuvering than Morningstar is comfortable with.   

Amber, the clear choice, has been put in charge of the Daywalkers in Tal Hae, and Morningstar sits down with her one sunny afternoon.  The snores of the sisterhood come faintly from the dormitories.   Amber herself sits behind a jet-black desk piled high with scrolls and notebooks.

“It’s what I’ve gotten myself into,” she says to Morningstar with a helpless gesture.  “Administrative nonsense.  I liked the fire and brimstone better, but it’s Ell’s will.  And how are you?”

“Well, thank you,” says Morningstar.  It’s such an odd conversation to be having.   With a start she realizes that it’s the first day of April – four years ago to the day was her summons by Abernathy.  (And relatively it seems even longer, what with her time spent in the past.)

“Should I add your name to the local rolls?” asks Amber casually.

Morningstar considers.  “I suspect I’ll always be out and about.”

“But your name ought to be recorded _somewhere_,” presses Amber.  “You are the _de facto_ leader of the Daywalkers, and most would say of the Dreamwalkers as well.”

“I am the ‘Child of Darkness and Light’,” says Morningstar with an exaggerated sigh.

“Many of us are, these days,” says Amber, laughing.  “We are hoping for a half-dozen Daywalkers at every major temple and shrine, but you are not personally affiliated with any place.  It would be an honor to connect you with Tal Hae.”

Seeing that Amber won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, she relents, and Amber wastes no time added Morningstar’s name to the official record.

“So, what’s next?”  Amber asks.  “I’m glad that things have worked out so well, but I almost feel deflated.  Like we’re preparing for an unknown future, with no fixed goals.”

“Octesian is still out there,” Morningstar reminds her.

“Do you have any leads?”

“No,” admits Morningstar.  “But finding him would be a fine goal in itself.  And training up as a cohesive fighting force is always advised.   Remember, you can train with other priestesses; you are still allowed to associate with those who are not Daywalkers.”

Amber steeples her fingers and touches her lips.  “There is... some pressure against that, unfortunately.  We are seen as a specific, separate unit, if you take my meaning.  It is the price of a begrudging tolerance.  But... small steps.  Small steps.  We are certainly making progress.”

“It’s not very exciting,” says Morningstar, “but our highest priority should be to gain the trust and acceptance of the main body of the Church.”

“And the best way to do that is to do good works, and serve Ell without reservation,” says Amber.  “And by doing, not seem so separate.  For better or worse, we were considered militant at best, and heretical at worst in some quarters.”

She looks thoughtfully at Morningstar before changing the subject.  “I understand you’re going to be writing some scrolls... some new chapters of our holy texts.  That’s very exciting!  Just think, a thousand years from now, the Scrolls of Morningstar will be read alongside the papers and prophecies of Therena, the Lady Vesper, and all the other prophets and seers of the ages.   Have you given any thought to what you’ll write?”

“Some,” says Morningstar, as non-committaly as possible. 

“If you want help, just to bounce ideas off of, I am at your disposal,” says Amber, a gleam in her eye.

“I haven’t started the process yet, but thank you,” says Morningstar gratefully.  And to change the subject herself, she asks:  “Have you had a chance to visit Kivia, now that anyone can do that?”

Amber looks ruefully at the stacks of papers on her desk.  “Maybe I’ll take a vacation.  Get out from under all of this, and take a trip, see the world.  There are ships making the crossing now, several weeks long I understand.   There’s a lot to see under the sun, and it’s my job now to see it.”


4. When Morningstar relates her conversation with Amber to the others, Dranko chuckles at Amber’s lack of subtlety.  “Everyone wants to be famous,” he says, speaking from the heart. 

“And we _are_ famous!” says Flicker.  “We’re the Heroes of the Kalkas Peaks!”

That makes Dranko nostalgic for their keep in the Norlin Hills – technically “Longtooth Keep,” though he refers to it, as always, as “Castle Blackhope.”   He, Flicker and Kibi take a quick _teleport_ to visit the place, and find that it’s looking extremely spiffy and refurbished.  There is still a team of fifteen dwarven craftsmen there, reinforcing the bailey, building new stone stairways to replace the old crumbling ones, and making numerous small repairs and improvements.  The old squatter, Fergus, is still there doing odd jobs and yard work, and calling himself the official caretaker.  


5. In the name of due diligence, the Company makes sure that the Null Shadow Cauldron is still secure in Kallor, and that the Evil Black Book remains protected in the Greenhouse.  Both are as they were last left. 


6. Two weeks after his vision about the Necropolis, Aravis has a new dream from the Maze:

_You are back in the tavern again, its time and place unknown.   You sit across from yourself, though it is not yourself, but rather that elusive someone whom you both have and have not met.   He has been speaking to you.

“...history.   I find it rather tragic.”

Your double grasps your hand, and again you are plunged into a vision within the vision.  A tall man dressed in kingly garb stands in a dead and lonely field.  He glances to the sides, as if fearing he was followed here.  The full moon illuminates his handsome face.  

The field is not simply dead.  It is corrupted, its grass black and reeking, and this man of royal countenance wrinkles his nose even as he takes slow steps inward.   He stops when he reaches the center of the field, his feet at the edge of a still black pool hardly bigger than a puddle.   He looks down at the pool intently, as if it is whispering and he strains to hear what it’s saying.

The man’s lips quirk.  ‘What do you want?” he asks in a trembling voice.  “Why have you called me here?”  He listens again to the silent field, and then reaches down to touch the surface of the pool...

The vision ends abruptly, and you are jarred awake.  It is the middle of the night._

“The Maze should send you something happier,” says Flicker, when Aravis tells them about it over the morning’s _heroes’ feast_.  

“That black pool is probably the ‘black goo,’” guesses Grey Wolf.  “The stuff from Het Branoi.”


7. Six weeks into their hiatus, on a night when all the Company is enjoying the plush comforts of the Golden Goblet, there comes a great cacophony from the streets.  It is dogs – dozens, hundreds of dogs, baying and barking and howling in loud and mournful tones.  The sound comes from all directions, so it’s not localized to any one area.  As far as the groggy party can tell, every dog in Djaw is raising a ruckus.  It continues for over ten minutes, punctuated by numerous human shouts of annoyance, before it starts to die down.

The next morning everyone in the city is talking about it, though no one seems to know why it happened. Aravis and Dranko immediately _teleport_ back to Charagan and look up Octavius Hightower in the capital city.  Octavius is the leader of the Starshine Players, a troupe of bards in the employ of the Undermen.  And the bardic spell list includes _speak with animals_.

“How urgent is this matter?” inquires Octavius, upon hearing Dranko’s unusual request.

“Very,” says Dranko.  “Dogs forget things very quickly.”

Octavius soon introduces them to a tall, skinny bard with a thick drooping mustache and a parrot perched piratically on his shoulder.   Georg is his name, and he bows when he learns he’s speaking directly to the Oracle himself.  

“It’s truly an honor to meet you, sir,” he says.

“Rawk!”  Says the parrot.  “Suck up!  Suck up!  Rawk!”

They intend to ferry Georg back to Djaw, but find to their surprise that the dog-barking episode _also_ occurred in Charagan!  So the party quickly rounds up a dog from the street, and Dranko puts his _headband of intellect_ around its head.  He asks his questions while Georg translates.

“Why do you look so sad?” asks Dranko.  And it’s true – the dog’s tail is dragging, its movements sluggish.

“There has been a great tragedy,” says the dog.  “An important dog has died.”

“The God of Dogs?” asks Dranko, thinking of Aravis.

“It was one of the Great Pack,” says the dog.

“How do you know he died?” asks Dranko.

“All the dogs felt it,” says the dog.  “Didn’t you?”

“Where did it happen?” presses Dranko.  “Who killed him?”

The dog looks puzzled.  “I’m not sure where it was.  But one of the Great Pack was killed, by a shadow.”

“How many dogs are in the Great Pack?”

“I don’t know.  I can’t count.”

“Are the more left?” asks Dranko.

“There must be,” says the dog plaintively.

Dranko takes back his headband, exchanging it for a soup bone.  The dog wags its tail and licks his face.

Aravis looks troubled.  “Maybe they’ll be after me next.”


8.  Two weeks after the barking dog incident, Aravis receives yet another piece of mental correspondence from the Crosser’s Maze:

_The tavern is starting to become familiar, and your ally sits across from you.  Still he wears your face.

“Once again I have something to share,” he says.  “It’s disturbing.  And this is relatively current.”

He touches your hand, and in another vision you see two figures in silhouette, one short and wide, the other tall and lithe, both fully armored.  The short one hands the tall one a tiny vessel, like a thimble, filled with... 

“Drink it,” the short one hisses.  “And be grateful you are found worthy of such an honor.”

The tall person drinks, convulses, gasps.   The short person chuckles.

“There.  Now you’ll survive the trip.”_


9. Kibi is able to find a learned sage named Ten Twisted Words, who specializes in Djawish legal matters.  The dwarf retains his professional services, seeking information on the following related matters:

-         What are the specific legalities (or lack thereof) of enslaving  someone?  What determines the  circumstances of enslavement, and the duration of the sentence?  Is there anything unusual about the enslavement of dwarves from Gurund?

-         What is the extent of connection between the Guild of Chains and the ruling body of Djaw?  What is the general attitude of the government toward the Guild and its activities?

A week and 100 miracs later, Twisted Words delivers Kibi a summary:

*To Mr. Kibilhathur Bimson:

Pursuant to your request for services, I have prepared this document in  order to address your questions regarding the Guild of Chains.

The Guild of Chains (hereafter, 'the Guild') is a long-established and well-respected organization that provides a valuable service to the city of Djaw, the other Jewels of the Plains, and several surrounding states.  They are granted an official charter, renewed annually by the office of the Emperor, may he live forever, to acquire slaves in accordance with Djawish and local laws, and make those slaves available for auction.   They are charged additionally with holding the slaves between purchase and auction, carrying out the auctions, and making delivery of product.

Specifically, the Guild is authorized to purchase and enslave persons who fall into one of two categories:

1) A person who has acquired debts and lacks the ability to make repayment within the contracted time.  By presenting the contract in  question before a lawfully appointed magistrate of Djaw, the creditor may legally sell the debtor to the Guild for a sum of miracs equal to the amount of the debt owed.   The Guild may then sell the slave at auction.  The period of enslavement is based upon a strict schedule correlated with the amount of the debt.  For instance, an unpaid debt of 500 miracs will result in 5 years of enslavement.

Slaves who fall into this category must live within the generally accepted geographical boundaries of the White Sun Kingdom.

2) A person who has been found guilty and convicted of a crime, and is being held by a local government, may be purchased by the Guild from that government and sold as a slave at auction.   In this case, the government in question need not be one within the White Sun Kingdom; the Guild has purchased criminals from Gurund and Dir-Tolia.  (There are conflicting reports of criminals purchased from Seresef.)  There is a minimum local population requirement of 50 persons in order for the Guild to agree to a slave transaction.  Any criminal held in a village of fewer than 50 persons may only be sold by an authority of an encompassing district, town, county, city-state or country that in total contains over 50 persons. 

Price is negotiated directly between the Guild and the governing authority in question. The relevant crime need only be considered such by local law, and not necessarily by Djawish law.   The Guild is authorized to consider each case individually, and purchase any slave who they agree has committed a crime in his or her local jurisdiction.  A written report of the crime and its circumstances are said to be filed and kept at the Guild of Chains administrative center in Djaw, though it is not available to the public. The Guild theoretically determines the length of enslavement based generally on the severity of the crime, but they have complete authority to decide individual cases as they see fit, and a majority of criminals-turned-slaves 
are given lifetime sentences of enslavement.

As stated, the Guild is officially sanctioned by the Royal Court of Djaw, and their charter is signed personally by the Emperor, may he live forever. Among the nobles at court, many have political and financial ties to the Guild, and most own one or more slaves, though there is typically a minority court faction that would prefer the Guild to be dissolved and slavery made illegal.

Regarding Gurund, and dwarvish slaves:  the Guild typically purchases around 100 criminals annually from Gurundian authorities and sells them at auction in Djaw.  Dwarves are highly sought-after and command higher than average prices, as their quiet and taciturn natures, along with their physical strength and knowledge of various trade skills, make them ideally suited for ownership.   Dwarvish slave contracts always run for a full life term, a Guild discretionary decision likely based on maximizing their selling prices.

Should you wish to extend your inquiry, I am at your disposal.

Yours in knowledge,

Ten Twisted Words*

10. Seeking more information on the topic, Ernie pays a visit to Yale, advisor to King Crunard IV of Charagan.  His wait for the appointment is less than an hour; such is the privilege of a Knight of the Spire Guard.

In a small meeting room in the King’s Palace, high atop a hill in Har Charagan, Ernie explains to Yale that he’d like to find out more about the slave trade.

“And while I and my friends have many talents, we lack diplomatic subtlety.   But you must already have representatives over there; can you tell me anything about the Guild of Chains, and the enslavement of dwarves in particular?”

Yale looks down at her hands.  “I have seen the preliminary reports,” she says.  “The slave trade of Djaw and the surrounding lands, while distasteful, seems completely legal according to all local laws.”

“May I be allowed to speak to your diplomats?” asks Ernie.  “I mean, about what they learn of the ins and outs of the slave trade?”

Yale fixes Ernie with a even gaze.  “We are disinclined to start pressing that sort of issue with a foreign government, in such early stages of establishing ambassadorial ties.  Our diplomats already have extremely complex agendas.  But, yes, we will certainly share with you anything we learn on the topic of slavery among the Jewels of the Plains.”

“That will sure be better than having Dranko talk to everyone,” says Ernie.

Yale laughs.  “Now _there’s_ a mission we might ask you to undertake for your Kingdom.”

“To stop Dranko from talking?”

“To mitigate the effects therefrom,” says Yale.

“I’ll try,” says Ernie.  “But Dranko has certain financial interests in expanding trade in that regard, so I.... er...”

The halfling turns bright red as he stammers to a halt.  Yale leans forward.

“Financial interests?  Really?”

“I can’t say anymore!” squeaks Ernie.

“I could order you to say,” says Yale quietly.

“Yes,” Ernie acknowledges.  “But then I’d be very sad and conflicted.”

Yale chuckles.  “We have suspicions, but perhaps they don’t bear looking into at this time.  You understand that the Spire Guard, including Dranko, have our full confidence.”


11. Toward the end of the three months, having learned so much and still with many, many questions, Morningstar and Ernie each cast separate _communes_ – Ernie at the Yondallan church in his home of Dingman’s Ferry, and Morningstar at _her_ home temple of Kynder Hold.  

Ernie is unable to cast his divination with any privacy.  He is a hero of incredible proportion in his tiny home village, and a crowd of novices (along with an assortment of laity) crowd around the temple kitchen to see what it looks like when someone _communes_ with Yondalla.

He casts his spell, and the Goddess is with him.  

_Is Aravis a divine figure to cats?_

*YES*

_In Kivia and Charagan, dogs mourned the death of one from something called the Great Pack.  They think he was killed by a shadow.  Is the shadow related to the Black Circle?_

*YES, RELATED*

_Does the death of the member of the Great Pack mean that Aravis is also in danger from that shadow?_

*PROBABLY*

_Does Tor now serve the Delfirians?_

*YES*

_Was Tor’s mind altered, or was he otherwise coerced into serving the Delfirians?_

*YES, ALTERED*

_Does the spirit of Davarian Firemount now inhabit the body of Thewana?_

*YES*

_Do we have the ability to rescue Tor now?_

*ONLY HIS BODY*

_Do we have the ability, or know anyone who has the ability, to undo what was done to Tor’s mind?_

*NOT AT PRESENT*

_If we attempt to rescue Tor’s body, and hold him in some way, will the Delfirians try to recover him?_

*ALMOST CERTAINLY*

_Do we have the ability to deal with Darkeye’s stronghold now?_

*WITH GREAT DIFFICULTY*

_Are Darkeye’s actions or plans related to the departure of Drosh, or the death of one of the Great Pack?_

*NO*

_Are there Black Circle members still active among the priestesses of Ell?_

*I DON’T THINK SO*

_Is Sagiro still alive?_

*THAT QUESTION CANNOT BE ANSWERED*

_Does Darkeye know where Sagiro is?_

*NO*

_We’re trying to determine what to do next.  Of the possible activities:  Find Darkeye’s stronghold, investigate Aravis’s visions from the Maze, investigate the death of the Great Pack member, or investigate the Guild of Chains and try to free the Kivian dwarves, is there an action that we should not yet attempt?_

*THE QUESTION IS TOO VAGUE*

_Would our rescue of the dwarves enslaved in Djaw be a disastrous distraction from the danger that caused Drosh to flee?_

*NO*

_Thank you._

*YOU ARE WELCOME.  CONTINUE TO DO GOOD WORKS.*

His spell complete, Ernie lets in the onlookers  They all want to cook as much they can while the spirit of Yondalla lingers.


Morningstar casts her _commune_ later that day, kneeling before the altar in the Ellish fane at Kynder Hold.

_Is there a place where a God is buried, on either Kivia or Charagan?_

*NO*

_Are  Drosh or his followers responsible for guarding the burial area of the Gods?_

*YES*

_Are we needed to find the next Guardians of this burial area?_

*UNKNOWN*

_Is the dark area on the Kivian map related to where the Gods are buried?_

*NO*

_Is the Entity that the Black Circle was calling to in Het Branoi, related to the reason why Drosh is leaving?_

*YES*

_Is this the Adversary?_

*UNKNOWN*

_Is the dark liquid seen in Aravis’s dream, related to the black liquid we saw where the Slices were being created in Het Branoi?_

*I CANNOT SEE ARAVIS’S VISIONS*

_Is the black liquid we encountered in Het Branoi related to the burial area of the Gods?_

*IT COULD BE USEFUL THERE*

_Useful to us?_

*YES*

_Is Aravis Divine?_

*YES, IN A SMALL WAY*

_Is Aravis Divine in the same way as the recently-murdered member of the Great Pack was Divine?_

*YES*

_Was the member of the Great Pack who was recently killed a human?_

*NO*

_Is the death of the member of the Great Pack related to Drosh leaving?_

*EXTREMELY TANGENTIALLY*

_Is Octesian in Charagan?_

*NO*

_Is he in Kivia?_

*YES*

_Through inattention, we allowed Darkeye’s plot to change time to succeed.  Is there a similar plot that we should be attending to now?_

*UNKNOWN*

_Is Aravis human?_

*YES*


12.  And while all of this is going on, the majority of the Company’s time and effort is spent on making magic items in the Greenhouse basement laboratory.   (Dranko also takes the time to find buyers for a number of items the party has outgrown or has no use for.)  Between the recently-acquired haul from Dafron’s assassins, and a number of newly-crafted items, the Company comes out significantly upgraded in terms of their enchanted armamentarium.  

But it’s inevitable that, when a group of adventurer’s like Abernathy’s Company spends too long avoiding trouble, trouble comes searching them out.  With a few days still remaining on their crafting itinerary, Morningstar receives an ominous _sending_:

_*This is from Cobb.  Bad news.  Burglars broke into estates, stole something from basement forbidden room which is now empty.  Orders for Cobb?*_

Morningstar replies:  _*Tell Cobb to leave the area as untouched as possible.  We’ll be right over.*_

She tells the others of this message, as they eat lunch at the Golden Goblet.  They all look at one another, and come to the same grim conclusion.

The Null Shadow Cauldron has been taken.

...to be continued...


----------



## StevenAC

Sagiro said:


> The Null Shadow Cauldron has been taken.



Fortunately, looking back through the collected Story Hour (specifically, the start of chapter 8 of Part Two), I have managed to solve this crime...


> _Piratecat_: We played last night, an "interim" session where we trained (to 17th level!) and cast _commune_s (man, are we in trouble, but it's that vague sort of trouble that means something horrible is coming although you won't be able to identify it until it is possibly too late) and made items.  Lots and lots of items.  In fact, we spent 235,000 gp in making items -- woot!  We're now poor but mighty, festooned with magic gewgaws.
> 
> Which is sort of a shame, considering that we ended the game learning that someone stole from us the evil cauldron that summons null shadows…
> 
> _el-remmen_: Jeez, man!  I just borrowed it!  I'll have it back next Tuesday.  That's the last time I borrow an evil artifact from you!



el-remmen... _J'accuse!_ 

Great update, Sagiro!


----------



## Atanatotatos

WWoowww! 
So many updates in such a short time! Way to go!
And, yes, great update Sagiro. Amazed, as always.


----------



## Halford

I am with you Ata!  Long may the oodles of updates continue!

I always find the down time updates hugely entertaining and this is certainly no exception.


----------



## Joshua Randall

I sure hope the party purchased LoJack for the Cauldron o' Evil.


----------



## Atanatotatos

Halford said:


> I am with you Ata!  Long may the oodles of updates continue!
> 
> I always find the down time updates hugely entertaining and this is certainly no exception.




Heh. May one day the Mostly Monstruous Crew have its own Story Hour!


----------



## Piratecat

The next session? A giant flood of badness, wherein extremely annoying secrets are uncovered and death comes on little null shadow feet. Look for it!


----------



## Sagiro

Piratecat said:


> The next session? A giant flood of badness, wherein extremely annoying secrets are uncovered and death comes on little null shadow feet. Look for it!




You'll have to wait until the next update for the annoying secrets, but this one sure does have Null Shadows in it!

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 291*_
*Null and Void*

Less than an hour after receiving the _sending_ from Cobb, the Company stands in a tastefully decorated foyer.  They have _teleported_ directly to the Cosnor Estate in the Silent Quarter of Kallor.  Below them is the former Black Circle headquarters, where the Company prevented Mokad and his fellows from expediting Emperor Naradawk’s arrival in Charagan.  

“We could just have Morningstar cast _miracle_ to get the cauldron back,” says Dranko.  And the idea has some merit, but is ultimately discarded because it wouldn’t tell them _who_ stole the cauldron, or _why._  Instead, Morningstar fills all of her empty spell slots with _thought captures_, and then everyone arms themselves with non-magical weapons (in case the cauldron was used before being stolen) before descending into the basement.

Morningstar casts her thought-gathering prayers every few yards as they go, but none of the thoughts are interesting or illuminating.   When they reach the room that once housed the Null Shadow Cauldron, no one is surprised that, in fact, it’s gone.  The 20’x20’ room is empty, its darkness entirely non-magical and completely native to the Prime.  Only a faint trace of unease remains, the last vestige of the horrible creatures that were once conjured here.  There are circular patterns chiseled and gouged into the walls, with flakes of rock scattered on the floor below them, as if someone had hastily pried out some round ornamentations or other wall-mounted objects.  Similarly there are three ragged holes in the center of the floor, as if some large object had been bolted to the ground and then ripped out.  The stone below where the cauldron had squatted is predictably discolored.  

Morningstar casts another _thought capture_ in the doorway to the room while the others wait outside.  Nothing.  Then she goes to stand next to some of the holes in the wall and casts again.  Finally, she gets a thought – and it’s addressed to her!

_Hello Morningstar.  You had something of mine, so I came to get it.  Have fun._

And that’s when the Null Shadows come boiling out of the holes, accompanied by waves of psychic nausea.  The five of them completely surround Morningstar and attack, their vaporous arms flailing.

The analytical part of Aravis’s brain (as he stands in the hall looking in) notes that these Null Shadows are different than the previous ones they’ve encountered.   Heretofore the shadow creatures have been a flat black, but these are a deep, dark green, as if a sickly jade light were glowing in the center of each roiling smoky mass.   

The primal part of his mind is screaming with unreasoning terror.

Morningstar tries to ward them off with her shield, but due to its magical properties, the arms of the Null Shadows go right through it, and indeed, through _her_, as if each smoggy appendage is reaching into her body and pulling out bits of her life force.  She resists in part, but her vitality is slightly reduced, on top of the stinging wounds that leave black smears on her skin.

Despite the horror of the moment, the Ellish priestess retains a smidgen of humor and thinks over the mind-link:  “Oh, crap!  A Null-Shadow-o-Gram!”

“Morningstar!” shouts Dranko.  He immediately activates his _boots of haste_, moves into the room, and unleashes a flurry of whip-cracks at the closest shadow-creature.  With the final snap the monster disperses, leaving a faint haze of sickening green smoke behind.    

Grey Wolf runs into the room himself, heedless that his arcane nature makes him a choice target for these creatures.  He slashes a mundane longsword at another of the monsters.  He thinks he’s wounded it, but its hard to know given the Null Shadows' lack of discernable anatomy.

It gets worse.  Another four Null Shadows stream out of the cracks in the walls, bringing their total number to nine.  Their gut-twisting _wrongness_ washes over everyone in the party, and Grey Wolf finds himself beset by all four newcomers.   Shadow-fists reach into his body and yank out life-force, and not only is he drained of constitution, but spells are forced painfully out of his head.

The rest, with no arcane targets within reach, attack Morningstar and Dranko.  Dranko mostly shrugs off the assault, but Morningstar’s knees start to buckle.  (She is now down six points of constitution, on top of the significant damage from the monsters’ fists.)

Aravis casts a _mass haste_ on the party; against creatures utterly immune to magic, maximizing weapon-swings seems the best use of his abilities.   Flicker tumbles into the room and attacks, while Ernie activates his _winged shield_ and flies in high along the ceiling.  Kibi casts a _wall of stone_ that blocks off all of the holes in the walls, in case there are more Null Shadows waiting to emerge.  He follows this up with a self-targeted quickened _bear’s endurance_.   His earth elemental familiar Scree is yammering cautionary words over their _empathic link_.   

_Kibi, don’t go in there!  Those things eat wizards.  You’ll be killed!_

Morningstar attempts to cast her newly-acquired _mass heal_ for the first time, but cannot muster the concentration for so complex a prayer, surrounded as she is by Null Shadows.  With a grunt of frustration she casts an additional quickened _cure critical wounds_ upon herself.  

Dranko again executes a deft series of whip-cracks; another Null Shadow is destroyed, and an additional one is (presumably) wounded.   Grey Wolf swings his sword again and a third monster is slain.   

Seven Null Shadows still remain, and these swarm around Grey Wolf.  Five of them are able to attack him, eagerly pummeling such a ripe arcane target.   Grey Wolf practically vanishes in a cloud of green-black smoke, twisting in pain as they tear at his essence.  By some miracle he stays conscious by the thinnest thread, his exposed skin a mass of dark smears.  He drops to one knee, blinking, reeling from the psychic stench, feeling that death cannot be far away.   Through bleary eyes he thinks he sees Morningstar and Dranko under attack from the remaining two.

Aravis bestows a _dimension door_ on Pewter, with instructions to rescue Grey Wolf.  

“Are you serious?” demands the cat.  “In there?!  You know, if you weren’t some demigod of Cats, I’d...”

“Just go!” urges Aravis, and the cat does so, weaving in a panic through the Null Shadows and touching Grey Wolf, returning to the relative safety of the hallway.

Flicker and Ernie launch full attacks on the Null Shadows, but with their non-magical short-swords (and in Flicker’s case, inability to sneak attack these creatures), cannot muster the damage to slay even a single one of the remaining enemies.  Morningstar activates her magical necklace that makes her immune to attacks of opportunity, and gets herself out of the room in a hurry.  Once out she quickens a _restoration_ on herself to restore her decimated life force.

Dranko is the most effective Null Shadow-killing machine in the party:  another series of whip strikes, another Null Shadow dispatched.  Half a dozen still remain.

Out in the hallway Grey Wolf fumbles out a healing potion and gulps it down.   Dranko and Flicker are now in the doorway, blocking access to the hallway where the rest of the party (including all the wizards) are apprehensively waiting...

The Null Shadows vanish, fading away into nothing over a two-second span.  Dranko peers around the room with his magical eye-patch.

“Heads up!” he shouts.  “They’re gone, and not invisible.”

“It’s possible that their additional strength came at the expense of a shorter lifespan...” says Aravis, though no one really believes that.

Ernie takes advantage of the enemies’ absence to fly into the hallway and cast _restoration_ on Grey Wolf, who despite the potion, really really needs the lift.  Morningstar casts _mass cure serious wounds_, also popular.  Aravis casts _greater arcane sight_ and looks around the room and hallway – nothing.  Dranko does a quick perimeter of the room while Kibi scoops up some of the flaked rock, thinking he can cast _stone tell_ on the rubble even if they’re forced to flee this place.  

Whether the Null Shadows retreated momentarily into the Ethereal Plane, or just shifted briefly into the Plane of Shadow, none can say.  But they do reappear, _in the hallway, next to the wizards._  Kibi is overcome with horror and veritably snowed under with Null Shadows.  He can feel the stinging, smeary wounds gouged in his skin, the pain of his _six_ most potent dweomers forced from his head, and life force pulled grotesquely out of his body.  In seconds he is reduced from full health to near death.

The remaining two attack Aravis, hungry for his powerful arcane core.   As the Company remembers from its previous encounters with Null Shadows, the creatures' physical attacks are much more devastating against wizards than against divine casters and non-magical types.  

Flicker and Ernie gamely hack away at the Null Shadows with their vanilla swords, and Ernie gets lucky, landing two hits on one of the monsters that was previously damaged.  It deforms into a harmless green cloud.  Five monsters remain.

Morningstar casts _heal_ on Kibi, which takes care of the damage but not the ability drain; the dwarf is still dangerously weakened.   Aravis has the idea to _polymorph_ into a hill giant, better enabling him to deal damage, and simultaneously improving his fortitude.  He has to duck a bit to keep his head from hitting the ceiling.  Kibi, at the frantic urging of Scree, casts _xorn movement_ and sinks safely into the ground.

_Just stay here and wait it out_ urges the little elemental.  _Up there, you’re just a target_.

Dranko methodically annihilates another Null Shadow with his whip; now only four remain.  It seems like the Company may finally be turning the corner against their ghastly assailants.

One of the remaining Null Shadows attacks the giantish Aravis, and even that is staggering.   The remaining three vanish.   Everyone looks around frantically.  Flicker and Ernie fail to eliminate the one enemy still visible, while Morningstar moves to protect Aravis.  Aravis himself rips a nearby door off its hinges and smashes the remaining Null Shadow, destroying it.

The three Null Shadows reappear, all adjacent to Aravis.  That turns out to be a crucial tactical problem – with his increased Giantish size, the rest of the party cannot surround him for protection.  Grey Wolf and Dranko take readied attacks as the monsters appear, but do not kill them.  

And then the three Null Shadows rip out Aravis’s life.  Their smoky limbs reach into his oversized giantish body and make a quick, horrific end of the wizard.   He reverts to his own body upon death and slumps to the ground, the black smears on his skin so ubiquitous, it looks as though he’s been dipped bodily in tar.  

“Aravis!  No!”  Ernie screams.   But his voice is further drowned out by Pewter’s piteous meowing over his master’s death.  Kibi, overwhelmed with guilt that he was hiding while Aravis fought on, emerges over Scree’s protests and tries too late to administer a healing potion to his friend.  But Aravis’s facial features have been smeared so thoroughly, Kibi can’t even find his mouth.

Morningstar and Flicker, numb at the sight of their slain friend, manage to kill one of the remaining three Null Shadows.  Dranko, likewise in shock, kills another with his whip.  The last Null Shadow vanishes, and this time, give a few seconds pause, they entirely surround Grey Wolf, while Kibi retreats back into the ground.

The remaining Null Shadow, unable to find a spot to reappear that offers access to an arcane caster, settles for an arrival point next to Morningstar.  It doesn’t matter; numerous readied attacks are launched, and Flicker delivers the killing blow.  

Pewter continues his caterwauling, and now, in the silence that immediately follows a violent scrum, the party can hear something else.  High above them on the streets of Kallor (and indeed throughout all of both Charagan and Kivia), cats everywhere are wailing with grief.

...to be continued...


----------



## Samnell

Aw. I don't suppose true resurrection would work on a feline divinity. Poor Pewter; he's lost his pet.


----------



## Halford

I have been reduced to smilies.  Damn.


----------



## Atanatotatos

..................................................
Can't write what I'd like to, 'cause the granny's here... but....


----------



## Joshua Randall

Sagiro (from a while ago) said:
			
		

> [...] the highest-level characters have recently hit 17th level, and thus have 9th level spells.
> 
> Speaking of which, Morningstar is likely to try one of them out next game. The bad news is: after the horrific events of last game, said spell is true resurrection.



Dun dun DUNNNNNN.


----------



## Piratecat

This game was _awful._ Not awful in a "we weren't having any fun," awful in a "our tactics were bad and even expecting this we got caught unprepared." The only reason Dranko was able to kill them was because he has two bonus attacks per round via the lasher PrC and _haste_. It still wasn't enough.

At the end of this game we really, really wanted to kill whoever left us this lovely parting gift.


----------



## KidCthulhu

Yep, I remember that being a frustrating evening.  Ernie actually rates to do pretty well against Null Shadows, but my dice were stone cold, and with the poor tactical position I remember that I spent the whole battle running from place to place, just in time to have the little bastards dissapear.  If this had been a comedy, Ernie's frantic dashing about would have been hilarious.  As it was, it was a tragedy.  Party front line fighter? Out of commission due to short legs.


----------



## EroGaki

!!!
Good grief, that fight was brutal! Poor Aravis! Poor Pewter! And poor cats! So do Null Shadows ignore magical effects that normally protect from touch attacks, such as mage armor?


----------



## Kaodi

_Wow._

When was the last time someone bought the farm? Seems crazy to have lived through so many fights just to have Aravis go down to a bunch of measly null shadows, even if they are juiced up versions.


----------



## Aravis

I went home that night and as I was getting ready for bed, my wife groggily looked up at me and asked how it went.  I said, "Aravis died," and then went downstairs to make sure lights were off and doors locked.  

Needless to say, she was fully awake and really annoyed at me for saying that and then leaving her hanging.  I then told her the whole story. 

Aravis


----------



## LightPhoenix

Aravis said:


> Needless to say, she was fully awake and really annoyed at me for saying that and then leaving her hanging.  I then told her the whole story.




Haha, true love!

Also... don't think of it as death, think of it as apotheosis...


----------



## Everett

Kaodi said:


> _Wow._
> 
> When was the last time someone bought the farm? Seems crazy to have lived through so many fights just to have Aravis go down to a bunch of measly null shadows, even if they are juiced up versions.




The last death was OCS.  This was rather more random.


----------



## Everett

Anyway, what did that message to Morningstar mean?


----------



## RangerWickett

One Certain Step sacrificed himself. Aravis was murdered.


----------



## Aravis

Everett said:


> Anyway, what did that message to Morningstar mean?




It meant that someone obviously felt they had property rights to the Null Shadow Cauldron.  Our position was that it was clearly abandoned property that was left in the house when we took ownership.  

Admittedly, we took ownership by force after killing all of the previous occupants.  In our defense, they were really, really bad.  Like, coal in the stocking, only a mother could love, even dogs bark at them kind of bad.

Aravis


----------



## Halford

> Admittedly, we took ownership by force after killing all of the previous occupants. In our defense, they were really, really bad. Like, coal in the stocking, only a mother could love, even dogs bark at them kind of bad.




This is DND, that is a completely legitimate way to acquire property, and very economical to.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Was the Null Shadow Cauldron some kind of hard-to-destroy artifact or something?  

Even if it was, wouldn't every caster in the universe want it destroyed?  


....



One thing 3e didn't do was 'fix' the problem of casters dominating at high level.  This is an awesome campaign, and very well run, but you'll note, all the PCs are casters, even if multiclassed, like Dranko.  That was never unusual, and it does lead even the best DMs to coming up with new challenges, like Null Shadows, specifically to thwart casters.

One of the things 4e got right was ending caster dominance - how well exectuted or desireable that was may debateable, but at least it finally happened.


----------



## Piratecat

Tony Vargas said:


> This is an awesome campaign, and very well run, but you'll note, all the PCs are casters, even if multiclassed, like Dranko.



Flicker is a single-classed rogue. Oh wait, he's a NPC...

To be fair, this campaign started in 2nd edition when you _really_ wanted to be multi-classed. Dranko would have fewer levels of cleric if we'd started in 3e, mostly for story reasons. (At this point in the campaign Dranko had just hit 17th level, a cleric 5 / rogue 8 / lasher 4 with a wisdom of 14 and a 9 int. He's currently lvl 18, having added one to his rogue level. Sneak attack, baby! It's all about having a fireball in a can with every hit. Not that this helped against the null shadows.)


----------



## KidCthulhu

Piratecat said:


> Flicker is a single-classed rogue. Oh wait, he's a NPC...
> 
> To be fair, this campaign started in 2nd edition when you _really_ wanted to be multi-classed. Dranko would have fewer levels of cleric if we'd started in 3e, mostly for story reasons.




Ditto.  I don't think I would have put any levels in fighter if we were building these characters in 3e.  I would have gone straight cleric, because nothing matches the power of raw 3e cleric.

If we were building them in 4e?  I wouldn't have built Ernie.  You just can't get the same feel.


----------



## KidCthulhu

EroGaki said:


> !!!
> Good grief, that fight was brutal! Poor Aravis! Poor Pewter! And poor cats! So do Null Shadows ignore magical effects that normally protect from touch attacks, such as mage armor?




Null Shadows are immune to *all* magic.  Magic armor bonuses and spells that increase ACE are nothing to them. Even Mage Armor.  If the bonus comes from magic, it doesn't count.  Even if the bonus adds to your natural armor.  Magic sword?  Goes right through them.  They don't just ignore the magical bonus.  They ignore the item if it has any magic associated with it.  Ditto magical armor, rings of deflection, etc.

I know Sagiro posted their stats somewhere, but I don't think he's posted these new and "improved" version.

Have I mentioned we hate Null Shadows?


----------



## Aravis

Tony Vargas said:


> Was the Null Shadow Cauldron some kind of hard-to-destroy artifact or something?
> 
> Even if it was, wouldn't every caster in the universe want it destroyed?



Yes and Yes, unless you own the cauldron, are evil, and have enough chutzpah to believe it will never be taken from you and the Null Shadows turned upon you.


----------



## RangerWickett

So is Aravis getting the Mrs. Horn treatment, or are you going to just play a very vengeful 'swarm of cats' for a few sessions?


----------



## KidCthulhu

RangerWickett said:


> So is Aravis getting the Mrs. Horn treatment, or are you going to just play a very vengeful 'swarm of cats' for a few sessions?




Actually, we were all so depressed about his death that we didn't want to play anymore.  The campaign just kind of came to an end around then.  We still get together, play board games and such, but it's not the same.


----------



## Atanatotatos

KidCthulhu said:


> Ditto.  I don't think I would have put any levels in fighter if we were building these characters in 3e.  I would have gone straight cleric, because nothing matches the power of raw 3e cleric.
> 
> If we were building them in 4e?  I wouldn't have built Ernie.  You just can't get the same feel.




Funny. I thought you'd be able to get that kind of feel in a lot of ways in 4e.


----------



## Dinkeldog

KidCthulhu said:


> Ditto.  I don't think I would have put any levels in fighter if we were building these characters in 3e.  I would have gone straight cleric, because nothing matches the power of raw 3e cleric.




Except maybe raw 3E druid. 



> If we were building them in 4e?  I wouldn't have built Ernie.  You just can't get the same feel.




If you were building in 4E, what would you do to get Ernie the way you imagine him?


----------



## Everett

RangerWickett said:


> So is Aravis getting the Mrs. Horn treatment, or are you going to just play a very vengeful 'swarm of cats' for a few sessions?





Well, what kind of favors would you need from the ether to bring back a deity of cats?  Let's muse until the next update, shall we?


----------



## KidCthulhu

Dinkeldog said:


> If you were building in 4E, what would you do to get Ernie the way you imagine him?




Er, not make him?  I don't want to say I hate 4e, but I'm certainly still getting my mind adjusted to liking it, and it's taking some work.  The feel is so very different that I'm not sure what I'd do.


----------



## Everett

KidCthulhu said:


> Null Shadows are immune to *all* magic.  Magic armor bonuses and spells that increase ACE are nothing to them. Even Mage Armor.  If the bonus comes from magic, it doesn't count.  Even if the bonus adds to your natural armor.  Magic sword?  Goes right through them.  They don't just ignore the magical bonus.  They ignore the item if it has any magic associated with it.  Ditto magical armor, rings of deflection, etc.
> 
> I know Sagiro posted their stats somewhere, but I don't think he's posted these new and "improved" version.




The original version is on StevenAC's Sagiro's SH site.


----------



## Blacklamb

Hey!
It's been awhile since I've been on EN world but dang I missed your Story Hour Sagiro.

Question for ya tho, is there an updated link to the all the major PC's?
The class talk a few posts ago got me curious about lvl and such and I'm always curious about magic items players create too!

Looking forward to the next post, and so Aravis vengeance!


----------



## Everett

Ha!  From the run prior to the Null Shadows - very clever.



Sagiro said:


> “I’m not disturbed by the thought that Gods can die,” says Aravis – which is an ironic comment for a couple of reasons.


----------



## Jackylhunter

KidCthulhu said:


> Er, not make him?  I don't want to say I hate 4e, but I'm certainly still getting my mind adjusted to liking it, and it's taking some work.  The feel is so very different that I'm not sure what I'd do.




I'm with you KidC.  I'm playing 3.5e, and I'm happy with it.  I've not heard one thing about 4e that makes me want to play it.  Can you say T$R?


----------



## Seule

KidCthulhu said:


> Er, not make him? I don't want to say I hate 4e, but I'm certainly still getting my mind adjusted to liking it, and it's taking some work. The feel is so very different that I'm not sure what I'd do.



I think the question I'm wondering is what about him doesn't fit 4e? Doubtless there's things about Ernie you see that I don't see (or just don't remember from the storyhour), so I'm curious.
Don't feel pressured to answer if you don't want to, though, I'm well aware that not all characters (or players, or settings) mesh well with all systems.

  --Penn


----------



## EroGaki

The lameness of 4E aside, when can we expect another update?


----------



## wedgeski

I hope we can keep all edition wars far, far away from this thread?

Looking forward to the next update.


----------



## Zustiur

****! What a totally awful update for me to catch up on! I've been reading through from page 90 in the previous thread to catch up. And _this is where the updates finish?!?!_
MAN that sucks.

...


But must have sucked more for you. I'd say Aravis in my favourite character, but that would be ignoring the fact that they're all my favourite characters.
Please tell me there's a resurrection coming?


----------



## scrubkai

Zustiur said:


> Please tell me there's a resurrection coming?




Wait my 3.5 knowlege is getting a little rusty but: 
If Aravis is a god, doesn't that make him an outsider and unable to be resurected?

It would be nice if I was wrong, but I've been assuming that we had just heard the end of our favorate mage...


----------



## Everett

...we'd previously been informed that a True Res. was coming, long before we knew who it was for.

And whatever update you catch up on is a suck place to finish: do you have any idea how long some of us have been reading this campaign?


----------



## Dinkeldog

Jackylhunter said:


> Can you say T?




Please don't.


----------



## Jackylhunter

Dinkeldog said:


> Please don't.




Thank you, you are absolutely correct , I don't know what came over me.

Does anyone remember (off the top of their heads) When Aravis became 'the God of Cats'.  I usually better at retaining these tidbits, but this one is eluding me.

Thank you


----------



## Caliber

Jackylhunter said:


> Thank you, you are absolutely correct , I don't know what came over me.
> 
> Does anyone remember (off the top of their heads) When Aravis became 'the God of Cats'.  I usually better at retaining these tidbits, but this one is eluding me.
> 
> Thank you




I don't think he "became" a god of cats at any point. Cats were just always weird about him, and when Pewter asked they said he was a god. The party has been wondering about that for a while, I think. 

'Course, I could be absolutely wrong as well. I'm generally pretty bad retaining those kinds of tidbits.


----------



## Everett

Caliber said:


> I don't think he "became" a god of cats at any point. Cats were just always weird about him, and when Pewter asked they said he was a god. The party has been wondering about that for a while, I think.
> 
> 'Course, I could be absolutely wrong as well. I'm generally pretty bad retaining those kinds of tidbits.





Correct - he didn't become a god, the party discovered (in a commune) that he is divine in a small way.  We don't know any more about that as of yet.

Why cats thought that Aravis was "like a cat" was one of a number of unanswered questions the company has had on their plate for hundreds of runs.


----------



## Zustiur

Everett said:


> And whatever update you catch up on is a suck place to finish: do you have any idea how long some of us have been reading this campaign?



I've been following since about run 30, I just took a long hiatus because I thought Sagiro had stopped writing. 
What I mean by sucky place to finish, is that had I stopped one update earlier, there was no cliffhanger/character death. Just 'mundane' downtime events.


----------



## Piratecat

We first knew that something was really weird about Aravis when we visited the Court of Cats in Djaw, which is where we met One Certain Step. We've also had other hints, such as being threatened by those damn rats.

Revelations about Aravis's catlike-nature will certainly be coming.


----------



## Aravis

Piratecat said:


> We first knew that something was really weird about Aravis when we visited the Court of Cats in Djaw, which is where we met One Certain Step. We've also had other hints, such as being threatened by those damn rats.
> 
> Revelations about Aravis's catlike-nature will certainly be coming.




The Court of Cats is where Aravis first got Pewter to be his familiar.

Aravis


----------



## KidCthulhu

Jackylhunter said:


> Does anyone remember (off the top of their heads) When Aravis became 'the God of Cats'.




Well, we started to get suspicious when he kept licking himself and throwing up hairballs.


----------



## RangerWickett

KidCthulhu said:


> Well, we started to get suspicious when he kept licking himself and throwing up hairballs.




No, we're talking about Aravis, not Piratecat. Easy mistake.


----------



## Joshua Randall

RangerWickett said:


> No, we're talking about Aravis, not Piratecat. Easy mistake.



Piratecat/Dranko only licks _other _things/people, not himself.

I hope.


----------



## Shmoo

Nine lives?


----------



## Aravis

Shmoo said:


> Nine lives?




I was going to say that I certainly hope so, but actually I hope they aren't necessary. 

Aravis


----------



## theskyfullofdust

Well, that's a cliff-hanger to leave us with. Just finished reading the whole lot, from the very start, all the way to here. It's taken weeks. But I've enjoyed every moment. This is a terrific campaign, excellent characters, and great players and DM too.

I know this story-hour is a couple of years or so behind the actually play, but I was wondering if it has reached an end yet, and what level the PCs are now?

And eagerly looking forward to the next update.


----------



## Piratecat

Thanks for the kind words! We're level 18. We're back on an every-other-week playing schedule (although the holidays were a bit rough), and just finished a really satisfying series of adventures. We're currently hip-deep in more badness that links way back to One Certain Step's vision. The Skysteel Hole (or whatever it is) has finally become relevant, with unpleasant results.

Shudder.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> The Skysteel Hole (or whatever it is) has finally become relevant, with unpleasant results.
> 
> Shudder.




What's that?  Doesn't ring a bell.


----------



## Aravis

Everett said:


> What's that?  Doesn't ring a bell.



That is a reference to a Gartine Arch.  It is from One Certain Step's vision.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Aravis said:


> That is a reference to a *Gartine Arch*.



Okay, this has been bugging me for *years*.

Every time I read the phrase "Gartine Arch", I cannot help but think of some lines from the Leonard Cohen song _Hallelujah_:

_I've seen your flag on the marble arch,
But love is not a victory march;
It's a cold and very broken hallelujah._

Of course, in my mind's ear, "marble arch" is replaced with "Gartine Arch".

So now I've got this mental image of ol' Lenny singing about Sagiro's D&D campaign, and it's just... funny as heck, actually.

There. I feel better, having gotten that off my chest.


----------



## Atanatotatos

*_* Beautiful song, that.


----------



## KidCthulhu

Joshua Randall said:


> Okay, this has been bugging me for *years*.
> 
> Every time I read the phrase "Gartine Arch", I cannot help but think of some lines from the Leonard Cohen song _Hallelujah_:
> 
> _I've seen your flag on the marble arch,
> But love is not a victory march;
> It's a cold and very broken hallelujah._




Thanks, now I've got it stuck too.  Good song.


----------



## blargney the second

I'm a fan of the hair of the dog treatment for what ails you.  If you're going to have a song stuck in your head, it might as well be awesome:
[ame=http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=vIMOdVXAPJ0]YouTube - Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen) - Allison Crowe live performance[/ame]
-blarg


----------



## Kaodi

The version of that song I know best is k.d. lang's. 

[ame=http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=P_NpxTWbovE]k.d. lang, Live at the Junos - Hallelujah[/ame]


----------



## EroGaki

Here's a bump and a plea for an update.


----------



## theskyfullofdust

I second this bump! Although with Sagiro's commentary in PirateCat's game, maybe there just isn't time any more 

I am very interested in seeing how it all ends...


----------



## darkhall-nestor

theskyfullofdust said:


> I second this bump! Although with Sagiro's commentary in PirateCat's game, maybe there just isn't time any more
> 
> I am very interested in seeing how it all ends...




I have not seen any new posts in Pirate Cat's story hour

does he have a new thread?


----------



## Piratecat

Sagiro is being kind enough to make 4e notes about my new campaign.

Big game last night in Sagiro's campaign! We have just:

- confronted an army of 10,000 undead
- found the "skysteel hole" mentioned in Step's dream
- met our first dracolich
- had one of our members splatter into unrecognizeable body parts
- had another one of our members take enough damage to drop them to -86 hit points
- confront the most powerful member of the Black Circle that we know of
- come face to face with the Emperor

Uh huh. It was quite a game. And for those keeping track of such things, it was game #226.


----------



## Atanatotatos

O____o!!!


----------



## EroGaki

Holy Crap!! You guys have been busy! Now I want an update even more... curse you, P-Kitty!!! Curse you!!!!


----------



## energy_One

Yeah, Piratecat. Stop taunting us with the truth.


----------



## Everett

We won't see the run he's talking about for a year, anyway.


----------



## Everett

Hurrrrm.

*ronch ronch ronch*


----------



## Atanatotatos

There seems to be some strange synchronicity to Sagiro's and Sep's posting after (relatively) long pauses, and since Viridity and Saizhan was updated... I'm hoping...


----------



## Sagiro

I can now reveal the reason I haven't been working on my Story Hour these last few months.  I've been working on this:  A little side project

But now that I'll have more free time, documenting the continuing adventures of Abernathy's Company is back on the docket, along with a number of other neglected pastimes.  No promises or timetables, but I wanted to let my readers know that they have not been abandoned, and I should have another update posted before too too long.

Thanks for your forbearance!

-Sagiro


----------



## Michael Silverbane

That is awesome, Sagiro! ...and totally worth the *ahem* short delay to the story hour.

I look forward to the update!


----------



## Atanatotatos

Amazing. All of you are great guys. That would have melted into tears!


----------



## StevenAC

That's just brilliant, Sagiro.  A wonderful example of a great Rat Bastard using his powers for Good instead of Evil. 

(Of course, this means I'm now expecting to see _Sagiro's Story Hour: the Musical_ someday... )

Great to hear updates are on the way, too.  In celebration, I've added the latest chapter to the Collected Story Hour site, bringing it right up to date with the cliffhanger you so thoughtfully provided all those months ago.  Can't wait to find out what happens next!


----------



## theskyfullofdust

Sagiro, it's good to know that there will be future updates. I was beginning to think I'd never know what happened next; and after spendign a couple of weeks reading from the very beginning, I've come to know and love the characters; and it's helped inspire and knit together ideas for my own campaign plans too.

Look forward to the updates, whenever they appear.

Thanks


----------



## Everett

Perhaps a plea for an update would not be too forward...?


----------



## Camris

*Seconded*

So say we all!


----------



## EroGaki

I agree!


----------



## Everett

Y'all might have said that a month ago.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 292*_
*Regarding Praska*

A sickly green mist hangs in the air, all that is left of the departed Null Shadows.   Morningstar sits down heavily against a wall and thinks hard about the voice she heard in the _thought capture_.   It was female, she’s almost certain, and vaguely familiar.  

Kibi has his own method of getting information in this kind of environment.  Putting his grief and guilt out of his mind, he casts _stone tell_ on the wall of the cauldron room.  A consciousness forms in the rocks and speaks ponderously into Kibi's mind.

“Kibilhathur.”

“Oh!”  The dwarf wasn't expecting immediate familiarity.  “You know my name!”

“All the stones know your name.”

Kibi blushes beneath his beard.  “I hope you don’t think of me poorly.”

“No, of course not.”

“I’d like to ask you some questions that are very important to us.”

“Speak, then,” says the stone.

“Somebody gouged holes in you,” says Kibi, “and vile Null Shadows poured out of them.  Can you tell me anything about who did this?”

“I have been here for an entire lifespan of those things,” answers the stone of the wall.  Its voice is deep and lugubrious.   “My body lay empty when it was built, and then many people came, chanting, singing, and drawing circles upon my face.  They brought in a metal vessel and set it down.   They chiseled symbols into my skin.  The chanting continued, and things were placed into the vessel.  Then this entire space, my being, what you call a room, was filled with a strange shadow-stuff, a terrible thing that leeched away my substance, my solidity, and replaced it with vapors and nothingness.”

“That’s terrible!” says Kibi, with genuine feeling.

“People would come back from time to time and chant over the vessel,” continues the stone, “and black, smokey creatures would emerge.  The chanters caused these things to go into small containers, and then departed. 

“Then four people came, one shorter than the others who had become before, and THEY chanted over the cauldron.  They smashed the walls, to obscure the symbols once carved there.   Vaporous creatures again emerged, but these were made to recede into my body, into the holes they had made, and to the spaces beyond.  They took the vessel, and the horrible nothingness departed, and I was left alone, until today.”

“Are there more vapors?” asks Kibi.

“No.  They have all emerged to assault you.”

“Can you describe the four people?” presses Kibi.  “Did one of them wear robes?”

“It is hard for us to distinguish, but their heights were clear.  Three tall, one short.  Slightly taller than you.”   

“Do you know what they were wearing?

“Wearing?  I do not understand.  There is rock, and non-rock, and they were non-rocks.”

“Did they say anything about where they were going?” asks Kibi.

“No,” answers the rock.  “They were chanting.  The short one made a strange sound.  It sounded like:  'Ha ha ha ha ha!' as it put the shadow things into the walls.”

The stone's rendition of evil cackling would be funnier if Aravis's corpse wasn't sprawled nearby.

“Is there anything I can do to make you feel whole again?” asks Kibi.

“I enjoy these walls that you have made to join me,” answers the stone, referring to the _wall of stone_ that Kibi cast during the battle.  And with that, the interview comes to an end.  Kibi relays his conversation to the rest of the Company.

“Stersa and Meledien were both tall,” says Kibi, while the others ponder the new information.  

A couple of minutes later the color drains from Dranko's face.  _And one short_.   “Oh, no.  Morningstar, the voice you heard in your _thought capture._  Did it sound like Praska?

Morningstar thinks for a second.  “Yes!  I knew it seemed familiar.”

“Argh!”  Dranko lets out a howl of anger.  The last any of them had heard, Praska was a happy priestess living at the Temple of Delioch in Hae Charagan.

Morningstar goes to Aravis and casts _gentle repose_ as Pewter continues his sad meowing.  

“Don't worry Pewter,” she says.  “I'll bring him back.”


* *


The Company spends a few minutes talking through what they know about Praska.  She had once been kidnapped by Mokad and then released, and ever since has been a faithful priestess at the Temple to Delioch in the capital city.   Califax had warned the Company not to trust her, and that warning had prompted the High Priest Tomnic to oversee a battery of divinations cast upon her.  Nothing had turned up as abnormal or suspicious, and so it seemed that Califax's waning had been unfounded.   By all reports she has been as spunky, smart, excited and hard-working as ever.  And still at the temple, as far as they know.

Edghar, Grey Wolf's little monkey familiar, looks with sympathy on Aravis's body. 

“Don't die,” he says to Grey Wolf.  The spellsword says nothing but scratches the monkey's head with affection.

They carry Aravis's body up and out of the evil basement of the Cosnor estate.  His face is completely disfigured by the black smears from the Null Shadows, and from certain angles his facial features appear to be missing. 

Like most places in Kallor, the manor house has a small shrine to Ell, though it went long unused while the place was co-opted by the Black Circle.  Morningstar uses it to cast _commune_.  

_When we try to resurrect Aravis, will some person or spiritual force attempt to hinder us?_

*NO*

_Does Aravis want to return to the living?_

*YES*

_Was Praska responsible for this?_

*NO*

_Was Praska involved in this?_

*NO*

_Is Praska a girl?_

*YES*

_Can you detect Praska?_

*YES*

_I detected Praska’s thoughts before we were attacked.  Was that a trick?_

*PROBABLY*

_Are you aware of who set the trap?_

*NO*

_Is Praska still under the influence of the Black Circle?_

*NO*

_Can you detect where the missing Cauldron is?_

*YES*

_Is it in Charagan?_

*YES*

_Is it in Kallor?_

*NO*

_Is it in Lanei?_

*YES*

_If Praska were being shielded from divination, would you be able to tell?_

*POSSIBLY*

_Is the cauldron on the western half of Lanei?_

*YES*

_Is the cauldron in Hae Charagan?_

*YES*

_Is the Cauldron within the grounds of the Temple of Delioch there?_

*NO*

Morningstar frowns at the surprising and contradictory answers.  Dranko opines that the results of those questions can’t be trusted, since Praska is clearly shielded from divinations.   Not to mention that by considering the answers as a whole, it provably _was_ Praska who set the trap for them.

“I can’t bring back Aravis until tomorrow,” says Morningstar.

“Can I cut off his finger and wear it around my neck?” asks Dranko.  “Cats would love me!”

Only Flicker laughs.  


* *


Morningstar visits the High Priestess Rhiavonne at the Temple of Ell, to discuss the casting of _true resurrection_. 

“There hasn't been a casting of that miracle in any temple of Ell for at least a century,” the old matriarch tells her. 

Morningstar sighs.  “I really don't want this to turn into a circus.  I'm enough of a curiosity already.”

“I can arrange to keep the audience limited,” offers Rhiavonne.

“Will that make people think me haughty?” asks Morningstar.

“Not if they think it's _my_ choice.  I could simply invite the various High Priestesses from other temples around Charagan – perhaps half a dozen.

“Whatever you think is best,” says Morningstar.  “But discrete would be better, since the Black Circle might not know that their trap has been triggered.”

“It will be hard to hide the event from all of the local priestesses who make their homes here,” reminds Rhiavonne.    “_True resurrection_ can take some hours; there will be gossip, if the main chapel is locked off for the duration.”

Morningstar agrees to the reduced headcount, but is nonetheless awed and dismayed at the thought of performing the miracle in front of even a small number of Ellish dignitaries.  Dranko is waiting for her outside of Rhiavonne's office.

“Did you guys talk at all about your memoirs?” he asks her.  “You know, the holy scriptures you're supposed to write?”

Morningstar shakes her head, at which point Dranko produces a black leather case with an Ellish symbol on the front.  It comes with a silvered goose-quill pen, and a set of custom nibs.  

“These are for you.  Try writing.”

She writes, and the magic of the pen not only improves her handwriting, but brings to her mind more elegant grammatical constructions for her thoughts.   

“Did you make this?” she asks, immensely pleased.

“I had it made for you,” admits Dranko. “I thought you’d want to be better remembered for your posterior.  Posterity. I mean posterity.”


* *

Kibi volunteers for the job of procuring the diamonds needed for the casting of _true resurrection_.  Still feeling guilt over his decision to stay hidden underground while Aravis was in danger, he contributes 10,000 GP of his own personal funds to the expense.

The plan is straightforward:  Kibi, Dranko, Grey Wolf and Ernie will teleport to Hae Charagan, where they will procure the diamonds and do a _locate object_ sweep of the city for the Cauldron.   The others will stay behind with Morningstar while she prepares to bring Aravis back to life.   There's a slight hiccup, as Grey Wolf's teleportation goes slightly awry.  He was aiming for the common room of tavern he had frequented on his previous visit, and they do end up in a tavern, but it's not the right one.  The four of them find themselves surrounded by dozens of seedy, criminal-looking types, patrons of the Happy Harpoon, one one of the most run-down, dangerous waterfront dives in the city.  They listen as the conversations die down to nothing.   Fifty thugs stare at them, sizing up their wealth and weaponry.

“Where are we?” Dranko demands of the crowd.

He is met with laughter.   With lightning quickness he snaps his whip and yanks a beer mug right out of someone's hand.  He catches the mug in midair and takes a quick drink before asking again.

“Where are we?”

(Morningstar, following the proceedings over the mind-link, looks down at Aravis and says out loud:  “you don't want to know.”)

Several of the Harpoon's customers get to their feet.  A dozen weapons are drawn.  Dranko sighs.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he says to the crowd.  “The easy way is, you tell us where we are, and we buy a round of drinks for the bar.  The hard way is, you try to attack us, and we kill most of you.  What's it gonna be?”

The tension is palpable.  One on the one hand, it's fifty-on-four.  On the other hand, those four are armed to the teeth, and did just appear from nowhere.  But one of the more far-gone customers at the bar makes the decision for everyone.

“Drinks for everyone on the new guys!” he shouts, and with that, all is forgiven.  The members of the Company soon learn that they're in the right city but the wrong bar.  They leave a pile of coins with the barkeep and make for the exit.   

The cauldron-finding team has no luck.  _Veiled_ as birds, and _wind walking_ in a spiral pattern with _locate object_ cast, they get no hits.  Kibi has more success, finding the diamonds he needs.  He notes with interest that many of the moneylenders and jewelers have new signs up in the windows indicating that they'll exchange Kivian currency.  

Their missions over, the group _teleports_ back to Kallor.  Next up:  new life for Aravis.

...to be continued...


----------



## EroGaki

Yay! At long last!!


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Really interesting to see _resurrection_ taken seriously in a campaign, with all the political and spiritual ramifications played out in game.

Beats "I cast the spell and spend the diamonds" any day of the week.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Very happy to see an update, with hopefully more to come soon.


----------



## theskyfullofdust

Woo hoo! Update! Just had to go back and read the last couple of entries to remind myself what was going on. Looking forward to more, hint hint


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 293*_
*Dead Boring*

Midnight in Kallor.  

The perpetual twilight of the day has given way to a sky bright with stars and a nearly full moon.  On such short notice only a few clergy from out of town have arrived to witness history:  Milanwy and Clariel from Tal Hae along with Amber and Previa; church leaders from Minok and Hae Kalkas; and of course Morningstar's proud parents, Domira and Rodvin.   Still, there are enough local priestesses and political figures in attendance that the crowd numbers nearly two hundred in the large chapel.  

Morningstar has spent hours studying the prayers and rituals involved in casting _true resurrection_.   She expects that the ceremony will last from midnight until dawn; it is no quick thing to call a soul back from the afterlife.   Bells ring the midnight hour and the murmurs of the congregation fade as Morningstar begins to cast, Aravis laid out upon the altar before her in a ceremonial black robe.  Moonbeams stream in through the skylights and play over Morningstar's hands as she prays.  The attendees settle in for a long night of spectacle.

Twenty minutes later, Aravis's eyes snap open.

Morningstar blinks, confused.

“Aravis?”

“Yes?” answers the mage groggily.

Pewter leaps up joyfully onto Aravis's chest and starts to purr, while the onlookers mutter uncertainly.  Morningstar can hear at least one of the priestesses whisper _maybe he wasn't dead!_

Morningstar peers down at Aravis.  “You, er, were really dead, right?”

“I'm pretty sure,” says Aravis.

“I'm only twenty minutes in,” says Morningstar, half to her friend and half to herself.  The audience starts to grow loud again until Rhiavonne strides forward to join Morningstar behind the altar.

“We have witnessed a miracle within a miracle,” she says, voice raised in authority.  But to Morningstar she whispers:  “Perhaps a ceremonial conclusion might be in order, for the sake of the audience.”

Morningstar continues to chant and pray for another thirty minutes before finishing with her head bowed in silence.   Many in the congregation come forward to put their hands on Aravis's head, who endures it with good grace.  Previa studiously records every detail of the event.  Any skeptics in the chapel are cowed by Rhiavonne's stern glare; but to most, there is no doubt that the power of Ell has flowed mightily thorough Morningstar Her servant.  Her parents are over the moon with pride and joy.  

Morningstar herself looks taken aback, almost embarrassed.  

“Aravis is a person of great personal power,” she says to the curious throng.  “It's likely that that was a factor in this quick resurrection.”  There is much nodded agreement. 


* *

Later, when the Company has carried the weary Aravis to a private room, the newly-revived wizard reveals  the unexpected explanation for Morningstar's remarkable feat.

“I stayed where I was,” he says.

Dranko scratches his scarred jaw.  “What do you mean?”

“Where I died.” says Aravis.  “When you guys left,  I was still there.  In the basement.  Death was boring!”

No one knows quite what to say. 

“That means you were a ghost!” says Dranko after a moment.  “Did you haunt anyone?”

“I was stuck where I was,” says Aravis.  “There was no one to haunt!”

“We stuck around for a while after the fight,” says Dranko.  “Did you haunt us?”

Aravis sighs.  Kibi wonders aloud if Aravis's stationary afterlife was because of the Null Shadows.  Dranko further muses that perhaps Aravis would have turned _into_ a Null Shadow had he not been raised.

“I didn't feel any different,” says Aravis, skeptical.  “Just bored, and non-physical.  I guess it could have been the Null Shadows, but more likely it was because of my unusual nature.”

“What if they were trying to trap you there,” asks Morningstar.  “And they were going to come back later for your soul?  They were planning on bringing back Grey Wolf against his will, remember?  Maybe they could have done the same thing to you.”

Those are all reasonable theories... and all of them are wrong.  It will be some time before the Company figures out the truth.


* *

Aravis feels better after a full night's rest, and they reconvene the next morning to discuss their next step.  Dranko's idea for capturing Praska is straightforward:  disguise the Company as something like street urchins via illusion, wait for her to leave the temple on an errand, and jump her _en masse_.  “I figure if we do it in public, she won't be able to summon her demonic minions without everybody seeing it.”

Talk turns to the confusing results of the recent _commune_.  Aravis can't help but wonder aloud:  “Do we think that the Black Circle is really trying to be _so_ tricky, that instead of simply blocking divinations on her, they're feeding us false answers through a _commune?_"

“Yes, I think that,” says Dranko.  “I think that Praska has had powerful magic placed on her that makes it impossible for divinations to work on her.  Then she came and set this trap for us, with the expectation that we wouldn't figure out who it was.” 

“How powerful do we think Praska is, anyway?” asks Aravis.

“Before?” says Dranko.  “I didn't think she was powerful at all.  Now?  Very.”

They _teleport_ back to Hae Charagan, this timing choosing the Happy Harpoon on purpose.   Shouts of “drinks on the new guys again!” start ringing seconds after the crowd has registered their arrival, and as they leave the Company hears some rumors about just who they are.  “Mad mages from Kivia,” says one man.  “The Archmagi in disguise,” insists another.  Kibi smirks as he hears one grizzled dockhand tell another, “You know who the leader is?  It's that pile of rocks that follows the dwarf around...”

Before heading to the Church of Delioch to kidnap Praska, Morningstar casts _circle dance_ to verify their quarry's location.  She gets the direction of due east, which does _not_ point to the church.  They try it again from a quarter-mile to the south, and get the exact same bearing.  Aravis figures this means that Praska is thousands of miles to the east, which happens to be the direction of Kivia.

Even so, the church is the next logical place make inquiries.   Dranko dons his seldom-used priestly robes and they walk through the city.   At the gates to the temple compound two door-wardens bow respectfully.

“Good afternoon!” one says to the group.  

“Greetings,” answers Dranko.  “Do you know if Sister Praska is currently on the grounds?”

“I'm sure she's not,” answers the guard cheerily.

“Oh?  Why's that?”

“She's off in.. what's it called?”

“Kivia,” says the second guard.

“What's she doing there?” asks Dranko, forcing himself to maintain a casual facade.

“I heard she was going on a spiritual journey,” says the first guard.  “She was curious to know if there were any worshipers of Delioch over there.  I gather that there was some magical artifact discovered in Kivia that indicated that there were.  I also think she was interested in learning about the Kivian God of Healing.”

“Do you know who I could talk to about this trip of hers?” asks Dranko.  “We've come a long way to talk to her, and I guess my timing was horrible.”

“She was friends with an older priestess named Marigold, I know that,” says the second guard.

“Great,” says Dranko.  “And how long ago did she leave?”

“Weeks, I think,” says the first guard.  He glances at his compatriot, who shrugs.

Weeks.  Okay then.  Dranko is immediately mistrustful of this Marigold.

“Flicker, do me a favor,” he says.  “While we talk to Tomnic, go search Praska's room.  See if she left anything incriminating.  Just don't set off any hideous traps.”

“Or get caught,” adds Ernie.

“The thing is,” says Dranko, “going off to explore Kivia is exactly the kind of thing Praska – the Praska I know – would actually do.  So maybe she's fine, and  the Black Circle is setting her up.  I need to talk with Tomnic.”

Tomnic the Follower is the highest authority of the Deliochan church extant on Charagan, and Dranko is at first told by an under-priest that the wait to talk with him is three hours, unless it's particularly urgent.

“Tell him it's Dranko, here to speak on the same subject as last time.”

“When he learns it's Dranko,” Grey Wolf mutters, “the wait'll become six hours.”

But Tomnic is no fool, and the Company is granted an immediate audience.   Dranko bows respectfully upon entering the office of the High Priest of Delioch, a man of about 50 years with silver hair and ruddy skin.  Tomnic is immaculately dressed.

After Dranko makes a round of introductions, Tomnic leans forward.  “I take it this is about Califax  then?”

“Indirectly,” says Dranko.  "It's more about Mokad.  Or his disciple.”

“His disciple?”

“Either it's Praska, or someone using Praska as bait, and making us think she's our enemy.”

“Do you think she's in danger?” asks Tomnic, concerned.

“I think she IS the danger.”

They tell Tomnic the whole story, including the results of Morningstar's recent _commune._  When they are finished, worry is showing clearly on Tomnic's face.

“You know,” he says gravely, “that we took Califax's warning very seriously.  I spoke myself with an agent of Delioch and posed piercing questions about Praska.  I learned that she was untainted.”

“Your Grace,” says Dranko, “do you understand fully what the Black Circle can do?  Have we told you how they changed history?”

“No, but I have the story secondhand.  And if it's true that the Black Circle can foil the miracle of _commune_, then it puts all of our previous divinations into some doubt.”

“You see why I interrupted your studies today,” says Dranko.  “I'm sorry.”

“You interrupted a meeting with a bureaucrat.  No apologizes necessary.”

“You understand that we have no proof,” says Morningstar.  “Just that I heard her mental voice through a _thought capture._"

“Could that mental voice have been imitated?” asks Tomnic.

“Yes,” Morningstar admits.  “In which case someone is setting a trap, and they want us to go after Praska.  She is in Kivia right now, where the Black Circle is stronger than it is here.”

“Praska told me she was very excited to visit Kivia, now that it was possible,” says Tomnic with a sigh.  “She knew that you had been there.”

“Who told her there was a God of Healing there?” asks Dranko.

“We endeavored to learn everything we could of the pantheon of Kivian Gods, since the boundary came down,” says Tomnic, pointing to one of the books on his desk.  “Heros is a Goddess of healing and mercy – the closest thing to Delioch they have.”

“But not as Good,” says Dranko with a smirk.

“It's not my place to say,” says Tomnic, though his face betrays agreement.

“Do you know that their God of Death, Drosh, is leaving?  He believes that the Adversary is coming back.”

That requires another lengthy bit of exposition, as they tell Tomnic about how the Black Circle in Het Branoi was trying to set up a beacon to call the Adversary.   Tomnic listens intently.

“But they failed, in the end,” the High Priest says, when the Company has finished their tale.

“But Drosh is still leaving,” says Aravis.  “Because he's scared.”

“Forgive me,” says Tomnic.  “I don't doubt your word... but do you have corroborating evidence?”

“Er... other than the fact that we talked with a powerful servant of his?” says Dranko.  “Uh.  No.”

“I only ask, because a powerful servant of the God of Death might well have been lying to you.”

“If he was, he was a better liar than I was, and I'm a pretty good liar,” says Dranko.

Dranko goes on to warn Tomnic that the Null Shadow Cauldron is still is in the city, and that Tomnic may himself be a target.   He requests of Tomnic that the high priest cast _commune_ himself to determine the Cauldron's whereabouts. 

“I will do that much for you,” says Tomnic, “though I also have some questions of my own, particularly regarding Califax.  Say an extra prayer for him, Dranko.”

“I'm sure his heart is true,” says Dranko.

“His heart is not in question,” says Tomnic.  “His affliction is more dire."

He pauses and looks thoughtful, as if looking for a tactful way to convey something horrible, but there's no other way to say it.

"He has no soul," says Tomnic simply.  "He complained of that from the start, and I thought he was mad and raving.  After all, such a thing is not possible while the body still lives.    But his complaints, as far as we can tell, are true.  He has no soul in him.  I thought perhaps you had an answer, when I heard you were here for an audience.  When Aravis was killed, did anything happen to _his_ soul?”

“He still has a soul,” says Dranko.  "Though... and this is going to hard to explain, your Grace, but technically Aravis is a God.  Of cats.  He's worshiped by cats.  He's...”

“Dranko?  Stop.  Please.”

Tomnic is giving him an incredulous look.

“Can you cast _detect lies_, your Grace?”

“I could.  But instead I'm going to ask you flat out.  Because I know that while you're a person of great power, and great wisdom, and great fame, as are all of your friends, I would not put it past you personally to play some kind of colossal prank upon me.  I would hope that given then grave nature of...”

“Your Grace, I'm not lying!” exclaims Dranko.

“Aravis, are you a God of Cats?” asks Tomnic.

“I was told during a _commune_ of my own that he was... in a small way,” says Morningstar. 

“I can't say whether I am or not, your Grace,” says Aravis.  “Cats think that I am.”

“And are you responsible for the unexplained hue and cry of every feline citizen of this city?” asks Tomnic.

“I believe that coincided with my death,” says Aravis.

Tomnic bows his head.  “Then, Aravis, I should be honored to be in your presence.”

“The honor is mine, your Grace,” says Aravis humbly.

“And when you died, your soul stayed put,” muses Tomnic.  “Perhaps Abernia was not prepared for a God to die upon its surface.”

“Do you mind if we talked with Marigold?” asks Dranko, getting back on track.

“Not at all,” says Tomnic.  "Though that reminds me: she asked me about ten days ago for a _sending_ scroll.  She wanted to know how Praska was doing on her journey.   Marigold did not afterward report that Praska was up to no good, or anything like that.  You know that Praska is willful, impetuous, prone to getting into trouble.  Marigold has been here as a priestess for over 30 years, and took it upon herself to be a kind of protector to the girl.  She misses Praska terribly.  It's understandable that she was worried about Praska being so far away, in a strange land.”

Over the mind-link, Dranko thinks to Flicker: _where are you?_

_I'm in Praska's room_ the halfling answers.

_Find anything? _

_There's nothing to find,_ thinks Flicker.

_Check Marigold's room._

_Got it._

“Your Grace,” says Dranko out loud, “we think that Marigold might be a danger, in league with Praska.”

“Before today, I would have though you mad for suggesting that,” says Tomnic.  “I still don't think it's likely.  Marigold is as nice a lady as you could ever hope to meet.”

“Yeah, and I'm a jackass, but I'm on the side of Good,” says Dranko with a grin.  “You never can tell.”

...to be continued...


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Another update!  And so soon too!  Can't wait to find out what held Aravis' soul in place.


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

Yay!  New updates are awesome!



Sagiro said:


> _*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 292*_
> *Regarding Praska*
> 
> 
> Morningstar frowns at the surprising and contradictory answers.  Dranko opines that the results of those questions can’t be trusted, since Praska is clearly shielded from divinations.   Not to mention that by considering the answers as a whole, it provably _was_ Praska who set the trap for them.




I don't follow the reasoning in concluding that it definitely was Praska who set the trap for them.  I understand why those answers would be consistent with a set of divination shielding effects used to conceal Praska's role in this.  But I don't follow why it couldn't be the case that somebody is using great power to make it appear that Praska was responsible.


----------



## Sagiro

Cerebral Paladin said:


> Yay!  New updates are awesome!
> 
> 
> 
> I don't follow the reasoning in concluding that it definitely was Praska who set the trap for them.  I understand why those answers would be consistent with a set of divination shielding effects used to conceal Praska's role in this.  But I don't follow why it couldn't be the case that somebody is using great power to make it appear that Praska was responsible.



I agree with you -- but that's the conclusion my players came to after reviewing the answers.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 294*_
*With Friends Like These*

The results of Tomnic's _commune_, to questions on the topic of the Null Shadow cauldron, are moderately useful:  the thing is in the northeast quadrant of the city, and underground.   Relatedly, Marigold's _sending_ scroll had nothing to do with the cauldron or the theft thereof.  Tomnic was unwilling to press Delioch further with narrowing-down questions, and he keeps any answers concerning Califax to himself.   

Dranko jokingly recommends that they hire the drunks and malcontents from the Happy Harpoon to scour the city sewers for the cauldron.  The ones who don't come back will indicate the likely location by their absence.  Even though Ernie knows it's a joke he lectures Dranko anyway.

*>> The following exchange deserves its own aside:

Aravis's player:  “ Do I think the Cauldron was in the plane of shadow?”

DM:  “Well, the room that the Cauldron was in had a weird feel about it; it was partially in the plane of shadow.”  

Dranko's player (Piratecat):  “But it wasn't like that when the Cauldron was gone.”

DM:  “Correct.  It was just an empty 20x20 room.”  (Pause).  “Well, admittedly it had some Null Shadows in it.”

Piratecat:  “Let the record show that I'm flipping Sagiro off.”*


* *


Morningstar figures this is a good opportunity to do some scouting in _Ava Dormo_.  She drops into a trance and enters the Dreamscape while the others guard her body.   Her first stop is the inn at which they met with Mokad so long ago – when Praska had been kidnapped.  It is no longer shrouded in magical dream-protections, but her scouting indicates that the place has likely been long abandoned by the Black Circle.

While exploring the northeast quarter of Hae Charagan, her memory is jogged by the site of the Rock, the dwarven tavern beneath which Parthol's minion Manzanill had been excavating a gartine arch some years earlier.  She swoops down into the tunnels and caverns, finding them much like she remembers – remnants of the Emperor's old city of Poal Cathan.  The gartine arch itself is still there, albeit partially buried beneath a small cave-in.   She does find something interesting:  a new, narrow tunnel has been built out the back of one the buildings near to the arch.  It snakes through the rock for a hundred feet or more before emptying into a wider, older tunnel, and thence into another large cavern.  She makes mental note of its location.

Kibi then sends his earth elemental familiar, Scree, to investigate in the real world.  He keeps up a running mental report to Kibi, describing at first the underground locales they remember from their previous excursion there.  As he moves to the new subterranean features, he describes small buildings mostly collapsed and crushed by stone and time.  

“Everything seems unremarkable,” thinks Scree to his master.  I sense a large cavern up ahead, probably the one you were talking about.   I'll just.... whoa!  Oh goodness.  I'm backing into the stone...”

“Be careful!” thinks Kibi in alarm.  “Maybe you should come back...”

“No, it's okay,” thinks Scree.  “I'll just poke my eye back in for a little bit.”

“Don't be over-brave,” admonishes the dwarf.  “What was it that made you startle?”

“Well, when I emerged into the large cavern there, I thought I smelled Null Shadows.  Not strongly, but still.  And I didn't see any.  Don't worry though... I'm back in the rock.” 

Scree returns, and the Company formulates an attack plan.    The elemental describes where he's been to Aravis (who has cast _tongues_), so the mage can _teleport_ them in.  While Scree's explanation is presented mostly in terms of different types of rock, and more by what's solid than by what's air, Aravis is smart enough to get a mental picture.  

“Also, Aravis,” says Scree, “you are an excellent wizard.  I haven't had the chance to tell you in person before now.”

“Thank you,” says Aravis.  “And you are an excellent familiar.”

“You're too kind,” returns Scree.

The plan is to _teleport_ to the cavern with the gartine arch, and to walk from there to the newly-discovered location.  Just before going, Dranko casts _omen of peril_ and gets a clear result:  *Peril*

“Hey, there's danger in the next hour,” he tells the others.  “I know.  Delioch told me.”

They arrive in complete darkness., but Aravis quickly casts _mass darkvision_. The Company looks around.   Able to take a closer look, Kibi concludes that someone _engineered_ the collapse under which the old gartine arch is buried.  They all have flashbacks to the battle they had here against Parthol's minion, the wizard Manzanill.

Aravis, Kibi and Grey Wolf – the party's three arcanists – can all detect a faint whiff of Null Shadows.

Peering carefully into the monochromatic gloom, the Company walks down the new narrow tunnel that leads from the back of a mostly-collapsed building.   Ten minutes of a single-file meandering march brings them out into a small cave, with another tunnel leading out on the far side.  It's all as Morningstar saw in her scouting mission in Ava Dormo.

The uneasy sense of Null Shadows grows steadily as they progress, and before too long the divine casters can detect it as well.  Ugh.  

There's a final straight shot where the tunnel widens and goes for about sixty feet before emptying out into the new large cavern.  They cast some preparatory spells – _xorn movement_, _detect thoughts_ and _true seeing_  among others – and the sounds of their casting echo up and down the tunnel.

Dranko and Flicker hustle forward on point.  They're first to reach the large cavern, which extends past the range of their darkvision.  Dranko's stomach churns with the nausea of proximate Null Shadows, though none are in evidence.  Several ruined buildings jut into the cavern, and from one of these Dranko thinks he sees a faint flickering light.   He relays this to the others over the mind-link.

The others move forward.  Grey Wolf sniffs at the door with _assassin's senses_ and gets a whiff of something nasty.  It's not Null Shadows, or anything else he's familiar with.  After Ernie and Flicker check the door, Dranko slowly pushes it open.

Beyond is a very large room – probably a guild hall in the old city of Poal Cathan.  The ceiling is supported by stone pillars, and rotting wooden tables dot the musty floor.  The whole is lit dimly by magical torches on the far walls.  

And speaking of the floor:  there's a large _symbol of weakness_ inscribed thereupon.   Dranko makes his save, but Ernie and Flicker are sapped of strength, Flicker falling like a marionette with its strings cut.  Ernie drops to one knee, unable to stand under the weight of his armor.

“I can't move!” thinks Flicker in a panic over the mind-link.

Dranko activates a magic ring and covers the _symbol_ with a hemispherical _wall of ice_.

“I've bought us seven minutes,” he thinks to the others.

“I really can't move!” repeats Flicker.  “I'm so weak, I can't even wiggle my toes.”

“Flicker, it's a _symbol!_” thinks Dranko.

“This is no time for literary references!”  Flicker shouts over the mind-link.  “I can't move a muscle!”

Aravis moves quickly into the room to help his comrades, and that's when five Null Shadows appear.  They're the sickly-green life-sucking kind, and four of them swarm around Aravis.  Dranko, protecting the wizard with _shield other_, feels the pain as his friend is pummeled and drained.

Worse, other black shapes -- wraiths -- rise from the shadows on the ground, and these carry the unmistakable taint of the undead.  The wraiths launch a frenzy of the attacks, and although these are largely ineffective against the higher-level Company, the effect of Null Shadow nausea mixed with the foul wrongness of the undead is nearly overpowering.  

Morningstar _turns undead_ through the door, and three of the wraiths are obliterated.  She then charges through the doorway herself, enduring attacks from others, and casts _shadow blast_ hoping it will have some effect on the Null Shadows.  Alas that their sovereign immunity to magic makes the spell a useless gesture.

Grey Wolf launches a _chain missile_ into the mass of wraiths, and Edghar, imbued with casting ability, lobs a _fireball_.  Two more wraiths are dissolved.  Kibi follows up with an _earthbolt_ that finishes off another half-dozen.  He quickens a _magic missile_ and destroys one more.  Only two wraiths remain.

But the wraiths and Null Shadows are soon joined by another dangerous adversary.  From the darkness behind the party comes an increasingly loud clanging sound, as some large creature smelling of rust  lumbers into view.  It's a large construct made of corroded metal and covered in long, sharp iron spikes.

“Another creature immune to sneak attacks,” Dranko groans.

The rusting automaton grabs Grey Wolf around the waist and lifts him off the ground in its huge metal hand.  Ernie would like to help him but he still can't get to his feet.  He looses the dancing sword _Beryn Sur_, and _turns_ the last two wraiths.

Dranko pulls out his non-magical whip and in three deft cracks annihilates one of the Null Shadows.   Flicker doesn't see it.  He's flat on his back, his strength reduced to nothing.  He _can_ see the spiked construct looming over him.  “You all see that thing, right?” he thinks.  

Aravis tumbles back through the doorway, squeaking past (and slightly _through_ – ugh!) a Null Shadow and slams the door closed.  With all the recent maneuvering, that leaves Dranko alone with several Null Shadows, while the others are in the cavern with the construct.

“You okay in there?” Morningstar thinks.

“Yeah, just fine,” answers Dranko.  “Just me and a bunch of Null Shadows!  I'm sure Aravis wouldn't have left me if I couldn't handle it.”

“You told me they'd need me more out there!” thinks Aravis.

And that may be true, but then a _wall of stone_ appears, sealing the doorway and more thoroughly cutting off Dranko from the others.   The caster appears to be a Null Shadow itself, one which follows up with a _searing light_ to Dranko's chest.  Dranko doesn't have much time to ponder this new turn of events – a spell-casting Null Shadow? – before the other Null Shadows swarm him.

“Update,” thinks Dranko.  “I am in deep and serious sh*t.  You can't open the door, because there's a _wall of stone blocking it._  And how come a friggin' Null Shadow is casting magic spells?!”

Morningstar casts _flame strike_ on the spiked construct but it's entirely unaffected.   It swings a spiked arm at her and she ducks beneath it, as she sprints to Ernie and quickens a _restoration_.  Strength floods back into the halfling's muscles. 

Grey Wolf squirms with all of his might but cannot escape the (literally) iron grip of his foe.  Then the automaton lifts Grey Wolf up high before smashing him down onto the spikes on its back.  Facing outward, the impaled Grey Wolf can see spikes protruding through his shoulder blade and thigh, and his blood dribbling down the side of the construct.  The monster reaches out with its other hand and grabs Aravis.

Kibi decides to even the playing field a bit.  He _summons_ a huge earth elemental that immediately tries grappling the construct.  Ernie, reinvigorated, launches a full attack against Mr. Spiky with both _Beryn Sur_ and his short-sword _Coiled Viper_.  Though the thing has some resistance to the damage, metal plates and large flakes of rust fly from its legs.  Each strike sends vibrations through the construct's body, and Grey Wolf feels like someone is turning a knife in his guts.

Dranko takes quick stock of his quandary, and it occurs to him that he's never seen a Null Shadow climb, let alone fly.   One of the room's old pillars isn't far from him; he burns his _divine insight_ to better see the few handholds and footholds it offers, then scampers up and clings to the stone like a treed cat while the Null Shadows roil in frustration below.  The one spell-casting Null Shadow moves directly to the opposite side of the pillar, out of Dranko's sight.

“Everything's okay for the moment!” Dranko thinks to the others.

“You all know that Grey Wolf is stuck to that thing's back, right?  And that Aravis is about to join him?” Flicker is far from thinking that everything's okay.

But Aravis has himself covered, at least.  He _dimension doors_ out of the construct's grasp and back to the ground, while the monster's fist closes reflexively.

Morningstar invokes _greater visage of the deity_, sprouting wings of solid shadow and transforming into a veritable Angel of Ell.  She follows with a quickened _mass cure light wounds_.  

Grey Wolf, concentrating through the pain, follows Aravis's example and _teleports_ off of the spikes, and puts himself so that Kibi's earth elemental is between him and Mr. Spiky.  Kibi himself, thinking that leaving Dranko trapped and alone in a room of full of Null Shadows is a bad idea, dives into the ground and pops back up next to the wall of stone.  He casts _stone shape_, making a gap big enough for a half-orc.

Meanwhile the earth elemental and the construct have begun a titanic grappling match.  The elemental roars in pain as spikes are driven into its body, but it doesn't let go.

“You are mighty!” says Kibi encouragingly.

“I am!” agrees the elemental.  “But this creature is spiky, and painful to crush!”

Ernie manages a few sword-hits on the grappled construct, but his damage is minimal – the foe is resistant to mundane damage as well as magic.

Back in the old guild hall, Dranko starts to relax as he realizes the Null Shadows can't touch him.  Even better, he takes out his _immovable rod_ and makes himself a little seat, where he can brace against the pillar and whip the Null Shadows from safety.  (Though first he uses a _wand of cure critical wounds_ on himself.)  Also he warns the others that two of the Null Shadows have clearly noticed the new hole in the wall of stone.  

“Why is no one helping me?” whines Flicker from the floor.  He has nearly been stepped on several times by the grappling giants above him, and figures it's only a matter of time before he's smashed to jelly.

Aravis fires a _disintegrate_ at the construct.  No effect.  He sighs as he mentally revises his assessment of the enemy from “magic resistant” to “downright immune.”

Just as Dranko is getting comfortable on his perch, the odd Null Shadow steps back into his view and pegs him with another _searing light_.  

Dranko peers at it.  _What the heck?_

Some of the Null Shadows grow tried of flailing uselessly below the half-orc and move through the wall of stone.  They attack Kibi, smearing his skin with stinging black wounds and forcing the _forcecage_ spell out of his head.  Morningstar, having retrieved her non-magical weapon, moves to defend the dwarf.

The elemental and the construct continue to roll around, locked in a grappling embrace.  One of the construct's spikes gets driven into the ground right at Grey Wolf's feet, as he moves into position next to Flicker.  Ernie drops _Coiled Viper_, draws his gartine shortsword, and destroys one of the remaining Null Shadows.  Dranko destroys another one with his whip, and beckons to the spell-casting one to come closer.  It doesn't oblige.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!”  Thud!  Crunch!

That's the sound of both the elemental and construct falling upward into the ceiling, propelled by Aravis's _reverse gravity_.   Their epic struggle continues high above their heads, as pieces of rock and corroded iron debris rain down.

_There's something you don't see every day_ thinks Flicker to himself.  

The Null Shadow caster points a black finger at Dranko and hisses a _greater command_:  *FALL!*

“Bite me!” rasps Dranko, resisting the compulsion.

Ernie and Morningstar finish off the final Null Shadow on their side of the door, and Dranko pops the last one at the foot of his pillar.  Now only the caster remains.  It targets Dranko with a _flame strike_, but the half-orc deftly uses the _immovable rod_ to swing around the pillar, avoiding all the damage.  The Null Shadow hisses in frustration, but Dranko notices that the flames also melted the _wall of ice_ covering the _symbol_.  He mentally warns the others.

A spike from the construct snaps off and plummets downward.   Flicker's eyes grow wide, but his strength is still gone and there's nothing he can do.  It impales itself... in the ground, inches from the halfling's head.  

“Save me that spike!” calls Dranko.  “I want a souvenir.”

“I'm going to kill you!” thinks Flicker over the mind-link.

Ernie dashes into the room to help Dranko and with his _true seeing_ still up he sees what Dranko cannot.

“That's not a Null Shadow!” he cries.  “It's Praska!”  And so saying, he casts a _flame strike_ of his own on Dranko's childhood friend.

Dranko tumbles down from the pillar and lands directly next to Praska.  “I thought better of you,” he says, before tripping her up and scoring her with a flurry of whip snaps.

“Then you're still an idiot,” Praska hisses.

“Idiot?”  Dranko lets disappointment fill his voice.  “Who's the one that's taken up with evil, horrible people?  You've taken the cheap and sleazy way out.  Like I said, I thought better of you.  And, face it, you're jealous 'cause I married Morningstar.”

Praska chuckles.  “Actually, I always though you'd do better.”

Aravis moves in, avoids looking at the _symbol_ and casts _chain lightning_ on Praska.   Ernie sees that she is entirely unharmed.  Praska stands up, dusts herself off, endures another whip-crack from Dranko without flinching, and casts _harm_.  Wounds sprout all over Dranko's face and body.

Grey Wolf finally gets around to casting _restoration_ on Flicker.

“It's about time” Flicker shrieks.

“Yes, yes,” says Grey Wolf.  “Now go help Dranko.”

Kibi summons another earth elemental, but when it tries to grapple Praska she slips from its hands as if greased.  

“I just don't get it,” says Dranko, moving into flanking position with the elemental.  “Why do you want to work with the people who were so cruel to us?  Unbelievable!”

Praska smiles, though only Ernie can tell.  “Dranko, I could fill a book with what you don't know.”   

Dranko launches a devastating series of whip attacks that ought to kill her – but after the third crack of the whip a bright silver circlet around her head glows briefly before turning to a dull gray and falling to the ground in pieces.  As it does so, all of her wounds heal.

Flicker finally gets into the action and charges at Praska... only to be brought up short by some magical effect that prevents him from approaching.  He screams in frustration while futilely pushing toward her. 

“Confession is good for the soul,” Dranko says to his old friend.  “It's not too late to tell us why you've chosen this path of evil, and repent.  Delioch will forgive you.”

Praska chuckles.  “Because we will win, is why.”

“And what do you get if you win?”

Praska smiles knowingly.  “Favor.”

Dranko scoffs.  “That's a sucker's bet.”

Aravis centers a _greater dispelling_ on Praska, and luck is with him.  He manages to dispel the _symbol_ but not Kibi's earth elemental.  He also gets rid of the _repulsion_ that was keeping Flicker away from Praska.  He stumbles forward towards her.

Ernie fires off a _dimensional anchor_, but Praska was specifically prepared for that.  It dissipates harmlessly into her _spell immunity._

Praska realizes that her tactical situation has finally become wholly untenable.  She takes a step back and says to Dranko:  “Tell Califax we say hello.” 

So saying, she casts _word of recall_ and vanishes.

“Crap!” Dranko exclaims.  

Into the momentary silence that follows comes a huge clattering, as if a cartload of rusted machinery had been dumped into a quarry.  A booming and satisfied voice comes from high up in the other room, speaking in Terran.

“Next!”

...to be continued...


----------



## Atanatotatos

Nobody commented yet?! What a great update, sagiro!!


----------



## EroGaki

Those Null Shadows are no joke! *shudder*

Great update, Sagiro! Looking forward to the next.


----------



## coyote6

Ah, the fully-prepared high-level cleric enemy. So much fun.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

So the party was right, Praska was responsible.  Does them having access to all those high level divination spells take some of the fun, or at least surprise, out of it for you?


----------



## Sagiro

Innocent Bystander said:


> So the party was right, Praska was responsible.  Does them having access to all those high level divination spells take some of the fun, or at least surprise, out of it for you?



Give the party's willingness to cast _commune_, _augury_, _moment of peril_, _thought capture_ and _find the path_, I consider it a bonus when I manage to keep _anything_ secret for any significant period.  But I try to structure the campaign _assuming_ they'll learn things by divination spell.  Also, the Black Circle's main schtick is divinations and the thwarting thereof, so I do have ready-made and plausible countermeasures when I want them.  It's all good.  

Hey, while I'm here:  another smallish update.  For the record, the Story Hour has now fallen about 30 runs and 2.5 years behind the actual game, which is still going but kind of entering the home stretch.  

By which I mean we may only have 2-3 years left before it all ends.  

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 295*_
*Shadows of the Past*

After the party exchanges celebratory words about the effectiveness of grapple-happy elementals, Kibi looks thoughtful.

“That was great, but weren't we here looking for the Cauldron?  I thought our divinations told us Praska was in Kivia.”

“Good point,” says Dranko, grimacing.  He's still a bloody mess from Praska's _harm_.  Morningstar heals him up, and she and Ernie top off the rest of the group.

Morningstar casts another _circle dance_ to divine the direction to Praska, and gets the same reading as last time:  east.   Also the direction is _not_ sharply up, which means she's either underground as they are, or extremely far away.  Perhaps she teleported back to Kivia?  Or maybe she never was in Kivia at all, and has some means of foiling the spell.  Who knows?

Kibi, focused on the main goal, casts _locate object_ to find the Null Shadow Cauldron.  He expects it to be shielded, and so is surprised to get a clear reading – off to the south-west, and downward.

“Huh,” he says. 

“What do we do with it when we find it?” asks Morningstar.

“Give it to Abernathy so he can suck the magic out of it,” Dranko jests.

“Or store it in the basement with our other evil stuff,” Flicker laughs.  “Heck, we can keep the other stuff inside it.”

Aravis rubs his hands together.  “It won't be too much longer before I can cast _Mordenkainen's Disjunction._”

“Isn't that a bad idea?” Dranko asks.  “I mean, if the thing's an artifact, couldn't you lose your powers?”

“That's a chance I'm willing to take,” Aravis answers.  “Besides, what better way is there to follow in the footsteps of the Archmagi, than to lose all my powers?”


* *

There are other doors leading out of the ancient subterranean guild hall; Flicker checks the one most likely to lead in the direction of Kibi's spell, and finds it neither locked nor trapped.   He gently pushes it open and the Company peers inside.  

It's a fairly large space – maybe twenty-five feet on a side – with a number of tables and desks pushed up against the walls.  All are empty save one in the far corner, upon which rests a quill pen and an overturned ink-pot.  The last of the ink is still dripping onto a fast-drying stain on the stone floor.  Before anyone can contaminate the scene, Morningstar strides over to that desk and casts _thought capture_.

She recognizes Praska's mental voice:  _Crap.  Crap crap crap crap!  How did they find me?_

Interesting.  So they had taken her by surprise.  She casts a second time.

_I bet that stupid halfling is going to... wait... dammit!  Stop thinking!_

Morningstar can't help but chuckle.  And it makes sense, since Praska clearly knows and expects that Morningstar can cast thought-scooping divinations.

She casts a third time, and gets a follow-on thought to the first one.  _...find me?  Crap._  Then there's a pause.  _Son of a... the stupid cauldron!  It must have been the cauldron that they found!_

Considering that Praska might _also_ be able to cast _thought capture_, Morningstar thinks very deliberately:  _Yes, Praska.  It *was* the stupid cauldron._

Dranko issues the following _sending_ to Tomnic via Ernie:  *From Dranko: Praska is confirmed powerful Black Circle.  Recommend that powerful, trusted priests apprehend and strip all her friends, including Marigold.  Use vast caution, speed.*

Tomnic replies:  *Thank you.  I will take that under advisement.  Do you know where she is now?*

Since Ernie only had the one _sending_, Morningstar casts the next one as Dranko dictates: _*Licking her wounds.  In Kivia?  Not sure.  All divinations are suspect.  She's as powerful as Morningstar, and you know what that means.  Dranko.*_  Feeling a need to convey some humility, but with only two words remaining, Morningstar appends:  *Huh?  Morningstar.*

Tomnic's answer:  *Morningstar, we know how powerful you are.  You have a reputation.  We will set to work on Praska, and double-check everyone inside the temple.*

While _sendings_ are being composed and delivered, Flicker has been sitting and thinking hard.  

“Which one of us do you think is the stupid halfling?” he asks out loud, but mostly to himself.   While Ernie stammers modestly, Flicker thinks some more before standing in a hurry.  “Ooooh!”

He starts investigating the perimeter of the room, carefully tapping on the walls and running deft fingers along the stone.   While the others look on he does a completely thorough search of the space, and just when they think it's probably a fool's errand, he crawls under one of the tables.  The rest of the Company hears a clear “click!”, and a small piece of stone swings inward to reveal a small cubbyhole filled with parchment.

“Ha!” they hear the halfling shout.  “See?  She was afraid I'd do that.  Who's stupid now, Praska!”

The many pages of parchment are covered with scrawl, and Flicker stows them safely in his pack.  He spends another few minutes completing his search but there's nothing else of note, and specifically no sign of the Cauldron.

With Kibi (and his ongoing _locate object_) navigating, Flicker continues to take point on the exploration.  There's a small complex of rooms and short hallways, and in one of these they find a table with various containers upon it:  a lead bottle with a stopper; a small metal tub with a hinged lid; and three wooden boxes.  Flicker checks them for traps, while others check for magic and evil.  All tests are negative, so Flicker opens each one.

The bottle contains a thick liquid with an eye-watering vapor rising off of it.  The alchemists in the group guess that it's contact poison, probably potent.  Flicker hastily puts  back the stopper.  The metal tub is half-filled with mercury.

The first of the wooden boxes contains a handful of emeralds – their particular shade of deep green is highly reminiscent of the Null Shadows recently encountered.   The second box contains about thirty carefully chiseled flakes from various types of gemstones:  emerald, sapphire, topaz, even some diamond flakes.  Flicker guesses that the flakes alone could fetch twenty-five thousand gold pieces if he worked the market.

The third box contains finger bones.  Ew.

Another room en route to the cauldron is small and empty, but with a large black circle inlaid into the floor.  It glows faintly of teleportation magic.   Aravis casts _arcane lock_ on the door, in case something teleports in while they're searching.

Finally they find the room with the cauldron – a 20 x 20 square chamber nearly identical to the room in which the cauldron resided back at the Cosnor estate.  The room itself is full of shifting shadows, and indeed is partially _in_ the Plane of Shadow.  The Null Shadow Cauldron, source of so much suffering, sits in the center. There are no Null Shadows to be seen, but the taint of them is palpable.  

Morningstar is prepared for this:  she casts her second prepared _shadowblast_ into the room, and the shadows ripple and vanish.  The Cauldron itself still squats there like a black iron toad.  The tang of Null Shadows has been diminished but not eliminated; they can see a shimmering “lid” of sorts still across the opening of the cauldron.   The thing is still a gateway to Shadow, but Morningstar's spell has, for the moment, sealed it off.

After some quick debate as to the best way to be rid of the thing, they decide to try the simple and direct method first.  Aravis casts _greater dispelling_ on the cauldron, and it seems to work:  at least it no longer detects as magic to Ernie.

Then, with the rest of the party backing out of the room in case of emergency, Aravis pegs it with a _disintegrate_ while its magic is suppressed.  

Fwoosh.  Just like that the Null Shadow Cauldron is reduced to metal filings.  

“Can we do a _sending_ to Praska?” asks Ernie.  “I want it to say:  *“Destroyed your cauldron.  Neener neener neener.”*

Aravis suggests:  “*You don't have to worry about us finding you through the cauldron any more.*”

They spend another hour clearing out the rest of the place.  There's nothing as interesting as what they've already found, though they do find Praska's bedroom and procure a few strands of hair from her pillow along with her spare Black Circle robe.  There's also a standard Black Circle Ritual Chamber(tm), with the expected inlaid circles and mathematical equations written on the walls.

Finally, in another mostly-intact building that centuries ago was a large inn, they find signs that it was more recently inhabited by somewhere between 25 and 50 people.  They appear to have all left a couple of years earlier.  Morningstar goes to the biggest of the rooms and casts a final _thought capture_.

_I'm sure not going to miss this place.  I hear our new headquarters is in a mansion in Kallor._

Ha!

So, with the Cauldron taken care of, the Company agrees on their next priority:  find Praska.

...to be continued...


----------



## Atanatotatos

Very, very interesting. Also these shorter, more frequent updates are a reliever!


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> Hey, while I'm here:  another smallish update.  For the record, the Story Hour has now fallen about 30 runs and 2.5 years behind the actual game, which is still going but kind of entering the home stretch.
> 
> By which I mean we may only have 2-3 years left before it all ends.




It's quite amazing to think of how long I've been following this continually evolving campaign on Enworld (almost five years), created and played by people I've never met.  I don't play Dungeons and Dragons anymore, but I'm sure I'll always be flipping back to Enworld every week or two for the sojurns of Abernathy's Company through to... what... 2012?


----------



## Innocent Bystander

I'm sure the party is beyond happy that the cauldren is gone...or is it?  Awesome update Sagiro, and any update, even a smallish one, is a welcome update.


----------



## Aravis

Innocent Bystander said:


> I'm sure the party is beyond happy that the cauldren is gone...or is it?  Awesome update Sagiro, and any update, even a smallish one, is a welcome update.




Yes, yes we are.  Although that is tempered by the knowledge that there is another one still out there somewhere.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Aravis said:


> Yes, yes we are.  Although that is tempered by the knowledge that there is another one still out there somewhere.




Like any powerful artifact/device, if one is good, two must be better.  With 'good' and 'better' being relative terms of course.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 295*_
*Not On The First Try*

The Company _teleports_ back to the Greenhouse.   With Posada's Boundary dissolved and the Uncrossable Sea not so uncrossable, teleportation magic makes the world a much smaller place.  They have noticed an odd phenomenon, though:  when they go from Kivia to Charagan, time seems to shift.  The sun moves eastward in the sky, and it seems to be several hours earlier.  When they blip the other way – from west to east – it gets later.

For a couple of hours the wizards pore over the papers found in Praska's underground hideout.   There's much that is useful, interesting, and disturbing, but the most relevant information falls into four different categories:

1. Praska's desire for the Null Shadow Cauldron was driven (ironically) by a desire not to be discovered. Specifically she sensed that the Diviners' Guild of Hae Charagan was on the verge of finding her out, and was planning on sending Null Shadows to eradicate them.  (The Company had enlisted the Guild some years back to scry Mokad, after the Black Circle had kidnapped Praska. The diviner who they retained, a fellow named Ragmir, had been assaulted _back through his scrying spell_, an occurrence so shocking that he dropped the assignment and claimed never to want to see the Company again.)  Ever since that day, the Diviners had been attempting to discover the identity and whereabouts of the Black Circle presence in the city.

Praska was convinced that the Guild was about to discover her hiding place, “despite my countermeasures.”  There are some brief notes outlining her plan to steal the Cauldron from the Cosnor estate in Kallor: what spells and scrolls she'd use, the best time to strike, etc.

2. There is a leather-bound book containing  full operating instructions for the installation and use of the Null Shadow Cauldron, along with the rituals required for preparing a “Shadow Chamber.” There are several kinds of Null Shadows that one can call forth from the Cauldron -- what you get depends on what material components you throw in while performing the rituals.   There are seven different kinds of Null Shadows, all of which are immune to magic, but which have different abilities and powers.   Ones made with emerald chips (as they discovered) can drain constitution.  Topaz chips generate disease-causing Null Shadows.   The sapphire flakes would produce Null Shadows with limited spell-casting powers.

There are occasional references here to "the other two Cauldrons."

3. There are numerous outlines of ideas for how the heck one might rescue Emperor Naradawk from the prison-Prime of Volpos.  Along with each one is an admission to the effect of "that'll never work." Praska seems to think that Mokad's plot to align Volpos and Abernia was their best shot, and now it's pretty hopeless. She also writes that "There may be other ways in the main library, but that's locked up in the Spire's impregnable bakery in Tal Hae." (On this last topic, she also refers to "... the numerous times we've tried and failed to get inside.")

4. She writes that "the collaboration with the others is going poorly." She goes on to bemoan the lack of cooperation from these others: "they only turn on the circle once a month, they act unnecessarily mysterious, and they tell me nothing." In particular, she refers to "that thing that leads them."

The Company ruminates over this new intelligence.  Most disturbing is the fact that there are still two more Null Shadow Cauldrons in existence, though it doesn't seem like Praska has access to them.    But the party is gobsmacked at the reminder that they have the Black Circle's “main library” squirreled away in the Greenhouse.   Aravis thinks for a minute that might simply be a reference to the Evil Black Book they have locked in a trunk, but Kibi remembers that after defeating and killing Mokad, they ransacked a whole room full of papers, books and scrolls from the Cosnor estate.  Those were stuffed into a closet and forgotten, but surely a thorough reading of those materials should be a near-term priority!

It's news (though not surprising) to the Company that the Black Circle has been trying to force their way into the Greenhouse, and they all thank Abernathy for his potent warding abilities.  (It has been heretofore impossible for anyone to enter the Greenhouse uninvited.)  Dranko wonders if their house-keys are a potential liability.

But... finding Praska is still the highest-priority item on the agenda.  Morningstar casts _find the path_ to “the location where Praska fled using her _word of recall_. " The spell points her due east – just as her earlier _circle dances_ had done.  Aravis _scries_ Praska, expecting her to be shielded, and is shocked to see her clear as day through the scry sensor.    She is sitting on a bench, surrounded by a green lawn – maybe in a park? – and reading a book.  She looks neither injured nor perturbed.  The party doesn't trust the image one bit.

Aravis casts _detect magic_ through the sensor, and there is some magic on her in small amounts – conjuration, divination and enchantment.

The party makes its plans – to teleport around while the _find the path_ is still up, in order to triangulate on Praska's position.  Aravis is well-stocked with _teleport_ spells, so off they go, first to grounds of the Golden Goblet in Djaw.  They arrive behind a hedge in the expansive back yard where they hope to go unnoticed.  As expected it's six hours later than it was when they left – getting on towards evening.   The _find the path_ is now pointing southwest instead of east.  They consult their map of Kivia, seeing what's in that direction.  The most likely target now is the coastal city of Kai Kin.  

A gardener comes around the hedge, sees the seven of them standing there, and drops his spade.   But he quickly recognizes them – they're the incredibly rich guests who were assaulted here not long ago, the ones Balthazar said should be showed respect and deference no matter what they do or say.   The gardener bows low, picks up his shovel, and asks if there's anything he can do to make their stay behind the hedge more pleasant.  The party politely declines.  

Their next teleport-stop is the abandoned and ruined golem-city of Repose, one of the stops they had made while questing for the Crosser's Maze.  It's exactly as they remember; a dry wind blows through, stirring up the untraveled dust.  Not much of a tourist destination, Repose.  A golem trundles up dragging the disintegrating remains of a cart behind it, and silently awaits further orders.  

Now the _find the path_ is pointing north-east – directly back to Djaw!

“If she's in the southwest corner of Djaw, we're going to be really embarrassed,” Dranko mutters.

Aravis is out of _greater teleports_, but he still has two more of the normal variety.  He casts again, intending to bring them just outside the northern wall of Djaw.  But, as any wizard will tell you, teleporting is an inexact science, and mishaps are an inevitability if you make enough trips.

There is pain, and the awful experience of being more or less mashed together.    Someone's arm is sticking straight out of Grey Wolf's chest, and Morningstar's left leg seems to end in three different feet.  But a moment later they become untangled, the pain subsides, and they are outside the towering wall of...

“That's not Djaw,” Grey Wolf says, pointing up.

The flags flying on the city walls clearly display the symbol of the God Nifi, and there are numerous Delfirian guards patrolling the top.   One of them sees a group of armed intruders down below and yells.  

“Halt!  Put down your weap...”

But Aravis is already casting again, and this time there are no screw-ups.  The wall of the Delfirian metropolis of Firebrand is replaced with the very similar wall of Djaw.

“I feel like someone reached into my stomach and swirled their fist around,” Dranko says.

“I feel like... ooooooh,” Ernie looks distinctly green.

“Hey, does this mean Ernie's no longer a virgin?” Dranko asks, grinning.  “Because I think my....”

“Oooookay!” Aravis says, desperately wanting Dranko not to finish that sentence.

The _find the path_ is in fact pointing back into Djaw, and there's some group head-slapping at their unnecessary detours.  Once inside the city walls they _wind walk_, and less than a minute later they are descending onto one of the manicured green lawns stretching between buildings in a large campus of church buildings.  They land next to a park bench, which Morningstar's spell indicates is where Praska went after casting _word of recall_.  It's also the bench upon which Praska was sitting (according to Aravis's _scry_) less than ten minutes earlier. 

There's no sign of Praska.

A priest, comfortable in a white silk robe with gold trim, walks calmly toward them.  He had watched the party wafting down from above and then turning solid with great curiosity.

“Welcome,” he says pleasantly.  “Are you in need of assistance?  Are you wounded?”

“Where are we?” Flicker asks.

“You are at the Temple of Heros, Goddess of mercy and healing,” the priest says, bowing.

“Hey!” Dranko exclaims.  “I'm from the Church of Delioch, God of healing, from beyond the Uncrossable Sea!”

“Yes,” says the priest, smiling.  “We just learned about that three days ago.”

“From a young lady?” Dranko asks, trying to sound unconcerned.

“No.  From Father Stone.”

Dranko snorts.  “Is he related to Brother Tree?”

Aravis describes Praska in some detail, and the priest listens intently, but he's never seen her before.

“It's an honor to meet you,” Dranko tells him, “but we can't stay.  One of our priestesses has turned evil, and we kind of thought we... um, well, it's a long story.”

The priest regards him curiously.   Dranko has an idea and changes his approach.  

“Say, actually, while I'm here, can you show me around the grounds?  I guess I should learn as much as I can about the Kivian God of Healing, after all.”

The priest is happy to oblige.  The grounds are extensive, as Heros is one of the more popular deities in the Kivian Pantheon.   While he gives Dranko the tour, the others cast _detect magic_ on the bench.  There is the faint glow of a _hallow_ all around them but no specific magics on the bench itself.  A _thought capture_ from Morningstar reveals no interesting thoughts.

They fire off a final _sending_ to Tomnic back in Hae Charagan, letting him know of their progress, and  that divinations on Praska are almost certainly to be invalid.  Tomnic replies that he's not surprised, but it's good to have that confirmed.  Also, that Marigold has been detained in her room under heavy guard.


* *


They spring for a night at the Golden Goblet – no great hardship, especially considering they still get a discounted rate.  It's beautiful and luxurious and with not an assassin in sight.  The service is exceptional.

The staff does look oddly at Kibi, as though they're waiting for him to do something unusual.   “Can we get you anything,” one servant asks him slowly, as though talking to a child.

“No,” Kibi says, discomfited.  “And I can understand you quite well, thank you.”

The servant smiles indulgently and excuses himself.   Kibi glares at Dranko, who can't stop himself from smiling.

“Well,” Dranko says, “you see, when you made my _gloves of dexterity_ cause my finger to get stuck in my nose...”

“Only if you were *picking* your nose!” Kibi interjects.

“Yeah,” Dranko says.  “So, later, I made myself look like you, and 'activated' the gloves again.  And I may have given the impression that you lacked any sense of personal hygiene...”


* * 

From the foolish to the extraordinary:  that night, Kibi dreams, and in his restless slumber the world itself speaks to him. *Kibilhathur Bimson, child of Gela, child of Cranchus.  You are still the Opener.  The splinter has encased itself, I and it crying out together.   It must be you who cracks its shell.   Bless it with its lover’s kiss, the watcher’s hour come, and together we will cleanse Abernia.*

...to be continued...


----------



## EroGaki

Never a dull moment for Team Abernathy.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Has the party gotten to powerful to do the little things in life, like go for a walk? 

I guess the teleportation side trek was the 2% mishap roll?


----------



## Aravis

Innocent Bystander said:


> Has the party gotten to powerful to do the little things in life, like go for a walk?
> 
> I guess the teleportation side trek was the 2% mishap roll?




Why not at all.  Just last night Dranko went water skiing...  Of course, he did it by tieing a rope into a Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion that was hanging a few feet off the stormy ocean and activating an item that gives him water walking...

-Aravis


----------



## Piratecat

Cerebral Paladin said:


> I don't follow the reasoning in concluding that it definitely was Praska who set the trap for them.  I understand why those answers would be consistent with a set of divination shielding effects used to conceal Praska's role in this.  But I don't follow why it couldn't be the case that somebody is using great power to make it appear that Praska was responsible.



It struck me as an emotional truth, rather than necessarily a _true_ truth. Dranko is generally convinced that life is an uphill slog through deep mud only made easier by good friends and boatloads of cash. If something particularly bad and personal can happen, it will. When the possibility of his best childhood friend Praska being behind this (purely a shot in the dark that I think surprised Sagiro) occurred to him, he immediately concluded that it was true because he couldn't think of a crappier alternative.

Like Greywolf, Dranko is a pessimist, but he views that as a personal challenge.

And Aravis is right about the little things in life! We were doing something ridiculous last night - teleporting our _folding boat_ into the middle of a ocean storm and casting _Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion_ so that we could dreamwalk to find an island that we learned about from a dead Goddess, en route to almost making a horrible mistake, and that was the simple part of the plan - and Morningstar says wryly, "Does it seem to anyone that our life has gotten a little bit weird?"


----------



## Everett

How far back in the Story Hour does Praska first appear?


----------



## Piratecat

Everett said:


> How far back in the Story Hour does Praska first appear?



Right at the beginning; she's almost certainly referred to in the first or second game. As pretty much the only actual friend he had prior to meeting the Company, she was key to Dranko's backstory.


----------



## StevenAC

Piratecat said:


> Right at the beginning; she's almost certainly referred to in the first or second game. As pretty much the only actual friend he had prior to meeting the Company, she was key to Dranko's backstory.



Praska was first mentioned in session #5 -- thirteen and a half years ago!


----------



## Everett

StevenAC said:


> Praska was first mentioned in session #5 -- thirteen and a half years ago!




Wow.

1996.

Golly.


----------



## Piratecat

Incidentally, Dranko's got about a 50% record on his clever epiphanies. He got it exactly right when he realized that the Company was ("void in the glass, I return to thee") trapped within a bottle, and he nailed it when he guessed Praska out of the blue. On the other hand, he was completely and utterly wrong when he guessed that the evil archmage Parthol Runecarver and the dwarven archmage (Kibi's grandfather) were one and the same. 

He has concluded that the reason Praska has turned to the Black Circle is extreme jealousy that Dranko married Morningstar instead of staying close to Praska. Bitter jealousy pushed her over the edge.

He couldn't be more mistaken -- and man, is he full of himself.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 296*_
*Why You Should Clean Your Basement*

Ernie pops a sweet fig into his mouth.   “Oh good,” he says between chews.  “A new delivery of proper nouns.  We haven't had one of those in a while.”

They debate the meaning of Kibi's dream over brunch.  “The Watcher” is a term oft used for the mysterious Goddess Uthol Inga, little worshiped in Charagan.   The myths surrounding Uthol Inga and Her role in the escape of the Travelers from the great Adversary are contradictory.  Her proponents maintain that Her liaison with the Adversary was a ruse, that She played the part of the Adversary's consort merely to learn his designs and gain his trust.   When the Travelers fled, She delayed the Adversary long enough for the others to successfully imprison the Dark God.  

Her detractors, most notably the Church of Werthis, claim that She truly was allied with the Adversary, and only fled with the others Travelers when Her lover turned on Her and tried to destroy Her.

Beyond that, the Company has no further insights in the dream.   Kibi finds the notion that he'll need to provide a  “lover's kiss” somewhat embarrassing.


* *


It stands to reason that if Praska feared imminent discovery by the Diviners' Guild of Hae Charagan, said Guild would be a good place for the Company to go next in their search for her.  After their meal Aravis _teleports_ the group back across the Now Easily Crossable Sea.   Because of the time difference it's early morning when they arrive; the gate to the Guild mansion is closed and locked.  There's no one on guard.   The party stands restlessly outside on the street for a couple of minutes, unsure of how to proceed.

“You're diviners!” Dranko grumbles.  “Shouldn't you know that someone's here?”

Grey Wolf scratches his chin.  “Maybe they know it's us specifically, and that's _why_ there's no one out to meet us.”

Ernie nods.  “The one guy we talked to _did_ tell us he never wanted to see us again...”

Flicker examines the gate at Dranko's prodding .  It's clearly trapped with some kind of incendiary spell. 

At Dranko's further provocation, Flicker pops the lock, bypassing the trap.  When Aravis takes him to task, Flicker protests.  “But I was only doing what Dranko told me.  And he's my boss!”  In a stage whisper he adds, “He's the Oracle!”

“When you're on his business, fine,” Aravis admonishes.  “But we're part of a different organization, and you should do what we _all_ decide is best.”

“Want me to lock it back up again, then?” Flicker sulks.

Morningstar casts a _sending_ to Ragmir, the diviner with whom they previously did business.  *It's Morningstar, Dranko, Ernie and company.  We had a recent run-in with Praska and the Black Circle.  Would you be willing to talk?  We're outside.*

The groggy reply:  _*Mmm?  Huh?  What?  Oh, Morningstar.  [Yawn]  Yes, I remember you.  You're outside?  I'll be right out to let you in.*_

“Flicker, lock the door again,” Dranko says quietly.

Three minutes later a disheveled man in pajamas comes walking down the front path.  He's tall and portly, hair a shock of black curls.  Ragmir stops at the gate and looks askance at the lock.

Dranko quickly explains.  “The... er... the trap on your door is no longer active.”

“How do you know that?” Ragmir asks, eyes narrowing.

“We disarmed it,” Dranko admits.  “It was... um... it was dark, and we were worried about you!  But then Morningstar got a hold of you, and you sounded okay, so we figured we'd just wait out here.  And anyway, we thought someone as skilled as you would know to expect us!”

Ragmir opens the gate.  “Your name is Dranko, right?  Well, let me tell you something that I'm surprised you don't know already.  We are about a dozen diviners of significant skill.  We do spend our time researching divinatory spells, and much of what we do is get paid to divine things our clients wish to know about.  But we do _not_ know every single thing that is likely to happen, going to happen, or will happen, even here on the grounds.  I don't know what you had for breakfast, and I don't know what you're going to have for breakfast tomorrow, and frankly I don't care.”

“Then what good is being a diviner?” Dranko asks.

“When we _want_ to know something, we have an excellent chance of learning it.”  Ragmir looks like he's had to give this kind of speech before, but to children.  “But it doesn't mean we just _know_ things.”

Dranko harrumphs.  “I feel cheated.”

“Dranko,” Aravis says, “We're about to ask these people for help.  Preemptively asking them what good they are seems a bit counterproductive, don't you think?”

Ragmir clears his throat.  “Now, you said something about someone... Praska, of the Black Circle?  Why don't you come in.”

Dranko makes small talk as they head down the front walk to the Guild house.  “Yeah.  She was getting ready to assassinate some of you.  Because you were getting really close to finding her out.”

Ragmir nods, keeping up a calm front though some alarm shows in his eyes.  “There is _someone_, we know, that has been keeping up Black Circle activities in the city.”

“That's her,” Dranko confirms.

“It's a 'her' then?  That's good to know.”

“We also have some of her hair,” Dranko adds.  “And we nearly got _her_, but she got away.”

“Hair? Even better!”  Ragmir obviously finds this significant, and it's odd to hear his voice so upbeat as he adds:  “And she was going to attempt murder on us?”

“Yeah,” says Dranko, as they step into the foyer.   “But we destroyed the thing she was going to use as the murder weapon.”

“Thank you!” exclaims Ragmir.

Ernie then provides a full description of Null Shadows, leaving out no gory detail.  Ragmir listens intently.

Aravis glances at the steep spiral staircase leading to the upper floors of the mansion.  “It might be in your best interest, if you happen to come across one of the other Cauldrons, that you prepare non-magical defenses.”  

“Big brutish bodyguards with mundane weapons,” Ernie suggests.

“Anyway,” Dranko says, “she was awfully worried that you were getting close to discovering where she was.”

“She should have been.  And we _are_ getting close.”

“When _we_ try to divine her, our spells all get redirected,” Dranko explains.  He tells Ragmir about the park bench in Djaw.

Ragmir nods again.  “We've seen that bench through some of our spells, though there was no sign of this Praska.  I'll tell you what we _have_ learned –  mostly one very important fact.  We know what's protecting her from divinations.  It's something called a Tome of Deceit.  And _that_ is what we're getting close to finding.  Find the Tome, and I'll bet you can find Praska.  I would have said we were two or three weeks away from tracking it down, but if you have hair, and a likeness, we might be able to narrow that to days.”

Ernie laughs.  “Sir, I would like to give you lots of money to continue that work.”

“Belinda has been responsible for most of the progress on this case,” Ragmir says.  “She is our most powerful diviner, and leader of the Guild.”

“I suggest we bodyguard her until this is finished,” Dranko says.  “Though... you don't still want us never to come back, do you?”

“No, no,” Ragmir answers with a laugh.  “I'm sorry about that.  It was heat of the moment.  I had never been assaulted back through a divination spell before.  Since then we have made a study of the Black Circle.  I doubt we know much more than you, but they are a cult of necromancy and divination; the Emperor, who nearly made egress at Verdshane, was a worshiper of it.  Suffice to say it is a religion of foul folk who are up to no good.  We didn't want them practicing their cult in this city, _and_ we have had missives from high up in the nobility, that it would be a good use of our time and money to suss them out.  We have been trying for almost a year and half.  It is boggling, the layers of protection they have.  They are divinatory masters themselves.  It has taken every ounce of our effort and knowledge to make any headway.  We've lost two members questing for rare reagents to power our spells.  But, we are close.  We are very close to finding the remaining superior of the Black Circle, operating here in the city.”

Dranko frowns.  “How the heck did she end up being in charge?  Praska's just a kid.”

“She applied herself?” Aravis deadpans.

“And we killed everyone else?” Grey Wolf adds.

Morningstar chuckles.  “We did puree a whole bunch of them down in that basement.”

Their talk turns to Kivia.  The party explains that  across the sea, the Black Circle is mainstream and not considered evil.  In fact, people of all religions give them life energy in exchange for knowledge.

Ragmir raises his eyebrows in disbelief.  “I don't know anyone who would be stupid enough to do that!”

“You do now,” Flicker says sheepishly.

“Over there it is a common thing to do,” Aravis explains.  

“They should stop!” Ragmir says, shaking his head.  “ Can you imagine any good thing that the Black Circle might be doing with a huge store of 'life energy?'”

“We think they were using it to bring the planes into alignment,” Ernie says.  “Which is ironic, when you think about how that ended.  They lost a whole lot of life energy in Kallor.”

“Excuse me for changing the subject,” Kibi says, thinking of his recent dream.  “Do you know anything about a splinter in Abernia?  I dreamed that Abernia was in pain.”

“You mean the world?” Ragmir asks, confused.  “I wasn't aware it had emotions, so no, I don't know about that.”

“Abernia speaks to Kibi sometimes,” Dranko explains with a grin.

“Odd,” Ragmir says.  “But then you are a dwarven wizard, which shouldn't be possible in the first place.”

“I'm not the only one, you know,” Kibi says.

Ragmir smiles.  “If you're referring to Cranchus, our divinations indicate that he is a myth.  There is no such person.”

Kibi opens his mouth, but closes it again without answering.  It would take too long to explain everything.  Best to keep the diviners focused.   Ragmir for his part has become lost in thought and doesn't notice Kibi's expression.

“So,” says the diviner brightly.  “Hair?”


* *

The Company sits with Ragmir and two of his fellow diviners and shares everything they know about the Black Circle.  Morningstar warns them ahead of time that some of this knowledge might be dangerous for them to have, but Ragmir is undaunted.

“Yes, I'm aware of that,” he says gravely.  “We deal in knowledge, day and night, night and day.  Not all of it is safe to know.  Sometimes we learn things that powerful forces would not wish us to have.  But that's our job.”

The full dissertation is a lengthy one, as they leave out no detail from their sojourn in Het Branoi.  When Aravis opines that the ultimate purpose of Het Branoi was to open a Gate to the location of the Adversary, Ragmir takes a sharp breath and holds up his hand.

“You mean the monstrous evil God from whom it is said that all the other Gods fled?  And you think the Black Circle is the Adversary?”

“No,” Aravis clarifies.  “But those who call themselves Black Circle seem to worship Him.”

Talk turns also to the Sharshun.  Ragmir is aware of the Masking, and that many people cannot keep the name “Sharshun” in their heads.  He himself can, and knows to be cautious.

“The Sharshun also worship the Black Circle,” Dranko says,  “but they don't work well with Praska.  Their leader is 'Darkeye,' who is crazy stupid powerful, and may be some kind of monster.”

Ragmir nods.  “Yes.  And their base of operations is somewhere in or around the Greatwood, though it's heavily warded and we've never even been able to pinpoint its location, let alone learn anything about it.”

As the discussion comes to an end, and Ragmir announces that there's no time like the present to get started on a new divination ritual to find Praska, Dranko makes an offer.

“I said this before, and I wasn't joking.  If you're all going to be tied up chanting and casting and stuff,  I'd like to offer my services as a bodyguard.”

“How much do you charge?” Ragmir asks.

“We charge that you find Praska,” Dranko answers.  “And that you give me a scroll of _sending_ while I guard Belinda, so that I can quickly summon the others in an emergency.”

Flicker agrees to stay with Dranko at the guild house, while the others _teleport_ back to the Greenhouse.  Ernie makes a report of all their recent findings to Ozilinsh via the crystal ball.  Of special concern is the discovery that Thewana (Abernathy's former apprentice, who was later sent to work with the Archmage Grawly) was not only still alive, but working with the Delfirian military (and Tor) while calling herself 'Davarian.'

Ozilinsh is quick to put the pieces together.  Back when Abernathy and Thewana drained the Delfirian throne, Tor's ancestor Davarian Firemount must have transferred his consciousness into Thewana's mind.  Eventually he took over the body, killed Grawly, and fled to Delfir.   Ozilinsh's best guess is that Thewana is effectively dead, and that Davarian is likely the only mind in Thewana's old body.   

Dealing with Tor and Thewana is still very much an item on the Company's “to do” list.


* *


Before long the floor of the Greenhouse basement is strewn with clutter.  The wizards have been excavating the closets, piling up workbenches, alembics, test-tube racks and other accumulated oddments as they look for the papers pilfered so many months ago from the Black Circle's HQ in Kallor.  Left alone for the nonce are three closets in the far back corner – the ones that contain various evil objects picked up on their adventures.  When Grey Wolf strays close to one in particular, he can feel palpable Evil radiating through the door.  The Book, wrapped in a blanket and locked away in a thick trunk, is emanating a muffled malice.

After an hour of excavation, Kibi finds what they've been searching for – a locked chest filled with books and scrolls.  He hauls it over to a large table that Dranko uses when enchanting armor.

“I can't believe I forgot about this,” the dwarf mutters.   He, Aravis and Grey Wolf start to spread the small library out on the table.  When they've taken full stock, they realize it could take weeks to carefully read every page.  (Especially true since the writing is in an unknown language of unknown characters, and slightly magical on top of that.  With both _comprehend languages_ and _read magic_ active, the mages still have to read slowly and carefully to figure out what they're looking at.)

But, there's no need to spend weeks.  Several hours should get them a basic skim of the material, and from there they can home in on topics of particular interest.   Morningstar offers to help keep things organized.  They set to work.


* *

Concurrent with the party wizards studying their Black Circle reading materials, the Diviners Guild of Hae Charagan is starting the long divinatory spell that will (they hope) reveal something about Praska.  Dranko and Flicker watch as Ragmir and his cohorts gather up scrolls, components and an assortment of glass jars, setting them up in a detailed pattern as directed by their leader Belinda.  Praska's hair is set in the center of a chalked circle, in a small pot of some magical bubbling goo.  The rogues watch with detached interest;  they are more worried about watching the door, and keeping an open eye for any _teleporters_ who might breach the building's defenses.


* *


One thing becomes evident at once:  about 80% of all the Black Circle papers are related to one specific subject:  the casting of the spell that was meant to merge Abernia and Volpos.   There are sheets and sheets of mathematical scribblings, and many derivations of equations used to model the synchonization of something called “planar shadow spheres.”  Some of the end-point equations match what the Company found inscribed in the Black Circle's enormous ritual room.  Other math relates to accounting for residual localized magic from “nearby operations.”  

Morningstar, around midnight, casts a _sending_ to Dranko:  *Dear Goddess, this is boring.  Thank goodness my religious practice doesn't involve a lot of math.*


* *


Back at the Diviners' Guild, all ten of the resident diviners are hours-deep into their spell.   Ragmir has told Dranko that they should be on track to have an answer the next day.  There's some speculation, that Dranko cannot help overhearing, that Belinda might not be strong enough to crack the protection on the Book of Lies, even with the lock of Praska's hair.  Worse, she could be in personal physical danger if the spell fails.  The others are confident that she'll hold up.


* *


In addition to all the math, the Black Circle archives contain copious notes for the exceedingly complex magic ritual that accompanies the equations.  This is pretty clearly the spell Mokad & Co. were engaged in when the Company so rudely interrupted them.  The wizards figure that if they were inclined to spend half a year studying this ritual, a year or so in preparations, didn't mind invoking the Black Circle, were willing to expose themselves liberally to that Evil Black Goo (called "Essence" in the literature), and felt like sacrificing Grey Wolf after all, they could probably arrange to merge Volpos and Abernia for real this time.

But of the greatest interest is this: there are books and scrolls outlining what is necessary to cast the spell of _forced resurrection._   (The Black Circle had decided that the surest way to guarantee Grey Wolf would be alive and in place when they needed him, would be to kill him ahead of time and then forcibly bring him back from the dead, in custody.)  The notes on _forced resurrection_ describe the preparation of the clear oily liquid discovered in a pit (which is mostly 'humors from slain Fiendish priests,' apparently), the necessity of having numerous objects from the subject's life (bones of the parents are specifically recommended), the requirement of 'the sacrifice of a traitor,' and of a Soul Shard created in something called a “Necromantic Forge.”  One thing is abundantly clear from the description of the spell:  the soul of the traitor is kept trapped in the Soul Shard, and is annihilated when the spell is cast.  (But, of course, the spell was NOT cast, since Grey Wolf was never killed.)

The traitor, they know, is Califax.  And Tomnic the Follower has recently concluded that Califax has no soul.   The notes on _forced resurrection_ even include a picture of a Soul Shard – a chunk of glistening, greasy black rock, about the size of a grapefruit.

Just like the one the Company took from the room where they found Califax, and which they still have in the basement.  It's right over there, in one of those back closets.

It's now three in the morning; Morningstar and the wizards have done enough reading for one night.  But Morningstar casts one more _sending_ to Dranko.  

*Um.  Dear?  We should have read this stuff sooner.  Apparently we have Califax's soul in the basement.*

...to be continued...


----------



## coyote6

That's hilarious. I love it when that happens, as both a GM and a player (albeit in a DOH-facepalm kind of way as a player). Sounds like it's definitely time to take inventory!

Did you have the _forced resurrection_ thing set up all along? I don't remember how _resurrection_ worked pre-3e, and I don't remember whether they got the Califax rock before or after the campaign changed editions.


----------



## Tamlyn

When I read "Tome of Deceipt" I immediately thought of the eeeeevvviiilll book in the basement of the Greenhouse. Wouldn't that be a kick, if they had the object blocking divinations all this time? In addition to Califax's soul!


----------



## Piratecat

Oh my goodness, we were so embarrassed. How do you tell a guy he's gone around soulless for a year because we forgot to look in a closet? _Major_ faux pas.


----------



## The Axe

Piratecat said:


> Oh my goodness, we were so embarrassed. How do you tell a guy he's gone around soulless for a year because we forgot to look in a closet? _Major_ faux pas.




...and Sagiro (the DM, not the NPC) is snickering and twirling his handlebar mustache wondering when the Company would get around to figuring it out.

Note to self: *don't* play poker with that guy...


----------



## thegreyman

All you have to do is tell Califax that it required reading to find his soul.  He'll understand; after all, no one likes to read...

Besides, I think he'll have more of a negative reaction when you tell him that his soul is currently in the form of a large greasy, bad smelling chuck of rock.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Very informative update.  Sounds like it was one of those why didn't we do this sooner moments.  It also feels like this is a bit of a calm before the storm.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Before the stuff hits the fan (show of hands if you think Belinda & Co.'s divinatory spell is going to go smoothly?), can someone remind me in a bit more detail who Mokad and Califax are? I know I could look this up in StevenAC's archive, but I'm feeling lazy. Thanks.


----------



## nakia

All caught up, after being away from ENWorld for a long time.  As always, a pleasure to read and very inspiring.


----------



## Sagiro

Joshua Randall said:


> Before the stuff hits the fan (show of hands if you think Belinda & Co.'s divinatory spell is going to go smoothly?), can someone remind me in a bit more detail who Mokad and Califax are? I know I could look this up in StevenAC's archive, but I'm feeling lazy. Thanks.




Sure.  Quick summary:  

- Mokad was once a member of the Church of Delioch (God of Healing, of whom Dranko is a cleric).  He became corrupted and recruited by the Black Circle, and was later placed in charge of rescuing Emperor Naradawk from his prison plane of Volpos.  This plan was thwarted by the Company, and Mokad was killed in the climactic battle.

- Califax is also a member of the Church of Delioch.  He was Dranko's disciplinarian for many years, and Dranko had always assumed him to be a bad guy.  And, in fact, Mokad recruited him away to the Black Circle for a short time.  But Califax never went all the way over, as it were, and with Dranko's help he turned away from the Black Circle.   Mokad later kidnapped Califax and (as it turns out) removed his soul as part of the world-merging ritual that (fortunately) was never completed.   The party rescued Califax and returned him to High Priest Tomnic, where he has been convalescing in an empty despair ever since, what with lacking a soul and all.


----------



## Duncan Haldane

*Bump!*

And a congratulations again on such a good game, Sagiro.  Been a while since I caught up (actually missed the thread change and wasn't subscribed to the new thread), but I'm glad I did.

I started reading this story when it was first being posted, so returning to read more adventures of Abernathy's company is like picking up a new novel by a favourite author.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 296*_
*Old Acquaintance*

The wizards are up early the next morning to continue their studies.   They pursue more about “Soul Shards” and learn that freeing the soul trapped therein is a dicey proposition.  The only way is to melt down the Shard in the Necromantic Forge where it was made.  That should release the soul and return it to the body of its owner.

“Maybe we have a Necromantic Forge in our basement too,” Kibi mutters.  “Has anyone checked recently?”

They continue to read.


* *

Flicker and Dranko cannot help but overhear a heated argument among some of the Diviners.  They have reached a point in their ritual where they can go two different ways, one of which is more dangerous to Belinda personally but has a greater chance of success.  Belinda herself is arguing for that riskier path.

Dranko knocks on the door.  When no one answers (or even seems to have heard), he opens the door to the ritual room and interjects:  “I recommend that you cast the spell in such a way that you don't become hideously evil, such that we have to stop you.  That's all.  As you were.”

He closes the door again.

“Is that likely?” asks one of the younger diviners.

“Of course not!” snaps Belinda.  The argument continues.


* *

Several hours later Kibi finds what they're looking for, written on one of several scrolls on necromancy.   One flaking parchment in particular outlines methods for creating undead creatures.  On the subject of “artificially” creating types of undead that would otherwise have to come about spontaneously, it says:  _“Where the Black Mountains fork, beneath the ancient wooded graves of the Bur-Kesh, there lies Nazg Hodeth that houses the Necromantic Forge.  It is here that some of the mightiest of risen dead were made in a time long past.   A Skulltower was made without abyssal bones.   Gravecrawlers were brought forth in great numbers.  And the emanating power of the Forge itself was enough to create the Walking Necropolis that now lies sleeping.   For those Necromancers who desire to call forth the most potent undead, seek the Forge in Nazg Hodeth.”_

“Walking Necropolis?” Morningstar echoes dubiously.

“We're doomed,” Grey Wolf sighs.

“We are so going to that place!” exclaims Aravis.  “We have to free Califax's soul, after all.”  He leaves unspoken his desire to kill bugbears (sometimes called 'Bur-Kesh').  He doesn't talk about it much, but his own parents were killed by bugbears from the mountains, who sacked his family's estate while he was away studying.

Regardless, the Black Mountains are easily found on their maps of Charagan.  The place described is not far from the city of Sentinel at the kingdom's far western border.

Beyond the information on the Necromantic Forge, the Company finds two more pieces of notable information in the Black Circle:

First is a blurb about Null Shadows and the cauldron that created them.  

_“Gurthin’s greatest claim to fame was his forging of the Three Cauldrons:  Shadow, Smoke and Lies.  In the Great War he used the first two to produce fell soldiers to counter the Spire’s greatest heroes.  Their wizards quailed before the Null Shadows, and their priests uttered oaths at the sight of Smoldering Ghosts.   But it was the Cauldron of Lies that was his greatest achievement, for knowing lies, one discerns truth.   Of course, while lies are treacherous, the truth can be even more so.  The story is told that when Naloric stirred the Cauldron of Lies, it told him that he would be trapped forever in the Prison of Volpos.   Perhaps it would have been better for him had that been true, since he was slain by Alander soon after his escape.  Let us hope Darkeye makes better use of it.”_

The Company makes a note to move Darkeye up a few pegs on their list of enemies.

They also learn something about the boundary between Volpos (the Prime where Naradawk is imprisoned) and Abernia.  There used to a be a conspicuous weak-spot between the two, at Verdshane, but Aravis fixed it just in time.  Other theoretical weak-spots exist (though not as severe as Verdshane), and these could be forced open with a sufficient quantity of focused life energy.  According to the Black Circle's notes, it would take dozens of Black Circle mage-priests decades to gather that much life-force, and there simply aren't enough Black Circle practitioners on Charagan to do that.

Ernie gasps.  “But they _are_ doing that in Kivia!”

These new discoveries are interrupted by a _sending_ from Dranko, that Belinda and her diviners are ready to start their ritual.  The others stop stop their studies and _teleport_ to the Diviners' Guild in Hae Charagan.   Belinda announces that they have decided upon the more dangerous version of the casting – one that has a higher chance of success, but could result in insanity or death for Belinda.   She declines an offer of _false life_, not wanting any necromantic spells upon her while divining for a necromancer.  (On a similar vein, the Company is asked to leave any magic items with powerful divination or necromantic magic in a lead-lined room so as not to interfere with the ritual.)

The Diviners first go through a brief “trial run” of the key parts of the spell, where they don't actual expend the rarer components.  Confident that they have it down, they start the ritual for real.   There is an etched triangle in the stone floor, with Belinda standing at one angle as the focus.  A dozen other diviners all have their parts to play, chanting and striding and burning components and reading passages from divinatory scrolls.  

Less than a minute before the ritual's completion, a fuzzy image of a book appears above the triangle – unmarked and unremarkable, bound in black leather.  It's the Tome of Deceit, that's foiling any divinations aimed at Praska.

Belinda, sweat rolling down her face, utters the final syllable of the spell.  The book vanishes from the triangle as her eyes roll up in her head.  She falls backwards and her head cracks loudly on the stone floor.  Ernie rushes up to check her, and finds her dead as a doornail.  

“Yours,” Dranko says to Morningstar.

Morningstar nods and casts _revivify_, which can bring someone instantly back from the dead if cast quickly enough.

Belinda's eyes flutter open and she sits up groaning, while the other diviners crowd around in concern.

“Damn it,” she hisses.  “I'm not strong enough.  We need a more experienced diviner than we have here.  The ritual... it worked!  But I couldn't break through at the end.”

“Does Praska know you came that close?” Dranko asks.

“I don't think so,” Belinda answers.  “Unless the Tome itself has a consciousness.   I doubt anyone outside this room was aware of our spell.  I was not attacked – it was simply a built-in defense of the book itself.  I'm surprised it didn't kill me.”

“Er...” says Ernie.

“Your soul was on its way out,” Morningstar says.  “I put it back.”

Belinda looks at the other diviners, who shrug uncomfortably.

“She did cast _something_ on you after you... blacked out,” one of them confirms.

“Thank you for that,” says Belinda.  “You are indeed as powerful as we've heard.  But I don't suppose you know any _diviners_ of transcendent power?”

The Company talk among themselves, not sure if they do or not.  Then Kibi perks up.  “Didn't we meet a powerful diviner in Het Branoi?”

“Yeah!” Dranko exclaims.  “That guy!”

“Chiswick,” says Aravis.  

Indeed, Chiswick was a very old diviner they had met at the Eye of the Storm; he had sent the Company the Lucent Tower as thanks after Het Branoi was dissolved.   And the party wizards remember clearly that he had divination spells beyond the normal 9th-level valence.  

While Morningstar casts _heal_ on Belinda (just to be sure), Ernie _sends_ to Chiswick.

_*Chiswick, Ernie here.  Want to get back at people who made Het Branoi, and help us save the world?  Many thanks.”*_

A few seconds later he gets a response.

_*I'd like to help.  I'm too weak to travel.  My world is 'Therris.'  Plane shift key is salt.  Elgo Farm, country of Rehna.  Find path.*_

It's unclear what Chiswick will be able to do from a different plane, but they're eager to find out.   Despite the late hour they make quick preparations before casting _plane shift_ to Therris.  Instead of using _find the path_ and _wind walk_, Morningstar _sends_ again to Chiswick asking if he minds them using _scry_-and-_teleport_ instead.  

_*All right.  Give me ten minutes to lower my wards.*_

An hour later Aravis finishes casting _scry_, and sees the wizened little wizard reclining in a deck chair, next to a cleared-out space where the other chairs have clearly been pushed aside.  Aravis _teleports_ the party to that spot, and they find themselves on the deck of a large farmhouse.  It's early afternoon here, with a warm sun casting its rays across verdant fields.  The air smells of fresh apples and horse manure.  

“What a pleasure to see you in a place that isn't a bounded demi-plane,” Dranko says.

Chiswick peers at him.  “Where'd you learn that kind of fancy talk?”

Dranko points at Aravis.  “I copied him.”

It's evident that Chiswick's health has deteriorated noticeably since they saw him in Het Branoi.  He's grown extremely gaunt, his skin is a pasty white, and his limbs quiver when he shifts his weight.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Morningstar asks, voice full of concern.

Chiswick smiles wanly.  “Old age is the one malady for which there is no cure, my dear.”

“Unless you count reincarnation!” Dranko says brightly.

“I don't wish to come back,” Chiswick sighs.  “I think I've earned myself a good long retirement in some heaven or other.”

“I think you have too,” says Ernie.

The Company pulls up chairs and regales the reclining Chiswick with tales of all their recent adventures, and their attempt to locate Praska.  Chiswick listens with eyes a-twinkle; whatever the degradation of his body, his mind is still as sharp as ever.

He's especially interested in how the Company brought about the dissolution of Het Branoi.  “When Het Branoi was dismantled,” Chiswick tells them, “the Eye of the Storm ended up in its home plane.  I _plane shifted_ back here that very hour.  I was eager to get home.”

He grows silent for a moment before continuing.  “I _do_ miss not aging.  My time is nearly up.  But I've got a few weeks left, and what better way to spend them than to help you with your problems?  I'm sure I can dig up something that can be of assistance.  Could someone help me up?  My servant is off tending the horses.”

“Why don't you just use a fly spell and float around?” Dranko suggests.  “I figured gratuitous use of magic is the reason you become a wizard in the first place.”

“I try not to use magic unless I have to,” Chiswick answers.  “I find it very tiring.  It takes a lot out of a person, casting spells.  It's something you'll realize when you get to be my age.”

His shoulders have slumped as he explains, but after a moment he perks up again.  “You're trying to divine something that's heavily warded, right?  I've dealt with that sort of problem from time to time over the years.   Do you have a diviner already of reasonable skill?”

The members of the Company look at one another, and there is a round of virtual head-slapping.  Why didn't they bring Belinda with them?  Fortunately they have the spells prepared to cover up their oversight – more teleports and _plane shifts_.   Kibi, Aravis and Morningstar go back to collect Belinda.

“Like I said,” says Dranko with a grin.  “Gratuitous use of magic.”

Chiswick chuckles, a weak but earnest laugh that collapses into a coughing fit.  When he's recovered, Chiswick asks, “Did you get my presents?”

The Company gushes with thanks, specifically about the Lucent Tower which they adore.  Ernie tells Chiswick about how they used it when last confronting Shreen the Fair.

Soon enough the rest of the party returns with Belinda, who was more than willing to meet Chiswick.  Immediately the two of them set to talking shop while the party sits nearby on the deck, basking in the warm afternoon.   The diviners' discussion is interrupted only by another of Chiswick's coughing fits, after which his personal servant shoos everyone away for a couple of hours while she takes the old wizard upstairs to his bed.  When he recovers he sends a servant down to fetch Belinda while another farmhand prepares a hearty lunch for the Company.  They talk among themselves, enjoying the beautiful weather and rare opportunity for relaxation.

Sometime in the early evening Belinda comes down from the farmhouse's upper floor, where she has been deep in private conversation with the old diviner.   She's wearing an enormous and gaudy pendant on a gold chain.

“Taught you all about bad fashion sense, did he?” asks Dranko

“Yes,” says Belinda, fingering the pendant.  “And he _also_ gave me this, with which I'll tear through the Black Circle defenses like wet paper – to use Chiswick's exact phrasing.”

“What does it do?” asks Dranko.

Belinda takes a deep breath.  “I need to activate it with some lower level divination spells, but it is specifically made to break through divinatory abjurations.  It can only be used once.  Chiswick said he made it many years ago for some specific need that it turned out was unnecessary.  It's been in his attic unused since then.  He says I'm powerful enough to make use of it, which is kind of humbling.  I wish I had another year with him.  He's going to send me as many of his notes as he can collect before he passes on.  I think I used up a lot of his remaining strength just talking to him.

“Given that we've gone through the ritual once already, and that everything is set up, it should only take an hour to recast.  And when we're done, I'll know where that stupid book is, and we will find Praska, and then we will break the Black Circle.”

...to be continued...


----------



## RangerWickett

Cool. Man, don't you ever run out of ideas? Heck, can you imagine going back to the beginning of the campaign and telling your friends and players all the details of the world you've created over the years?

You've made an excellent setting, and the players have made wonderful characters. Thanks for sharing it all.


----------



## theskyfullofdust

RangerWickett said:


> Cool. Man, don't you ever run out of ideas? Heck, can you imagine going back to the beginning of the campaign and telling your friends and players all the details of the world you've created over the years?
> 
> You've made an excellent setting, and the players have made wonderful characters. Thanks for sharing it all.




I agree. This has been my favourite story-hour from when I first read the very first session and spent weeks catching up.

I feel like I know the characters and setting better than my own games 

Thanks for sharing these tales with us all, Sagiro, they're fun to read, interesting, and inspiring.

I look forward to the next update with eager anticipation.


----------



## Sagiro

I appreciate the kind words, as always.  The story hour is still a couple of years (and about 35 runs) behind where the game is now, so there's lots still to come.  Writing this competes with a bunch of other things for my scarce time, but my intent is still, as it always has been, to chip away, one update at a time, until I've told the entire tale.  

As for the campaign itself:  I think I'm still on track to finish it up in the next couple of years.  The PC's are one good boss-fight away from reaching 20th level, they're festooned with epic and near-epic magic items, and they have only a couple of loose plot-ends to tie up before effectively triggering the end-game.  It's a strange feeling.


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 297*_
*Cloaks and Hoods*

The sun has now set over Chiswick's farm; the Company has been awake for 20 hours straight.  They set up the Lucent Tower on the old diviner's front lawn and are woken the next morning by the crowing of a rooster.

Belinda is extremely eager to get back to the Guild, and as the Company doesn't wish to wake Chiswick from sleep (even would his servants allow it), they leave him a note of thanks and _plane shift_ back to Abernia.  At the Diviners' Guild, Belinda strides through the halls, knocking on doors and shouting.  

“Up!  Wake up!  We're trying again!”

Various diviners in their pajamas appear sleepily in doorways.  It's five o'clock in the morning.

“What makes you think it's going to work this time?” asks Ragmir, rubbing sand from his eyes.  Belinda just smiles and beckons.

As the diviners file into the ritual room and start to prepare the spell, Belinda details her meeting with Chiswick, eyes flashing with anticipation.  She almost seems possessed, though without losing her innate sense of rigor.  They carefully step through a trial run – just as well, with some of the diviners still groggy at such an early hour. 

They start the ritual.  Once again, near its conclusion, the Tome of Deceit appears in the circle.  The ungainly pendant around Belinda's neck starts to glow, and sweat beads on the diviner's brow.  Her face contorts for a moment as though she's engaged in a great mental struggle; Morningstar readies another _revivify_.  But Belinda smiles suddenly, closes her eyes, and in a voice several registers lower than her own, intones:

_*The tree is hidden in the woods, disguised as a treatise on cloaks and hoods.  Follow a seamstress, a maid or tailor, discover the truth, and her words will fail her.*_

Her eyes snap open.  “Yes!” she shouts with glee.  “What did I say?  Did someone write it down?  Tell me you wrote it down!”

Then she sits heavily, her strength spent.

“From what Chiswick told me,” she says, “Praska still doesn't know we're onto her.  She may have other divinatory protections beyond this book, but this is the key – her main line of defense.”

“Thanks very much!” exclaims Kibi.  “That was well done.”


* *


The Diviners, the exhausted Belinda included, go back to bed.   The Company stays in the ritual room for a few minutes debating their next move.   They can think of three immediate courses of action at this point:  continue their current pursuit of Praska; go to the Necromantic Forge to free Califax's soul; or investigate the recent death of a member of the Great Pack.  They decide to go with what's most current – Praska.

There is swift agreement that Belinda's little rhyming riddle means the Tome of Deceit is hidden in a library.  There are two such  likely places right here in Hae Charagan – the library at the Temple of Delioch, and of course the Vault, the largest repository of written works in the Kingdom.  

“Time to look for books about cloaks and hoods!” Dranko exclaims.

“Yeah,” Aravis says wryly.  “Maybe for once in our careers it'll be that simple.”

They first try the library at the church.  Dranko and his friends are let onto the grounds without question, and they march straight to the repository which is housed in some basement rooms beneath the main courtyard.  Most of the collected works are religious in nature – there's a separate wing for holy writings and scripture – but there's a small room with a few dozen books and scrolls on a variety of topics.  There is only one book about tailoring and sewing to be found, though it's not about cloaks and hoods specifically.   Half the book concerns the creation of church robes, and the other half to the tailoring of courtly finery.

Just to be sure, Dranko makes a small tear in one page.  He gets raised eyebrows from his fellows.

“If this is a powerful tome of the Black Circle, it's probably indestructible.  Tell me I'm wrong!”

Leaving the library, Dranko seeks out the priest who does most of the odd domestic jobs around the grounds, including the mending of robes.

“Say,” he says.  “If you needed a book on cloaks and hoods, and we didn't have it here, where would you go?”

“I'd probably go to the Vault, if I could afford it,” answers the man.  “They have books on everything there.  Do you need me to make something for you?”

Dranko grins.  “I might.  I admire your work.  The clerics here are better dressed than in most of the churches I've visited.  Say, do you know if Praska ever visited the library here?”

The man frowns.  “Not sure.  Don't think so.  I don't recall that young scamp having much interest in reading.”

So... to the Vault!

En route they discuss strategy, including the possibility of sending _prying eyes_ into the library.  The thinking is that a book immune to divination might show up as a blind-spot.

“Excuse me!”  They're interrupted by a street vendor, a young man with a small cart.  “Can I interest you in one of these fine dragon souvenirs?  Only five silver pieces.”

“Souvenir of what exactly?” asks Ernie.

“Of what?” The man looks incredulous.  “From the war!  The one where our armies fought off an invasion of dragons in the Greatwood!”

He holds up a carved wooden dragon of middling quality.  It looks more like a gold-painted lizard.

“Hey,” says Dranko.  “That's the dragon we killed!”

“Can't speak to that, sir,” the young man smiles.  “But I have it on good authority that the finest heroes in the Kingdom fought off a small army of dragons.  Surely you went to one of the parades afterward?”

“I'm not sure it's worth 5 silver pieces,” says Dranko, tuning over the figurine in his hands.  “5 coppers, more likely.”

“Not likely at all!” says the young man easily.  “For five coppers I might as well keep it on my mantle.”

Aravis interrupts the haggling to hand the young man a gold piece.  “We'll take it.”

Dranko is aghast.  “Don't you know to play this game?”

The dragon-carver goggles.  “Want a second one free, then?  For your kids?”

Dranko rummages around in his _bag of holding_ and fishes out a large claw from the dragon they fought at Verdshane.  “Son, I'll tell you something.  There wasn't an army of dragons at the battle.  Just one.  But it was plenty, trust me.”

The young man nods, mightily impressed.

“Off to the library then!” says Dranko, dropping the claw back into the bag.

“To save the day?” asks the vendor.  “Is the library in trouble?”

“No,” says Dranko.  “But sometimes to do great deeds, you have to read boring books.”

“Ah.  So you're sort of a bunch of warrior poets.”


 * *


The Vault is unimpressive from the outside, but the party knows from experience that its subterranean expanse of rooms is without equal on Charagan.  Not even the Sages' Consortium in Hae Kalkas can boast such a collection of written works.

They know the drill:  you pay an entrance fee, and then an additional fee to have a “walking curator” lead you around.  No one is allowed to wander freely in the Vault.  A man at the front desk inquires as to the subject of their researches, and assigns to them a nice old lady named Jenwha to take care of them.

Weapons are left at the door, though security seems lax – most of the group manages to secret backup arms before heading into the library.   Dranko makes small talk as Jenwha leads them down a flight of stairs and into the Vault's labyrinthine interior.

“Out of curiosity, what was your profession before you joined the staff here at the Vault?”

Jenwha looks pleased to be spoken to.  “That was a long time ago,” she says in a cracking but  lively voice.      “Did you know I was a seamstress to royalty?”

The party exchanges glances; it's looking more and more like Chiswick's bauble did the trick.

“Really!” Dranko exclaims.  

“Yes, really,” Jenwha answers, taken aback by Dranko's enthusiasm.  “Would you like to hear about it?”

“We sure would,” Dranko says amiably.

So she tells them all about her time spent in the court of Duke Nigel's father, while she leads them down more stairs and past many small rooms, each containing books and scrolls on some specific subject.  They pass some labeled “livery,”  “armorsmithing” and “winemaking” before Jenwha stops beneath an archway labeled “sewing and tailoring”

“The Vault sections on crafts are not large,” she explains almost apologetically.  “If you have the subject matter narrowed down this shouldn't take long at all.  Do you have a specific book in mind, or are you just looking for general information?”

“We're looking for a treatise on cloaks and hoods, specifically,” Aravis explains.

Jenwha nods.  “We have one of those,” she says.  “It's my specialty, don't you know.  I'm not in charge of a very large section of the Vault, so I know it all pretty well.”

She walks over to a shelf that contains about a dozen books of various sizes, and pulls down one made of black leather.  Clearly printed on the spine it says _Cloaks and Hoods._  It's about the same size and shape as the book seen in the diviners' ritual.

“How long have you had that book here at the Vault?” Morningstar asks.

“Since I got my job here, and that was over a decade ago.”

“Do you recall anyone else wanting this book in the last several years?” asks Dranko.

“Yes, I do.  Last time someone wanted that book was about four months ago.  A very respectable tailor named Jonas, who comes here from time to time.  His shop is only about six blocks from here.”

“One of my old friends may also have come here looking for it recently,” Dranko says.  “A nice girl, on the short side.”

Jenwha shakes her head.  "Not that I've seen," she says.

Dranko takes the book.  It's not suspiciously heavy, or throbbing with malign magic, or unusual in any way.  He turns his back to Jenwha and surreptitiously makes a small tear in one of the pages.  It tears.

Morningstar meanwhile casts a silent, still _detect evil_ and gets no pings.

Aravis turns to Jenwha.  “Are we allowed to cast spells in here that will help us read better?”

Jenwha hesitates before answering.  “I don't see why not.”

Aravis casts _detect magic_.  As he does so another walking curator walks past their room and stops short in the hallway at the sound of casting.

“Miss Jenwha!” he exclaims.  “What are you...?”

Then he sees her clients and goes a bit red.  “Oh, sorry.  My mistake,” he mumbles before hustling away.

Jenwha looks sheepish.  “That was nothing.  You're fine.”

When Dranko presses her further, she leans in and whispers.  “Most folks aren't allowed to cast spells in here, but we make an exception for you.  Your description is unmistakable; folk of your stature are allowed a certain latitude.”

So saving the world has some perks after all!

_Cloaks and Hoods_ doesn't detect as magical, though another book does – a short, fat book describing how one might modify the _unseen servant_ spell to do complex sewing.  Dranko tears a page of that one too.

“What's the point of having a magic book if the pages tear?” Dranko complains.

“Because most people don't want to destroy books,” Grey Wolf says dryly.

Kibi casts _prying eyes_ and has them do a quick sweep of the room, but they report nothing different from what they see with their own eyes.  The dwarf takes _Cloaks and Hoods_ from Dranko and thumbs through it.  He makes three observations.

First, it's a boring book about cloaks and hoods, and how to sew them.  It has some nice drawings of patterns in the back, along with sketches of finished garments, but for the most part it's exactly what it claims to be.

Second, he finds it odd that there is no author's name written anywhere, inside or out.

Most notably, Kibi finds that there are no tears in any of the pages.   The book has mended itself.

“Dranko will be crowing about this for months,” Grey Wolf whispers, as Dranko continues to chat up Jenwha.

“Gods, we'll never hear the end of it,” Aravis agrees.

Dranko overhears, sports a huge grin, and instinctively lights up a cigar.

“Sir!” Jenwha exclaims.  “Is that necessary for your investigation?”

“No!” answers every single other member of the Company, in unison.

“I can't really say 'yes' now, can I?” Dranko grumbles.

“May I ask you to put it out?” Jenwha asks, careful to keep her tone neutral.  “We prefer not to have open flames in a room full of books.”

Morningstar casts _true seeing_ but _Cloaks and Hoods_ seems no different to her under the spell's effect.  Grey Wolf opines that it would be worth trying to _dispel_ the thing, but worries that it might have countermeasures.

“Is there any way we can just borrow this book for a while?” Kibi asks Jenwha.

“Especially if it's a horribly evil book?” Dranko adds.

“For you, we can make an exception to Vault policy,” says Jenwha.  “Do you have a discreet way of removing it from the premises?  And how soon might we expect its return?”

“Probably no more than a week,” Aravis answers.  “Assuming we don't need to destroy it for the good of the kingdom.”

Morningstar adds a request.  “If anyone else inquires about this book, can you let us know?” 

“Of course,” Jenwha answers.

“Thanks,” Dranko says jovially.  “You've been extremely helpful.  Can we offer you any additional.. compensation?”

The old curator peers at him.  “You did save Charagan, didn't you?  No further payment will be required.  Good luck with any additional tailoring you need to do.”

Dranko slips a few gold pieces into her pocket anyway.


* *

Back on the streets of Hae Charagan, Morningstar sighs.

“We have another artifact.  Yay.”

“Let's lock it in a trunk in our basement,” Flicker says.

“And forget about it,” Morningstar adds.

They cast _locate object_ to see what happens when they try to find the _original_ copy of _Cloaks and Hoods_, and find to their surprise that it indicates their recent check-out.  When Dranko jogs away to get the book out of the spell's range, it detects nothing at all.

“You know who can probably help us crack this thing?”  Dranko says.  “A bunch of really powerful diviners.”

Back at the Guild, Aravis hands the Tome of Deceit to Belinda.  She thumbs through it, frowning.  

“You're sure this is it?”

“Watch this,” Kibi says, reaching out to tear a page of the book.

“Now casts _detect magic_,” Aravis prompts.  Belinda does so.

“Nothing,” she reports.

“Now find your tear,” Dranko says.  Belinda cannot.

“Who would make a self-repairing book that doesn't detect as magic?” Aravis asks.  “Plus, it matches the name and likeness of the book we saw during your ritual.  _And_, we followed a seamstress to find it.”

Thinking that they might be able to detect Praska just because they're now in possession of the book, Belinda casts _scry_, but she still sees Praska sitting on the park bench.  That doesn't change when the book is placed in a _bag of holding._

Dranko turns to Aravis.  “You're a sort-of God.  Can't you just smite it?”

Aravis does his best, trying _greater dispel magic_ on the book, twice.   It fails.  Morningstar does the same, with the same disappointing result.


* *


Dranko spends the remainder of the afternoon and evening on the rooftops, spying alternately on Jonas' tailor shop and the Diviners' Guild itself.   After Jonas closes up shop and leaves for the night, Dranko breaks into the store and scouts around.  He does find a rack of hooded cloaks near the back that were clearly made from one of the patterns in the book.

The wizards, meanwhile, read _Cloaks and Hoods_ cover to cover, combing it for hidden codes, cyphers, or any other disguised messages.  With their mighty combined intellect, they conclude that there's nothing, unless you want to learn how to make a decent hooded cloak.

The next morning, having exhausted nearly every other approach, they decide to get heavy-handed.   Belinda grants the Company a nearly-vacant stone room to work in, and Morningstar urges the others to stand back.  Placing the book on a table in the center of the room, she casts _anti-magic field_.    Her magic items grow a bit heavier and her Ioun Stone plinks on the hard floor.

Aravis, who has been casting _scry_ and timing it so that he finishes as Morningstar casts, still cannot locate Praska – but this time the spell simply fails, instead of showing the image at the park bench.

Morningstar gingerly picks up the book.  It looks no different from the outside.  She opens it up... and the inside is completely different!  Tiny, foreign characters fill almost every page, and it's written upside down and back-to-front.   The wizards, casting _comprehend languages_, can't get close enough to Morningstar to read the cramped letters without stepping inside the _anti-magic field_.  Dranko solves that problem by walking over, picking up the book, and carrying it to the very edge of the field.  He holds it open while the mages engage in speed-reading, and the trick works because _comprehend languages_ is cast upon the reader, not the writing.  Aravis reads out loud so the rest can hear.

_Cloaks and Hoods_ turns out to be a biography of Praska's life.  The early material is accurate to the tiniest detail as far as Dranko can tell.  It even includes some episodes that feature him, and he's amazed at its fidelity to events he remembers.   When the narrative of Praska's life reaches that fateful dinner with Mokad, it says that she left with no lasting ill-effects, and then continues on to describe her life, as they've heard described, at the church here in Hae Charagan.   It's all there – the friends she's made, her plans to explore Kivia, her actual _travel_ to Kivia – even a description of her meeting members of the Church of Heros, and how she spends much of her time reading on a park bench inside the Heros church grounds in Djaw.  The next-to-last page ends the story:  “...she expects to split her days between Kivia and Charagan, and to become a bridge of good will between the churches of Delioch and Heros.”

The Tome of Deceit is part truth, part fiction, and every divination aimed at Praska has been redirected to the events contained therein.

Dranko turns to the final page, which contains a single, curious three-word sentence.

“Mokad is dead,” Aravis reads.

Dranko blinks for a second before comprehension dawns.

“Aaaaaargh!”


...to be continued...


----------



## Everett

A Sagiro update: What a yummy way to start the day.  Hope there's more soon.

The ending lost me - if Mokad died when the company prevented the Emperor's return, why is Dranko surprised by this?

You know what this story hour could really use?  A character index.


----------



## Abciximab

Everett said:


> A Sagiro update: What a yummy way to start the day.  Hope there's more soon.
> 
> The ending lost me - if Mokad died when the company prevented the Emperor's return, why is Dranko surprised by this?
> 
> You know what this story hour could really use?  A character index.




I'm not sure, but I wondered if it was because of this...



Spoiler



The Tome of Deceit is part truth, part fiction


----------



## Fajitas

Everett said:


> The ending lost me - if Mokad died when the company prevented the Emperor's return, why is Dranko surprised by this?




Presumably because it means Mokad isn't really dead.  He faked his death, and the book is now backing up that hoax if anyone attempts to confirm it by divination... which suggests that Mokad is not only not dead, but also in on it with Praska.

Yes?

Both genius and evil, by the way.


----------



## coyote6

Fajitas said:


> Presumably because it means Mokad isn't really dead.  He faked his death, and the book is now backing up that hoax if anyone attempts to confirm it by divination... which suggests that Mokad is not only not dead, but also in on it with Praska.
> 
> Yes?
> 
> Both genius and evil, by the way.




That's what it sounds like to me.

I hope somebody immediately wrote some "truths" of their own in the book.


----------



## The Axe

Sagiro said:


> I appreciate the kind words, as always.  The story hour is still a couple of years (and about 35 runs) behind where the game is now, so there's lots still to come.  Writing this competes with a bunch of other things for my scarce time, but my intent is still, as it always has been, to chip away, one update at a time, until I've told the entire tale.




This is pure happiness to those of us who have already been reading for several years---however long it takes.



Sagiro said:


> As for the campaign itself:  I think I'm still on track to finish it up in the next couple of years.  The PC's are one good boss-fight away from reaching 20th level, they're festooned with epic and near-epic magic items, and they have only a couple of loose plot-ends to tie up before effectively triggering the end-game.  It's a strange feeling.




Same comment as above...


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Who would have guessed that a trip to a library would be that entertaining.  Great writing as always Sagiro.  Eagerly awaiting further updates.


----------



## Piratecat

Mokad (the head of the Deliochan Scarbearers cult and the primary Black Circle traitor within the Church of Delioch) definitely didn't fake his death; when we stopped the Black Circle from killing Grey Wolf to bring Abernia and Volpos together, in the same incident where Califax was left soulless, we killed that SOB by trapping him in a _passwall_ pit that we mostly covered by a wall of stone. When the passwall was dispelled, he did a creditable imitation of a tube of toothpaste, following which we beat on him with Kibi's axe. Mokad was the most powerful Black Circle priest we'd met, and having him dead was a tremendous relief.

If Praska felt the need to write "Mokad is dead" in the Book of Lies, then you can be sure he didn't actually stay that way. That's a bad, bad thing.


----------



## Sagiro

A couple of tiny corrections to Piratecat's previous post.  The actual chronology of Mokad's last few second of life were:

- ...dropped into a pit created by a _passwall_ from Aravis.  He catches the edge and hangs onto the lip.
- ...fingers whipped by Dranko; falls to the bottom of the pit
- ...struck by a magical axe thrown by Kibi
- ...casts a _wall of stone_ himself to prevent line of sight by the party.  It covers most but not all of the opening, so he could still escape if necessary.
- ...expelled violently (and indeed toothpaste-like) when Aravis dismisses the _passwall_.  Still alive though.
- ...barely survives a round of spells and attacks from the Company.  Tries to fly upward through the open ceiling to escape.
- ...killed by a sword-stroke from Kay, flying in pursuit.


And now, another update:

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 298*_
*Scratching at the Edges*

The Company returns to Tal Hae.  Dranko receives a cryptic _sending_ from one of the Undermen and excuses himself, while the rest enjoy a lunch courtesy of the Icebox and served up by Eddings.  They discuss the Tome of Deceit, and what their next move should be.

“We ought to tell the Gods that someone's messing with their miracles,” says Ernie between bites of roast chicken.  “In the meantime, I wonder if we can re-attune the book to someone else.  Dranko in particular, since someday that Demon Prince is going to come looking for him.”

“We could write a story in the book about us always being in some particular place,” Morningstar muses, “and then heavily trap that place.”

“We don't necessarily have to re-attune it,” Aravis points out, “as we know it can affect multiple people simultaneously.  On the other hand, I doubt we can just write anything we want and have it become protected knowledge.”

The fact remains that while they've figured out how to suppress the Tome, Praska is still shielded – probably by _mind blank_, _private sanctum_, or both.  At least now their divinations won't be giving them patently _false_ information.

“If we do find her,” Ernie says, “what do we do with her?”  Kill her outright?  Question her?  Try to redeem her soul?”

“We never just kill anyone,” Morningstar sighs.

“I have no problem with killing her,” Aravis says with some vehemence.   The memory of his death at the hands of her Null Shadows is still fresh.  “But we should wring any useful information out of her first.”

“Say,” says Kibi.  “Where's Grey Wolf?”

“In the basement,” says Flicker.  “He realized he didn't have _anti-magic field_ written in own spellbooks, so he's copying it out of one of the books we found in Het Branoi.”

Which makes sense, since anything they do to find Praska will have to take place while the Tome of Deceit is deactivated.

Ernie finishes his meal and also departs, desiring to pay an overdue visit to the Temple of Yondalla here in Tal Hae.  (Also, he doesn't mind the celebrity status he enjoys there whenever he visits.)  Aravis, Kibi and Morningstar continue to talk about Praska without any revelations.   If Praska truly is _mind blanked_, there's little they can do to find her through magic.  Morningstar halfheartedly wonders if they should try divining her every hour on the hour in an attempt to catch Praska in any gaps between applications of the spell.  But Aravis points out that she could very well _also_ be in a _private sanctum_.  He frowns.  The beginnings of an idea are forming in his head, but it's all so indirect...

“I couldn't help overhearing,” says Grey Wolf, up from the basement for a quick drink of water.  “But if Praska is in a _sanctum_ but _not_ _mind blanked_, then _commune_ will work while the book is suppressed.”

The door to the Greenhouse swings open; it's Ernie, back sooner than the others expected.  His face betrays a great concern.

“What's the matter?” Morningstar asks anxiously.

“I learned something disturbing while I was at the temple,” Ernie says, sitting down.  “One of Sunblossom's adventuring under-priests, Tolo, was killed in the field; some monster or other that they think got loose with the Masking breaking down.”

“I'm sorry to hear it!” says Flicker.

“That's not the disturbing part, though,” Ernie continues.  “For one thing, his friends killed the monster, and for another, High Priestess Sunblossom _raised_ him from the dead.  But apparently Tolo's soul didn't go anywhere, just like Aravis's.  So it's not that there was anything wrong or strange going on with Aravis in particular; it's likely that _no one's_ souls are going on to the afterlife!  Which means it's something more sinister.”

“Maybe a Black Circle plot,” Kibi surmises.  “Maybe that's how they intend to gather up a huge amount of life force?”

“Wouldn't that make it 'death force?'” asks Flicker.

Who can say?  Well, maybe Yondalla can.  After the Company mulls over some possible questions to pose to a divine agent,  Morningstar and Kibi fly out to an empty field on the outskirts of town, taking the Tome of Deceit with them.  (No one wants to find out what happens if an _anti-magic field_ is invoked in the Greenhouse!)  While the Tome is being suppressed, Ernie casts _commune_ in the Greenhouse kitchen.  The scent of fresh bread fills the air, and a holy presence speaks into Ernie's mind.

*ASK YOUR QUESTIONS, MY SON*

_Are you receiving souls from this plane, from those who have died?_

*NO.  NO ONE BRINGS THEM.*

_Is Mokad alive?_

*I CANNOT TELL.*

_Has the soul of Mokad left whatever afterlife it went to after his death?_

*IT WAS NEVER THERE.*

_Is Praska protected by a Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum?_

*I CANNOT TELL.*

So she's almost certainly protected by a Mind Blank, whatever other safeguards she might have.  Drat!  They have other questions lined up that are no longer worth asking.  Aravis feels like he's almost figured out a solution, but he hasn't quite put together all the pieces...

_Is Sagiro well?_

*SAGIRO DOES NOT EXIST.*

“Wait!” exclaims Aravis.  “I've got it!  Ernie, repeat these questions...”

Aravis dictates the next set of inquiries.

_Has anyone spoken to Praska recently?_

(After a long pause):  *YES.*

_Was the person who spoke to Praska most recently, in Hae Charagan?_

*NO.*

_In Kivia?_

*YES.*

In Djaw?

*NO.*

In Het Branoi?

*NO.*

In Il-Drosh?

*NO.*

In Tev?

*NO.*

Someone we know, or know of?

*NO.*

Within 300 miles of Djaw?

*NO.*

In the Endless Wood?

*NO.*

Is the departure of Drosh the reason why souls are no longer traveling to the afterlife?

*YES.*

Is the departure of Drosh related to the death of the member of the Great Pack?

*NO.*

Interesting.   

Interesting that Mokad's soul never even made to the afterlife after he was killed in Kallor.

Interesting that it's Drosh's departure (presumably into the Crosser's Maze) and concurrent abdication of duty that's preventing souls from ascending to the afterlife.

And, to Aravis, interesting that you can divine people by their _associations_ with someone protected by a _mind blank_.  He sits and has a good long think about how to leverage that.

Kibi returns to the Greenhouse while Morningstar reports this new knowledge to High Priestess Milanwy.  She's surprised to find that they already know.

“We're aware of the situation,” Milanwy says.  “But we're unsure of what to do about it.  It turns out Drosh has been the shepherd of souls in Abernia, and he is no longer doing his job.  Souls are not ascending to the afterlife.  It is troubling, but not our business; we have faith that the Gods will figure something out.”

Dranko returns briefly to the Greenhouse as most of the Company are going to bed.  

“I've got to go attend to some Undermen business in Kivia,” he says.  “Apparently we have a huge opportunity to make some inroads into the Seresef gem trade, but they'll only negotiate with the leader of the Undermen.   I've got Morningstar's doo-hickey so I can return to you guys in an emergency, and you can always keep me up to date with _sendings_.  Probably shouldn't be more than a day or two.”

And with that he's off again.

Aravis, Morningstar and Grey Wolf are the last folks awake.  Grey Wolf is still copying _anti-magic field_, while Aravis sits on a couch in the living room, thinking furiously.  

“A ha!” he says out loud.  He realizes that the _commune_ has given him the bare minimum knowledge necessary to _scry_ on “the person who had last spoken with Praska at the time of the _commune_.”  He casts, and it succeeds – but all he can see is the blackness indicative of a _private sanctum._

Undeterred, he rouses Ernie from sleep.

“Ernie, I need you.  I want you to cast _find the path_, targeted on “the area protected by the _private sanctum_ that's around the person I was just trying to _scry_.”

Ernie casts, and gets a direction:  practically due east, and the tiniest bit south.

“Great,” says Aravis.  “Now I want you to fly due north as fast as you can.”

Ernie blinks.  

“Due north,” repeats Aravis.

“Aravis, I'm still mostly asleep.  Can I at least change out of my pajamas?”

Ernie flies, and the direction indicated by the _find the path_ doesn't change, which means the person is in southern Kivia.  Even better, tomorrow he can _teleport_ the whole party to Kivia and find the protected area, and that is a significantly better lead on Praska than he had any right to hope for, given her copious defenses.

“Thanks Ernie,” he says over a _telepathic bond_.  “You can come home now.  Tomorrow's going to be a busy day!”

Morningstar is the last to fall asleep that night.  She can't shake the image of hundreds of souls, lingering and confused and not ascending to heaven as they should.  

Because Drosh, God of Death, has fled.

Because they gave Drosh's servant the Crosser's Maze – a decision for which _she_ shares a heavy burden of responsibility.   


* *


Aravis is already at the table when the rest of the Company comes down for breakfast.  

“Anyone up for a field trip?” he asks brightly.

Grey Wolf quirks an eyebrow.  “Where are we going?”

“Kivia,” says Aravis.

“And finding Praska, and giving the Black Circle a good stern talking to,” Ernie adds.

“That will show them, Master Ernest,” Eddings says, clearing some dishes.

“If we don't come back, blame the Black Circle,” Morningstar adds.

“Do try to come back,” Eddings replies.  “It would be lonely without you.”

Their morning meal done, the excited Aravis casts _greater teleport_ without even telling the rest of the party where they're going.  He lands them in Kivia outside of the city of Levenmud, on the road that rises towards the mountains to the east.  They can smell the swamp to the west of town, the stink reminding them of the Sea of Snakes.  There's some discontented muttering; no one particularly cared for this region of Kivia during their last visit.

“This is great!” Flicker says.  “You know what I was thinking we were out of this morning?  Snakes!”

Aravis glares.  “Might I suggest at this point, a _wind walk_ and _find the path_ would be a good idea?”

Ernie gets a direction toward the location from the previous night – the place inside the _private sanctum_ that prevented Aravis from _scrying_ the last person to have spoken with Praska at the time of Ernie's _commune_.   The spell is leading more-or-less in the direction of Kai Kin, a city on the southern coast, in the country of Ocir.

Over Kibi's inevitable grumbling, they _wind walk_, following the Eternal River.  The land below them becomes greener and more arable as they fly, and for the nearly-three-hour duration of the spell the direction does not waver.  They continue for another hour on the same heading before landing and recasting _find the path_.  It turns out they have overshot their target, but a after a few minutes of backtracking the spell is indicating a straight-downward direction.  They are directly above the small town of Opal in the country of Seresef.  

They land behind a hill outside of town and Kibi casts a _veil_ to make them look like local birds.  (So now they look like _wind-walking_ crows.)  They pop off a _sending_ to Dranko to apprise him of their whereabouts.  As they approach the town they can hear an odd cacophony; it sounds like a hundred horses all neighing at once.  

Which turns out to be exactly what it is.  Every horse in town is raising a ruckus.  A horse-drawn carriage has overturned on a main street; several men are trying to calm the horse that was pulling it.  

Grey Wolf says what they're all thinking.  

“I'll bet a horse-god just bought it.”


* *


Dranko can hear it too, in the city of Kingstown, capital of Seresef.  He glances up at the window in the office, as does the man he is meeting with.   Dranko immediately understands what happened but keeps it to himself; Trevin Olfkir frowns and looks puzzled, but redirects his attention toward Dranko after a second or two.  He extends his hand.

“So, it's a deal, then?”

Dranko has been deep in negotiations for many hours now.   Kingstown is only about 100 miles south of Djaw, but is on the Seresef side of the Kingstown River and thus not included in the loose confederacy of city-states known as the “Jewels of the Plains.”   Dranko has heard more than once since arriving in town that “there would be no jewels in Djaw if not for Seresef.”

The northern spur of the Greytower Mountains lies within the boundaries of Seresef, and from there comes the source of the Kingdom’s wealth – precious gems of a great many varieties.  There is speculation all throughout Kivia that the surfeit of gems isn’t natural, that no stretch of mountains could have that many quality veins of that many gem types.  The Merchant-Princes of Seresef are cagey on that point – it’s hard to know the truth of the matter.

Trevin Olfkir is the current First Merchant; effectively the King of Seresef.   He’s a rotund but humorless fellow with profit seemingly his only concern.  The Kingdom’s economic policies are rigidly enforced at the highest political levels, and so it  has fallen to Trevin personally to negotiate such a unique opportunity.  He had already been approached by none other than Olorayne Firemount (Tor Bladebearer's father and Baron of Forquelle) seeking to prevent a deleterious competition between the two by hammering out some terms, but Trevin had soon figured out that his operation was much bigger than Firemount’s, and that he could do better by waiting for the right opportunity.  He and his inner circle had decided upon the Undermen.

Specifically – though he doesn't quite phrase it this way to Dranko – he wants the Undermen to be his fencing operation.   He’ll sell his gems to the Undermen, and they will in turn sell them (at a tidy markup) directly to gem merchants around Charagan.  Dranko is enjoined to _not_ tell them where the gems really come from, to circumvent certain possible trade restrictions for as long as possible.  (In fact, he encourages Dranko to think creatively about setting up front companies and _faux_ mining operations that could claim to be the sellers.)  While it’s possible that King Crunard could get around to passing (or trying to pass) increasingly restrictive laws, Trevin is confident that once the nobles of Charagan get a taste for his product, they won’t support that sort of thing.   Dranko gets the sense that long term Trevin intends to buy out the Forquellian operations entirely and then start slowly jacking up the prices.  It’s not clear that he’d still need the Undermen at that point, but that’s a long way off and there’s a lot of money to be made between here and there. 

The only drawback is that it’s going to take a large up-front payment to Trevin to get the first shipments of goods.  The more funds Dranko can raise, the better a bulk discount Olfkir will offer, and obviously the bigger the discount, the bigger the profit.  

As for the product itself:  breathtaking.  Flawless diamonds.  Silk-surfaced opals.  Jade so luminous you could mistake it for emerald and rubies so deep red they look like you could squeeze juice from them.  And the teardrop-shaped translucent white gems called Moontears (coveted by Morningstar), they have in relative abundance.  Dranko is reasonably certain that there was no illusion or similar magic involved, and while Trevin was probably showing him the best of the best, it’s a good bet that Seresef gemstones are of generally higher quality than Forquelle’s finest.

Dranko takes the First Merchant's hand and shakes it with vigor.

“You wont' regret it,” he says, smiling.

“No, I won't,” Olfkir says with a toothy grin of his own.  “Now, as I promised, I'll have one of my associates cast _wind walk_ upon you, so you can rejoin your friends.   I'll be in touch via _sending_ to work out logistics.  And one more thing:  if you can find a trustworthy wizard associate who can cast _greater teleport_ with any regularity, it would save you a lot on shipping costs and security.”

Dranko thinks he might know a guy.

...to be continued...


----------



## theskyfullofdust

I do love this campaign 

Question for you Sagrio: how much of this do you prep before hand and how much of it is ablibbed as you go along? I get the impression that you have copious notes, events planned out, then make the rest up as you go with the flow of the party's adventures; but really I have no idea how much work you put into it, but I am intrigued.

Simon


----------



## Everett

Why does Morningstar feel she bears more responsibility than the rest of the party for giving up the Crosser's Maze?  

As I recall, they only surrendered it after doing everything possible to ensure it wouldn't be misused by the obviously evil recipient, and they didn't really have much choice in the matter.

And if the Maze is the reason why souls aren't going on to the afterlife, wouldn't Aravis know it via the fragment of his Intelligence he left inside?


----------



## Sagiro

theskyfullofdust said:


> I do love this campaign
> 
> Question for you Sagrio: how much of this do you prep before hand and how much of it is ablibbed as you go along? I get the impression that you have copious notes, events planned out, then make the rest up as you go with the flow of the party's adventures; but really I have no idea how much work you put into it, but I am intrigued.
> 
> Simon



I probably spend 2-3 hours, in total, preparing for a typical game session.  I also will occasionally spend an evening brainstorming about the over-plot, things I can do to foreshadow other things, and reviewing old story hour entries looking for loose plot threads I'd meant to pick up later.

I try not to fill in the lowest-level details until the last possible minute, in order to maintain plot cohesion, take player actions into account as much as I can, and (most importantly) not waste prep work.

I'm not that great at plot-improv, and at this point the plot is complex enough that there's great risk of causing continuity glitches when I just start making stuff up mid-game.  It happens sometimes, though -- this most recent post being a prime example.  I had no idea the party was going to go after Praska via the "last person she talked to" route, so I just thought on the fly about what she would have done following her escape, whom she would have talked to, and where.


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> Why does Morningstar feel she bears more responsibility than the rest of the party for giving up the Crosser's Maze?
> 
> As I recall, they only surrendered it after doing everything possible to ensure it wouldn't be misused by the obviously evil recipient, and they didn't really have much choice in the matter.
> 
> And if the Maze is the reason why souls aren't going on to the afterlife, wouldn't Aravis know it via the fragment of his Intelligence he left inside?




Morningstar doesn't feel she bears more responsibility than anyone else -- she just is feeling the guilt more keenly.

And the Maze isn't _itself_ isn't the reason souls are staying put -- it's Drosh's abdication of duty.  (If Drosh had fled to the Astral Plane, you wouldn't say the Astral Plane was the reason...)  Also, Aravis's fragment isn't omniscient, Maze-wise -- it's just wandering around inside, scouting space-time for useful info, as is the mysterious ally who's helping on occasion.


----------



## Destil

Sagiro said:


> It happens sometimes, though -- this most recent post being a prime example.  I had no idea the party was going to go after Praska via the "last person she talked to" route, so I just thought on the fly about what she would have done following her escape, whom she would have talked to, and where.




Potential dangers of cross-story-hour idea pollination? If memory serves something similar was used in Sepulchrave's story hour to find mind-blanked people by Jorval.


----------



## theskyfullofdust

Sagiro said:


> I probably spend 2-3 hours, in total, preparing for a typical game session.  I also will occasionally spend an evening brainstorming about the over-plot, things I can do to foreshadow other things, and reviewing old story hour entries looking for loose plot threads I'd meant to pick up later.
> 
> I try not to fill in the lowest-level details until the last possible minute, in order to maintain plot cohesion, take player actions into account as much as I can, and (most importantly) not waste prep work.
> 
> I'm not that great at plot-improv, and at this point the plot is complex enough that there's great risk of causing continuity glitches when I just start making stuff up mid-game.  It happens sometimes, though -- this most recent post being a prime example.  I had no idea the party was going to go after Praska via the "last person she talked to" route, so I just thought on the fly about what she would have done following her escape, whom she would have talked to, and where.




That's a great way to do it. I've been trying something like that myself, keeping a vague over-arcing plot, then filling in the details as necessary to take into account PC actions, potential twists and the like.

I guess it must be hard sometimes to pick out all those loose threads that are strewn through all the story hour sessions; there are so many of them!

Look forward to the next update  And thanks.


----------



## Piratecat

Sagiro said:


> I'm not that great at plot-improv, and at this point the plot is complex enough that there's great risk of causing continuity glitches when I just start making stuff up mid-game.  It happens sometimes, though -- this most recent post being a prime example.



Having given it some thought, I think Sagiro is a little better at plotting than I am, and I'm a little better at plot-improv than he is -- although he's always so well prepared that it's impossible to tell. 

Also, his bad-guy-voices blow mine away. We're about to fight Octesian next game, and that guy gives me the willies just remembering how he speaks.


----------



## theskyfullofdust

That's one of the things that I still find hard to pull off, getting the bad guys' voices right. Any tricks you or Sagiro care to share?


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> Also, his bad-guy-voices blow mine away. We're about to fight Octesian next game, and that guy gives me the willies just remembering how he speaks.




How's that?


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 299*_
*Peer Pressure*

Putting aside for the moment the echoing equine lamentations, the Company stays focused on their immediate goal – following a lead toward Praska.   The _find the path_ is specifically pointing to a innocuous store on one of Opal's main streets.   They land on the road outside the shop, still _wind walking_ and _veiled_ as crows.   Kibi makes Morningstar _invisible_ and she slowly opens the door to the shop.  Right away Kibi sees her _invisibility_ become dispelled, though it's not entirely unusual for fancier stores in Kivia to have that sort of protection.  And the _veil_ seems to be holding.  

Morningstar sees that the shop sells glassware of notably fine quality.   She hears someone call out from a back room in an unfamiliar language.  Kibi, under the effects of a _tongues_, understands the words.

“Hello?”

There some shuffling, and an old man emerges from a workshop in the back of the store.  

“Hello?  Is someone there?” he says, looking around.  He doesn't notice the crow, hidden behind a counter.

Morningstar casts a silent _brain spider_ on the man and starts digging around in his mind.   There are no images of Praska floating in his surface thoughts, and no memories of her.  The priestess frowns.  

The old man shrugs, looks around once more, and goes back to his workshop.

Morningstar continues to root around in his head.  He has recent memories of talking to a relative, of a married couple (tourists) who wanted to buy an expensive opal, and some local customers.  She searches back another day and finds more of the same sorts of memories.  There's nothing about Praska, the Black Circle, or anything else even remotely sinister.  The only interesting nugget is that several days ago, guards from Kingstown came around asking if he'd seen any foreigners.  But even that is routine; the man has many such memories, since that's standard practice in the xenophobic country of Seresef.  

Ernie suggests that perhaps Scree could search for secret rooms in or around the shop, and some minutes later Kibi hears the voice of his familiar in his mind.

“Did you know that there's some sort of hidden chamber under his shop?  It's not very big.  Maybe twenty feet on a side, and made out of stone.  The odd thing is, it's completely sealed.”

Morningstar confirms that the shopkeeper has no memories of such a chamber.  He does have a basement storeroom, but Scree's chamber is beneath it.

“They must teleport in and out,” she concludes.  “This glass-maker probably doesn't even know the room is there.”

“Oh, here's something else,” thinks Scree to his master.  “When I look through the ceiling of the room, I see a black circle in the floor.  I must have poked my eye up through it, though nothing happened to me.”

“Come back, please!” answers Kibi, alarmed.

They spend a few minutes discussing the discovery, coming to the conclusion that it's most likely a way-station or safe-house for the Black Circle.   Aravis notes that the scarcity of foreigners in this town makes it a good locale for such a place.    There's some talk about going into it, maybe even perpetrating a bit of sabotage (or at least vandalism), but they decide they'd rather not risk Praska discovering the discovery.  (And there's also the possibility of another trap.)

As due diligence they make a fly-through of the rest of Opal before landing a hundred yards outside the town.  It doesn't seem like a hotbed of Black Circle activity, whatever else it might be.  It's upscale, with citizens in well-tailored clothes and streets almost completely free of sewage.  As the party (still looking like a cluster of crows in a field of short grass) discusses possible next steps regarding Praska   they notice a dog is approaching them from the direction of the town.  It's a handsome golden retriever, walking slowly and with an almost regal bearing.  It sniff the air and looks around curiously.  

It sees a bunch of crows, and freezes.  A low growl starts deep in its throat, and it starts to back away.  Aravis, an idea leaping to his mind, casts _greater arcane sight_.  The dog has several spells upon it:  _telepathy_, _tongues_, and some minor enchantments.   Satisfied, Aravis flies over to it.

“Hello,” he says to the dog.

The dog stiffens and turns to the crow.

“Aravis?”

The dog speaks directly into his mind.

“Why do you look like a bird?” continues the dog with clear disapproval.  “That is _extremely_ unseemly.”

“We felt it best to remain hidden from sight,” Aravis explains.

The dog snorts.  “That may be, but it is an unfitting disguise.”

“And who might you be, may I ask?” Aravis asks politely.

“I am Arkin,” says the dog.  “I am of the Great Pack.”

“I see,” says Aravis, his suspicion confirmed.  “You'll have to pardon what you may see as a faux pas on my part, but I am only newly aware of my status.”

Arkin's voice betrays no sympathy.  “I would not let the rest of the Conclave see you in such an illusionary raiment.”

“I will endeavor to follow that advice,” Aravis answers humbly.  “You realize that my normal raiment might be considered unseemly by some.”

“You are a human,” Arkin says.  “That is what makes you extraordinary.”

When Aravis doesn't immediately answer, the dog adds:  “I would have expected the divine spark to give you knowledge.”

“I would have expected that too,” Aravis says.

“Do you have somewhere safe we can talk?” Arkin asks.

“Yes, I do.  May I inform my Company of who you are?”

“Do you trust them?” asks the dog

“With my life.”

Aravis shares the discussion with the others, and then casts _rope trick_ at a low height.  Arkin bounds gracefully through the dimensional opening, and Aravis follows, pulling up the rope.  The rest of the Company remains outside, both to keep an eye out, and to respect Arkin's request for privacy.

Settled in the extra-dimensional space, Aravis sits and watches Arkin carefully.

“So, you were looking for me.”

“Yes,” says Arkin.  He notices Pewter for the first time, emerging from Aravis's pack and resting on the wizard's shoulder. “I have been.  I share an affinity with all of my kindred, so I was able to find you.  I've come a long way.  My legs are tired, and I am hungry.”

Aravis digs out some jerky from his pack and offers it to Arkin.

“Better,” says Arkin as he chews.  (His speech remains telepathic.)  “So, what _do_ you know?”

“I know that I am considered a God by cats,” Aravis answers.  “That is the extent of my knowledge.”

Arkin is incredulous.  “That's all?”

“I know that someone is killing various other animal deities,” the wizard adds.

“We are not deities, Aravis.  We are divine, but we are not deities.  Spirits.  Paragons.  There are more fitting terms.”

Aravis nods.

“Now,” Arkin continues gravely, “for the first time in history and memory,  there are two fewer of us.  One of the Great Pack was killed, and only hours ago one of the Noble Herd was also slain.  I don't know for certain, but if one of the Feline Conclave was born into the body of a human, I can't believe it's a coincidence.  So.  Why aren't you doing something?”

Arkin makes no attempt to hide the accusation in his mental voice.  Before Aravis can think of an adequate response, Arkin asks another question.

“Do you know your history?  Do you know of Quarrol?”

Aravis thinks the name sounds familiar, but can't place it.

“No,” he admits.

Arkin puts his paws on his head, a clear gesture of disbelief.

“You have to understand,” says Aravis.  “I...”

“I understand,” Arkin interrupts.  “You are a cat, in a manner of speaking.”

Pewter can't keep silent at the rebuke.  “Are you going to take that from him, Boss?”

Aravis puts a hand on his familiar.  “Now is not the time, Pewter.”

“But he's being a jerk!” Pewter protests.

“I want information from this dog.  I don't want to annoy him.”

Pewter sulks.  “For the record, he annoyed you first.”

“Until a few months ago,” says Aravis to Arkin, “I thought I was only human.”

“How could you not know?”  Arkin can't keep the disbelief from his voice.  

“All I knew was that cats liked me, and rats hated me.  The Council of Nine wanted to kill me.”

“Yes.   Yes, they would,” Arkin answers somberly.  “And the Unkind also want to kill you.  The Noble Herd and Great Pack are mostly on your side.”

“Who are the Unkind?” Aravis asks nervously.

“The ravens.”

“And thus, your comment about my current appearance,” Aravis says, understanding.

“As for Quarrol,” Arkin goes on, “He is the Kivian God of Nature, Himself a creation of Posada.”

Arkin pauses and shakes his head.  “How is it that I am giving this lesson to a human?”

“For two reasons,” Aravis explains  “One, I am a mage, and not well studied in religious matters.  But also I'm not from Kivia.  Until recently there has been almost no travel or communication between Kivia and my Kingdom of Charagan.

Arkin lets out an almost-human-sounding sigh.  “Well, there must be something about you, because Quarrol has chosen you.  In centuries long past, Quarrol in His great wisdom imbued five species of animal with a divine nature:  horses, dogs, cats, ravens and rats.   One cannot fully understand His purpose about that last one.  Quarrol decided that each of these races would always have nine of their number infused with a divine spark.  They would have greater leadership, intelligence – they would guide their races, protect and advise them in times of trouble.  These nine are spirits that are constantly reborn in generation after generation;  when one dies, the spirit is returned to nature and then immediately reborn in a younger member of the species.  There are always nine.”

Arkin pauses before continuing. 

“At least, until very recently.  When the member of the Great Pack was killed, his spirit was not reborn.  It was annihilated.  We suspect the same thing is true of the horses.   Spirits are meant to travel from generation to generation, but now there are only eight.  Something is killing us.”

“Do you know where the member of the Great Pack was killed?” Aravis asks.

“Yes.  In a human country called Bederen, although I don't think that is material.  Clearly this thing can strike anywhere.”

“Do you know the exact spot?” Aravis presses.

“No,” Arkin admits.  “We don't know.  He was traveling.”

“I ask because recently, when humans have died, their souls have not gone to their respective afterlives.”

Arkin nods.  “Ah, yes.  Drosh's mysterious absence.  It is not of particular import to us, but I try to stay abreast of current events.   Quarrol guides our souls. Not Drosh.  I can tell you, if it matters, that the member of the Noble Herd was killed in the town of Waterhold, north of Djaw.  Again, I don't know the exact location.”

More silence, as Aravis and Arkin contemplate.  Then the dog speaks again.

“I assume from the fact that you are here, and not in the Wood, that the Feline Conclave has not contacted you.”

“No, they have not.”

Arkin growls.  “I ask rhetorically:  why not?  They should have done so immediately.   It should be obvious to them that you are of great importance.  In only one in fifty generations are any animal spirits born into the bodies of humans – only in times of exceptional need.  Humans can master greater power than we can.  Quarrol must believe that there is great danger to us all – to cats, at least.  And yet the Feline Conclave has not summoned you to them.  Why?”

Aravis sighs.  “I have no idea.  I assume a summons from them would be impossible not to notice...”

“They would come to you as I have,” says Arkin.  “_I_ knew where you were; you share the divine spark.  _They_ would know even better – you are one of them, after all.   They share the ability to detect other sparks – despite their lack of focus and capricious nature.”  

Pewter fumes.  “Can I swat him on the nose on general principle?”

Aravis ignores his belligerent familiar.  “Do you have any clues as to what or who is killing us?” he asks the dog.

Arkin shakes his head.  “We know nothing, save that it is likely very powerful.  We strive to know its purpose but we have no leads.”

“Why specifically was it that you were seeking _me_ out?”

Arkin growls again, frustrated.  Are all cats this dense?  “Because you are an animal spirit born into the body of a human – the only one among the cats, dogs and horses.  And yet, you have not contacted the cats, and they have not contacted you.  We are being extinguished.   You are human because Quarrol knows we have great need.  So I come to you asking, if not telling, there is great need and you should _do_ something.  Perhaps you need to go visit the Conclave.”

“I suspect you are correct,” Aravis answers.  “Can you teach me how to seek out others of our kind?”

“It's innate,” says Arkin.  “If you lack the skill, I cannot help you.”

“I'll do my best,” says Aravis.  “For when I meet them, are other bird forms inappropriate, or just ravens and crows?”

“The finer points of feline illusionary etiquette are beyond me,” says Arkin dryly.

“Of course they are,” says Aravis with a wink.  “After all, you're only a dog.”

“Nice one, boss!” thinks Pewter.  “Now swat him on the nose!”

“I'm not here to trade insults with a member of the Feline Conclave,” says Arkin without betraying any humor.  “Consider that advice to save you embarrassment later on.  So, do you have a plan?”

“You mentioned the Wood,” says Aravis.  

“The Endless Wood.  Yes.  That is where the Feline Conclave resides, though I cannot be more specific.”

*Flashback, to 18 months previous.  The Company is traveling through Kivia in search of the Crosser's Maze.   Returning to Djaw from the Golem City of Repose, the party is beset by swarms of rats that focus their attacks on Aravis.  A semi-humanoid rat creature, sent by something called the Council of Nine, gave Aravis a warning:  do not approach the Endless Wood for any reason, or be killed.  It is all very mysterious.*

Before Aravis can do more than think to himself _'those dirty rats!'_ he gets a _sending_ from Morningstar.  (With the _rope trick_ closed, it's the only way she can communicate with him.)

_*There's a flock of ravens headed our way.  A big one.  Can you let us in?*_

Aravis shares this with Arkin as he opens the _rope trick_ and lets down the rope.  

“Are they moving to attack?” asks the dog.  “The Unkind may have had similar thoughts as I, though not to the same ends.  How many are there?  And how far away?”

Morningstar had neglected to include that level of detail in her message, but the answers would be “yes,” “thousands,” and “imminent.”  No sooner have the rest of the Company pulled themselves up into the extradimensional space, then the swarm of birds reaches them.  They can see as dozens of birds actually swoop _under_ the opening, frustrated at the disappearance of their quarry.

Aravis makes hasty introductions to Arkin.

“I am more powerful than a normal dog, but not strong enough to withstand what you have described,” Arkin says.  “But you, Aravis, are a wizard.  How powerful a wizard are you?”

Ernie fields that one.  “If wizards were thunderstorms, he'd flatten trees.”

After Aravis has summarized what he has learned, Kibi turns to Arkin.  

“Why do the Unkind want us dead?” he asks.

“Perhaps they are the ones who have found a way to kill other Animal Spirits,” Arkin ventures.  “We have always been at odds with them, but heretofore that would have been fruitless.  Now, though, the rules have changed.  If the Council of Nine or the Unkind did discover a way, I'd not be surprised that they'd use it.  So they could be coming for you, or for me, or both of us.”

Aravis ponders.  “Even if they are _not_ the ones responsible, they may believe that killing me will cause the spirit to come back as a cat, which would weaken the cats.”

Arkin nods.  “So... I repeat... what are you going to do about it?”

Ernie knocks his fist against his helmet.  “I'm armored.  I could try to parley.”

“Great,” says Grey Wolf.  “You're just going to stick your helmeted head into a swarm of ravens.”

“Okay!” Ernie lies down on his stomach by the opening.  “If I tug on the rope, pull me back in!”

“I was joking!” exclaims Grey Wolf, but it's too late.  Ernie sticks his out out of the rope trick.

He is not even given sufficient time to shout 'Ravens, what do you want with us?' before he is battered and buffeted, pecked and scratched by a hundred frenzied birds.  The others quickly pull him back in.   Ernie finds his wounds to be filthy, and he continues to take damage from them until he casts _cure light wounds._

So much for parley.  

“There are big ones out in the swarm,” says Ernie, confirming what they saw during the ravens' approach.  “Dire ravens, bigger than any of us.  At least a dozen of them, mixed in with the flock.”

They Company plans and plots for a few minutes before acting.   Ernie casts _prayer_, releases _Beryn Sur_, and drops down.  Aravis also drops down from the rope trick and like Ernie finds himself in the middle of the swarm.  Concentrating hard, he casts _lightning ring_ around himself, and the birds start to crisp.    Grey Wolf drops out next, and clears out some of the birds with a _fireball_.   

Aravis, and only Aravis is assaulted by dire ravens; Grey Wolf and Ernie are ignored.   He is bitten and clawed and nearly knocked to the ground, though in a moment of unexpected comedy two of the huge birds collide head-on and fall stunned to the ground.  

But this is all meaningless lead-up, really, to the main event.  Morningstar drops down from the _rope trick_ and casts _prismatic sphere_, forming a large hemisphere that wholly encompasses the extradimensional opening.  

Lots of awful things happen to lots of ravens.

Gruesomely, dozens of bird corpses come popping into the sphere with them – some on fire, some melted by acid, some crisped by lightning, and some skeletonized by several of these at once.  A few are made of stone and fall with little thumps into the grass.  The lucky ones that manage to survive the trip _in_ are still blinded, and don't survive the trip _out_ the other side of the sphere as they flap around in a panic.

One dire raven comes hurtling in, petrified and smoldering.  It rolls to Aravis's feet.   After about ten more seconds the birds stop coming.  The ground is an avian abattoir.  

There's some brief, lopsided combat as the two stunned dire ravens regain consciousness.    Kibi casts _xorn movement_ and leaves the prismatic oasis, and pops up on the far side to take a look.  While he's there he casts _prismatic spray_, and while this causes a similar swath of carnage through the ranks of ravens, there are way too many for a single spell like that to seriously thin their ranks.  Kibi is dive-bombed and somewhat shredded before retreating again into the ground and back to his friends.

So, they wait it out, and after a few minutes the frustrated assault force departs.  The Company can hear the retreating cacophony.  They stay in the _prismatic sphere_ a bit longer, just to be on the safe side.

A few minutes later they hear a voice outside.

“You guys had a barbecue and didn't invite me.  I'm hurt.”

It's Dranko.   Scree confirms it's really him, and Morningstar drops the _prismatic sphere_.  There is a brief reunion and brain-dump.   Dranko starts to tell them news of his excursion.

“Things went great!  I've sewn up the market for gem imports.  It's going to make me... make us... I mean the Undermen... a lot of cash.  And I...”

He stops.  Kibi is holding up his hand.

*Flashback even farther – over two years ago.  The Company is approaching God's Thorn on their quest to free the Yrimpa, when Kibi abruptly vanishes, having been summoned away to another world.   Here is his experience from that moment:

Kibilhathur is standing on a white marble floor, and specifically within a wide grey circle drawn on that floor.  Nine candles burn at various points around its perimeter.  Around him is a wide chamber with a high ceiling; the walls are marked with glyphs and patterns written in a grey, swirling hand.  The room is lit by hanging lanterns, and through a round glass window at the highest point in the ceiling he can see a full red moon in a black night sky.  In front of him are two people: a tall, imperious-looking woman in a brown and white robe, and a small man with spectacles, holding a large book.

The woman speaks: “Something must have gone wrong.  This is a dwarf!”

The man frantically looks through the book. “No, we did it right.  I'm sure of it.”

The woman answers. “Dolt! The Opener is a mage.  It has to be! And dwarves are incapable of magery.  We must have made a mistake.”

“Perhaps this one isn’t.  Maybe he’s… oh, I don’t know.  And besides, this one has to be the Opener.  The summoning wouldn’t have worked on anyone else.”

He flips to a page near the back of the book. “I’ll read it again, milady, in case you’ve forgotten.  ‘When the smoke of nine is set beneath the Sigil of the Sky, and four of Tirat’s children align themselves behind the moon, the Opener will be brought from an echoing world.  He is the wizard who will move the World Stone.  He will bridge the Earth and the light, and force the gates of yesterday.’”

“I told you,” says the woman frowning.  “It says ‘wizard.’”

“Hm,” says the man.  He looks at Kibi.  “Well?  Are you a wizard?”

The dwarf feels as though he couldn’t lie, even if he wanted to.  “Of course,” he says, affronted.

“Ah,” he says.  “Well then.  Good.  What is your name?”

“Kibilhathur Bimson.”

“Well, Kibilhathur Bimson, know this.  You have been summoned by the Lady Serpicore, Mistress of the Wizards’ College, and by her humble apprentice, Maudrin.  You are under our control for as long as the task takes.  When your task is done, you will be released to your home.  We will not mistreat you, but if you resist us, we will compel you, and that might cause you discomfort.  Your task is dangerous, and though we will give you assistance, and protect your life however we might, there is no guarantee that you will survive.  Understand that the fate of Cafille, our world, hangs in the balance, and that if you fail, you will perish with the rest of us.  Will you assist us willingly, or will we be obliged to compel you?”

Kibi nods.
*

And now, years later, he hears this _sending_ in his head:

*“Kibi.  Must move World Stone.  Ruby is plane shift focus.  Hurry... minutes before we're overwhelmed.   Teleport to the world arch.  Bring help if possible.  Hurry!”*

...to be continued...


----------



## wedgeski

There's something about a dog holding counsel with a flock of crows in a field that I find very agreeable.  This is such great stuff.


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Sagiro said:


> And now, years later, he hears this _sending_ in his head:
> 
> *“Kibi.  Must move World Stone.  Ruby is plane shift focus.  Hurry... minutes before we're overwhelmed.   Teleport to the world arch.  Bring help if possible.  Hurry!”*
> 
> ...to be continued...




Which is, of course, exactly what you want to hear at a time like this...

Awesome stuff! Some old pigeons finally coming home to roost, if you'll excuse the bird-brained pun.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Sagiro, did you plan for the sending to take place at this particular moment or did you decide that after 'x' number of days/months from the original summoning it would happen regardless of what the pcs were up to?


----------



## Sagiro

Innocent Bystander said:


> Sagiro, did you plan for the sending to take place at this particular moment or did you decide that after 'x' number of days/months from the original summoning it would happen regardless of what the pcs were up to?



Not the latter, I assure you.  

What I did was, I kept the Kibi World Stone thing in my pocket for years, waiting until I was fairly sure the players (especially Kibi's -- my wife, as it happens) had forgotten all about it.  Then I looked for an opening.  The party had kind of petered out on the whole Praska thing, which for the time being was a dead-end, and hadn't yet made any specific plans to find the Feline Conclave.  Seemed like a good time for a pace-changing one-off.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 300*_
*World Stone*

Kibilhathur Bimson, during those brief times spent _summoned_ to the world of Cafille, had never actually _seen_ the World Stone.   As is typical of heroic quests there had been a number of preliminary steps necessary before the main event, and Kibi hadn't made it past even the first of those adventures before snapping back to Abernia for good.

He _did_ recall seeing the World Stone's location on a map – in a canyon that, according to a dire warning on the parchment, could not be entered by living creatures.  Worse, he recalls that the World Stone itself was said to be blocking the World Arch, which must not be opened lest the world be destroyed.  Kibi never received a clear answer to his questions about why his summoners _wanted_ him to move the World Stone, or how he could survive in the canyon that housed it; the Lady Serpicore was still muddling through prophecies at the time that were supposedly going to reveal the details.   All she knew was that the world of Cafille was going to be threatened by something called the “Bleeding Scourge,” and that moving the should-never-be-moved World Stone was the only way to stop them.

Kibi responds to the _sending_:  *I'd like to come and help, but we cannot survive in the valley.  That's where we'll plane shift, though; correct me if you want me somewhere else.*  Then he tells the others what he has heard.

Dranko snorts.  “You know if we go help them, it's going to be like four months before we get back here.”

“Another thing I don't understand,” Kibi adds.  “You can't _plane shift_ into Cafille.  The plane has some odd temporal properties that make it impossible.  That's why they had to _summon_ me the way they did.”

“Maybe it's an enemy, luring us to certain doom,” Morningstar posits.  

“I can't take the chance; I need to go!” answers Kibi.  “I have to help those people.”

While Flicker digs a ruby out of his pack, Aravis points out a potential snag. “Depending on how big the canyon is, we may end up _inside_ it if we _plane shift_.   Which will be a problem if we can't survive there.”

Kibi receives another _sending_:  *You can survive... it's the great syzygy!  You.... argh!  Augh!  Hurry, please!  Agh!*

“We're jumping into a fight,” Grey Wolf sighs.  “We're _always_ jumping into fights.”

“We have to go now!” Kibi exhorts.  “But I don't have a _plane shift_ prepared.  Who does?”

It turns out that no one does, but Morningstar uses her _gem of recall_ to get one in a hurry.   Off they go to Cafille!  Upon arrival they drop fifteen feet through some tree branches and land with a collective thump on a soft forest floor.  The smell of a new Prime fills their nostrils: rich, cold, coniferous.  

Morningstar stands up and brushes pine needles (or something like them) from her robe.  “What's a syzygy?”

“I think it's a kind of worm,” Dranko answers.  “A sea worm.”

Morningstar blinks, then turns to Aravis.

“It's an alignment of planets, in a row,” the wizard explains.

“Or maybe that,” Dranko concedes.

Kibi has no idea where they are; it's not a part of Cafille he remembers.  Worse, Kibi doesn't have a _greater teleport_ readied, and Aravis has already used his for the day.  Time is passing, they're between five and five hundred miles from their destination, and the Company has no way of reaching the World Stone!  Kibi tugs his beard with agitation.  They quickly review and discard options:  _scry_ takes too long; _clairvoyance_ doesn't have the range; Morningstar has _mass heal_ ready instead of _miracle_.   

“Wait,” says Ernie.  “I have an idea.  Kibi, I'm going to fly you up.”

Flying?  “What?  No...” 

Ernie grabs the dwarf around the armpits and flies him straight up, through and above the trees and into a beautiful clear sky.  They're at the edge of the forest, and abutting the wood is a steep cliff dropping off to the east.  Beyond the cliff is a series of box canyons stretching away nearly to the horizon. 

Way out above one of the canyons, maybe a dozen or more miles away, Kibi and Ernie can see a wispy stream of smoke rising upward, a pencil-thin thread of gray against a deep-blue backdrop.   Kibi breathes a sigh of relief.  Assuming that's his spot, a normal _teleport_ is back as an option.  

_Seen once,_ he thinks.  _Good enough for now._

Ernie lands, and they hit everyone with _fly_ spells who's not already so endowed.  Kibi takes a deep breath and casts _teleport_.


* * 

They arrive high in the air above a large box canyon, near to the dead-end.   Below them – well, there's a lot to take in.

The canyon itself is almost eighty feet wide directly below, though it tapers down narrowly.  They cannot actually _see_ the very end, as it's covered with a rocky roof – the canyon effectively ends in a cave.  The walls of the canyon rise up at least a hundred feet.

There are numerous battered and broken defenses scattered across the canyon's expanse:  slabs of stone and wood, partially-filled trenches, hastily-constricted and now mostly-wrecked barricades.  It's as if someone wanted to slow an advancing army and didn't have long to set things up.

Also, there's an advancing army.   It looks like they had brought some siege towers with them, but those have all been destroyed.  One is on fire and producing the smoke seen from afar by the Company.   The soldiers in this army wear no uniforms, or indeed any clothing at all, and while humanoid are clearly nothing like human.  They are taller as a rule, standing seven or eight feet, and have brown rubbery skin reminiscent of troll-skin.   Scattered here and there are some truly Giant specimens of the type, towering at nearly fifteen feet tall.   They have long sharp claws, and all of them, shorter and taller, have something wrong with their faces; the Company is too high up to see exactly what.

The floor of the canyon below is scattered with hundreds of bodies of these creatures, along with an even greater number of slain men and elves.   Sounds of battle ring out where the badly-outnumbered defenders are still holding off the tide of advancing monsters.  And that tide is clearly going to overwhelm them soon, as the canyon extends back as far as they can see, and it's filled with hundreds – no, more like thousands – of attackers.

There's no sign of the World Stone, but given that the army is pressing toward the cave at the end of the canyon, the Company has a fairly accurate impression of what's going on.  As they descend they take in three more details about the battlefield:  first, there are some defenders standing here and there who have not died, but who are also not fighting back.  They're standing or sitting, glassy-eyed and comatose, weapons fallen from their slack hands.

Second, there's too much blood.  Even for a battlefield with hundreds of bodies, there's _much_ too much blood.   It's not just that the shattered barricades, corpses, monsters and defenders are splattered with dark liquid; the ground itself looks like it's a few inches deep in the stuff.  Some of the trenches are practically filled with it.  

_Guess that's why they're called the Bleeding Scourge_ thinks Kibi.

Third, the Company sees what's amiss with the faces of the monsters:  they have no traditional features.  Instead, across the otherwise-smooth face of each member of the Scourge is a single carved rune, distinct in its edges but weeping blood.

Dranko grimaces.  “Nothing good ever comes from guys with runes instead of faces.”

Kibi immediately drops a _wall of force_ that _almost_ entirely blocks off the cave mouth; he leaves a small gap at the top that he and his friends can fly through.   He shouts to the others that he has done this (as the party is not mind-linked at the moment) and then flies himself through the gap and into the cave as a wave of monsters smashes into the base of the wall.

The back of the cave is not far in – maybe thirty or forty feet from the mouth.  Set into the rock wall at the back are the columns of a large arch, and completely _filling_ the archway is an enormous white marble stone.  It's a perfect sphere, about ten feet in diameter, and so white it seems to glow from within.  No dirt, blood, or grime marks its perfect smooth surface.

Near to the Stone and off to the side is a man in leather armor, hunched over slightly and fervently praying inside a little translucent force bubble.   A tall woman in plate mail, badly wounded, is guarding the man in the bubble.   Some monsters had gotten into the cave before Kibi's _wall of force_ went up and are battling the few remaining defenders there.  A tall elf dressed in long red robes stands nearest to the Stone; he has just finished casting a healing spell on a number of the soldiers.

“I'm Kibilhathur Bimson,” Kibi announces as he lands.  “I understand you have a stone that needs moving.  Oh, and I dropped a _wall of force_ over there.”

The priest looks up and nods at Kibi.  “Walls won't hold for long again the Scourge.”  Then he points to the World Stone and adds,  “Move that!”

The rest of the Company moves in to assist the defenders outside the wall (though Flicker follows Kibi, to serve as a bodyguard).  Dranko drops an _ice storm_ to help slow down the Scourge, then moves down just out of reach of one of the giant-sized monsters.  Aravis sighs.  “He always gets in the way,” he mutters to himself.  Out loud he shouts, “They're in a perfect cone formation, but Dranko is...”

“I'll dodge it, whatever it is,” Dranko calls back.  “Don't worry!”

“You'll dodge a _prismatic spray?_”

Ernie, meanwhile, drops a _flame strike_, accompanied by the battle cry:  “Back off, you nasty-faced... things!”   It's modestly effective, though the Bleeding Scourge seems to have some resistance to fire.

“Do what you need to do,” reiterates Dranko.

Aravis sighs, shrugs, and blasts a _prismatic spray_ straight downward, catching a huge swath of Scourge in its cone.  The angle is such that the _wall of force_ protects those in the cave, and Ernie is high enough to be out of the blast.  Only  Dranko catches some friendly fire, and he _does_ – barely –  manage to avoid going insane.

Four of the smaller Bleeding Scourge vanish, ten die from various damage types, and another three are petrified.   Four big ones are also caught:  one sucks up a large amount of electrical damage but doesn't quite die, another does drop dead from poison, and the remaining two are unaffected.

Some of the Scourge pressing against the _wall of force_ turn and start yammering in horrible screechy voices – maybe it's a language?   And the ones already _inside_ the cave advance and attack.  Two get through to Kibi and rend him with their claws, but that's not the worst of it.   Huge gouts of blood spray from the runes in their faces and splatter the dwarf from head to foot; it burns his skin and sets his clothes to smoking.   He manages to resist some further ill-effect but bellows in agony nonetheless.  

Two more Bleeding Scourge overwhelm and kill the bodyguard standing over the man in the bubble.   Another  monster sprays an elven defender with acidic blood, and the effect is even more gruesome:  a bloody rune draws itself across the  elf's face, his body jerks around uncontrollably, and a second spray of blood spurts out of _his_ face, directly at one of his wounded compatriots.  His ally screams and smolders.  Kibi turns green; he's seen a quite a few revolting creatures in his time, but this... ugh!  The surviving soldiers fight back and slay one of the beasts, but it's the Scourge who clearly have the upper hand.  

Outside the wall, the Scourge continues to pour down the canyon toward the World Stone as the Company thins their ranks with magical firepower:  a _firestorm_ from Morningstar obliterates a couple dozen, and Grey Wolf sets up an _ironstorm_ as a precursor to Aravis's inevitable _chain lightning_.   

Two of the Giantish members of the Scourge jut their heads toward the cave, and from each of their runed faces springs a thin beam of gray light.  There's a flash where the _wall of force_ stood, and the front line of monsters stumbles forward.

“Wall's down!” shouts Kibi.

While the fellow in the force-bubble continues to crouch and pray, the red-robed priest casts another healing spell on his allies before turning to Kibi.

“Move it!” he barks.  “Do what you have to do!”

Kibi throws up his hands.  “I don't _know_ what I have to do!”

The priest goes white and a look of panic crosses his face.

“You don't know?!” he cries, frantic.

“I thought _you'd_ know!” Kibi answers, equally frustrated.

“I don't know!” exclaims the priest.  “You're the Opener!  There's the Arch.  Open it!  Move the damned Stone!”

Kibi looks again at the World Stone:  a towering sphere of perfect, unstained marble.  Not knowing what else to do he puts a hand upon it.

Immediately the dwarf realizes it's saturated with Earth Magic, and its power starts to intermingle with his.  The World Stone starts to glow in earnest as energy rushes between the two, and Kibi realizes he couldn't pull his hand away even if he wanted to.

Kibi thinks at the Stone:  _Move!  My will is that you move!_  It doesn't budge, but a surge of Earth Magic flows through him when he concentrates.  

“Protect me!” he cries to his friends.  “I'm going to be busy for a bit.”

They're _all_ busy for a bit.  Aravis unleashes his _chain lightning_ into the _ironstorm_ with predictably destructive results.  Grey Wolf and Ernie pound the attackers with spells while Morningstar heals the good guys.  Dranko uses his ring to place a _wall of ice_ across the cave entrance – another delaying tactic – and then catches sight of a monster smashing through the force-bubble protecting the chanting man.   The rune-faced horror rakes the man's neck – it would be a death-blow, but Dranko casts an interrupting spell of wound-closure to save his life before other elven soldiers bring down the beast.

The _wall of ice_ comes down, _disintegrated_ by one of the giantish Bleeding Scourge.   Another one blasts a cone of blood from its face into the cave, drenching them in stinging gore.   Most of the Company resists the accompanying horror, but Flicker is overwhelmed.  He sits down quietly, expression vacant, and drops his sword.   Behind them the blood sheets down the curve of the World Stone and puddles onto the ground beneath it.

Another smaller member of the Scourge leaps forward and tears at Kibi, but the dwarf keeps his hand on the World Stone.  He continues to concentrate, willing the Stone to move while channeling Earth Magic into it.  More blood splatters upon him, this time from the lacerated face of a horrified human defender.   

_No good_, Kibi thinks, and so he casts _xorn movement_ and sinks into the ground, keeping his hand in contact with the very bottom of the World Stone.   Surrounded by the earth of Cafille his power grows stronger, and he knows that somehow he is changing the very physical nature of the great marble sphere, though the details are still beyond his grasp.

The attackers press in, while the Company and the ever-dwindling ranks of native defenders fall back to guard the back of the cave.   Dranko goes _invisible_ and annihilates one of the giants with his whip.  Ernie grows in stature with a _righteous might_ and hacks away with his blades.  “Nice to see something other than kneecaps for a change!”

Aravis casts another _prismatic spray_.  Grey Wolf blasts a _cone of cold_.  Morningstar heals the robed priest and  moves to protect the chanter.

“Good!” shouts the priest.  “We have to protect Baylor at all costs, or all of this is for nothing. Now if...”  He looks around and doesn't see Kibi.  His face falls.  “The Opener!  What happened to the Opener?!”

What's happening is, Kibi is finally figuring it out.  With a last massive surge of Earth Magic he understands the link he's formed with the World Stone, and how he's affecting its nature.  Specifically, he's changing its weight.  Suddenly, to him, it's as if he's holding not a hundred-ton rock but a thin shell of balsa.  With his wrist and hand still above ground, he moves the World Stone off to the side as easily as if it were made of paper mache.  

(Since Kibi cannot see what's going on above ground, he fails to realize that he has slammed it right into Ernie.  And while the _weight_ of the World Stone is lessened, its _mass_ is entirely unchanged; Ernie is knocked backward against one of the cave walls, stunned.)

The World Arch now stands unblocked; it is filled with a deep purple light.  The man Baylor, who has been praying for the well-being of his world while waiting for this moment, stands upright.  He looks at the red-robed priest, sighs, and with an expression reminiscent of the last one seen on the face of One Certain Step, shouts  “I die for Cafille!” before dashing straight into the Arch.

Purple light blasts outward and fills the canyon, diffusing into the air above and filling the world with a mauve tinge.   The Company is overcome by a odd feeling as the light washes over them, odd and familiar.  They feel as they did while traveling back in time using the Eyes of Moirel.   They feel that something is wrong with how time is anchored to space.

The Bleeding Scourge are physically blasted backward and as they stumble they fade out of existence.   Even the corpses vanish.  Within five seconds there is not a single specimen of their kind left on Cafille, alive or dead.  

A few seconds after that, the same thing starts to afflict the Company.  They feel like an inexorable hand is shoving them backward, and their physicality starts to falter.  

The priest looks around frantically.  “Where did he go?  He has to put it back!”

Kibi emerges from the ground to see his friends looking only semi-solid, and he hears the priest yelling loudly, “Put it back!  For the love of Balt, put it back!”  The dwarf moves the World Stone easily back into position, blocking the Arch and cutting off the source of the purple light.  The fading stops.  Morningstar realizes that the priest is the only defender to survive the attack, but casts _revivify_ on the last soldier to have fallen.

Kibi looks confusedly at the priest.  “Can you explain what this is all about?”

The priest turns from Kibi to the now-lifeless canyon and then back again.

“Gods be praised!” he shouts, and engulfs Kibi in a bear hug.


...to be continued...


----------



## theskyfullofdust

I think part 300 deserves a round of applause, or fireworks, or something equally celebrationary. Love the rune-face monsters, pretty gruesome, yet cool. What effects did the blood spurts have?


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

This group is so awesome, they save worlds without even knowing how!


----------



## Tamlyn

theskyfullofdust said:


> I think part 300 deserves a round of applause, or fireworks, or something equally celebrationary. Love the rune-face monsters, pretty gruesome, yet cool. What effects did the blood spurts have?




I think it's pretty cool that part _300_ is about a handful of warriors defending against an oncoming army.


----------



## Everett

They really ought to do something about Flicker's Will save.


----------



## blargney the second

Everett said:


> They really ought to do something about Flicker's Will save.



Greater Heroism seems like a good fit.


----------



## Everett

blargney the second said:


> Greater Heroism seems like a good fit.




Flicker rarely if ever gets buffed in combat.


----------



## Piratecat

Everett said:


> Flicker rarely if ever gets buffed in combat.



Yeah, poor 'lil fella. 

This was one of those fights where Dranko felt relatively useless - area effect spells were _definitely_ the order of the day - but which made for a spectacular session. One of the facets of good pacing is to know when to completely swap the feel of the game for a session. We had been pretty frustrated trying to track down Praska and fight swarms, and the change of pace was a delight.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> We had been pretty frustrated trying to track down Praska and fight swarms, and the change of pace was a delight.




No doubt.  The battle had a wonderfully epic feel to it.


----------



## Sagiro

This is not an action-packed update.  

I can't say the same about the next one.  

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 301*_
*You'll Get To Them All Eventually*

An odd quiet settles over the canyon.

Almost directly overhead is a remarkable sight, heretofore ignored by the Company what with the ground-based distractions:  the Great Syzygy.  Four celestial bodies are visible – moons or planets of increasing size, overlapping in the sky like concentric colored marbles – though there may be more hidden behind those.  Slowly, very slowly, they are shifting out of alignment.

Dranko squints upward.  “Do we all die when those are no longer lined up?”

The priest doesn't look up; his gaze is still cast upon the canyon itself, now blissfully free of monsters though the seas of blood remain.  “If you are still in this canyon, yes.  As will I, and Enric here.”  He motions to the one other soldier who survived.  “I would suggest that you return to whence you came.  The Great Syzygy will not just affect the canyon; it will also prevent… “

He looks at Dranko, and wonders if the crude-looking ally of the dwarf will understand.  “Cafille is out of temporal phase from the rest of the universe.  That is why Kibilhathur had to be summoned with an elaborate and time-critical ritual the first time.  People cannot simply _plane shift_ to and from Cafille.  You could come now because of the Great Syzygy.  But we will soon become bombarded with... it's too technical.”

Dranko clears his throat with conspicuous annoyance.  “You're forgetting to say something important.  How about, 'Thank you, Kibi, for saving the world.  Here's your loot.'”

The priest gives Dranko a sour look.  “Perhaps, young man, I was getting to that, but thought that other matters, like you all being confined to Cafille for the rest of your lives, might be worth mentioning first.”

Grey Wolf quirks an eyebrow.  “How much time do we have left?”

The priest looks up at the planetary alignment.  “I would estimate about half an hour, give or take five or ten minutes.  It's hard to tell without a telescope.”

Morningstar starts to pray for another _plane shift_ while the priest explains recent events to Kibi.

“That was the Bleeding Scourge,” he says, gesturing to the bloody canyon.  “They took advantage of the unique nature of our Prime to stage an invasion.  The World Arch emanates a temporal energy that's building up all the time.  When one releases the World Stone it floods the world with that energy, with theoretically devastating effects.  Fortunately for us, the Great Syzygy, which allowed the Scourge to invade, also allowed you to survive here long enough to fend off that invasion.  Though ordinarily, the Bleeding Scourge would be immune from the energy from the Arch.”

“Really?” says Kibi.  “Because they seemed pretty affected by it to me!”

“Yes,” sighs the priest.  “That was because of Baylor – the man who gave his life to save us all.   He had spent the better part of the year living in a cauldron filled with a complex magical liquid.  It altered his nature such that when he leaped into the Arch, it changed the temporal energy slightly to a type that would send the Bleeding Scourge back to their home world.”  

“Couldn't they come back?” asks Kibi.

“Yes – in another 6,000 years, when the next Great Syzygy is upon us.”

Aravis cuts in.  “A little more warning would have been nice, you know.  We almost couldn't get here at all!”

“Also, you should have told me I was also the 'Closer'” says Kibi.

The priest chuckles.  “I only warned you when the time was right – and indeed it was, judging from the results.  According to prophecy, the right time to _send_ for you was when I was blinded by light through the eye of the needle.”

He gestures to the top of the canyon, where the sun has now moved a few degrees off from a small gap in a jumble of rocks.  

“I was standing here guarding Baylor when the sun shone upon me through that hole.”

The priest turns to Kibi and bows low. 

“I am the High Priest Sipe of the Sun God Balt, and I am most grateful for your timely arrival, prophesied or not.  The late  lamented Lady Serpicore, Gods bless her soul, was correct about you after all.  She perished in one of the previous attacks of the Bleeding Scourge – as, I'm sorry to say, did every one of your former party of adventurers with whom you spent so little time on your previous truncated visits.

“We have lost most of our greatest heroes, knights, warriors, and priests.  I'm afraid I have little to give you by way of thanks, but you may have this.”

He takes off a necklace with a red and glowing bauble on the end of it and presses it into the dwarf's hand.

“This is a holy relic* of the Sun God Balt.  The chain is not necessary; you may keep it in your pocket if you wish, though I feel that would be disrespectful.  It has long since been used by those here who need it.  Think of it when you need something badly.  It will only work once for anyone, but it will work, once, for everyone.  Even him.”

He gestures at Dranko.

The party flies Sipe and Enric up to the top of the cliff above the canyon, since they have no magics left to flee before the Great Syzygy ends.  Then, it having been a very long day, they _plane shift_ back to Charagan and _teleport_ to the Greenhouse to sleep...

...except that with nothing but normal _teleports_ left, there's a small mishap.  The Company arrives not at the door to their home, but in the fine sucking sands of the Mouth of Nahalm.   Ernie and Kibi have sunk nearly up to their necks before Aravis casts a second time, this time with perfect accuracy.   At least, for Eddings' sake, they cast _clean_ cantrips to banish the caked-on blood and sand from their clothes before going inside.

The butler is happy to see them as always.   Dranko greets him a question that's not as unexpected as it should be.

“Eddings, what day is it?”

Eddings scowls.  “You haven't been time traveling again, have you?”

“_Plane shifting_” says Grey Wolf, plopping into a chair and putting up his feet.

Ernie lets the cat Argol scamper up to his shoulder.  “And the place we shifted to had a different – temporal signature?”  He looks questioningly at Aravis.  “Is that it?”

Aravis nods.

It takes them a few minutes to figure things out, particularly given the time change between Kivia and Charagan, but they come to realize that their time spent on the world of Cafille was actually passing more quickly, and so very little time has passed here at home since they _plane shifted_ away.  

While Kibi examines the necklace from High Priest Sipe – the bauble is a beautiful and stylized sun with tiny solar flares – Dranko takes a small pouch from his pack.

“Almost forgot,” he says with practiced nonchalance.  “When I was negotiating with the gem merchants in Seresef, they gave me a few free samples.”  He empties four stones onto his palm – a diamond, two opals, and a moontear.   He hands them to Flicker.  “What's your professional opinion?”

Flicker starts with the diamond, taking out a magnifying lens and giving the gem a careful examination.  After several minutes he mutters longingly, “I think I need to be alone with this one.”

Dranko nods.  “So?”

Flicker spends a few minutes with each gem before delivering his verdict.  “In my professional opinion, these are suspiciously flawless.”

Dranko raises an eyebrow.  “Suspiciously?”

“Unusually,” says Flicker.  “Startlingly.” 

Dranko laughs.  “They have mountains full of these things, and lots of people are suspicious.  They won't confirm if the source is magical, but I can tell you that the gems themselves are not.   But they are, in fact, flawless.”

Flicker exhales.  “I imagine  the nobles of Charagan will be falling all over themselves to own these, once word gets out.”

Dranko grins broadly.  “You don't say!”

Aravis interrupts.  “When do we grind them up for spell components?”

Dranko and Flicker reply in alarmed unison.  “Never!”

Aravis smirks.  “Then how interesting can they be?”

“As a member of your Small Council and a close personal friend,” says Flicker to Dranko, “I could look after these for you.”

Dranko takes the gems back from the halfling.  “You can have visiting rights on weekends.”  Then he turns to Morningstar, who has been watching all of this in silence.  “You may be married to the mob, but it's a really _rich_ mob, swimming in gems.”

“You may want to give the moontear to your wife,” says Flicker in a stage-whisper.  “She loves them, you know.”

Dranko looks affronted.  “Are you implying I can bribe my wife's affections with mere gemstones?”

“Well, it would work on me,” Flicker replies.

Morningstar laughs.  “You two would make a lovely couple.”

They discuss the gem-trade for a few minutes, and the talk eventually turns to how Dranko's new business will probably end up hurting the financial fortunes of Tor's family – nobles of Forquelle who own most of the precious-stone business on Charagan.  That leads to wistful talk of Tor himself, and how they should try to rescue him someday.

“But I think the Necromantic Forge comes first,” says Dranko.

“Let's have a good dinner before anything else,” says Morningstar.  “Then we can figure out what we're doing tomorrow.”

“Before that, I need a bath,” says Dranko.  “_Clean_ cantrips can only do so much.”

Ernie smirks.  “If you want the dinner to be good, you'll let me go first.”


* *

Cleaned and fed, the Company lounges in the living room of the Greenhouse and debates their next move.  Dranko makes an impassioned plea to waste no more time in freeing Califax's soul.

“The man hasn't had a soul for a year, because we forgot we had it in our basement.  That sort of makes it our responsibility."

Aravis answers.  “As much as I agree that we should release his soul, the fact is that members of the Noble Herd and Great Pack are being killed _right now_.”

Grey Wolf nods.  “I agree.  I say we go find the cats.”

“Actually,” says Aravis, “if we're considering _all_ of our options, we should keep going after Praska.  We're on her trail.  It's what we were in the middle of doing before we were interrupted by dogs and World Stones.  Why are we giving up?”

Dranko leans forward.  “It seems to me that we hit a dead end on that one.  And we don't know _how_ to solve the problem with the animals dying.  But we _know_ how to free Califax's soul, and we know _where_ to do it.  “We can go in, find the Necromantic Forge, free the soul, and then move right on to the Feline Conclave.” 

Morningstar shakes her head.  “I'm much more worried about the problem of souls not going to heaven now that Drosh is gone.  The Black Circle could very well have plans for those souls.”

Flicker scratches his head.  “But it's not the Black Circle that's causing the souls to be stuck.  Is it?”

“No,” Morningstar admits.  “But think about it.  Drosh is fleeing because the Adversary may be coming.  And who's summoning the Adversary?  The Black Circle.  Given how good they are at divinations, is it a stretch to think they're planning on scooping up all these souls for their own evil purpose?”

“But there's nothing we can do about that!” says Dranko.  “Look, we're talking about the soul of the man who risked his life to prevent the Emperor from returning.  We owe him.”

Morningstar exhales.  She hates this kind of debate.  “His soul isn't getting any _more_ trapped, is it?”

That provokes some bitterness from Kibi.  “Yeah.  And the dwarves aren't getting any _more_ enslaved...  I don't think I like that line of reasoning.”

“The problem is,” says Ernie, “every time we say something can't get any worse, and we turn our back on it, it gets worse!”

“I understand that we have a number of important things to do right now,” Dranko says plainly.  “I ask that we deal with Califax first so I can stop feeling guilty about it.”

Ernie blinks.  “Okay,” he says.   “But we should vote on it.”

Aravis votes for finding Praska.  Morningstar wants to deal with the un-ascending souls.  Grey Wolf and Kibi vote for seeking out the Feline Conclave.  Dranko and Ernie vote for the Necromantic Forge.

“Looks like you're the deciding vote, Flick,” says Ernie.

“No way!” Flicker protests.  “In that case, I vote we go figure out how to free the Dwarf slaves in Kivia.”

After a few more minutes of bickering Kibi changes his vote.  “If Aravis isn't going to vote for the cats, then I'll change my vote to rescuing Califax's soul.  Let's just get it over with.”

Before going to sleep they review the materials they have on the Necromantic Forge, which pinpoint its location and function but say nothing about what it looks like.  The descriptions of the undead made there are unsettling.

“Walking Necropolis.” repeats Grey Wolf, looking at their notes.   His comment is the same as when they first read about the place.  “We're doomed.”

It won't be long before they find out if he's right.

...to be continued...

* We use Action Points in our 3.5e game, and the necklace grants a theoretically-infinite number of Action Points, with a limit of one per person per lifetime.


----------



## coyote6

So, if you die, and get revivified/raised/resurrected/etc., does that count as another lifetime? Your first lifetime ended at death . . . 

PS: There's a weird copy & paste artifact or something in there: Flicker gives the "gem `111111111// a careful examination."


----------



## theskyfullofdust

coyote6 said:


> PS: There's a weird copy & paste artifact or something in there: Flicker gives the "gem `111111111// a careful examination."




Maybe that was Flicker's inner thoughts about how much it was worth


----------



## Piratecat

Sagiro said:


> * We use Action Points in our 3.5e game, and the necklace grants a theoretically-infinite number of Action Points, with a limit of one per person per lifetime.



I totally forgot we had this!

The next fight is a thing of glory: horrible, leprous, terrifying, undead glory.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 301*_
*Graveyard Shift*

The next morning they prep spells with three goals in mind:  location, travel and Undead Slaying.   Before heading out, Aravis goes to the basement and retrieves the Soul Shard, a chunk of flat black rock slightly smaller than a human skull.  The stone housing the soul of Califax is rough-looking and irregularly shaped, and greasy-feeling even though it's objectively dry.   To a seasoned adventurer like Aravis the thing is, beyond question, capital-”E” Evil.

Having secured the Shard in his pack, Aravis _teleports_ the party to a spot he recalls outside the town of Feslin, not far from where he grew up.  Ernie immediately casts _find the path_ to “Nazg Hodeth”; to his relief it points in exactly the direction they expect.   Off they fly, the green countryside below covered with stately manor houses and their surrounding well-tended grounds, though after a time these give way to knobbly pine-covered hills that rise quickly to the Black Mountains.   The name of these mountains, clear to see from this height, comes from the nearly-black dark green color of the evergreens that cover them.   The peaks are not high; there is no tree line, no snowy peaks.  The pines cover them to their hidden tops.  

The Company drops altitude and flies for a time closer to ground level, and they discover that beneath the trees lurk a number of bugbear villages.   These settlements are physically sprawling though sparsely populated, as if once there was a great civilization of the monsters here, but no more.  Now the local populations resemble skeleton crews, going about their bugbearish  business in villages of empty and collapsing buildings, the forest encroaching everywhere.

The party pays them little mind, and if a few bugbears here and there are alarmed by seven ghostly humanoids zooming among the trees on a magic wind, nothing ever comes of it.  Finally the last of the habitations are left behind, and half-an-hour later they overshoot something  red painted on several of the trees.  They turn around, go back, and discover that at a distinct boundary the same symbol has been drawn in red on dozens of tree trunks.  Aravis casts _comprehend languages_ and learns (to no one's surprise) that it means “danger” in the language of the bugbears.  Undaunted they continue to follow Ernie's spell.

Ten minutes later, zipping through the trees on a steady upward grade, they burst out into a huge gently-sloping clearing.  Clear of trees, at least; there are gravestones here a-plenty.   At the same time they feel the temperature drop a good 30 degrees, from summer warmth to a cold chill.  Overhead, where the sky had been sunny and clear an hour earlier, the sun struggles to shine through a thick ceiling of slate-gray cloud.   Crude and crudely-marked tombstones stretch away from them up a slope  of dirt and dead grasses, dotted here and there with larger monuments and small mausoleums.  

Dranko mutters, “Delioch's blessing be upon this place,” but it's obvious that the next time will be the first time.  

They discover with some quick triangulation that the _find the path_ spell indicates the center of the graveyard,  so they drop out of wind form to be better able to defend themselves.  The cold takes on a sickening edge and seeps into their bones.    They pick their way slowly among the crooked slabs and pitted earth, wary for the inevitable appearance of the undead.

It doesn't take long.  After trudging less than a hundred feet up the slope, the ground shifts beneath their feet and starts to rise violently around them.  At first the party thinks that some huge creature is pushing its way up through the dirt and gravestones, but after a few seconds it's clear that what they're facing _is_ the dirt and gravestones.   The creature – and they all guess correctly that this is the “Walking Necropolis” referenced in the Black Circle literature – hulks upward of forty feet, a generally humanoid form of earth and stone with bones and tombstones sticking out all over.  Dranko rises with it, trapped for the moment in a huge mouth with graven stone slabs for teeth.  

“Very... painful...” he gasps, trying to avoid a gruesome crushing.  The stink of the dead is everywhere around him, a stench not lost on the others as it rolls off the Necropolis is putrid waves.  

Grey Wolf loads a _greater fireburst_ into the sword _Bostock_ and takes a mighty swing at the monstrosity's “leg.”  He makes contact and takes out a large clump of sod, but the Walking Necropolis is naturally resistant to magic and shrugs off the _fireburst_.

Dranko, who at least has his hands free, retrieves the Lucent Tower from his pack.  For some reason he mistakenly thinks he'll end up _inside_ it when activated.

Aravis looks up in alarm when he sees what Dranko is doing.  “No, that's not the way it...”

Dranko invokes the command phrase.  “Crystal Rise!”  The Lucent tower quickly expands to its full size of 20 feet long and 15 feet around; within seconds it is sticking out in two places from the Necropolis (roughly the chin and shoulder blades).    Bones, rocks, dirt and tombstones spray out in all directions, while Dranko is slammed into the air.  _Feather fall_ slows his descent, though he finds that a detached skeletal forearm is still grasping his own arm.  The Walking Necropolis bellows in annoyance, an unearthly noise that's part low screech and part grinding of old stone.  

Kibi quickly summons a huge earth elemental, instructing it to grapple the walking graveyard.  The elemental looks up dubiously at the much larger enemy, tries gamely, and only ends up getting poked with jutting bones for its trouble.  Kibi follows up with an _earthbolt_ that, like Grey Wolf's _fireburst_, splashes harmlessly off the monster's spell resistance.

“I could _maze_ it,” calls Aravis.  “And we could get the hell out of here.”

“No,” says Dranko, trying and failing to shake loose the skeletal arm.  “It's a monstrosity.  It's our _job_ to destroy it.”

Aravis sighs and casts _disintegrate,_ with no more luck in affecting the creature as the other party wizards.

Figuring they'll get through if they keep trying, Ernie casts a ringed _blade barrier_ around the Necropolis, eight feet in the air so the Company can still attack beneath it.   Flicker preps his ice dagger and tumbles into melee position, and as he does so nearly a dozen new undead creatures burst up out of the ground in true horror-movie fashion.   At least these are less formidable than the Walking Necropolis; they look like rotting bugbear corpses, dirt caked into their rancid flesh and exposed bones.  They glow a deep green.

Morningstar grimaces.  _It always gets worse before it gets better_.  So thinking, she makes things a bit better by casting _undeath to death_.  The burst of positive energy is powerful enough that gravestones tilt away from its epicenter, and five of the newly-risen bugbears corpses are blasted to fine powder.  She follows up with a _searing darkness_ that penetrates the Necropolis's defenses and knocks a bunch of dirt and skulls out of its midsection.  A stone-grinding growl comes from its massive unnatural bulk.

The Necropolis reaches a massive arm through the _blade barrier_ and Ernie is gratified to see the whirling force blades slice away chunks of rock and bone.  He's less thrilled as he watches the monster pluck Grey Wolf up off the ground and bring _him_ through the _blade barrier_ as well.  Crushed in a tombstone-filled fist and slashed up horrible by blades, Grey Wolf looks barely alive as he stares up into the dead, cavernous eyes of his enemy.

Dranko activates his _boots of haste_ and tumbles into a flanking position with Kibi's earth elemental.  He lashes out once with his whip but the attack goes awry; the skeletal arm still clutching his own arm has thrown off his balance.  Annoyed, he smashes the clinging hand away with the butt of the whip.  Aravis shakes his head before flying up under the _blade barrier_, avoiding a swing of the Necropolis's other arm, grabbing Grey Wolf's exposed foot, and casting _dimension door_.  Pop!  The two wizards arrive safely back on the ground, at the edge of the battle.

The earth elemental tries to bull rush the Necropolis; it digs in with its huge stone feet and pushes with all its considerable might, enduring the cutting blades of Ernie's barrier as it does so.   It _barely_ manages to nudge the undead mountain backward, but it's enough – the Necropolis stumbles back and gets a fresh set of wicked slices from the _blade barrier_.  Skulls and clods and stone chunks fall out of its body by the dozen.  Dranko just barely manages to dodge out of the way, taking some harm from the falling detritus but keeping his feet.

“Hey Dranko!” calls Kibi.  “Can you dodge of _cone of cold?_.  You're kind of in the way.”

“Yeah, go for it!” Dranko shouts back.

Kibi shifts to an optimum casting position and blasts, the cone of ice catching many of the smaller bugbear corpses as well as the Walking Necropolis.  Dranko does evade the whole of the blast, ducking behind a large tombstone as body parts and dirt and some rotting entrails go flying past.  

Grey Wolf, wobbly on his feet but still able to concentrate, pegs the monster with a _sonic lance_ that blows a gaping hole through its chest.  The creature roars again, somehow managing to maintain its cohesion despite having taken some massive abuse.   Ernie steps up beneath the _blade barrier_ and swings his sword multiple times into the Necropolis's ankle.  He carves another hole that reveals one of the many rotting corpses inside of it – and the corpse moves, like it's trying to escape!  Ernie glares for a second before a final stroke of his sword beheads the smaller body.  

“Uh, guys?  I think there's something inside this thing.  When it goes down, we may want to stand back...”

Flicker runs up and discharges his ice dagger into the monster, but the magic is repelled and the physical damage is pitiful.

Finally the recently-risen bugbear corpses shamble forward to attack.  Two swing their rusting weapons at Morningstar, one of which scores a gash on her face.  Another opens a wound in Kibi's leg.   Two of the corpses have less luck with Ernie, their weapons scraping off his plate mail, while another two fail to penetrate the rocky hide of the earth elemental.  The remaining four swarm around Dranko, with two of them landing blows.

Morningstar grasps her holy symbol and effects a _greater turning_; three more of the bugbear corpses are blown to dust.      Then she quickens a _mass cure light wounds_ that restores some vitality to both Grey Wolf and Kibi.  And a good thing, too, as the Necropolis, heedless of the Lucent Tower still sticking out of its neck, targets the little creature that damaged it with the _cone of cold_.  It smashes an enormous fist down repeatedly on the dwarf before picking him bodily up and _stuffing_ him into its own body.  Kibi can feel a dozen skeletal arms grasping him and trying to force him further into the mass of dirt and graves.   Scree cries out in alarm.

But now Dranko has the opening and the opportunity he's been waiting for.  He casts _gravestrike_, which allows him to sneak attack the undead.  And he's still flanking with the earth elemental.   With his lasher training he delivers a devastating series of blows with the whip; with each hit, huge chunks of dirt and stone shower from the creature's body.   By the time Dranko makes his last whip-crack the Necropolis literally has no leg left to stand upon.  It crumbles apart as it falls, the Lucent Tower crashing down upon its remains (and barely missing Kibi, who ends up buried beneath a pile of heavy earth).

From the Walking Necropolis's dissociated rubble, some thirty bodies rise to attack.

...to be continued...


----------



## theskyfullofdust

Ooooh...


----------



## blargney the second

Was this a rebranded tarrasque?  It kind of feels like one..


----------



## coyote6

I think it's a critter from MMII.

Edit: Corpse gatherer, I think.


----------



## the Jester

coyote6 said:


> I think it's a critter from MMII.
> 
> Edit: Corpse gatherer, I think.




I think so too. I was envisioning the pic of it the whole time I was reading!


----------



## theskyfullofdust

I might have to use one of those in my own game. The players will love me for it


----------



## Shmoo

coyote6 said:


> I think it's a critter from MMII.
> 
> Edit: Corpse gatherer, I think.




Wasn't there a grave elemental or grave golem or something back in 2e, part of the Ravenloft stuff?


----------



## The_Warlock

More importantly, was this Sagiro's revenge for the Purple Ghoul Worm from PirateCat's old run?


----------



## the Jester

Shmoo said:


> Wasn't there a grave elemental or grave golem or something back in 2e, part of the Ravenloft stuff?




Yeah- mist, pyre, grave and blood elementals, iirc. Bitchin' stuff.


----------



## the Jester

For the record, I totally stole Dranko's name to use in my own campaign (he was a wererat that, with his buddies, kicked the pcs' asses and ransomed their lives). 

In the interest of full disclosure. Ahem.


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

the Jester said:


> For the record, I totally stole Dranko's name to use in my own campaign (he was a wererat that, with his buddies, kicked the pcs' asses and ransomed their lives).
> 
> In the interest of full disclosure. Ahem.




Did any of your players get it?


----------



## RangerWickett

Likewise, in War of the Burning Sky there's an immortal half-orc who rules the Ragesian Empire. Guess what his name is.

And I didn't even realize it until a few months after we released the campaign, but apparently I'd taken the "Burning Sky" name from the flying carpet in Sagiro's game, but I'd forgotten it in the intervening 6 years.

And there's a group of monsters named trillith, after a troll/illithid in one of Piratecat's first storyhour posts.

I hope they see it more as homages than theft. *whistles innocently*


----------



## Shieldhaven

The Jester, that raises an important question. What _do_ you do about a problem like T'Cri Dranko?

Haven


----------



## the Jester

Mathew_Freeman said:


> Did any of your players get it?




Nah, I recently moved and none of my group up here read story hours other than the ones they are pcs in.



Shieldhaven said:


> The Jester, that raises an important question. What _do_ you do about a problem like T'Cri Dranko?




If you mean "problems like the Dranko in my campaign," they surrender and pay a ransom.


----------



## Piratecat

Shieldhaven said:


> The Jester, that raises an important question. What _do_ you do about a problem like T'Cri Dranko?
> 
> Haven



Whoo hoo, Dranko's in a musical! Oh yeah, _that's_ going to end well. He's going out for a drink when Ernie has his solo, but there's a whole big comedy musical number based on treasure baths.

(Last night we watched the Defenders of Daybreak musical that Sagiro wrote for me, my absolute favorite moment of 2009. Thinking about a Company musical is the next logical step...)

Travel and holidays mean that we're playing in a week or so for the first time in almost two months. I have bad feelings about our upcoming fight with Octesian. Wish us luck.


----------



## StevenAC

Sagiro said:


> Dranko, who at least has his hands free, retrieves the Lucent Tower from his pack.  For some reason he mistakenly thinks he'll end up _inside_ it when activated.



Let me guess, he's been reading (contact)'s Temple of Elemental Evil Story Hour, right?  

(That bit's still one of the most hilarious things I've ever read... _"It should have been you, Jespo."_)



Piratecat said:


> (Last night we watched the Defenders of Daybreak musical that Sagiro wrote for me, my absolute favorite moment of 2009. Thinking about a Company musical is the next logical step...)



Well, some of the songs _are_ already written (see Part Two, chapters 1 and 2, of the collected Story Hour)... 

Speaking of which, I've just added a new chapter to Part Three.  Enjoy...


----------



## Sagiro

StevenAC said:


> ...I've just added a new chapter to Part Three.  Enjoy...




Thanks as always, Steven.  Your .pdf's are invaluable!

Speaking of them, would it be possible to create one enormous .pdf that contains the whole thing?  I often use your .pdf's to find old references, but often it takes me a few tries to figure which one has the stuff I'm looking for.

-Sagiro


----------



## Piratecat

StevenAC said:


> Let me guess, he's been reading (contact)'s Temple of Elemental Evil Story Hour, right?



Ha! Yes, in fact, that's *exactly* the reason. I was dumbfounded at the time when Sagiro showed me that it was never in the rules; (contact) had made such an impression on me that I was sure that was how the item had always worked.


----------



## StevenAC

Sagiro said:


> Speaking of them, would it be possible to create one enormous .pdf that contains the whole thing?  I often use your .pdf's to find old references, but often it takes me a few tries to figure which one has the stuff I'm looking for.



Anything to help make life more interesting for Abernathy's Company... On the Collected Story Hour website, you'll now find a link to one enormous .pdf (866 pages!), as requested.  Happy searching!


----------



## Sagiro

StevenAC said:


> Anything to help make life more interesting for Abernathy's Company... On the Collected Story Hour website, you'll now find a link to one enormous .pdf (866 pages!), as requested.  Happy searching!



Fantastic.  

Thanks again, Steven!


----------



## SolitonMan

Hard to believe that I've caught up to the end of this thread!  Awesome work everyone, thanks so much for sharing!  

I started in on this Story Hour back around Thanksgiving I think it was, reading the pdfs (thanks, StevenAC!) and finally today catching up to the current postings.  Really enjoyable, although I'm already missing those halcyon days of last week when it seemed as though the tale would go on forever...

Anyway, I came across some commentary while reading that made me curious, and I apologize if this has been documented somewhere else I've failed to see, but Sagiro, what exactly do you do for a living?  I saw comments about work on Bioshock (awesome game, BTW) from some time back (no idea how long ago in the real world).  Do you work for 2kBoston?  And related to Bioshock, I just started Fallout 3 (yeah, I'm behind the curve on videogames, mostly) and the thing that struck me was how similar some of the illustrations seemed to the ones in Bioshock.  Is there a relationship between 2k and Bethesda?

Thanks again for such a wonderful source of enjoyment, and may you and and your players have many more happy gaming moments (which you'll share!!) in the future.


----------



## Sagiro

SolitonMan said:


> Hard to believe that I've caught up to the end of this thread!  Awesome work everyone, thanks so much for sharing!
> 
> I started in on this Story Hour back around Thanksgiving I think it was, reading the pdfs (thanks, StevenAC!) and finally today catching up to the current postings.  Really enjoyable, although I'm already missing those halcyon days of last week when it seemed as though the tale would go on forever...
> 
> Anyway, I came across some commentary while reading that made me curious, and I apologize if this has been documented somewhere else I've failed to see, but Sagiro, what exactly do you do for a living?  I saw comments about work on Bioshock (awesome game, BTW) from some time back (no idea how long ago in the real world).  Do you work for 2kBoston?  And related to Bioshock, I just started Fallout 3 (yeah, I'm behind the curve on videogames, mostly) and the thing that struck me was how similar some of the illustrations seemed to the ones in Bioshock.  Is there a relationship between 2k and Bethesda?
> 
> Thanks again for such a wonderful source of enjoyment, and may you and and your players have many more happy gaming moments (which you'll share!!) in the future.




SolitonMan, you surmise correctly that I design video games for 2K Boston (now Irrational Games again!), and I did work on BioShock.  The aesthetic similarities with Fallout 3 are entirely coincidental, and we have no relationship with Bethesda.

I'm glad you're enjoying the Story Hour!  Don't worry -- there's plenty still to come.  I just haven't written it yet.  

Hey, while I'm here, have some more!

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 302*_
*Remains of the Day*

The air quickly fills with the semi-coherent groans of revealed undead – more bugbear zombies, though the newer set  is  fresher and more spry.   They dig their way out of the enormous pile of tombstones, mausoleums, bits of rusted iron fence, rotting coffins, bones and dirt.  The hill of debris shifts as they emerge, which causes the Lucent Tower to slide a few feet.  The Tower taps a teetering monument which in turn topples into a tombstone and cracks open.  From a hollow chamber inside come fluttering a number of amorphous bird-sized creatures that flap and bob into the air, settling into a swirling cloud some twenty-five feet above their heads.   It's hard to say exactly what they are, but they resemble little sickly-gray ghosts, dripping greasy droplets that evaporate before reaching the ground.  

Three of these flying things fire beams of gray light at Kibi, who feels a sharp chill as strength is leeched from his bones.   Morningstar, Grey Wolf and Ernie are each struck once, though Dranko is able to leap to the side and avoid one.  Flicker dodges two beams but is struck by a third.   Every touch of these beams drains away a small amount of bodily vigor.

Flicker finds himself not far from one of the risen zombies and stabs it through the chest.  It grunts and stays on its feet.

“_Mass Heal_ coming up,” says Morningstar, prompting Grey Wolf to pick his way over the rubble to get in range.  Dranko does likewise, and also casts _spiritual weapon_.  A mace of Delioch forms in front of him; he sends it upward where it destroys one of the floating zappers in a single stroke.

Morningstar's spell goes off, which not only heals all of the Company's wounds and lost strength, but also blasts a number of nearby zombies to ash, annihilated in a flash of darkness.

The lid of a coffin standing on its end splinters outward and a huge rotting and angry-looking bugbear steps out, clad in a patchwork of rusting armor and wielding an enormous morningstar.   This is Stighrk, once a mighty barbarian and champion of the Bur-Kesh.  A necklace of skulls hangs from his neck and a large metal shield dangles from his arm.  Stighrk raises his weapon, steps forward, and smashes Morningstar heavily in the shoulder.  She stumbles to one knee. 

Ernie centers a _flame strike_ on this new arrival.  The column of holy fire is tall enough to vaporize a few of the little flying ghosts, and it also turns a few zombies to cinders.  Stighrk's armored body is smoking but still very much on its feet.  Kibi, who doesn't have a good line of sight on the barbarian, blasts a number of the lesser zombies with an empowered _coldfire_.  A couple of creatures that survived the _flame strike_ are destroyed by the spell, and many more are badly damaged.  He quickens a _magic missile_ and finishes one of them off.

The zombies attack.  It's been a while since they've had a live enemy to menace, which may excuse their dismal lack of effectiveness.  Most of the their attacks are ineffective; only the halflings are heavily damaged by their fists and broken weapons.  (Flicker finds one assailant, a short zombie wielding its own off-arm as a bludgeon, to be particularly vexing.)  The Company doesn't grow complacent; they grow chilled, as two bone-white snake-like creatures worm their way up from the remains of the Necropolis.  They resemble fat overgrown larva, perhaps four feet long and a foot in diameter, and their bodies end in expressionless, human faces.  It almost looks like they're wearing masks.  

Aravis shakes off the chill but is zapped and strength-drained by two of the little flying ghosts.   Assessing the battlefield and the various angles thereupon, he responds with an empowered _cone of cold_ that catches nearly every enemy in the fight.   Most of the zombies drop, and Stighrk, Champion of Bugbears, is flash-frozen before he ever had a chance to get really riled up.   The only disappointment is that the two white larvae seem to resist the spell entirely.

Flicker looks around at the mostly-cleared battlefield, then back at his personal zombie nemesis which has somehow survived. 

“Why is mine still alive?!” he complains.

“I apologize,” says Aravis. “I'll do better next time.”

Grey Wolf is unable to resist the supernatural chill of the larvae-creatures.  He can feel his muscles starting to seize up, and is reminded of nothing so much as his last moment of consciousness before he was _petrified_ in Het Branoi.   Figuring he could use some speed bumps to take some of the heat (or cold, in this case), he begins to cast _summon the pack_.  

Dranko and Morningstar resist the worms' freezing calcification but their attacks aren't greatly effective.  Dranko moves his _spiritual weapon_ and lashes once with his whip but does only modest damage, while Morningstar's _flame strike_ bounces off their spell resistance.   Ernie has better luck, managing not only to avoid the heat-sapping aura but also to inflict grievous harm upon one of the worms with _Coiled Viper_ and _Beryn Sur_.  

Kibi is partially overcome by the cold auras, and irked that a feeling of ossification should be so objectionable.   He has a moment of alarm as, just for a second, the back of his right hand looks as though it's turning into pure bone.   He shakes it off and pegs both of the larvae with an empowered _earthbolt_.  

Flicker and his personal zombie antagonist exchange blows, while another rotting bugbear corpse flails harmlessly at Ernie.    One of the larvae lashes with an unexpectedly quick tail-strike and slaps Dranko across the chest.   The half-orc's bones stiffen slightly as fell magic infuses them. 

Not wishing to see what prolonged exposure to these creatures will do, Aravis nails one with an _antimagic ray_.  At once the ambient chill from the worms drops to about half its original intensity.   In response the remaining wispy ghosts above the battle field bombard Aravis and Kibi with weakening rays.  Aravis slumps, the weight of his cloth robe nearly dragging him to his knees.

Flicker, feeling like he's figured out the herky-jerky moves of the zombie he's been fighting, is startled to see an enormous dire wolf appear behind it.  The wolf leans forward lazily and bites the zombie's head off.

“Damn it!”  Flicker yells.  “I worked hard on that guy!”

Aravis rolls his eyes.  “First you complain you're getting no help, and now you're complaining that we're helping?  Make up your mind!”

As his wolves appear around the battlefield, Grey Wolf casts _chain missile_ at one of the zombies but it stubbornly keeps its feet.   Dranko, now flanking the anti-magicked larva with a dire wolf, repeats his _gravestrike_ trick, and annihilates the thing in a flurry of whip-snaps.   But he's still within the aura of the second, and he shudders from the sickening chill.  Grey Wolf glances at him, alarmed to see what look like bone-white lesions on Dranko's neck and cheek.   Another round or two and his friend could be a bone statue.

Morningstar channels the power of Ell through her holy symbol and _turns._  The worm is too powerful for such measures, but the last zombie and one of the flying ghostlets are blasted to ash.   Ernie hacks at the remaining worm with his blades while Kibi pops it with _magic missiles_; in response the thing burrows down into the remains of the Walking Necropolis and out of sight.  Its chill fades.   Aravis and Grey Wolf finish off the remaining fliers with _magic missiles_.


* *

Dranko retracts the Lucent Tower, and there's a breath-holding moment of apprehension as the jumble of remains collapses further.   The Company stands poised and ready to battle fresh undead but there are no more to be seen.   The gentle hill  before them looks as if a giant's hand has scooped up an entire graveyard and then dropped it from fifty feet up.  

With time to take a closer look, they also see that it's speckled with glittering loot.  Dranko rubs his chin.  

“Do you think given what just happened, if it would count as grave robbing?”

“Not if the graves attacked you first!” says Flicker.

“They were bugbears,” Aravis says flatly.  “So I don't care.”

After a few minutes of _heals_ and _restorations_,  Aravis makes Flicker and Dranko's lives easier by casting _detect magic_ and walking around with them as they dig in the piles of remains.   They collect buried treasure for several hours while the others stand an anxious guard; the unnatural chill may be gone, and the strangely thick cloud cover may have cleared, but it's still a graveyard of monsters, surrounded by somber evergreens.  By the time the sun has set behind the trees, the rogues have collected a pile of magic items, coins and jewelry.  Flicker has also discovered an ornate gold-plated dwarf skill with opals set in its eyes, over which there is some debate considering how much more valuable it would be if sold intact.

The Company agrees to quit the graveyard for the night and set up a camp in the forest.  Flicker badly wants to put up the Lucent Tower, but the others override him, opting for the safer option of _rope tricks_.  

Flicker grumbles.  “Damn it!  In the Lucent Tower I could make myself a comfortable bed.  I'm sick up to here of stupid featureless _rope tricks_!”

Dranko snorts.  “A comfortable bed, in which you will no doubt be attacked in the middle of the night by insubstantial undead.”

Aravis looks over at the halfling.  “A comfy bed?  Have we really become that soft?”

“Yes!”

“Fine” says Aravis dismissively.  “You can sleep in the Tower by yourself.”

“No, you can't,” corrects Dranko.  “Too dangerous.”


* *

That night, Aravis dreams of the Crosser's Maze, or maybe it dreams of him.

*Your wandering fragment of personality is once again at the now-familiar tavern, sitting across from its mysterious ally who still wears your face.

“I don’t know what he was trying to do,” he says.  “Find someone, I think.   His mind was incredibly strong – and still is, for what it’s worth – but it crumbled before he could make contact.   He’s making his way back now, a long way yet from home, an insane wanderer flitting from dream to dream, scrawling his madness with the blood of passersby.   I was close enough to hear him, just once, when he strayed into the waking world.   His lunacy mixes with hate, and he spat the name of Morningstar.”*


* *

Hearing about this over breakfast, Morningstar sighs, and immediately guesses the person described to be Octesian.  They haven't run into the red-armored warrior since his assault on Semek's tower in Ava Dormo.

“I was looking forward to a showdown with Octesian,” Morningstar admits, “but not so much if he's insane.”

Grey Wolf looks at the bright side.  “That could make him _more_ dangerous, and so more satisfying to kill.”

“That reminds me,” says Morningstar.  “There's something I've been wanting to try.”

She takes Dranko into Ava Dormo with her, manifests a dagger, and asks her husband to put out his arm.  Dranko winces as she makes a small slice.  Morningstar drops them back out of Dream and sees, to her grim satisfaction, that his arm is still bleeding.

Flicker makes a face.  “There are things about your relationship that I don't want to know.”

“You know what this means?” says Dranko with a leer.  “It means that when we're having sexy dreams, we're _really_ doing it!”

“That,” says Flicker.  “That right there, for example.”

“What it means,” says Morningstar, “is that when I kill Octesian in Ava Dormo next time, he'll be dead for good.”

While Kibi sets about identifying yesterday's magic item haul, Morningstar returns to Ava Dormo to give her sisters warning.  She finds Previa at the temple in Tal Hae.

“Morningstar!” the Chronicler of Ell exclaims.  “How are you?”

“I have some unsettling news,” Morningstar answers.

“I guess it's been weeks since the last such news,” says Previa,  “We figured we were due.”

When Morningstar quirks an eyebrow at this, Previa adds, “We talk about you often.  The Book of Morningstar?  Really?”

“Yeah,” says Morningstar, without much enthusiasm.

“Can I read a draft?” Previa asks, awed.

“I would really appreciate it if you would,” says Morningstar.  “I'm much better at fighting large ugly monsters than writing scripture.”

Previa laughs.  “I'm sure that you're good at all sorts of things.  And just the thought of it... I don't think anyone has written official canon in a century or more.”

Morningstar smiles.  “Thanks.  That makes me feel so much better.”

“So,” says Previa, looking serious again.  “What did you want to talk about?”

“About Octesian.  I have some indication that he's gone mad...”

“Oh!” Previa interrupts.  “That's a terrible shame!”

“...and that he may be rampaging through Dream looking for me.”

“Oh.  That _is_ a terrible shame.  I'm surprised word hasn't filtered back to us if that's the case.  I'll spread the word, and we'll increase patrols.”

Morningstar nods.  “If you have any sign of him, let me know immediately.”

“We will!  There will be Dreamwalkers lining up to help you dispose of him once and for all, I promise.  Is there anything else I can do?  Avenues of research you'd like me to pursue?”

“Yeah, one thing,” says Morningstar.  “If you can find out anything about Nazg Hodeth, that would be good.”

She gives Previa a rundown of their current quest, up to and including their recent encounter with the Walking Necropolis.

Previa shakes her head.  “I'm happy to say that I've never heard about it or anything like it, but I'll see if I can dig anything up.  Figuratively speaking, of course.”


* *


Kibi holds up a leather belt with a tarnished silver buckle.

“Doesn't look like much, but it's as powerful as they come.”

The haul from the graveyard includes a few nice pieces, about half of which were on the body of Stighrk, the flash-frozen bugbear champion. 

A belt of strength +6​Chainmail +3​A +3 shield, +5 vs. melee attacks from humans.​A necklace of bellows, strung with skulls.  Each skull is a charge, and allows the wearer to knock back adjacent enemies.  (Most of the skulls are from animals, though one is that of a small human child.)​An Ioun Stone that grants a +2 insight bonus to AC​A bag of holding that's filled with bugbear corpses, some mummified and adorned with personal effects including jewelry.  (Flicker takes that one, with a promise to clean it out himself.)​A rich maroon cloak, that grants a +5 diplomacy check, and possibly something else.  Kibi's not entirely sure, but guesses that more can be learned about it through use.​
He finds the cloak very pleasing to look at.  In fact, the more the party looks at it, the nicer it seems.   Morningstar admonishes her husband:  “Don't lick it.”  For the moment no one trusts it enough to put it on.


* *

With the items ID'd, breakfast eaten and spells prepped, the Company heads back to the graveyard.  There are no signs of anyone having visited the place overnight; all of the chaos and destruction are exactly as they left it.  Ernie casts another _find the path_, which points him up the hill towards a part of the graveyard undisturbed by the previous day's excitement.  

They don't have far to go.  Not more than fifty feet beyond where the ground was churned by the Walking Necropolis stands a mausoleum, ten feet tall and with a large stone door slightly ajar.   Ernie's spell indicates that the door leads to Nazg Hodeth – and is also trapped.

“Nazg Hodeth is smaller than I expected,” says Flicker as he gives the door a once-over.   “Everyone stand back for a minute.”

With a twist of his fingers he springs the trap, sending a poisoned metal barb zinging into the dirt.

It takes several of them to pull open the heavy stone door, which grinds against its frame as it grudgingly gives way.  Inside the small single chamber is a stone coffin on a stout pedestal.   When a quick search of the room fails to uncover anything else of note, Flicker and Kibi lever off the coffin lid.   Inside is – surprise! – the skeletal remains of a bugbear.  Ernie concentrates on his _find the path_ and learns that the way to Nazg Hodeth is through the floor of the coffin.

They unceremoniously shovel the crumbling remains out onto the floor, after which Flicker leaps in and searches.    Ernie is secretly glad that Yoba isn't here to witness such irreverence.  

_Click!_

“Just as I suspected,” says Flicker.  “A trap door in the bottom of the coffin.”  

The others peer over the side to see a tiny winding staircase descending beneath the mausoleum.  It's too small for a large bugbear, but they should be able to squeeze down single-file.

Aravis casts _mass darkvision_, and down they go.

...to be continued...


----------



## Innocent Bystander

I don't want to say that sounded like an easy battle, but it sounds like the party made it through better than the last few encounters.


----------



## coyote6

It probably seemed easier because it was a party of high-level PCs versus a single monster, plus some low level mooks (the zombies) -- it's fairly safe to ignore the zombies and focus on the big guy, and it's very hard to have one monster stand up to a whole party in 3.5e, IME. 

OTOH, someone used _mass heal_, so it couldn't have been too easy. 

What were those worms? They seem familiar, but I can't place 'em.


----------



## the Jester

coyote6 said:


> What were those worms? They seem familiar, but I can't place 'em.




Gravecrawlers- from either the FF or MM2, I can't recall which off hand. But they're cool!


----------



## Piratecat

Innocent Bystander said:


> I don't want to say that sounded like an easy battle, but it sounds like the party made it through better than the last few encounters.



Sagiro was so, so upset when his bugbear barbarian went down like a punk! We barely noticed him, although I think he might have been a pain to stat up. The colossus inflicted a lot of damage, but those worms _sucked_. We went from "whee, fun ass-kicking" to "what the heck we're in trouble help help". I had no clue at all what they were, so I assumed the worst.

Of course, the fun is only just beginning.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

coyote6 said:


> OTOH, someone used _mass heal_, so it couldn't have been too easy.



At least one mass heal per encounter seems to be par for the course.  But that's why I said it didn't sound easy, just easier.


----------



## Piratecat

Convenient that Octesian just came up. We're fighting him tonight.

We are so, so screwed.


----------



## The_Warlock

Piratecat said:


> Convenient that Octesian just came up. We're fighting him tonight.
> 
> We are so, so screwed.




Our pre-emptory condolensces?


----------



## coyote6

My condolences to the bad guy; the "we are so screwed" fights always turn into a horrible beatdown for the other side. It's like those million-to-one shots -- they come up every time.


----------



## Kaodi

I do not suppose you could remind us why Octesian is so scary? I mean, I vaguely remember him as a very dangerous opponent, but you guys have gotten a lot more dangerous since then yourselves.


----------



## Sagiro

It turns out the party didn't actually fight Octesian tonight.  Since it had been two months since our last game, and because Kibi's player was stuck for a while on an emergency work call, the players collectively decided for a lower-key game, and to put off the Big Confrontation until next game. 

To address the previous question:  Octesian was a formidable opponent during the Battle of Verdshane, and while the party has indeed grown more powerful since then, so has Mr. O.  In fact, the party learned this evening that  [mouse-over for spoilers]



Spoiler



he's capable of killing dozens or hundreds of civilians in their sleep, all in one night, scattered around the kingdom.

Plus, he's now augmented with Cleaner Tentacle Powers(tm).  And he's insane.

So, yeah, the Company is terrified of him, and rightfully so.  On the other hand, they realized today that since they'll be fighting him in Ava Dormo, they can leave their physical bodies in a room full of healers, and basically get healed for free in the middle of any violent confrontation.   Now, will Octesian have also thought of that, and have some counter?  Or not, since he's insane?  Is he so powerful that the Company will need that kind of backup just to survive?



They'll just have to find out in two weeks!

-Sagiro


----------



## Piratecat

Kaodi said:


> I do not suppose you could remind us why Octesian is so scary? I mean, I vaguely remember him as a very dangerous opponent, but you guys have gotten a lot more dangerous since then yourselves.



I can't tell you without some serious spoilers. He tried to use dream to go somewhere a human mind really, particularly shouldn't go. It has not changed him for the better.

That being said, we don't fight him 'til next game! After not playing for six weeks no one felt really comfortable with a complicated, crazy-dangerous brawl, and Sagiro had already prepped a fun and interesting side adventure. One die was rolled the entire session - I rolled it and it was a streetwise check - but we had to make decisions that would doom or save an ally that not everyone in the group likes. Good stuff.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 303*_
*Looks Like I Picked A Bad Day To Start Casting 'Status'*

Morningstar, fifth in the marching order, concentrates for a second on the conditions of her party-mates.  For the first time she has cast the spell _status_, which lets her know if any adverse conditions afflict her friends.  At the moment, they're fine.

The staircase winds its narrow way downward, and it's a tight squeeze for those in bulky armor.   The descent is steep and the stairs themselves – like the walls – are slick with damp moss.  In places the stone has crumbled away.  It's slow going, with Flicker and Ernie (who's following the _find the path_) in the lead.  Ernie stumbles occasionally, but Flicker is always there to steady him.

After a few minutes of careful creeping, Flicker sees a greenish glow emanating from somewhere below.

“Oh, come on,” he whispers.   “Could this get any more cliched?”

Dranko chuckles.  “I'll bet it comes from phosphorescent mushrooms.  All the best light in creepy caverns comes from phosphorescent mushrooms.”

Aravis agrees.  “It's a classic.  Though I wouldn't rule out undead lightning bugs.”

One final twist of the spiral staircase brings them to a opening looking out onto an enormous room, almost a hundred feet  on a side and thirty feet from floor to ceiling.   The opening is actually about half way up one of the longer walls, and there's a narrow wall-hugging staircase that leads to the floor.  The place is depressingly familiar, but with some new touches as well.   The first thing the party notices is the enormous black circle, fashioned of obsidian bricks set into the stone floor.  They've seen something like this in almost every Black Circle edifice and ritual chamber they've visited, and it usually doesn't indicate anything good, but there are two other features of Nazg Hodeth that command more attention.

For one, the far wall is covered with smaller inlaid black circles and scrawled over with lines and equations.  It's the same sort of arrangement the Black Circle had in Kallor for Mokad's ritual, though this one is vertical (being on a wall instead of the floor) and dotted with 4-inch holes.   Black obsidian rods jut out from about a third of the holes, and a pile of additional rods sits as the base of the wall.

But even that is not what draws the Company's collective eye.   At the far end of the chamber huge ribs, from something dragon-sized or larger, seem to grow up from the stone floor to curve over a tremendous obsidian slab set upon a granite pedestal.  A bright green fire plays along the surface of the slab, casting out a flickering light that illuminates the entire enormous room.

There are also some open archways set into the walls at irregular intervals, but no light comes from any of these, and nothing stirs from them.

Grey Wolf gestures to the wall with the diagrams and holes.  “Why can't they just get a blackboard?”

“We're here, by the way,” says Ernie, in case anyone had lingering doubts.  “Nazg Hodeth.  Now, before anyone goes down, let me check something.”

He casts _true seeing_ and looks around again but detects no subterfuge, though the black circle on the floor has a magical aura, as does the wall with diagrams and of course the obsidian slab.  Aravis casts _greater arcane sight_ to get more detail:  the wall radiates strong divination and necromancy, and the circle indicates conjuration and teleportation magic.   The obsidian slab is an intensely strong focus of necromancy, which further strengthens their suspicion that it's the Necromantic Forge itself.  

Morningstar casts _hide from undead_ on the group as a precaution before Dranko goes into the room alone to scout.   Down at ground level it's unnaturally cold, and he hears the crackle of the green flames which seem to offer no heat.   He strolls toward them, a half-orc guinea pig fully cognizant that the first awful thing to happen is likely to happen to him.

By the time he gets halfway to the Necromantic Forge, he finds it impossible to look at it directly.   The black slab with its poison-green flames is radiating the same palpable evil as the black book they found in Kallor, and the black-goo-infused column that housed the blue Eye of Moirel in Het Branoi.   Still twenty feet out he cannot even will himself to take another step towards it.  He returns to the others and gets a _protection from evil_ and a _death ward_ from Ernie.  So fortified he returns to the Forge, and while its evil still beats upon his brow like a malevolent sun he is able to walk right up to it.   The ribs  tower overhead, casting shadows on the walls by the light of the flames.   He peers as closely as he can at the flat obsidian table, squinting at the unnatural fire.

He turns back to the others and shrugs.  “I don't see any instructions!”

The others beckon him back.  He gives his report, and the Company decides to descend the stairs together and at least be closer to one another when they try messing around with the Forge.   They skirt the black circle on the floor, entirely mistrusting.  They still expect something horrible to happen.  It's all too easy.

Something horrible happens.

Actually, to start with, _two_ horrible things happen.   There's a tiny hiccup in the flow of time around them, and when reality normalizes a split-second later there's an enormous bone construct looming over them.  It's vaguely in the shape of a humanoid but has obviously been cobbled together from hundreds, maybe thousands of bugbear bones.  Its complex interior is full of weird moving parts and rope pulleys that allow various sharpened bits to swivel around and stab outward.     Animated bugbear arms stick out all over the place.   The huge top section tilts down, allowing a synchronized array of over thirty bugbear skulls to look upon  them – but they sweep back and forth, seeing nothing.  Morningstar's _hide from undead_ has foiled them for the moment.

The second awful thing  is that Ernie has become entirely obscured by a cloud of greasy black smoke.   For the first time Morningstar gets a ping from her _status_ spell – Ernie's condition has changed to “undead.” 

_What?!_

She's hoping she's just not sure how the spell works, but when the smoke drops from around Ernie like a magician's curtain, he has clearly been transformed.  He still looks more or less like the halfling they know, but his face has become greenish and sallow, with glowing red eyes and fangs in a drooling mouth.  He snarls at her.

“Let me get this right,” says Grey Wolf wearily.  “Any attack, even on whatever just did that to Ernie, and the big thing sees us?”

“Yeah, that's right,” Morningstar confirms.

But whatever did cast the spell is not yet in evidence, so Dranko tumbles around to the far side of the bone construct and casts _spiritual weapon_ (though for the moment he holds back its attacks).   Aravis thinks for a second and postpones the tough decision:  he casts _maze_ on Undead Ernie, who blinks out.  Grey Wolf looks about for whatever it was that cast _time stop_ but sees nothing, so he casts _dragonskin_ on himself.

Something new appears:  an enormous fist dripping black blood.   It congeals out of magic energy above their heads and comes smashing down upon Flicker, Morningstar, Grey Wolf and Kibi.  None of them can dodge its brutal attack.   _Crunch!_  Aravis counts himself lucky for a second to have been spared by the _crushing fist of spite_, but he gets something worse.  His heart starts to thump crazily in his chest and then – just stops.  He drops unconscious from a sudden heart attack.  In Morningstar's head his _status_ switches to _dying_.   Meanwhile the fist has not dissipated as hoped.  Instead it hovers menacingly above the bruised bodies of its victims, poised to strike again.

But now there's a target, as Dranko sees a weedy little man in black robes who stepped into one of the darkened archways to cast his spells.   And while only Dranko sees the invisible assailant, they all hear his high maniacal cackle.  

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!  Welcome, welcome!  You'll all make excellent subjects... except for the Yondallan.   And what happened to the filthy little rat, anyhow?”

Morningstar drops a bomb of her own – a _mass heal_ that restores to full health the four crushed by the fist, rouses Aravis to consciousness, and for good measure does massive damage to the bone creature.  Bugbear bones are blasted loose inside its latticework construction and come bouncing down through its body like balls in a nightmare Pachinko machine.  The whole construct lists a bit to its left, and twenty-some bugbear skulls swivel in unison to stare at Morningstar.  She backs away.

Kibi summons a huge earth elemental and it attacks immediately, bludgeoning the bone creature with rocky fists.  More pieces are knocked loose and its damaged tilt shifts to the right.   Kibi then quickens a _coldfire_ centered in the archway where he heard the cackling.  Dranko gives him the thumbs up as he watches the little man wince in pain.  Kibi then moves out from under the looming fist.

Ernie appears.  Aravis curses.  Ernie gurgles.  Flicker looks frantically at the others.  

“Should I do something to Ernie?”

“Incapacitate him!” answers Dranko.

“Can I _do_ that to the undead?”

“I don't know... just do it!”

“I'm sorry, Ernie,” Flicker says, as he smacks his friend with the flat of his blade.  Ernie responds by sticking out a long green tongue and making a grotesque panting noise.

The bone creature, damaged but still operational, swivels around to face Dranko.  A number of out-jutting bugbear hands grasp Dranko's body and limbs and lift him off the ground.  Dranko squirms and twists but cannot break free, and feels the pain of sharpened finger bones gouging his skin.

Aravis stands up and bestows a _dimension door_ upon Pewter.  “Climb up the earth elemental and jump over to Dranko.  Get him out of there!”  Pewter leaps from his arms and starts his climb.  Dranko, grappled, makes himself useful while he awaits rescue.  His _spiritual weapon_ knocks a few of the bugbear skulls free from the construct's “head,” and with a magic ring he drops an _ice storm_ on the black-robed assailant across the room.

Grey Wolf quickens a _see invisible_ and gets a decent look at their enemy – 5' 4”, dressed in ragged black robes, pasty skin, practically a skeleton himself.  If one could forget about the high-level magics he's been flinging around, one might mistake him for a homeless beggar.

The little necromancer cackles again.  “It's been so long since I've had any volunteers!  Thank you!”

Dranko bluffs.  “If we can take out Parthol Runecarver, we can take out you.”

He expects this to have an impact, but the little man merely blinks.  “Who?”

Dranko tries again.  “Condor, then.  We killed him too.”

This at least gets a response.  “Ha ha HA HA HA!  Volunteers with a sense of humor!”

Grey Wolf shoots an _acid orb_ at the man but his aim is off, and the green glob splashes off the adjacent wall.

“Now, now,” says the man.  He casts something on Kibi, who burns some charges of his _ring of safety_ to resist what was probably a quickened _feeblemind_.  The necromancer harumphs in disappointment but cheers himself up by casting _maze_ on Morningstar.  The Ellish cleric blinks out.   He directs the enormous fist to swing over to Kibi before he himself steps back into the concealing darkness beyond the archway and out of sight.  Kibi looks up but cannot scramble out of the way.  The fist comes down with bone-crunching force and knocks him sprawling to the floor.

Morningstar has never been inside a _maze_ before.  She thinks she sees an immediate way out of the shifting labyrinth but it turns out to be a mirage, and as the spell's true complexity hits home it occurs to her that she'll be lucky to escape before the entire battle is over.   Kibi, his  bone-cracked body going on pure adrenaline, puts up a _wall of force_ that blocks off _all_ of the archways on the far side of the room.  Then he casts _xorn movement_ and sinks into the soothing embrace of the ground.

The earth elemental spots a huge crack in one of the bone construct's central femurs and takes two mighty swings at the weak spot.  The second punch causes the entire thing to collapse in a heap and clatter of bones.  Dranko, released all at once by the many hands that grasped him, tumbles far enough away that he's only partially buried.

Ernie points a moist, sickly hand at Aravis, his red eyes glowing with menace.   With an inhuman gurgle he rips the _disintegrate_ spell out of Aravis's head and then _casts it back at the wizard_.  Aravis barely resists, though his body still shudders as the force of the spell rocks him backward.

“Let's try this again.”  Aravis casts a second _maze_ on Ernie, who again vanishes.   Pewter reaches Dranko, but now the half-orc has a new plan.  

“Pewter, take me to the other side of Kibi's _wall of force_.  Right where we last saw that wizard.”  Aravis's familiar does just that, and Dranko finds himself staring directly at the necromancer.   Over his enemy's shoulder Dranko can see what's in the room beyond the archway – it's a long table on which rests a partially-constructed skeleton of some huge lizard.  Each bone has been painstakingly tagged and labeled with pins and parchment.   

“Ah, wonderful, wonderful!” exclaims the little mage.  “You're so eager to start, you want to be first!  Come in, come in!”

Dranko lets his whip do the talking, as he activates his _boots of haste_ and unleashes a flurry of attacks, sending his enemy sprawling.   The necromancer stands up, annoyed.

“You're not cooperating!” he yells at Dranko.  “But that can be fixed.  _You_ can be fixed, and I can remake you properly.   The sooner the better.  Look at you.  You're ugly!  Ugly!”

“Say,” says Dranko, brushing off the insult.  “What's your name?  So I know what to put on your tombstone...”

“You don't know me?” gasps the man.  “I am Zeg, Master of the Dead!”

To demonstrate his prowess, Zeg waves a rod at Dranko.   The instrument squirms in his hand (uncomfortably reminding Dranko of Tapheon's rod _Despoiler of Flesh_) and some of Dranko's own flesh starts to rot.  A piece of necrotized flesh falls from his arm.

“Now,” barks Zeg.  “Wait right there.”  He casts a spell and vanishes.

Grey Wolf looks around him, dismayed at the attrition.  Morningstar is gone.  Kibi has fled underground.  Ernie is... well, best not to dwell on that.  And Dranko is now out of sight as well.  It's just him, Aravis and Flicker.  He _summons the pack_, just in case.

Oh, and there's that one other thing.  The enormous fist swings over and slams down on his shoulder, driving him to the ground and probably breaking some bones, judging by the sound and the pain.   He could do with some healing, but all the party healers are AWOL.  Morningstar tries one more time to escape the _maze_, fails, and decides upon a new tactic, though it'll still take a few rounds.   Kibi chugs a healing potion, which turns out to be possible for him even underground.  

Grey Wolf and Aravis spot Zeg lurking in the opening at the bottom of the stairs, where they first arrived in this place.  Aravis pegs him with a _disintegrate_ but Zeg largely resists.  

“Just lie down!” screams the mad necromancer.   

Dranko, left alone, has a few seconds to examine the lizard skeleton on the table.  It must have taken Zeg years of work to assemble it; there are hundreds if not thousands of pins poking into the various bones, each with a little piece of parchment attached.   The skeleton itself is huge – perhaps the creature when alive was a small dinosaur.  

With a gleam in his eye, Dranko cracks his whip and snaps off a few carefully-labeled bones from the tail.  Then, shouting across the room, he yells, “Oops, I broke your skeleton!”

Zeg's eyes grow wide.  “Leave that alone!” he shrieks.

“I wonder what _else_ I can break?” Dranko shouts back.  He sweeps a large portion of Zeg's project onto the floor with his whip.  “This looks like it took a lot of hard work!”

“Leave that alone, I said!” shouts Zeg.  “Stop it.  STOP IT!”

Dranko scampers up the wall and hides above the doorway.

Grey Wolf's dire wolves appear around the spot where Ernie will reappear if he escapes again from the _maze_.  Speaking of which, Morningstar uses her _gem of recall_ to prepare _plane shift_, then quickens that spell to escape.  Upon arriving in a forest somewhere, she notes that Dranko's status has changed to _rotting_.

_I'm never casting that spell again_.

Dranko shouts again.  “It would be terrible if anything _else_ happens to this skeleton!”

“You know,” screams Zeg.  “I can replace its bones with yours if I have to!”  And thinking that sounds like a splendid idea, Zeg _teleports_ back to the room with Dranko.  He looks around and doesn't see the half-orc hiding in the shadows, so he steps back and quickens a second spell with no obvious effect.   It's been a long, long time since he's been in a fight like this one, and it starts to occur to him that he might be badly injured.  But more importantly that impudent creature is smashing up his project!  Meanwhile Dranko's flesh continues to rot.  He feels the tip of his chin fall away from his face.

Kibi emerges from the ground, makes a snap judgment, dismisses his _wall of force_, and casts _glitterdust_ into the room with Zeg and Dranko.  He knows that Zeg is invisible, and this should make him an obvious target to the rest of the party.  But there are two problems with this:  first, it turns out that Zeg had cast his own _wall of force_, which protects him from the spread of the glitter.   Second, Dranko is _also_ painted with sparkles, making it impossible for him to stay hidden.

“Ah,” says Zeg, seeing Dranko shimmering above the archway.  “There you are.”

“Kibi!” roars Dranko.  “Not helping!”

Aravis casts one more _disintegrate_, this time dissolving the _wall of force_ protecting Zeg.

“Here I am,” agrees Dranko.  “And now I'm going to finish off this lizard model you've got going.”

He makes as though he's going to whip off the head off the lizard, but it's a bluff.  Zeg falls for it, jumping forward to protect his beloved model, and that gives Dranko the perfect opening for a devastating sneak attack.  The first four of his whip strikes shear flesh from Zeg's old bones and knock him to his knees.  As Dranko raises the whip for a final strike, Zeg says petulantly, “At least use my organs for something useful.”

Dranko stares at the crazed little necromancer.

“No,” he says, and his final strike snaps Zeg's neck.

...to be continued...


----------



## Shmoo

I just finished reading the previous entry (fight in the graveyard) and the various comments, hit refresh on my browser, and another entry showed up! I'm gonna try again after I read this one.


----------



## theskyfullofdust

That sounded like it was an excellent fight. The multiple actions, are they just story telling or where the characters pulling off more than one action per round?

I do love this story hour. It's a novel in its own right, fun, exciting, and full of ideas. Thanks for sharing this with us over the years


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Full. Of. Awesome.

So, what spells did Zeg cast during that Time Stop, then? I can only assume he killed Ernie and Reanimated him, all during the spell. Ouch.

Excellent dialogue as usual, particularly Dranko ("Not helping!") and Zeg ("At least my organs for something interesting!").

Now the Company only have a few problems:
1) Undead Ernie
2) Morningstar is up to 500 miles away
3) Dranko is rotting

Is now the right time for the reinforcements to turn up? *evil grin*


----------



## wedgeski

lol... wow! What an awesome scrap! I love the use of the _Status_ spell... one could think of all kinds of adjectives: _perturbed_, _red-brown with a hint of green_, _a little tired but otherwise fine_...


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> Dranko bluffs.  “If we can take out Parthol Runecarver, we can take out you.”




They did?

Last I recall, he was still on the company's to-do list.


----------



## Piratecat

Everett said:


> They did?
> 
> Last I recall, he was still on the company's to-do list.



That's why it was a bluff. Not an effective one, mind you.

It's so much fun to read this; I remember us shouting all those things as we were getting schooled by Zeg. Boy, was I frustrated when I dim-doored behind the wall of force with no way back and he simply left.  Ernie's player wasn't there this session, which means that Sagiro turned him into undead when the player wasn't even present. There's more going on then meets the eye. I'll say for the record that me giving Sagiro a copy of the _Book of Vile Darkness_ as a present was a STUPID STUPID THING I SHOULD NEVER HAVE DONE. Stupid. With extra stupid on top. 

Ouch.

Sagiro, how'd I manage to get a full round of sneak attacks off on Zeg at the end? I don't think Dranko was flanking and I don't remember how I managed it.

Interesting, the 4e theory of "give the solo monster more than one action" is also really clear in this 3.5 fight. Zeg had quickened spells up the ying-yang and cast spells that summoned or created more allies (like turning Ernie undead or summoning the fist.) This was a great fight we felt lucky to win.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Nasty fight against the necromancer. _Time stop _is a lot of fun for the person casting it, and not so much fun for anyone opposed to him.

I do hope the PCs won't abandon their pursuit of Praska. Remember what happened the last time they left something undone -- viz. the Oasis Mage's Guild?

(Of course in reality, whatever the PCs decided to do or not do is already over with, but we won't find out about it for a while.)

Also, regarding Kibi's prophecy: one line stood out for me, namely *It must be you who cracks the shell*.

If you remember waaaaaay back to session 49, when the party was in Sand's Edge following up on the first prophecy of the Eyes of Moirel regarding the Ventifact Collosus, they ran afoul of some Utholites. One was captured and interrogated and revealed that...







> The *Utholites* have their own versions of the two prophecies spoken by the Eyes of Moirel, and they *clearly are following the “turtle must live” version*.



Ventifact Collosus... turtle. Turtle... shell. This cannot be a coincidence.

The last phrase of Kibi's message says, *Together we will cleanse Abernia*. Hearkening back to the Eyes' prophecy, the purple eye said, HEED WELL MY WARNING. IF THE COLOSSUS IS KILLED BY THE WAR GOD’S CHILDREN, THOUSANDS WILL PERISH. ITS DEATH WILL HERALD THE COMING OF THE FIRE.

Cleanse Abernia... Thousands Will Perish / Coming of the Fire... sounds roughly equivalent to me.

Yup. Should've led the turtles win.


----------



## Piratecat

Joshua Randall said:


> Yup. Should've led the turtles win.



Screw you, buddy! The future is written in water!

Minor spoiler: the resolution of Praska, however it turns out, is pretty much my favorite couple of sessions from the past few years. Sheer, brief panicked terror has a way of sticking in your memory.


----------



## Sagiro

To answer a couple of questions above:

- The combat is narrated accurately, round by round.  Most of the Company have taken the _quicken spell_ feat, which is why it seems like they're getting extra actions fairly often.  I use a variant for metamagic feats wherein players can apply them spontaneously to spells 3 times per day.  

Also, I use an Action Point system that, at the time of this game, allowed players to burn an Action Point for an extra standard action.  I later decided that was too powerful.

- A related answer:  Dranko used an Action Point to get an extra standard action, which he used to Bluff the necromancer Zeg.  That allowed him to get a full round of attacks, one of which was a sneak attack.  Mucho Damage!


----------



## Everett

How far is the Story Hour behind the game at this point?  About 40 updates worth?


----------



## Sagiro

@Mathew_Freeman: I recall rolling poorly on Zeg's _time stop_ -- I think he only cast two spells:  the one that turned Ernie into an undead creature, and the one that summoned the bone construct.  He may have also cast a buff on himself, but I don't recall.

@Everett:  The run with Zeg was the 207th of the campaign.  The game I'm running next week will be the 240th.  So I'm 33 runs behind, and with the shorter evening runs we have these days (as opposed to the old 6-hour Sunday mini-marathons), I'm generally covering about one full run per update.

Looks like your guess is not far off.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> Looks like your guess is not far off.




And the game is a year or less from ending?


----------



## Piratecat

Everett said:


> And the game is a year or less from ending?



Pfft. Not if our dithering has anything to say about it!


----------



## Aravis

Everett said:


> And the game is a year or less from ending?




It would be wrong for the game to end before the players had accomplished their goals.  Aravis's goal is to ascend to his rightful place amongst the gods as the new God of Knowledge.

- Aravis


----------



## Everett

Aravis said:


> It would be wrong for the game to end before the players had accomplished their goals.  Aravis's goal is to ascend to his rightful place amongst the gods as the new God of Knowledge.




That sounds like a great deal of story-content we haven't seen yet.


----------



## Aravis

Everett said:


> That sounds like a great deal of story-content we haven't seen yet.




Not really.  Mostly Aravis getting delusions of grandeur ever since finding out that he is a god of cats.  And since the Charagan pantheon has no God of Knowledge, it seems a logical choice for Aravis.

Aravis


----------



## coyote6

Be careful, you might end up the God of Knowledge of Cats.


----------



## Everett

What kind of skill check would that be?  Knowledge (cats)?  Or would it be DEX?


----------



## Piratecat

Aravis said:


> Not really.  Mostly Aravis getting delusions of grandeur ever since finding out that he is a god of cats.



And you thought _Dranko_ had an ego problem.


----------



## Everett

True dat.  But it's still gonna be months before we poor beggars get to read it...


----------



## Sandain

Hello,

I am just delurking to say that I loved Bioshock and like to think the part at the end and prior foreshadowing was similar to what i've read in his and Pkitty's stories over the last decade.

My official claim to fame is that Sagiro emailed me a few times, I think we spoke about Cadbury's chocolate.


----------



## Sagiro

Sandain, what do you think about Cadbury's recent acquisition by Kraft?  They'd better not mess with the chocolates coming out of New Zealand!

Anyhoo... here's another update.


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 304*_
*Short Circuit*

The huge dripping fist swings over Aravis's head, but dissipates into harmless vapors before smashing down.   As the wizard breathes a sigh of relief,  Flicker receives a _sending_ from Morningstar:  _*I'm out of the Maze.  Use your token to summon me to you.*_

Not lacking an inappropriate flair for the dramatic, Flicker breaks his _refuge_ token while announcing loudly:  “I'm a mighty Black Circle sorcerer.  Watch as I summon a powerful priestess!”

Morningstar appears... in the middle of the black circle on the floor.  Alarmed, she hustles out, and seems none the worse for it, though she glares hard at the oblivious Flicker.

A minute later Ernie appears as well -- not the horrible undead version, but the real original halfling they all know and love.  He whips his head around.  “Ooooh, let me at 'em!  He _mazed_ me, that... that...”

“That was me,” says Aravis.  Morningstar smiles as her _status_ of Ernie indicates “fine.”

Ernie turns on Aravis.  “You did?  What happened?”

Aravis doesn't sugarcoat anything.  “You were turned into a horrible undead creature that tried to _disintegrate_ me.”

Ernie opens his mouth but can't think of a good reply.  

“You were undead,” says Morningstar, “and these poor mages had to fight without any clerics.  Let's go help them, okay?”


* *

Zeg, Master of the Undead, is not actually undead himself.   Dranko mutters last rites over his thin, frail body, then sets about divesting him of valuables.

While the clerics heal up their injured comrades, the wizards ID Zeg's magical loot.   Unfortunately, most of it is Evil.  The items are:


- a Flesh-eater Rod, which is what caused Dranko to rot.  (3d6 damage for 1d6+1 rounds on a failed DC 31 Fort save)
- a Robe of the Archmage, of Evil alignment.  (They think a _wish_ or _miracle_ could switch it to 'good.')
- a Deadwalker's Ring (Turns a victim temporarily into a spell-stealing undead servant)
- a Headband of Intellect +6
- a Ring of Deflection +5


While helping identify the items, Kibi's attention also returns to the magic diplomacy cloak they found after the previous battle.   He considers trying it on – after all, he'd look quite dashing in it – but his suspicious friends talk him out of it.

So now the Company finds itself alone in Nazg Hodeth, while the Necromantic Forge still burns with its eerie green fire on the far side of the huge main chamber.  Without _protection from evil_ spells none of them can get close to it, and even looking directly at it causes headaches.  But there are several unexplored anterooms to search.  

“Maybe there's an instruction book around here somewhere,” says Morningstar.

One of the anterooms contains little besides Zeg's elaborate lizard model, now smashed up a bit.  

A second is filled with bugbear bones, mostly piled into barrels but also strewn about haphazardly.   A shelf on one wall is full of books and papers, and more parchment is scattered on the dirty stone floor.   Many of these papers have carefully-drawn schematics, outlining different sections of the huge bone construct the party just finished fighting.

The third side-room has a dozen barrels filled with organs preserved in a thick clear fluid.  There are many long shelves here, but instead of books they hold flasks and jars full of nasty-looking and foul-smelling humors and extractions.  One is filled with insect eyes.   On a nearby table there is an assortment of alchemical equipment.

Finally there is Zeg's bedroom, a cramped little 10-by-10 space with a bed, bookshelf filled with books, wardrobe (with several identical black robes), and a little table and chair.   The table has some more papers and a pair of glasses without lenses.  Next to the bed (filthy but recently slept-in) is an equally-long slab of dull green glass on the floor.  The party has seen slabs like it before; they usually indicate something is, or has been, in temporal stasis.   Strewn on the floor are more papers along with dried up ink-pots and a few spent quills.  There is also a bowl with a spoon resting on its lip.  Lastly there is a deep hole in the corner of the room farthest from the bed.  The wizards opine that it was made with _disintegrate_ spells; a faint whiff of sewage drifts up from it.

Dranko and Flicker scour the rooms for traps but find none.  As for magic stuff:  one book in the library radiates magic, as does most of the alchemical equipment, and the spoon.  Morningstar does a walk-through with  _true seeing_ up but sees nothing different.

Flicker does find a secret panel behind the bed, and a little wooden box in a space behind the panel.  He and Dranko lean over it eagerly, expecting they have found Zeg's heretofore undiscovered cache of riches.   What they find is a collection of teeth.   There about forty of them, mostly bugbear teeth, and they are only remarkable in that each one is perfect – no chips, nicely symmetrical, and free of cavities or other blemishes.   None radiate magic.  Dranko tosses the box onto the bed in disgust.

“He's powerful enough to cast _time stop_, but instead of money he collects _teeth?_  Unbelievable!”


* *


The wizards cast their _comprehend languages_ and start researching the many written materials they've found.  It takes hours – Zeg's handwriting is barely legible.   There a great deal of writing on the subject of building constructs out of bones – how to fuse them together, how to animate them, cantrips that help during construction, that sort of thing.  

The papers on the table, which had the least dust on them, seem to be part of some research papers Zeg was in the midst of preparing.  One is on the subject of keeping skeletal undead from decomposing when submerged for long periods.  The other concerns what would happen if undead were to fight each other, and Zeg has been working out ways to make undead resist the attacks of _other_ undead.  

Dranko takes the one magic book and opens it himself, figuring that if it's trapped he has the best chance to dodge.   He feels a twinge in his mind as he cracks the spine – it _was_ trapped – but resists the effect.   After Morningstar takes fifteen minutes to prepare a _remove curse_, Aravis looks inside.  To the wizards' delight it's a spellbook.  To their dismay, most of the spells have the Evil descriptor.  But there is _time stop_...

Taking a break from his reading, Kibi takes out the diplomacy cloak.   He's been thinking about how nice he'd look in it, and he admits to himself that it _has_ been hampering his concentration.   Before Morningstar can grab it out of his hands, Kibi just goes ahead and puts it on.  

There's no doubt about it – he _does_ look good.  Maroon's a good color on him.  The others look at him with apprehension but nothing untoward happens.  Kibi himself feels no different, save that he thinks he'll be better at persuasion and understanding while wearing the cloak – which makes sense, given what he knows about it.

He looks over at Flicker, and a soft voice sounds in his head.  “You know,” says the voice, “Flicker always feels a little under-appreciated for all the appraising he does for the party.”

Kibi walks over to the little halfling.  “Hey Flicker,” he says.  “I just wanted to thank you for everything you do for us.  Especially appraising all the gems we find, but also for checking for traps.  I really appreciate it.”

Flicker is a bit startled as he looks up, but then he breaks into a grin.  “Thanks, Kibi.  It's nice to know someone's paying attention!   I've been hit by some pretty awful traps over the years – like those _harm_ spells in Mokad's place.   It's nice to know you've noticed, 'cause, well, sometimes I feel like I'm just in the background all the time.”


* *


The shelves in Zeg's bedroom are where the good stuff is:  hundreds of pages about the Necromantic Forge and its function.    The wizards learn a great deal about this infernal machine, including instructions for many different rituals.   While much of the necromantic theory is lost on them, they gather that by reconfiguring the obsidian rods in the various holes, and pouring certain unsavory liquids onto the burning slab in conjunction with different organs and bones, they could create all manner of undead horrors down here.  Then they could use the teleportation circle to send them off to who-knows-where to cause trouble.

Aravis finds a stack of papers that deals with the topic of Soul Shards, and he and Kibi spend several hours poring over them.  Even with their mighty combined intellects, most of what they read goes over their heads.  It would take decades of training in the Necromantic Arts to fully understand how to make a Soul Shard, or (more relevantly) to get a soul out of one.     

After a failed _speak with dead_ on Zeg, the wizards argue for a few more minutes before deciding that at best they've got about a fifty-fifty shot at freeing Califax's soul.  The silver lining is that the cost of failure would most likely be in time and components, and that nothing would stop them from simply trying again.

“And when we're done,” says Aravis, “I'm going to disintegrate the wall with the holes.  I doubt I can affect the Necromantic Forge itself, but I can do some serious damage to its control panel.”  They also consider _hallow_ and _earthquake_ as means to makes sure no one follows in Zeg's footsteps.

The Company makes “camp” right there in the main chamber of Nazg Hodeth; after placing a _greater glyph of warding_ in the teleportation circle and _spike stones_ all over the floor, they make a _secure shelter_ at the far end of the room from the Forge and keep careful watches throughout a nervous night.   No one disturbs them, though when the Company wakes, each of them finds that they have turned their heads away from the flickering green flames.

Kibi wakes up and immediately thinks about the cloak in his pack.  What a classy piece of clothing!  He puts it on while Ernie adds his own personal touches to the morning's _heroes' feast_.    The cloak says to him:  “You can never go wrong complimenting Ernie's cooking.  It's what he takes the most pride in all the world.  He's heard it all before, but never gets tired of it.”

The dwarf walks over and dips a pinky into the jam.  “Ernie, you know I just love having a nice hearty breakfast, especially in a place like this.”

Ernie smiles back, clearly pleased.  “Thanks, Kibi!  That's really nice of you to say.”

The wizards are already up and studying for their necromantic foray.  Grey Wolf is thumbing through a history of necromancy, a beautifully illuminated work titled “The Veil, Torn.”  He thinks it would be quite valuable to the right buyer.

“This is the most boring selection of library books ever,” Dranko complains.  “Why do we never find books about the 'Secret Masters of Elf Porn?'”

Aravis smirks.  “They're so evil, we couldn't even comprehend them.  Thus, we go after the Black Circle.”

“We could have gone to see Darkeye,” says Morningstar.  “Maybe there would have been some elf porn there.”

Grey Wolf glances up from his book.  “That's my great-great-grandmother you're talking about.”

“You think Darkeye is related to you?” asks Flicker.

“It makes sense,” says Dranko.  “I'll bet Darkeye is Moirel, and we know Grey Wolf is descended from her.”

“I wonder just how many of our enemies are related to Grey Wolf, anyway,” says Aravis.

Grey Wolf pointedly ignores him.


* *


Aravis has the best grasp of the ritual they're about to attempt, so the others assist him.  They rearrange the configuration of obsidian poles, moving some around and adding new ones.  Each time a pole is inserted or removed, the flame on the Forge itself changes in hue and intensity, at times burning orange, blue, pale yellow and a deep purple.  When they're finished, the fire is a bright white.

Aravis also dictates the precise quantities of alchemical reagents needed, all of which are found in abundance in one of the anterooms.  “Three flasks of frogwort extract, two drops of liquified bugbear tongue, one flask of aqueous humor, four drops of demon-skin acid...”  He reads out all of the ingredients in the precise order to be applied.  Ernie helps with the measurements.

In order for Califax's soul to be freed from the Shard, it must be placed in the very center of the burning obsidian slab.  Dranko, endowed with _protection from evil_, finds that he cannot reach far enough to place the Soul Shard properly without touching the Forge itself -- something he is entirely unwilling to do.  He returns to the room with the lizard skeleton and rigs a long femur into a paddle, which he then uses to get the greasy rock in position.

Aravis realizes he'll have a similar problem drizzling the various components onto the Shard, but solves that dilemma by summoning an _unseen servant_ to do the applications.  

Morningstar issues a _sending_ to Tomnic at the church of Delioch in Hae Charagan.  _*Speaking for Dranko.  Trying to restore Califax's soul.  Any minute now.  Please “send” if there is any change.  P.S.  Mokad is still alive.*_

The reply:   _*Understood.  We'll keep a close eye on him, and I'll want to hear more about Mokad*_

The _unseen servants_ follow Aravis's careful commands, dripping foul liquids onto the Soul Shard in precise order, forming a little train of bobbing flasks that would be comical in less portentous circumstance.   The party's faces are bathed in white light from the flames of the Necromantic Forge.  As the last drop falls onto the Soul Shard the black rock starts to shake and roll around on the slab.   The flames leap upward and the Shard rises into the air – with a body materializing around it.  It's a large deformed zombie, and the Soul Shard is jutting gruesomely from the side of its head.

“I think I screwed something up,” Aravis gulps.

Kibi nods.  “Yeah, I don't remember this part.”

“Yeeaaargh!” groans the zombie, reaching up in a semblance of confusion to feel the rock growing from its skull.

Ernie instinctively _turns_ the zombie, which is a big mistake.  As the positive energy strikes the Necromantic Forge the backlash blows Ernie backward a good twenty feet.  Angry fire leaps up in protest at the effrontery.

“Fine,” says Grey Wolf.  He casts _telekinesis_ and lifts the zombie up and away from the Forge.  Morningstar _turns_ and the zombie is flashed to powder.  Dranko catches the Soul Shard but drops it just as quickly; it's burning hot and covered in foul slime.

“Well, that was fun” Grey Wolf comments dryly.

Aravis sighs.  “Okay.  I guess that pole should have gone into the second slot from the left, not the third.   That was what I was least sure of going in.   But everything else went right... I think.  No reason not to try it again.”

They do try again.  Aravis is more confident this time around, though part of him is fascinated by the thought that he could make himself all sorts of low-level undead down here without much difficulty.  As the last drop touches the Shard this time there is a loud hissing, followed by an uproar of blue-green flames that makes them all flinch away.  When they look back, the Soul Shard is melting onto the obsidian slab.  A puff of white smoke rises up and disperses, after which the flame dies back down to its green steady-state.

Aravis requests that someone check him for Evil, just in case.  He tests negative.

They _send_ again to Tomnic:  _*Done!  Us again.  We're really paranoid.  Check him for evil, and a soul.  We really hoped this worked.  Really.  Hoped this worked.*_

The reply:  _*Califax just convulsed.  Eyes wide open.  Screamed, then fell fast asleep.  Looks peaceful.  Will detect evil, etc.  Many thanks!*_

“Great!” Dranko exclaims.  “Now let's knock this place down and go home.”

Aravis is more than ready; this morning he slotted _disintegrate_ into most of his higher-level spell slots.  After Morningstar casts _dispel magic_ on the teleportation circle on the floor, Aravis hits it with a series of _disintegrates_ that destroys almost the whole thing.  Ernie then “caps” the floor with a _wall of stone_.

One down, one to go.  Morningstar concentrates hard and manages to _dispel_ the wall with the holes and rods.   A groaning sound issues from the Forge itself, as Aravis quickly follows up with a _disintegrate_ that gouges out a huge chunk of the wall, wiping out a dozen holes and several obsidian rods.  

The Necromantic Forge flares up.  Its massive energy, heretofore kept in check lo these many centuries by the powerful enchantments in the controlling wall, is released in a runaway torrent.  In little more than a second its entire end of the chamber is filled with roaring green flames.  After another second the Company can't even _see_ the Forge anymore, and the flames are pouring toward them, a towering, encroaching wall of fire.   

Kibi responds almost instantly, putting up a _wall of force_ while the others bolt in panic for the exit.  His spell isn't large enough to entirely seal off the Forge's side of the chamber, but now the fire's advance is at least slowed down as it comes spurting and cascading through the gap near the ceiling.   Even so, they only have a few seconds before the entire room will be filled with the wrath of the Necromantic Forge.  On the other side of Kibi's transparent wall they can see that the boiling flames are shot through with shadowy faces and swirls of black energy.

“Get us the heck out of here!” cries Ernie; it's clear that they won't be able to outpace the flames if they simply flee on foot.   Kibi is able to _teleport_ out with most of the party, and Aravis grabs Morningstar and does likewise.

Outside it's a lovely morning.  They have relocated to their last outdoor campsite, at the edge of the woods abutting the graveyard, and about a hundred yards from the stairs down to Nazg Hodeth.  Ernie activates his shield and flies up and over the cemetery to get a good look at what's happening.

They all feel a rumbling in the ground, and Ernie sees the tombstones shiver below him.  

Dranko mutters nervously.  “This is really, really bad.”

Ernie flies higher and moves off to the side.  Then the mausoleum, the one through which they had gained egress to Nazg Hodeth, explodes in a shower of masonry and green fire.  A geyser of flames leaps up fifty feet in the air and then pours splattering down over the bone-yard.

“Yondalla's muffins,” Ernie shrieks.  “We've made an evil volcano!”

As he flees, he sees that the green fire is forming into tendrils that are wrapping up corpses, as if a huge fiery squid is reaching up out of the ground with burning tentacles and grabbing at bodies.  Dozens of dead bugbears are grasped and pulled back down into the hole where the mausoleum once stood.  Thirty seconds later the flames have entirely receded and all is quiet.

“I admit,” says Aravis, “we've stepped into unknown territory.”

Dranko laughs nervously.  “Hey, something awful that isn't my fault!”

“We have to go back,” says Aravis, “and find out what's going on down there.”

The ever-prudent Kibi sends _prying eyes_ down into Nazg Hodeth, with orders to come back staggered every five minutes to report.  The first set comes back and shows Kibi a towering pile of bugbear bodies heaped on the Necromantic Forge, the fires of which have died down to their steady state, barely visible beneath all the corpses.   The jumble of bodies is pressing up against, and squeezing through, the cage of giant ribs that surrounds the Forge.

The next set of Eyes comes back and reports nearly the same – except that the pile of bodies is starting to glow.   The Company doesn't wait for the third set; they charge down the stairs again to put a halt to this new mischief before the Forge animates a pile of over a hundred dead bugbears into Gods-only-know-what.    They arrive in time to see a final spasmodic short-circuiting of the Necromantic Forge, as seven of the remaining obsidian rods come shooting out of the holes to smash against the far wall.  The glow on the bodies dies out.  

Kibi dismisses his _wall of force_ and _summons_ earth elementals to remove the bodies from the slab.  (Though the first one tries climbing _onto_ the Forge to do this, and is immediately reduced to small pebbles.)  Morningstar watches impassively as elementals hurl corpse after corpse onto the stone floor.  “I love our job,” she sighs.

Aravis _disintegrates_ the bodies, and now everything is more or less back to an acceptable calm status quo.  Morningstar spends the rest of the day casting _hallow_ (though she does _not_ include the Forge itself in the area).

The next morning Aravis persuades the others to let him cast one more _disintegrate_, to remove another chunk of the wall.   Most of the others leave while he does so, though Morningstar stays back to protect him.  He carves another divot out of the Forge's control mechanism, but this time there is no catastrophic side-effect.  Nonetheless, Morningstar convinces the party to spend one more night nearby, just to be sure.


* *


Kibi finishes the job, first by using _stone shape_ to weaken the support pillars in the Forge chamber, and then (once the party is all out) by casting _earthquake_.  The ground collapses into the room, burying the Necromantic Forge beneath tons of rocks and dirt.  Satisfied that the Forge has been effectively neutralized, the Company _wind walks_ back to Hae Charagan to check on Califax.  They find him lying in bed, smiling and asleep while Woundtenders minister to his health.  High Priest Tomnic is sitting by his side.

Kibi hears the cloak talk to him.  “Tomnic is sensitive about not being worthy of his post.  Deep down he knows that what he lacks in charisma, he makes up for in efficiency and solid judgment.  But he still worries that he's not a natural leader.”

Tomnic nods to Dranko as they come in to Califax's room.  “You have done your job well; he has been sleeping, peacefully, for days.  He is quite healthy physically – and, I feel, spiritually as well.”

Califax stirs from sleep at the sound of Dranko's voice, and beckons the half-orc to listen, his expression suddenly agitated.  Still only half-conscious, he starts to whisper urgently.

“I have to...  something important,” he croaks.  “Praska.  She's not... Mokad's still alive.”

“We know,” says Dranko gently.

“No, no,” whispers Califax.  “Mokad is... is Praska.  Mokad _is_ Praska.  They performed a... morbid link, that... time he kidnapped her.  Mokad formed a morbid link.  When he died... she _became_ him.”

Dranko's eyes open wide.  “What happened to _her_?”

“She's in there,” whispers Califax.  “But she's not in control.  Don't kill him... don't just kill him, or she'll be destroyed as well.  Please... Praska...”

“Everything's going to be all right,” says Dranko soothingly.  “We'll take care of it.  Just sleep, Califax.  Sleep, and enjoy having your soul back.”

They leave the sleeping Scarbearer and adjourn to a private room, where Dranko starts swearing loudly.

“Now I feel bad about all those mean things I said to her while we were fighting,” he says.  “It wasn't really her.  It was Mokad!”

Aravis puts a hand on his shoulder.  “She'll understand, Dranko.”

Dranko fumes.  “That man has an uncanny ability to utterly piss me off.”

“Look at the bright side,” says Aravis.  “At least Califax didn't say that there was an easy way to get Mokad out of Praska's body using the Necromantic Forge.”

...to be continued...


----------



## Sandain

Actually, they changed the recipe of the chocolate, by including cheaper palm oil instead of cocoa butter.  They thought no-one would notice, but they lost about 80% market share and thousands of NZ'ers signed a petition.

Supermarkers put  alot less on display, and everyone started buying a NZ brand called Whittaker's chocolate instead.

They have now changed the recipe back to the original.

Cadbury stops using palm oil in chocolate | Stuff.co.nz


----------



## coyote6

Sagiro said:


> “Look at the bright side,” says Aravis.  “At least Califax didn't say that there was an easy way to get Mokad out of Praska's body using the Necromantic Forge.”




Now that would have been hilarious.

To me, who is not a player in the campaign.


----------



## Thornir Alekeg

coyote6 said:


> Now that would have been hilarious.
> 
> To me, who is not a player in the campaign.



I agree.

Sagiro, did you curse yourself for not thinking of that once Aravis' player said it?


----------



## iamwardicus

I've been following this thread for years - I'm glad to see the new updates!   Out of curiosity - what are the more or less - current player sheets like?  (Class/level)?


----------



## Innocent Bystander

So Kibi's got an intelligent cloak of diplomacy?


----------



## Sagiro

iamwardicus said:


> I've been following this thread for years - I'm glad to see the new updates!   Out of curiosity - what are the more or less - current player sheets like?  (Class/level)?



At this point in the Story Hour, the party just leveled (after releasing Califax's soul) to 17th.  I believe at that time their class/level breakdown was something like this:


Kibi:  9th level wizard/8th level Earth Mage (custom class whose levels-minus-one count toward wizard spell progression)

Aravis: 17th level wizard (Transmuter)

Grey Wolf:  3rd level fighter, 9th level wizard, 5th level spellsword

Ernie: 4th level fighter, 13th level cleric

Morningstar: 17th level cleric

Dranko: some combination of cleric, rogue and lasher -- heavy on the latter two, lighter on the first.  Not sure of level breakdowns.

Flicker:  17th level rogue

In real-time (which is about 2 years ahead of the Story Hour), the party will almost certainly reach 20th level after the next session -- at least, any of them who survive.    The level/class breakdowns are pretty much the same except for Ernie, who [spoiler redacted].


----------



## Piratecat

At level 17 Dranko is a cleric 5, rogue 8, lasher 4.


----------



## wedgeski

Sagiro said:


> The level/class breakdowns are pretty much the same except for Ernie, who [spoiler redacted].



:gnash:


----------



## RangerWickett

Piratecat said:


> At level 17 Dranko is a cleric 5, rogue 8, lasher 4.




Spell-storing bladed whip with inflict serious wounds/dispel magic in it? Or better yet, vampiric touch courtesy of one of the wizards? 

Actually, that makes me curious, what sorts of prominent gear do you guys use?


----------



## Everett

What's Aravis' banned spell sphere (opposite of Transmutation)?  Have never seen it referred to.


----------



## Aravis

Everett said:


> What's Aravis' banned spell sphere (opposite of Transmutation)?  Have never seen it referred to.




Illusion and Enchantment.

- Aravis


----------



## Siuis

Aw, man! It's over? Now I join the ranks of everyone else who laments catching up at a cliff-hanger, almost. This si still better than when I got to the end of the .PDFs and went frantic over Kibi's sidequest (I then remembered that the actual thread might be farther along. Score!)

Sagiro, PC, KidC, Aravis, and the rest o' you fine folks, it's been a heck of a week and a swell read. Thank you all; without Abernathy's Company this would have been the slowest work week ever.

And now that I have to wait for updates, maybe this won't consume my life anymore! The charm is broken, I'm practically free!... Until the next post, of course... Thanks again, for sharing this wi' us all. Your game is truly Mesmerising, Sagiro. Makes me sad to think what a jerk player I've been to DM's who've tried to do something similar. I must change my munchkin-y ways.


----------



## Piratecat

Siuis, I know how you feel - Morningstar and Greywolf's players have just become proud parents, so the game is on hold for a bit. I miss it!

And for anyone who wishes to be utterly appalled, last summer I totalled up all the list of the "excess loot" that no one had claimed but that we hadn't gotten around to actually selling. It's.. err.. disturbing, in that the purchase value is 1.1 _million_ gp. To wit:

[sblock]

1	shield of spell turning +4
1	heavy mace - strength drainer (1d6 str on crit)	
1	bracers of armor +6
2	ring of deflection +4	
1	large shield +5
1	breastplate +5
1	cloak of resistance +4	 
1	large shield +4	 	 
1	belt of strength +4
1	breastplate +1	 
2	belt of strength +4
1	shield +3, +5 vs human melee attacks	
6	large shield +3	
3	ring of deflection +2
6	longsword +2	 
5	amulet of health +2
3	periapt of wisdom +2
6	belt of strength +2	
6	plate armor +2	 	
6	dagger +1	 	 
1	ring of darkvision		 
1	headband of ferocity	
1	belt of metamagic harmony
1	blue & green rolling marbles
1	ring of random energy protection	
1	potion of cure serious wounds		
1	wand - knock - 12 charges		
1	wand - hidden lodge - 17 charges	
1	wand - indomitability - 1 charge	
1	scroll - dispel magic (10th), greater dispel magic (17th)	
1	scroll - harm, mass inflict moderate wounds, ethereal jaunt (11th lvl)
1	plate mail of the brewing storm
1	gems	 244,000 	
1	stuff	 35,400 	
1	stuff	 190,000 	
1	misc. magical stuff	 45,000 

[/sblock]

What do we learn from this? That xp loss (or action point loss for us) + time are far more important than money when it comes to constraining important magic item creation, that we have more magical doo-dads than we can easily track, that there's nowhere easy to buy or sell items (we gave a lot of these away to followers), and that everyone sort of has a schtick that they cleave to closely, instead of trying to track lots and lots of items.


----------



## coyote6

Piratecat said:


> 1	stuff	 35,400
> 1	stuff	 190,000
> 1	misc. magical stuff	 45,000




That right there is some impressive stuff.

Clearly, you guys need to build some tombs, fill them with traps and oodles of treasure, and spread incomplete maps and rumors of them. Pay it forward for the next generation of adventurers.


----------



## Piratecat

coyote6 said:


> That right there is some impressive stuff.
> 
> Clearly, you guys need to build some tombs, fill them with traps and oodles of treasure, and spread incomplete maps and rumors of them. Pay it forward for the next generation of adventurers.



It's Dranko's only chance to [giant redacted spoiler]. I like it!

Dranko's personal gear is varied, since he still clings to items he got at 1st level. My major and character-defining stuff includes:

[sblock]
Gloves of Dex +6 (fingers inserted in the nose will stick there unless you say "Kibi is a genius." I hate Kibi.)
+3 mithral shirt of true stealth (+15 move silently)
+5 buckler of moderate fortification
Robe of blending
Sash of transparency (improved invisibility 1/day, says "Miss Charagan" across the sash for anyone who can see invisible. Man, did I mention I hate Kibi?)
Eye patch of See Invisible
_Coaltongue _(whip +2; +1d6 holy dmg, +4 to trip, ignores alignment DR, with a few other enchantments on it. Usually made +5 by Ernie's _greater magic weapon]_ spell each day.
_Alazar's Tongue_, a +5 whip that can shut down dimensional traveling foes.
Truedeath crystal, allows the whip to sneak attack undead.
Snooper's earring (+5 to listen)
Bag of endless rope (495')
Pouch of accessibility
Boots of haste
Immovable rod

At 19th level (the game in real time) he is a cleric 5, rogue 10, lasher 4 and has 191 hp, an AC of 36, and modified ability scores of 19 STR, 24 DEX, 20 CON, 09 INT, 14 WIS, and 08 CHA.
[/sblock]


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 305*_
*Communiques*

Dranko opens his mouth to make an additional snarky comment about Mokad, but finds that no sound issues from his lips.   Tomnic mouths:  “what?” but his voice is also silent.   All of the Company look at one another in great alarm, as each tries and fails to talk.

A moment later they realize that it's not just them; the sounds from elsewhere in the temple, as well as outside the window, have ceased.  Has someone cast _silence_ in the room?  It appears not; a glance out the window reveals confused townsfolk gesturing wildly.  Whatever it is that's suppressing sound is affecting the entire street, and possibly all of Hae Charagan.  There is only one exception to the profound quiet:  each person can hear, faintly, the sound of their own beating heart.   

Then there is a sound, and they all hear it, like a thousand whispers being uttered in their ears.  Behind it is a noise like a rising wind, and over the course of a minute both the sounds grow louder, though there is no accompanying breeze, and no obvious source of the whispers.   But still no one can produce sounds of their own.

As abruptly as it started, the whispers and rushing wind noises die down. 

“...was that?” asks Tomnic, and they all hear him.  From out in the town come numerous screams and shouts as the multitudes find their voices returned.

Grey Wolf looks thoughtful.  “I bet that was all the spirits who have been hanging around.”

Tomnic nods.  “I'm going to cast _commune_ and find out.”

Morningstar looks worried.  “Make sure that wasn't the sound of spirits getting sucked into some dark engine of the Black Circle.”

“I love your optimism!” Dranko exclaims.

“What are the odds,” Morningstar responds, “that something bad just got nicely taken care of by someone who wasn't us?”

But it looks like that's the case.  Tomnic casts his spell and reports his findings.  “Grey Wolf is right.  All of the spirits who were bound to Abernia have ascended to their proper heavens.”

“Good,” says Ernie.  “But how?”

“Death is no longer on holiday?” asks Grey Wolf.

“Another God has taken over the duties of Drosh,” says Tomnic.  “I don't know the name; I could only ask yes or no questions.   But I learned that it was a Kivian God whose intent was not malicious.”

“That's the best news we've had in weeks!” Ernie says with a smile.  “Thank you!”

Indeed, as they stand and look at one another, each of them feels as if they had long been holding their breath without knowing it, and now have finally exhaled.


* *

In a private room in the Church of Delioch, the Company inventories and redistributes magic items after their recent haul.   Dranko taps the magic spoon to a bowl (figuring it's a typical gruel-producing _Murlynd's_ variety) and is startled to see the bowl fill up with maggots – live, wriggling, and highly nutritious.  

“No wonder Zeg was so scrawny,” says Ernie.

“It's things like this that make me sorry Turlus is now Turlissa,” Dranko sighs.  “If it were Turlus, he'd find this in his silverware drawer.”

“What should we do with this?”  Flicker holds up the gold-plated dwarf skull with opals in its eyes.  “It's probably worth more than 8,000 gold pieces if we sell it as is.  Or, we can chip off the gold and pry out the gems, and maybe get a thousand for it.”

“I'm okay with saving the gold and gems,” says Kibi, “but we should bury the skull.” 

“I dunno,” says Dranko.  “That's a lot of wasted cash.”

“Dranko!” says Ernie, appalled. 

“Seriously,” says Dranko.  “Think of how much we could _help_ the dwarves with 8,000 gold!”

Kibi looks pointedly at Dranko.  “But you're not going to give the money to the dwarves.  Are you.”

Dranko opens his mouth, then closes it.  “You'd be easier to argue with if you'd take off that _headband of intellect_,” he grumbles.

* *

They also learn more about the diplomacy cloak.  While it always gives the wearer a +5 bonus to Diplomacy checks, it occasionally grants a _+20_ bonus, at its own discretion.   And though to Aravis's _identify_ there's still no good reason why it should make someone _want_ to wear it, he does think the cloak is very slightly sentient.

“Give it to Grey Wolf,” Ernie suggests.  “He's already got one voice in his head.  What's one more?”

Bostock speaks into Grey Wolf's mind.  *Remind them that I am no more a “voice in your head” than they are voices in each others' heads when using telepathic bond.*

Grey Wolf sighs wearily.  “I know, I know...”


* *

Morningstar leaves to visit her own temple in the city, and learns a bit more there.   She is told that Myr Madar, the Kivian God of Judgment, has taken over for Drosh in the shepherding of souls.   Little is known about Myr Madar in Charagan; while the core pantheon of Kivian Gods is essentially an extended family, Myr Madar is not related to the others by either blood or creation.    Regardless, all of the churches in Hae Charagan are abuzz with the news. 

The Company _teleports_ back to Tal Hae to take care of some local business and start up on more research.   Aravis casts a pair of _vision_ spells, with the following two questions:

“How do I contact the Feline Conclave?”
“How do we defeat the Book of Lies?”

His vision on the first question starts high in the air, looking down upon an enormous forest.   The view swoops down through the canopy and then into a small hidden clearing.  Eight cats lounge there in an approximate semicircle, some stretching in the grass, others resting on stumps or logs.  

They are having an argument.  

About him.

While Aravis cannot specifically hear the words spoken, the vision conveys to him the gist of their dispute:  some of the cats think he is vital to their survival, while others think he will be the instrument of their destruction.  When he shares this with the others, Dranko guffaws.

“Oh my gosh!  Cats are fickle!  Alert everybody!”

The second vision is shorter and more straightforward:  Aravis sees the black face of Grey Wolf's _Mordenkainen's Cube_ – the one that casts _disjunction_.  

“In other words,” Aravis concludes, “The book is unalterable, and we have to destroy it.”

“That's so annoying!” Dranko complains.  “I wanted to write our own stuff in it.”

Aravis rubs his chin.  “The worry is that the Book of Lies is powerful enough that I could lose my spell-casting ability if I destroy the thing.   We know it's magical, and we know it doesn't _detect_ as magic, so it could be a true artifact.  On the other hand, it could simply have a minor enchantment upon it that hides its magic.”

He tries casting _greater dispel_ upon the Book a couple of times, but the power of his spells is insufficient and so nothing changes.

Morningstar casts a _sending_ to Arkin, member of the Great Pack.  *This is Morningstar, companion of Aravis. Human spirits can move on now after death.  Has this helped your plight?  You may respond, twenty-five words*.

The reply:  _*No, our spirits are not subject to your Gods.   We've been neither helped nor harmed.*_

Aravis then tries to _teleport_ to the cats' clearing he saw in the _vision_, but this fails.   A _scry_ cast upon one of the cats also fails, and he concludes that the whole area must be shielded.

“I guess I should be happy the _vision_ worked at least,” he mutters.


* *

Dranko takes a stroll through town to the secret tailor-shop entrance to the Manse of the Undermen.   He finds that Lucas Blackwell is out on business, but while walking the corridors he finds the halfling Gideon Hollow at work in a laboratory.  The little arcane trickster is part of his Small Council, but their interactions have been few since Dranko's return from the past.

“How are you?” Dranko asks amiably, poking his head through the doorway.

Gideon doesn't look up.  “Fine.”

“You look suspicious,” Dranko comments.

The halfling sets down the wand he was working on, sits up straight, and turns to Dranko.  “And you look unattractive,” he says.  

Dranko ignores the insult and keeps smiling.  “How's everything?” 

“It was going well until someone interrupted me while I was in the middle of crafting this wand.”

Dranko clears his throat.  “Uh, yeah.  Anyhow,  a new God of Death just took over for the old God of Death who fled, and all the souls who had been anchored to Abernia have now ascended to their ultimate reward in the heavens.”

Gideon Hollow picks his wand back up, along with a small file.  “Oh.  Good for them.”

“So... yeah,” says Dranko.

“I hope they end up somewhere nice,” adds Gideon.  “And you're telling me this because...?”

“Because you asked,” says Dranko.  Then, quickly:  “No, no, I guess you didn't ask, but I wanted to tell somebody.”

“Well, that's very interesting,” says Gideon, entirely without interest.

Dranko smirks.  “Would you mind if I just sat here and looked over your shoulder for half an hour?”

Gideon doesn't look up again.  “Yeah, that would be great, Dranko.  I'd love that.”

“Or perhaps I could go do other, more useful things.”

“You're the Oracle,” says Gideon, looking aggrieved.  “Your word is law.  Do whatever the heck you want.  Speaking of which, how are you doing with your ragtag bunch of adventuring buddies?”

Dranko puffs up a bit.  “My ragtag group of adventuring buddies has just made an unbelievably profitable gem-importing deal that I'll be telling the Small Council about soon.”

“Excellent,” says Gideon, and for the first time he seems to be sincere.


* *

Dranko makes two more stops in the Manse.  The first is in the treasury office, where four Undermen functionaries are passing a number of papers around a small round table.  Their conversation stops when Dranko enters the room, and they all leap to their feet.

“Sir!” exclaims one of them, a tall thin fellow with red hair.  “To what do we owe this honor?”

“What are you doing?” Dranko asks.

“We're crunching numbers,” answers a second guild member.  “Specifically we're reviewing various terms of our trade deal with Tev.  It's, ummm, it's kind of boring.”

“That's not boring at all!” Dranko answers with a smile.  “If you figure out a way in which they're trying to screw us, let me know.”

A third guild member, a short woman wearing glasses, smiles back at the Oracle.  “It's more the other way around, sir.”

Dranko raises an eyebrow.  “We're trying to screw _them?_”

“Subtly.  It will increase the profit margins.”

Dranko nods approval.  “How badly are we screwing Forquelle?” 

“If you refer to our agreement with Seresef, Forquelle is not involved.  I suppose in that sense, we're screwing them mightily.”

Dranko laughs.  “Well, carry on.  You're doing a great job.”

“Thank you sir,” says the red-haired man. “If you'd like to review the paperwork at any time, we are at your complete disposal.”

Finally Dranko stops in his own office.  _My own office.  This is great!_  He evidently has a large desk, shelves, a carpet, paintings – the place is pretty posh.  There's a large folded parchment on the center of the desk with his name written neatly upon it.  He reads.

_To Dranko Brightmirror, Oracle:

As you requested, I have shifted the main focus of the Undermen to taking advantage of the recently-opened border between Charagan and Kivia.  As those efforts have now been underway for several weeks, I am able to make a preliminary report.

We have secured trade agreements, or are in the process of doing so, in a number of areas, the main ones being the gem trade with Seresef, furniture imported from Tev, and glassware and spices from Dir Tolia.  Although the impact so far on our bottom line has been modest, this is due to initial outlays, purchases and investments necessary for future business.   We expect that our available funds will triple within six months due to the increased revenues from new trade.

However, there are significant difficulties that may hinder our ability to extend our reach further.  One is that Ocir controls much of the Kivian trade, due to the location and size of its main port city, Kai-Kin.   They are an extremely insular country, xenophobic in the extreme, and they have rebuffed all of our attempts at contact.  

The more serious problem is our main competition – a merchant guild known as the White Sun Cartel, based in Djaw.  They were as quick off the block as we were, and have already secured many contracts with merchants in Charagan.  The Cartel wields enormous clout, and it’s said that they are the mercantile arm of the Emperor made manifest.   It is a fair statement to say that they have taken control of the trade markets between the two continents.  They are willing to threaten and intimidate to further their ends; we have lost several contracts due to that pressure, most notably a lucrative agreement with a consortium of wine merchants from Fanaam, who backed out of a deal after being contacted by the Cartel.  

I will continue to explore all avenues in this regard, and am pleased to note that despite the competition,  the sum of revenues involved is so large that even a small player stands to gain significantly.  

One unrelated note:  Octavius and his people have expended some effort to locate King Farazil, as per your request of some weeks ago, but have made no progress.   They have followed up several rumors of “possession by evil sprits” and such, but all have led to dead ends.   His conclusion thus far is that Farazil has either gone deep into hiding, or has left Charagan altogether.  However, he will continue to search until you explicitly countermand your previous instruction.

I continue to run the day-to-day affairs of the Undermen in your absence, knowing that your personal affairs can, and should, take precedence.   As always, you may contact me via sending, visit to the Manse, or through Turlissa.  

Ever your servant,

Lucas Blackwell, Hand _


* *

Morningstar visits her church in Tal Hae.  She hopes to hear news about Octesian but there is none.  For better or for worse, the Dreamscape has been quiet under the constant watch of Ellish sisters.   As she leaves to return to the Greenhouse she passes another sister coming in from outside, which is unusual because it's early afternoon under a bright sun.  She can't help but notice that the sister wears an unusual necklace, the stone of which is a flat diamond formed of two triangles, one black and the other white.

The sister recognizes Morningstar and her eyes grow wide.   She falls to one knee.  

“Morningstar?”

“Yes.  And you are...?”

“My name is Glory.”

“You can stand up, Glory.  You are a Daywalker, I see.”

Glory smiles proudly.  “I am.”  If Morningstar notices that she's blinking more than is normal, and sports some conspicuous sunburn, she makes no mention of it.

“I have been visiting other churches today,” says Glory.  “Making rounds, introducing myself.  I assume you've heard about the souls of the dead; it's all anyone's talking about inside church walls.”

“How long have you been day-walking?”  Morningstar asks.

“Three weeks.”

“Headaches?”

“They've gone away, mostly.”

“And you long have you been a priestess?”

“Three years,” says Glory.  “But it was an honor to be called as a Daywalker.”

Morningstar reaches out to touch Glory's necklace.  “And where did these pendants come from?” 

“They were Amber's idea.”

“Of course they were,” Morningstar mutters.  Then:  “How many Daywalkers are there here?”

“In Tal Hae?  Six.”

“How's it working out?”

“It's exhilarating,” says Glory.  “And we see so many more people this way.”

“And what has been the reaction?”

“Mixed, but mostly good.  Things have gone as smoothly as can be expected, given the tumultuous nature of our politics.”


* *


“Kibilhathur, I almost forgot.  There was a delivery for you while you were away.”

Eddings hands the dwarf a badly-folded piece of parchment.   Kibi reads it out loud, though only Aravis and Grey Wolf are currently there with him.


_To the Knights of the Spire Guard, Greenhouse at the Street of Bakers, Tal Hae,

Wile we was moving sum rubble out of from the dunjuns here at Longtooth Keep, we found this here stone box.  We can’t figger out how it gets open, and it’s got “Kibilhathur” carved on the lid, so I’m having it sent to you at Tal Hae.   I hope its nuthing bad.

Yor servant and offishul caretaker of Longtooth Keep,

Fergus_

Eddings gestures to a small stone block, about the size of a cigar box, resting on a side table.   There is a seam that indicates it's a container, and Kibi's name is indeed engraved neatly on the top.  When Kibi picks it up he hears an audible 'click' from inside, and the dwarf feels Earth Magic thrum through his fingertips.  He tilts the box open and two folded-up pieces of paper fall out.  One has his own name written on the outside, and other, which looks to have a small object wrapped up inside, says “Dranko.”

With Dranko still at the Manse, Aravis opens the half-orc's note and a small green stone falls out into his palm.  It looks like a jade marble.  Aravis puts the stone and paper back in the box without reading the note, while Kibi reads his aloud.

_Dear Kibi,

It’s been several months now since you and your friends left my home.  Let me tell you something right off:  that battle against Condor was the most amazing thing I’ve ever witnessed in my life!  You had me on the edge of my seat, and the ending made it well worth watching.   I cheered so loud I think I startled my unseen servants.  

I don’t have much to say, just that my life has become much more enjoyable since your visit.  I no longer look upon my daughter’s still face with sadness and trepidation, but instead with hope and happiness.  And I’m not worried so much about Condor anymore, either!  

I think about you almost every day, too.   Please tell Gela again how pleased I am to know that she not only lived through the accident, but went on to raise a fine young dwarf with good proper magic in his veins.   You make me so proud.  

Much love,

Grandpa Cranchus  

p.s. Don’t tell Dranko, but I did add a little something extra to his trinket.  After he eats it, make sure to watch him the next time he smokes one of those foul cigars of his._


* *


Dranko comes back not too long after and is surprised to find he is also a beneficiary of Cranchus' gift box.  His note reads thusly:


_Dear Dranko,

For me, it’s only been a few months.  For you, it’s been a couple thousand  years.   I’ll bet you didn’t think I’d take you up on your request, especially after that crack about my daughter being a bookend.  I was tempted, I’ll tell you up front, to curse this thing, maybe make it turn your tusks green.   But you probably have troubles enough right now, given your line of work.  And since I have lots of time on my hands, I figured I could spend some of it making you something interesting.   The real problem will be figuring out how to deliver it to you, since you won’t be born for about two thousand years, assuming everything worked out with the time travel.  I’ll think of something – I’ve got centuries to work on the divinations and follow the probability lattices.   

What you’re looking at is a charm that should give you some insight into the weaknesses of elementals; I figured that was the least I could do after Rumbler knocked you guys around.   Ordinarily I wouldn’t make something like that, since it might fall into the wrong hands.   That’s why you have to swallow it.  

Good luck with your adventures.  I hope you found the future the same as you left it.

Sincerely,

Cranchus_

He gulps the jade marble without hesitation, and feels an innate understanding of elemental physiology come into his head.  (In game terms, he can now crit and sneak-attack elementals.)

Dranko steps outside the Greenhouse. “Hey Cranchus!  If you're paying attention:  thank you!”

...to be continued...


----------



## iamwardicus

oh goodness... poor Dranko - Brilliant Job as always Sagiro!


----------



## Enkhidu

So, it's a family trait to heap shame on Dranko under the guise of helping?

Excellent!


----------



## Piratecat

Enkhidu said:


> So, it's a family trait to heap shame on Dranko under the guise of helping?
> 
> Excellent!



You know, I'm standing _right here_.

[sblock=Pointy-headed character musing]Dranko has a weird role in the party. He fills the role of both damage sponge and striker, with more hit points than anyone else (a combination of good rolling and a 2nd-edition-legacy high con) and an impressive damage output against a single foe. On those occasions that I can manage a _hasted_ sneak attack, Dranko will get five attacks doing something like 1d3+1d6 holy +10 + 6d6 sneak attack (reroll any 1s). That's about 14 pts of damage per attack with no sneak attack, or 40 points with sneak attack. The real weakness here is three-fold; he can only attack one foe at a time, he often needs to move and attack (squandering a full attack), and it's surprisingly difficult to manage consistent sneak attacks. The result is that foes often start strong until Dranko and Flicker can maneuver into position.

With a 14 wis, those cleric levels don't do a whole lot to his offense. They're great for defense, though, helping his saves and giving him a handful of utility and buff spells. Even better, they let him use a healing wand to act as party healer any time he isn't in optimal whipping position.[/sblock]


----------



## Thornir Alekeg

Wow, you can tell they are taking a break due to the new parenthood in the group.  Piratecat is apparently missing the game so much he has failed his save against "Let me tell you about my character." 

I can tell you from experience that the compulsion does fade with time, but hopefully you won't be away from your game that long.


----------



## Enkhidu

Piratecat said:


> You know, I'm standing _right here_.








Piratecat said:


> [sblock=Pointy-headed character musing]Dranko has a weird role in the party. He fills the role of both damage sponge and striker, with more hit points than anyone else (a combination of good rolling and a 2nd-edition-legacy high con) and an impressive damage output against a single foe. On those occasions that I can manage a _hasted_ sneak attack, Dranko will get five attacks doing something like 1d3+1d6 holy +10 + 6d6 sneak attack (reroll any 1s). That's about 14 pts of damage per attack with no sneak attack, or 40 points with sneak attack. The real weakness here is three-fold; he can only attack one foe at a time, he often needs to move and attack (squandering a full attack), and it's surprisingly difficult to manage consistent sneak attacks. The result is that foes often start strong until Dranko and Flicker can maneuver into position.
> 
> [/sblock]




[sblock]In our last high level game, we were somewhat melee oriented, so we had enough role specialization in melee that we didn't run into that type of "single point of failure." But, on those occasions when our primary striker (our two-weapon using rogue/ranger/hunter could dish out damage similar to Dranko) was out for some reason, my character (a woodsy marshal type of character that was the primary damage and attack sponge) would feel the pinch.[/sblock]


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

Piratecat said:


> And for anyone who wishes to be utterly appalled, last summer I totalled up all the list of the "excess loot" that no one had claimed but that we hadn't gotten around to actually selling. It's.. err.. disturbing, in that the purchase value is 1.1 _million_ gp. To wit:
> 
> [sblock]
> 
> 1	shield of spell turning +4
> 1	heavy mace - strength drainer (1d6 str on crit)
> 1	bracers of armor +6
> 2	ring of deflection +4
> 1	large shield +5
> 1	breastplate +5
> 1	cloak of resistance +4
> 1	large shield +4
> 1	belt of strength +4
> 1	breastplate +1
> 2	belt of strength +4
> 1	shield +3, +5 vs human melee attacks
> 6	large shield +3
> 3	ring of deflection +2
> 6	longsword +2
> 5	amulet of health +2
> 3	periapt of wisdom +2
> 6	belt of strength +2
> 6	plate armor +2
> 6	dagger +1
> 1	ring of darkvision
> 1	headband of ferocity
> 1	belt of metamagic harmony
> 1	blue & green rolling marbles
> 1	ring of random energy protection
> 1	potion of cure serious wounds
> 1	wand - knock - 12 charges
> 1	wand - hidden lodge - 17 charges
> 1	wand - indomitability - 1 charge
> 1	scroll - dispel magic (10th), greater dispel magic (17th)
> 1	scroll - harm, mass inflict moderate wounds, ethereal jaunt (11th lvl)
> 1	plate mail of the brewing storm
> 1	gems	 244,000
> 1	stuff	 35,400
> 1	stuff	 190,000
> 1	misc. magical stuff	 45,000
> 
> [/sblock]




What I find most striking about this is the large number of mid-grade items just sitting around.  There are some high-grade items (the +5 large shield, the +5 breastplate) but it's easy to see how those end up in a weird "we don't want to sell this, because it's really good and we might want to use it, but nobody actually wants to use it" category.  In my experience, it often takes a while to reach the conclusion that those should be sold (unless they're sold in a handwaivey way right away).

But it's the 6 large shields +3, and the 6 plate armors +2, and the like that really get me.  You could make some midlevel adventuring party or elite group of knights very happy with that stuff, and it's not like the Company is the only heroic group of adventurers in the world. 

(I totally understand why it happens, I just can't help imagining the group of midlevel adventurers suffering a TPK because their armor classes weren't a couple of points higher.  Plus, they likely have +1 equipment that they might have passed down to starting adventurers.  Okay, now I've convinced myself that you guys caused a cascade of good adventurer deaths by holding onto that stuff.  For shame.   )


----------



## Siuis

Piratecat said:


> Siuis, I know how you feel - Morningstar and Greywolf's players have just become proud parents, so the game is on hold for a bit. I miss it!




I'm sorry to hear that, PC. Expecially as you're an Administrator; You cannot but read this every now and then, relive the glory days of Dranko failing a save or eating a cursed jade pearl (Priceless move, Cranchus ya ol' fart!) and lamenting your hiatus.

And on the loot. . .

Well. Only word I can think of is... Agog. I am agog. 1.1 million?! and give to you freely and legally by the DM? I've only ever seen that level of cash by abusing _liquid pain_, _distill joy_ and _masochism_ on an accelerated time demiplane. And that wasn't until over 20th level... Talk Aravis, Kibi and GRey Wolf into making a spell that lets you dissolve another magic item, use it's magic essence, and more cheaply enchant a different item. I mean, yeah, you could _give_ it away to other adventurers, but that's not the Dranko thing to do.


----------



## The_Warlock

Siuis said:


> ... into making a spell that lets you dissolve another magic item, use it's magic essence, and more cheaply enchant a different item.




I give you, The Rope of Transference (because despite my stinginess, in my 13 year campaign, they got a LOT of magic they outgrew, or were beyond when they got it):

The Rope of Transference (Constant Item, Min Research 2 Weeks, DC 40)

Lesser:		
Transfer Magic Arms and Armor: Allows Transfer of All Magical Properties of ONE magical weapon or armor of like kind – weapon to weapon, armor to armor, shield to shield, to an unenchanted masterwork item. Takes 10 minutes per “plus”/1000gp value transferred, draws 50% of the normal crafting XP from the user of the rope, and completely devastates the originating magic item. The slagged material can never be used in magic item creation.

Isolated Transfer: Allows the transfer of 1 magical property from a magical weapon or armor to a previously enchanted magical weapon or armor of like kind that is not fully enchanted. Takes 10 minutes per “plus”/1000gp value transferred, draws 75% of the normal crafting XP from the user of the rope, and completely devastates the originating magic item. The slagged material can never be used in magic item creation. 
Need: Transference Feat, Min Caster Level 12, 90000gp Unlimited Use 
(Costs for per week use, 4: 85000; 3: 80000; 2: 70000; 1: 60000)


Standard: 	
As Lesser, except Isolated Transfer instead drains from the source item a number of  “plusses” equal to the transferred power +1. These drained plusses are lost randomly. If the source item retains at least a +1 enhancement bonus after the transfer it retains it’s basic magical nature. An item which cannot pay the “plus” cost, is devastated as per a Lesser Rope. Only one power may be transferred at a time, but so long as the source item remains magical, the rope may be used on it to transfer additional powers. Furthermore, the transfer costs twice the original power’s XP cost to craft from the user, and takes 30 minutes per plus transferred.
Need: Transference Feat, Min Caster Level 15, 125000gp Unlimited Use 
(Costs for per week use, 4: 115000; 3: 105000; 2: 95000; 1: 90000)

Greater:	
As Standard, except as follows: Isolated Transfer drains plusses equal to the transferred power, and costs 5 times the original crafting XP. 
Wondrous Transfer: The rope may be used in a fashion similar to Transfer Magic Arms and Armor with wearable non-armor constant items (garments, rings, etc). This takes 30 minutes per 1000gp value of the originating item, and costs the original XP crafting cost if the target item is metaphysically/thaumaturgically related to the magic in question, or 10 times if it is not. 
Need: Transference Feat, Min Caster Level 18, 275000gp Unlimited Use 
(Costs for per week use, 4: 260000; 3: 245000; 2: 225000; 1: 200000)

Grand: 
As Greater, but gains the ability of Wondrous Isolated Transfer, allowing transfer of 1 power to a previously enchanted non-armor wearable constant item, destroying the source item, taking 1 hour per 1000gp value of the source item, and costing XP equal to 5 times the original crafting XP for thaumaturgically related items, and 20 times for non-related items.
Need: Transference Feat, Min Caster Level 20, 400000gp Unlimited Use
(Costs for per week use, 4: 375000; 3: 325000; 2: 300000; 1: 275000)


They didn't use it as often as you might think, but the times they did use it made for some very excellent armor and weapons...


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> Bostock speaks into Grey Wolf's mind.  *Remind them that I am no more a “voice in your head” than they are voices in each others' heads when using telepathic bond.*




Been a long time since Bostock said anything.

Or does he talk to Grey Wolf without it showing up in the Story Hour?


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> Been a long time since Bostock said anything.
> 
> Or does he talk to Grey Wolf without it showing up in the Story Hour?



Bostock does talk to Grey Wolf from time to time, but typically in throw-away contexts that don't make for good Story Hour content.   I have learned that the only way I'm ever going to get this thing written is to leave out a bunch of the extraneous, not-story-advancing dialogue.  I admit to being a bit arbitrary about what I include, but I promise I'm not omitting anything important.


----------



## Joshua Randall

I think I can understand how the party ended up with so much extra magic stuff: paranoia. 

When I play a high-level PC, I'm always afraid that my PC is going to get disintegrated / dropped into molten lava (you die, no save) / otherwise completely destroyed... _along with all my stuff_.

True Resurrection brings your PC back just fine, but it doesn't bring back the PC's gear. So, keeping backups around is better than adventuring naked.

Hmm, naked adventuring...


----------



## Siuis

A random though occured to me, while remembering the stirges and the crystal tower thingy.

Couldn't Dranko make himself immue to fire and then use the _Paroxysm of Fire_ on himself? I can't recall if if it leaves you helpless, but if not...

Few things would draw attention from a Big Bad like burping onto the enemy and _lighting him on fire._ Right up Dranko's alley.


----------



## Cervante

Delurking to say this is an excellent story of D&D and give it a bump.

Also, Sagiro, would you be opposed to me ste...erm borrowing some of your story for my own campaign I'm going to be running?


----------



## Piratecat

Siuis said:


> Few things would draw attention from a Big Bad like burping onto the enemy and _lighting him on fire._ Right up Dranko's alley.



True, although he's not entirely comfortable with the whole burning-hair-crackly-skin thing. I don't think _paroxysms of fire_ has scaled well with level.

That was an example of a magic item that wasn't used as much as Sagiro had hoped. Because it only had a few charges and we couldn't identify what it did, I almost never used it. That was probably a disappointing decision on my part.

And Cervante, I think Sagiro would be completely flattered if you used his insidious rat-bastardy as an inspiration (or ripped it off wholesale.) Just remember to give your half-orc player a lot of loot.


----------



## Everett

Does anyone know where in the SH or StevenAC's archive the battle with Condor occurred?  I'd like to read it again.


----------



## StevenAC

Everett said:


> Does anyone know where in the SH or StevenAC's archive the battle with Condor occurred?  I'd like to read it again.



You'll find that in the last chapter (chapter 9) of Part Two of the collected Story Hour.


----------



## Everett

StevenAC said:


> You'll find that in the last chapter (chapter 9) of Part Two of the collected Story Hour.




Thanks-


----------



## Cervante

PC, if I get a half orc I'll make sure they get plenty of loot, also, I have to say Dranko is my favorite character with Ernie being second.


----------



## Everett

*Faves:*

1.  Morningstar
2.  Aravis
3.  Kay
4.  Dranko
5.  One Certain Step
6.  Grey Wolf


----------



## The Axe

Dranko, baby!  The rest are just window dressing!

*ducks*

*wink*


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Just a bump and thought I'd mention tomorrow will make 2 months since the last update.  No pressure or anything


----------



## Piratecat

Whoo hoo, we play tonight for the first time in like two months! Player new-parenthood has temporarily slowed things down.


----------



## Piratecat

Whoo! Octesian, insane and dream-addled red-armored enemy, is a SOB. We're one round into a giant battle against him. Expect no "massive sneak attack saves the day" here; it's all about Morningstar and her cadre of dreamwalkers. I'll be excited to see if we live.

Sagiro has mentioned that the story hour is on hold for a bit as he finishes work-related writing, but he works in waves: focus on one thing for a period of time, then focus on something else for a bit. Have no fear, there will be updates.

In the mean time, I'm going to try to whip my unmanageable character sheet into shape. If I succeed, I'll publish it here for anyone who is interested.



Everett said:


> 1.  Morningstar
> 2.  Aravis
> 3.  Kay
> 4.  Dranko
> 5.  One Certain Step
> 6.  Grey Wolf




You forgot Ernie and Flicker! And let me say, it wounds me to the quick that I've been bested by a PC who hasn't been in the game for about a decade.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> You forgot Ernie and Flicker! And let me say, it wounds me to the quick that I've been bested by a PC who hasn't been in the game for about a decade.




Sorry, but Kay's Yrimpas were the coolest thing ever.  I'm partial to wind-based elemental characters because I played one for a long time.  I'm tempted to put Grey Wolf before Dranko, too.

Fine, my party faves all the way through the list would look like such:

1. Morningstar
2. Aravis
3. Kay
4. Dranko
5. Grey Wolf
6. One Certain Step
7. Kibi
8. Ernie
9. Flicker
10. Tor
11. Snokas
12. Makel
13. Mrs. Van Horn


----------



## Everett

So... did Grey Wolf's player take his name from the two protagonists of Joe Dever's role-playing books?  I've always wondered.


----------



## Sagiro

Cervante said:


> Delurking to say this is an excellent story of D&D and give it a bump.
> 
> Also, Sagiro, would you be opposed to me ste...erm borrowing some of your story for my own campaign I'm going to be running?



You --  and anyone else -- should feel free to steal anything you want from my story!

Speaking of which, here's the next installment.  It's pretty action-free, I'm afraid.

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 306*_
*My Dinner with Califax*

Kibilhathur wakes early the next morning, checks on the progress of his beer in the basement, and gets to work.  His mission before lunch:  to pore through their pilfered Black Circle library looking for information on the term “Morbid Link” – the bit of necromancy by which Mokad stole Praska's body.  Kibi's certain that he's seen the term before – maybe when they were looking for ways to destroy the Null Shadow cauldron?

It takes him less than an hour to find what he's after.  He calls the others down from breakfast and reads aloud the latest disturbing findings from their enormous Collection of Unsavory Writings:

_“The Morbid Link is an advanced Black Circle ritual in which the seeds of a devotee’s consciousness are planted in the mind and soul of another person (“the subject”) who need not venerate the Black Circle, nor even be a volunteer.  The subject typically retains no knowledge of the link afterward, and the ritual leaves no residual auras subject to divinations arcane or divine.   

“When the adherent dies, his soul, intelligence, personality and memories are instantly transferred to the mind of the subject, who for all intents and purposes becomes the adherent.  The subject’s own consciousness is subsumed in sub-layers of the psyche, faintly aware of his surroundings but unable to exert any control over the body.  

“After a Morbid Link is triggered, the death of the single body results in the annihilation of the subject’s soul, so caution is advised.

“Once the original devotee has died, and the two beings come to occupy a single body, there are two ways in which the souls involved can be affected.   First, assuming that any objects are at hand that were once in possession of the subject, one can enact the Ritual of the Fourth Derivation.  This will not have any noticeable effect on the Morbid Link itself, but afterward, if the body is killed, the soul of the original subject will continue on to the afterlife, rather than become null.  

“Second, if a Ritual of Seven Stars is performed directly upon the adherent, the subject’s consciousness and mind will be fully restored, and it will be the soul of the transferred devotee that is annihilated.  To configure this ritual properly, a Ritual Circle of 31 spans should be inlaid, adjunct to the Seven Star equations in standard configuration.”_

Kibi looks up from the book.   “I hope the black circle we just tore up wasn't 31 spans,” he sighs.

“We still have Mokad's ritual room in Kallor,” says Aravis.  “Mostly intact, I think.”

All three wizards then hit the books to learn what they can of the “Ritual of Seven Stars.”  It turns out that said ritual isn't inherently Evil, but it's still creepy and complex, with some odd material components including “moontears that have been immersed in Dustwine.”  Like most highly-involved Black Circle ceremonies, this one will involve a meticulously-prepared chamber set with obsidian rings and obscure equations.  Fortunately the Black Circle provided thorough documentation.  The ritual itself looks like it takes about six hours to complete.

“Look here,” says Aravis, inviting Grey Wolf and Kibi to look over his shoulder.  “If we're going to do the Seven Stars, Mokad will have to be alive and restrained through the whole thing.”

“It looks like the Ritual of the Fourth Derivation would only take 15 minutes,” notes Grey Wolf, “and it's much simpler.”

“The problem with that one,” says Kibi, “is that it leaves Mokad's soul intact.  He could be raised from the dead by his Black Circle buddies.”

The wizards share their findings with the others over lunch.

“Have you noticed?” says Ernie, chewing on a hunk of cheese.  “It's always 'adherents' and 'devotees' with them.  Never 'believers' or 'worshipers.'   They sound less like a priesthood and more like a cult of evil mathematicians.”

“Could Mokad have more of these Morbid Links going?” asks Morningstar.

“Nope,” says Grey Wolf.  “You can't chain them, or be part of more than one at a time.”

“Another problem with that simpler one,” says Dranko.  “It's possible that if we do it, Mokad will sense it somehow.  But I still think we have to do it, given that someone _else_ could kill Mokad in the meantime.  Which, if I'm understanding you smarty wizards correctly, would destroy Praska's soul.”


* *

The Company settles in for several weeks of research, spell-scribing and item creation – with occasional globe-hopping forays when necessary.  For example, an hour spent with an acolyte of Kemma in Djaw gets them a primer on the Kivian pantheon, and Myr Madar (newly self-appointed master of Drosh's old portfolio) in particular:

_The Kivian High Gods, Yulan (God of Time and Reality) and Manisette (Goddess of Creation) arrived on Abernia millennia ago. With them came Myr Madar, whose relation to the High Gods is not known, and who takes no worshipers unto himself.  The three found the land of Kivia, uninhabited and ruled by no other Gods, and they claimed it for themselves.  Yulan and Manisette first created the five Greater Gods, who are: Kemma, Goddess of the Sun; Drosh, God of Death; Tiria, Goddess of War; Palamir, God of Magic; and Posada, God of the Sea. They also made the first humans who settled in Kivia, though these were soon joined by other creatures who came through the Ancient Archways. For it happened that there was another land on Abernia, and another God who ruled it. The land was called Char'gan, and the God was Pikon, but he stayed aloof from the Kivian Gods across the Sea.

Myr Madar has always stood outside the "family tree" of the other Gods. For the Greater Gods created the Lesser Gods, one to one -- Heros from Kemma; Nifi from Tiria; Quarrol from Posada, and Dralla from Drosh. Palamir, God of Magic, was prideful and created four Lesser Gods instead of one, but his creations were flawed, and weaker than the others. They were Paro, Laramon, Svetla and Vinceris, mere demigods among the pantheon. Manisette was angered by Palamir's pride, and though she was a Goddess of Creation, she showed that she could also destroy. She unmade Palamir and remade him as a God of Loyalty and Duty.

Myr Madar is the shadow that looms over all other Gods; and they fear him, even Yulan and Manisette. But has always judged fairly, and no soul ascends to heaven without his scrutiny.  Drosh holds the dead, and Drosh keeps those who deserve no good fate, and Drosh releases the righteous to heaven, and Drosh allows the undead to walk; but it is Myr Madar who judges, and Myr Madar who points the way.

With Drosh's recent unexplained absence, it seems to many religious scholars that Myr Madar was the logical choice to assume his duties._

* *

They also look up the sage Four Keen Mind while in Djaw, he being the scholar who once sold them information about the land of Branoi far to the north.   It only takes him a few hours to dig up a very old reference to 'dustwine,' and for some gold coins he shares it with the Company:

_Far to the northwest of Djaw, in the rocky country of Bederen, is the town of West Greydust, and in that town it is said that that they once drank from a holy pool a magic elixir known as "dustwine." There are no credible accounts of its effects, since the spartan inhabitants of Bederen have always been reclusive, but one who imbibed it was said to be cured of any number of afflictions both physical and spiritual.

This information is in a book of exotic potions written over 100 years ago, and there is no more recent information on the subject._

* *

About two weeks later, late in an afternoon when most of the Company are busy in the basement laboratory, they hear a knock at the door upstairs.  A moment later Eddings calls down.

“Dranko, you have a visitor.  It's Califax.”

Dranko sets down his tools.  “Show him in.  We'll be right up.”

It's strange to see his one-time nemesis standing and fidgeting in the Greenhouse living room.  Dranko's not quite sure what to say.

“How are you feeling?” he offers, after an awkward moment.

“Better,” says Califax with a wan smile.  “They've been feeding me well.  May I sit?”

“Of course.  Would you like something to drink?”

“I'd love something, thank you,” answers Califax, sitting carefully down in a chair like he's afraid he might break it.

Kibi has come up as well by this time.  “How about a beer?”  

“Sure!”

Dranko sits in the chair opposite Califax.  Now his scar-covered tormentor is relaxing in his house with a beer!

“Well, I wouldn't have predicted this,” he says.

“No,” Califax agrees.  “I guess not.”

For one of the few times in his life, Dranko is finding it difficult to generate small talk.  “So.  Got your soul back.”

Califax chuckles.  “Yes, I'm well aware of that.  Father Tomnic told me everything.  I understand you put yourself in great physical danger on my account.”

Dranko nods.  “Giant monster, made out of huge crypts and earth and stuff.  It was full of undead.  It was great.”

“Great?”

“For certain definitions of great, that involve excitement more than safety.”

Califax, who has never been inside the Greenhouse, looks around with great curiosity.

“This is... how did you come to be in this house?”

“Classified,” says Dranko with a smile.  “Let's just say it was a gift from one of the arch-magi, who saw a certain amount of potential in me and my friends.”

He gestures to his friends, who by now have all filtered up to join the reunion.  “Califax, this is my wife Morningstar, a shield-maiden of Ell, and a Daywalker.”

“I've heard a lot about you,” says Morningstar, keeping a neutral tone.

“Yes, I'm sure you have,” says Califax, not meeting her gaze.  “I wish I could say Dranko was entirely wrong, but I don't doubt he's been honest.”

“This is Sir Ernest Roundhill,” Dranko continues, pointing to Ernie,

“'Sir?'”

“Yeah, we're all knights,” says Dranko.  “Did I mention we even have a keep?  We have a keep!  Do you have a keep?”

“No,” says Califax.  “But I do have a church, which I'm fortunate to have been let back into.”

“This is Grey Wolf.  This is Aravis Telmir, a very powerful an impressive wizard.  And over there is Kibilhathur Bimson, also one of those.  And that's Flicker.”

(Edghar grumps to his master over an empathic link.  _You're a powerful wizard too.  Want for me to remind him?_)

Califax regards the Company with poorly-concealed awe.  “Father Tomnic has told me that you... all of you... have saved Charagan several times over.”

“Once or twice,” says Ernest modestly.

“Three times, actually.” says Dranko.  “Maybe four.”

Califax says nothing for a minute, so Dranko speaks again.

“Like I said, the Archmagi saw our potential.  And it turned out that there was a better way for me than being cut and healed every time I did something wrong.  You could say I've been re-channeled into more productive opportunities.”

Califax steeples his fingers and speaks carefully.  “Every part of your past is part of what has made you the man you are today.”

“True,” Dranko admits.  “I would not be me, without you.   And sadly, without Mokad.”  He turns to Ernie.  “Can I spit in here?”

Ernie shakes his head.  “No, but we'll take it as read.”

“I'm... I'm very sorry about Praska,” says Califax quietly.

“Yes, me too,” says Dranko.  “So, yeah, we fought Praska, and knew that she had turned, but didn't know that was Mokad inside of her.  I'm glad you got that info to us, so we have the opportunity to actually save her.”

Califax nods.  The two regard each other in silence for another minute or two, taking occasional sips of beer.

“I'm thinking,” says Califax suddenly, “about all the meetings of the elders of the Church, back when you were a child.  The meetings about you, I mean, and what we should do about you.”

“Did I ever apologize for the time I set the fane on fire?”

“You did... break a lot of things,” Califax laughs.  “And they weren't always easy to fix.   You were... difficult.  I'm just trying to reconcile certain things.  I think I needed to see you here, in person.”

Dranko extends his arms.  “I'm just me.”

“Yes.  It's obvious you're still the same person I remember.  But now, married and respectable...”

“Our very first mission involved some unfortunate moments with rats,” says Morningstar.  “Afterward, some in our very young Company were having trouble sleeping.  My fumbling attempts at using dreams to help could only do so much, but someone else here found a more direct solution.  He went out and found an old, bedraggled stray cat, that had no home, and brought it in so the house would be safe from rats.  _That_ is Dranko.”

She fixes Califax with a prideful look.

“So you are,” says Califax.  “And... I'm sorry, that you feel your childhood was less than fair.”

Dranko leans forward.  “All of my resentment and anger that was aimed at you was forgiven and dismissed a long time ago.  I was set a task by Brechen, in exchange for bringing back one of our friends that was killed, to find a way to forgive you.  And I'm glad I did.  Because frankly, you were worthy of forgiveness.”

“Thank you.  I guess I served some greater purpose after all.”

“Well the fact is that you were able to find the strength in yourself to do what was right in the end, instead of what Mokad wanted you to do.  I have tremendous respect for that,  and I don't know that I've ever told you.  Or expected to.”

Califax looks studiously at his hands.  “I spent so long not liking you, Dranko... this is going to be hard for me.”

“It's okay for you not to like me.”

“You're clearly a different person now, to a great extent.  I shouldn't hold old grudges, especially in light of debts I owe to you now.”

Dranko smiles.  “Why don't we start over?  Not in an annoying bards-singing-love-songs-by-candlelight kind of way, just a two adults sort of way.”

Califax glances over at Morningstar.

“Yes,” she says.  “He's worth it.”

“Dranko Blackhope, hero of the realm,” says Califax.  “That's going to take some getting used to.”

“It's 'Brightmirror' now.  I changed my name after marrying Morningstar.”

“That's the last thing I would have expected of you.  Just remarkable.  I'm pleased things have turned out the way they did.  But... I'm really here to talk about Praska.  I'm sorry to get sentimental.”

“It's okay,” says Dranko.  “Why don't you stay for dinner?”


* *


“She has a secret hideout under the capital,” says Califax between bites of roast chicken.  “It's possible that she's there right now.”

Dranko shakes his head.  “We've already raided it.  She was there.  Do you know that she sent Null Shadows after us?”

“Extra nasty ones,” Kibi adds.

“Mokad did that, not Praska,” Califax corrects them.

“Right,” says Dranko, thinking sheepishly again of the mean things he said during the battle.

“He even used Praska to taunt me,” says Morningstar.  “Through a _thought capture_”

The Company gives Califax a summary of their battle against Mokad/Praska beneath Hae Charagan, ending with their frustration when she teleported away, and their subsequent failure to track her down.

“Where would you guess she is now?” Dranko asks.

“If I had to guess, I'd say probably Kai Kin.”

“Really!” exclaims Dranko.  “Have you ever had their custard?”

“No,” says Califax, not getting the reference.  “I've never been to Kai Kin.  There is a Black Circle temple there.  Highly regarded by the locals, I understand.  The Black Circle is one of the prominent religions in the country.  I don't know what he was up to there; frankly, they weren't wholly sure of me, and eventually found me out, right before you rescued me.  I was never deep in their counsels.   I believe – though I have no proof – that they are working again to find a way to rescue Emperor Naradawk from Volpos.”

“Attempt number four!” Ernie exclaims.

“I don't know how far along they are,” says Califax, “or what their plan is.”

“Mokad has powerful anti-divination magic going, unfortunately.”

“Their entire temple is safeguarded,” says Califax.

“How did they recruit you?” asks Morningstar abruptly.  Califax freezes for a second before putting down his fork.

“And is anyone else in the temple still compromised?” asks Dranko.

“No,” says Califax.  He turns to Morningstar and answers:  “I don't wish to discuss it.  Let's just say they recruited me by... it was a personal matter.  They preyed on my personal weakness.”

“Oh, I know how it is,” says Dranko.  “They hated Dranko.  You hated me.  It was a perfect fit!”

“It's not funny, Dranko.   Suffice to say, I found Mokad persuasive, and I fell.”

“But you clambered back up,” says Dranko, smiling.  “And that's what counts.”

Ever tactically-minded, Kibi asks, “In Kai Kin, where is the temple specifically?”

“I'm sure it's location is no secret,” says Califax.  “The Black Circle is worshiped openly; you could probably ask anyone on the streets of Kai Kin.  Though, Kai Kin – and all of Ocir – is xenophobic in the extreme.   Insular.   But here's what I think.  You know the Black Circle in Kivia collects life energy, from people seeking knowledge.  And that life energy is ultimately put to use for some grand purpose of theirs that was never made clear to me.   I _think_ that purpose is being brought about in Kai Kin.”

“And something tells me their plan isn't to feed the hungry or heal the sick,” says Ernie.

Califax chuckles.  “The Black Circle – I'm embarrassed to say, I don't exactly know what it is.  It is the embodiment of certain attitudes.  But it is also tangible in its way.  There is a malign will of some sort...”

“That's the goo,” says Ernie.

“The what?”

“Long story,” says Dranko.  “Concentrated Evil.”

“We're not prepared to talk about it,” Aravis interjects, glaring at the others.

“So,” says Dranko.  “Califax, is there any way _we_ can help _you_ at this point?”

“You can sit and talk with me while you feed me dinner,” laughs Califax.   And so they do, making small talk for another hour.  Eventually Dranko leans back in his chair and lifts his mug of beer.  “You know, this is way, way nicer than I imagined it would be.  Cigar?”

Califax declines, citing his soul-weak state.   Flicker, ever insensitive to social niceties, asks what it was like to not have a soul for so long.

Califax darkens and doesn't answer for a minute.  Then he says simply, “it was hell.”

Dranko breaks the tension by telling Califax the story of their encounter with Lord Tapheon in Het Branoi.  When he has finished the part where the Demon Lord turned him into an inside-out fish, Califax shakes his head in disbelief.

“All I ever did was give you scars.  I don't feel like such the villain anymore.”

“Heck,” says Dranko with practiced nonchalance, “I've been eaten a few times.”

They show Califax the trophy case.

“And he's licked most of those things,” Aravis chimes in.

Califax looks at Dranko.  “You still have that revolting habit?”

Dranko looks affronted.  “Aravis doesn't understand that people don't properly experience the world through all of their senses.”

“Well, you certainly know what everything in the church tastes like,” says Califax.  “Including some holy relics, as I recall.”

“They tingle,” Dranko grins.

“He also knows what addictive, strength-draining powder tastes like,” says Aravis.

“We don't have to air all of our dirty laundry, you know,” says Dranko, aggrieved.

“I'm not airing all of it,” Aravis answers. “Just the funny stuff.”

Califax peers out a window at the dark Street of Bakers.  “You can save some stories for my next visit.  I should probably take my leave.”

Dranko walks him to the door.  “If you need anything, let us know.”

“Well, you don't need anything from _me_,” says Califax.  “You're a savior of the world after all.  Good night everyone.  Thanks so much for dinner.”

And Califax departs.  Dranko closes the door, turns to his assembled friends, and lets out a long breath.

“That was the strangest visit we've had in a long time.”

...to be continued...


----------



## Innocent Bystander

When this happened, did the party have any alarm bells going off that Califax still wasn't entirely on the up and up, or by this time was he truly trustworthy?


----------



## Piratecat

Innocent Bystander said:


> When this happened, did the party have any alarm bells going off that Califax still wasn't entirely on the up and up, or by this time was he truly trustworthy?



We helped redeem him, let him rat out Mokad, and then gave him back his soul. At this point we're pretty confident that he's trustworthy.

By the way, I'm just going to say: the process of trying to get Mokad out of Praska is probably my favorite adventure(s) that Sagiro has run in a decade. There's a lot leading up to it, but so good in so many ways.


----------



## Joshua Randall

You can take the Mokad out of the Praska, but you can't take... the...

Wow, where was I going with that?


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 307*_
*Dream of a Black Rat*

Morningstar shakes her head.  “Weird, weird, weird.”

“He didn't seem like that bad a guy,” says Aravis.

“He cut my husband!” 

“Yeah,” says Flicker.  “But it sounds like he deserved it some of the time!”

Morningstar turns and glares at Flicker but says nothing.

“Hey,” says Ernie, eager to change the subject.  “Grey Wolf and I were talking, and think that we should really find out what that black Goo is, given how central it is to what the Black Circle gets up to.  What if the Goo is the boiled down life energy itself?”

“Note to self,” Dranko mutters.  “Not going to lick it.”

“Maybe we can _legend lore_ it,” Morningstar suggests.

“Or I could do some alchemical experiments on it,” says Aravis, getting that gleam in his eye that shows up when he ponders doing something perilous.

“Don't let it touch you!” Dranko warns,

“I'll cast the _legend lore_,” says Kibi.  “But I'll need a _protection from evil_ first so I can get close enough to cast.”

So shielded, Kibi goes to the basement and retrieves from a closet the small sealed iron pot of Goo from Het Branoi.  He casts his spell, and can feel it starting to work.  Some kind of knowledge is coming into his head...

Thirty seconds later he regains consciousness, with a clear memory that he had learned some truth that was too horrific to contemplate.  He has no recollection of the details.  The pot of Goo, still sealed, has fallen to the ground, and his _protection from evil_ is still active.   He locks the pot back in the closet and goes upstairs to tell the others.


* * 

The next night they invite Ozilinsh over dinner, and it's a much less awkward social call than Califax's visit of the previous night.  The now-powerless archmage seems happy, and they exchange pleasantries before the Company tells him about Mokad, Praska, and a possible new threat to the kingdom.  Ozilinsh is absolutely fascinated by the notion of a Morbid Link, and ends up reading through the Company's papers through dinner.  His mild hyperactivity and lack of social graces have certainly survived the draining away of his magical powers.

“Hmmmm,” he says at various intervals, while the others eat and watch him.

“Oooooh.”

“Interesting!”

“Dustwine?”

“Say what you want about the Black Circle, but they're brilliant mathematicians.  Do you feel up to casting this Ritual of  Seven Stars?  Some of it is extremely advanced... but someone with whom you are eating dinner happens to be an expert mathematician himself, and would be delighted to help you.”

“Ozilinsh,” asks Kibi, “Do you think casting the smaller ritual would alert Mokad that we were up to something?”

“No, I don't think so.  I don't see any sub-aetheric vector that could account for transfer of knowledge.   If you don't mind, I'd like to borrow some of these books, so I can study the ritual and give you some advice.  Don't worry – I won't actually try anything myself.  Anyhow, thanks for dinner!  It's nice to get out of the house now and again.”

* *

Another week goes by without notable incident.  On the first day of July, Aravis wakes with a fresh message from the Crosser's Maze.

_This time your vision is direct – discovered by your own wandering fragment, rather than by your mysterious ally.   The vision is of a dark place – an attic, you think, with light slipping through thin gaps in the roof.   There are only two beings there – a short, stocky man in blood-red plate mail, and a large rat, its eyes glowing with malice.

The two communicate telepathically, but your fragment hears their thoughts.  

“Do you understand fully what I’m offering?” asks the man.  “A being of your divine stature would become immensely powerful.   You could lift your kind above all the others, become the hunters rather than the hunted.  You could eliminate your rivals... permanently.”

“I understand full well,” hisses the rat.  “And believe me, I enjoy the thought.”

“Excellent,” says the man.  “Because that is also the price of my gift.   Once you have been blessed, I want you to destroy the sparks of your three enemy factions.   The ravens will also serve us in time, but for now they are of no consequence.   It is the others who have both the means and the will to hinder me.  Feast upon them.  Their power will become yours.  No beast on Abernia will be your equal.”

“As you wish,” says the rat, baring its teeth.

The man produces a small bowl and sets it down before the rat.

“Drink,” he says.  And the rat drinks._

That vaults the Rats into the #1 spot on the Company's 'to do' list.

Ernie rubs his chin.  “What is it that the cats, dogs and horses can do that would annoy Tarsos like that?”

“Whatever it is,” says Aravis, “we have to stop the rats.”

Dranko frowns.  “But Mokad...”

“I have to at least warn the cats about what's happening!  Can anyone here cast a _sending_ for me, to Arkin?”

Morningstar volunteers, and sends:

_*From Aravis: do you have the ability to get cats, dogs and horses to meet?  We know who's killing you.  Respond 25 words or less.*_

The answer comes back:

_*No, we are not wizards, and separated by hundreds of miles.  It would take many weeks.  Who is killing us?*_

Morningstar sends again:  *We want Aravis to scry you, so we can teleport to you and meet face to face.*

The answer:  _*We are in a protected place.  I would have to endanger myself to allow this.*_

They send once more:  _*It's important enough to take the risk.  We'll be scrying you in just under an hour.*_

_*Very well.  I will step outside in an hour.  But you could have just told me, to satisfy my curiosity.*_

Aravis starts casting _scry_ immediately, and an hour later he successfully sees Arkin through the sensor.   He _teleports_, taking the whole party with him.


* *

The Company arrives at the foot of some steep, rocky hills that are covered with mist.  Arkin observes them calmly.  Only when he is satisfied of Aravis's identity does he gesture to a small meandering path that snakes its way up into the foggy hills.  Through his telepathy he thinks, “I don't believe most of you can follow us.  But Aravis can.  Come with me.”

Arkin turns and vanishes into the mist.  Aravis follows.

“Huh,” says Grey Wolf.

Dranko sits on a rock and lights up a cigar.  As he takes a leisurely puff and exhales, the puff of smoke forms itself into words in the air:  *Kibi is a genius*.  Appalled, Dranko turns accusingly toward the dwarf.

“I didn't have anything to do with it,” Kibi protests.

“Really,” says Dranko dryly.  “Who did then?  You think my cigars are smart enough to just _know_ you're brilliant?”

“Well,” says Kibi smugly.  “Have you eaten any objects given to you by an Archmage recently?”

Dranko gulps.  Yeah, in fact, he has.

Kibi continues, “At the end of my message from Cranchus, it said:  'p.s. Watch Dranko every time he smokes a cigar.'”

Dranko blows more smoke.  *Elementals over all*.  

He blows again.  *Hi Dranko.  Enjoying the cigar?*

Aravis smirks.  “You shouldn't have coveted his elemental's eye!”

Dranko sighs, but at least he finds that if he blows smoke with a bit more vigor, the words smear into a normal-looking cloud.

Aravis follows Arkin of the Great Pack up the winding path.   The mist soon grows so thick that the wizard is following Arkin only by sound.   Ten minutes into the climb, he senses something odd about his surroundings; the space around him takes on a tingly, ethereal quality, as if it both is and isn't part of the physical world.   (And back at the foot of the hill, Aravis drops out of the _telepathic bond_.)  After a minute of that the feeling subsides (and he's back on the mental link), and then the mist grows thin for the last hundred feet before Aravis steps out into a tiny grass-covered valley.

There are dogs lounging here, eight in all if you include Arkin.   There is some barking, and some sniffing, and the dogs arrange themselves into a rough circle in the center of the valley.

Aravis sits before them and describes in detail the vision he had about the Black Rat.  Immediately the dogs begin a riotous barking, pelting Aravis with mental questions and general exclamations of alarm.  (Aravis shakes his head at the chaos.  For all that these are Divine beings, they're still a bunch of dogs.)  Aravis waits for the clamor to die down before explaining about the Emperor, his red-armored servants, and how the latter are working to rescue the former from exile.

The dogs are especially interested in Tarsos's opinion that the dogs “have the means and the will to hinder him.”

“What does he think we can do?” asks Arkin.

“I don't know,” Aravis admits.

“We should do it, whatever it is!” barks one of the other dogs, and that starts more frantic back-and-forth.
“But we don't know what it is!”
“We should find out!”
“How?”
“I don't know!”

“At the moment,” says Aravis, holding up a hand, “the more immediate danger is that the rats can kill us _permanently_, and possibly even take our Divine Sparks onto themselves.”

“What?”
“WHAT?”
“ How?”
“That's terrible!”
“No!”
“We must put a stop to it at once!”

Arkin glares the other dogs into silence, then turns to Aravis.

“I think,” says Arkin, “we know now, don't we then, why one of the Sparks was born into the body of a human, and a great human wizard at that.  We are...  I have told you that we are not wizards.  We do not have any magic in the sense that you think of it.  Our power lies in the guidance of our kinds.  Their greater good, their way in the world, their relationships with Man.  But we are not wizards, or warriors.  We are dogs.  That's why we hide.  And we hope that this Rat cannot find us here.”

One dog looks worriedly at Aravis.  “Are you sure you weren't followed?”

“Yes,” says Aravis.  “But even if someone did, my friends would take care of them.  Because we _are_ wizards and warriors.”

“Then we beseech you... find this Rat and do away with it!”

The dogs are clearly in some awe of Aravis.  Over the mind-link, Kibi thinks:  “Enjoy it now.  The _cats_ won't be in awe.  They're cats.”

Aravis addresses the dogs.  “Do you know how I could contact the Feline Conclave, or the Noble Herd?”

“I know approximately where they are,” Arkin answers, “but we have no magical means of contacting them.  The Noble Herd runs somewhere on the Plains of the White Sun.  And the Conclave resides in the Endless Wood, as you should know.”

“How did you find me?”

“You are different from the others.  You have a unique scent.  I walked, and ran, for many days.   Maybe the horses also sent one of their kind, but with Sparks being snuffed out, they are probably all in _their_ place of sanctuary.  Regardless, we appreciate the warning, and the knowledge.  We'll appreciate it even more when you've eliminated this Black Rat.”

“I'll be in touch,” says Aravis.  He bows to the dogs, and walks back down the misty path.  He is fascinated by the stretch in the middle where he seems to exist both inside and outside the world. 

“So much to learn, so little time,” he mutters to himself.  “And I have to _waste_ that time killing rats and the Black Circle.”

Once back with the others, Aravis shows off a new trick.  

“I _wish_ we were home,” he says.

And they are. 

“Neat!” exclaims Flicker.

"Overkill," admits Aravis, “but I was out of _greater teleports_.”

In the Greenhouse, they sit down in the living room and ruminate.

Aravis exhales.  “They can't defend themselves against the Rat.”

“Then I guess we know where this is going,” says Morningstar.

“Once we deal with the Rat,” continues Aravis, “we may be able to convince normal dogs, cats and horses to help us against the Black Circle.  If the Sparks can guide regular animals, all of those animals could be our spies.”

Ernie nods.  “Maybe that's what Tarsos was afraid of.”

Aravis wants to issue a sending to the Feline Conclave, but cannot cast the spell himself, and none of the others have enough familiarity with the cats to cast.   This is solved by Morningstar casting _memory read_ on Aravis and choosing the five minutes when he was actively casting the _vision_ that showed him the Conclave.   She chooses as her target the one who was arguing most on Aravis's behalf – a big, fluffy, smoke-colored Maine Coon.

_*I speak for Aravis of the Feline Conclave.  We know who is destroying the Divine Sparks.  We must meet.  Respond 25 words or less.*_

The answer comes back:  _*Still too much distrust among the Conclave.  I agree with you, but some think HE is the killer.  I'll keep working on them.  Plumpypuss.*_

Morningstar can't choke back a chuckle.  When she recovers, she recites the cat's response verbatim, and when she gets to the spoken signature, everyone except Aravis breaks out in gales of laughter.

“No wonder the other cats won't believe her!” says Kibi.

Aravis turns red.  “For the record,” he huffs, “before you make up some ridiculous Cat God name for me, I have never in my life insulted either Delioch or Ell.”

“If your'e going to be that way,” says Ernie with a grin, “we'll call you 'Grumpypuss.'”

Dranko snorts.  “Our return sending should be:  'Dear Plumpypuss.   That's the cutest little Cat God name we've ever heard...'”

But Aravis has Morningstar cast again with a more sober message.  _*Stay hidden.  The Rats are able to kill you, and we believe they can destroy and absorb your Divine Sparks.*_

The reply from Plumpypuss:  _*Understood.  Thanks for the warning.  Figures it's rats, the vile creatures.  They cannot penetrate our sanctuary.  Hope to see you soon.*_.

The party is not wholly convinced that the cats are safe from a Divine Rat who's already absorbed the Sparks of two other animal deities, but there's not much more they can do, so they go back to their work.


* *

Two days later, Aravis gets yet another missive from the Maze:

_You wake from a dream, and know it has come from the Maze, but are not sure who sent it – your fragment, or your ally.   

You dreamed of the bottom of the sea.  There was a school of fish there, floating easily above the uneven ocean floor, perhaps basking in the eerie illumination of some odd plants clinging to the rocks.  

Then there was a sound, a strange thud, a noise that does not belong in the quiet recesses of the ocean.  Another thud follows, louder, and the fish scatter.   For a second there is nothing but the rocks and silt bathed in the blue light of the local flora.   Then, with a swoosh and a yet louder thud, an enormous skeletal leg slams its bony toes into the ground.  A second leg follows, and then a third; some skeletal monstrosity is striding along the bottom of the sea._

As Maze-o-grams go, this one goes into the “disturbing but not immediately actionable” category, though Dranko decides to  go ahead and make some Truedeath weapon crystals after all.


* *

Kibi tries another _legend lore_ on the Black Goo, but this time maintaining a greater distance from the pot, and casting the version that takes longer to return information.  Ten days after casting the knowledge comes, and once again he is knocked unconscious.  But this time, though he wakes with no clear memory of what knowledge was imparted to him, he does retain a tiny recollected fragment:  a faint idea of a tremendous physical impact.


* *


The days roll by.  The Greenhouse basement fills with the acrid smells of alchemical reagents and the sounds of progress.  Morningstar spends hours in her room working on the first draft of her holy writing commissioned by High Priestess Rhiavonne.

_The Book of Morningstar!  What have I gotten myself into?_

Life is relatively peaceful for several weeks, and then gets hectic in an awful hurry.  Just before dawn on a hot July day, Aravis is woken from a sound sleep by the feeling of a dagger in his heart.  He instinctively clutches his chest and sits up screaming, but there is no knife, no assailant.   Pewter is sitting at the foot of his bed, meowing piteously.

As are, from the sound of it, all the cats in Tal Hae.  One of the Feline Conclave has been murdered.

The others rush to Aravis's room, knowing full well what must have just occurred.

“The cat must have died, just now!” Dranko exclaims.  “Can we find out where he was?”?

“We should have gone after the Rat before now,” Aravis groans dismally.

“You warned 'em, boss!” says Pewter.  “It's not your fault.”

Flicker puzzles.  “Shouldn't they all have been safe in their sanctuary?”

“That's what bothers me,” says Grey Wolf, looking at Aravis with concern.

“We should do a _sending_ to Plumpypuss,” says Ernie.

“Do it,” says Aravis.  “In the meantime, I'll do what I should have done weeks ago.  I'm going to try scrying the Rat.”

Morningstar cast her _sending_.  _*Plumpypuss, can we help?  Who died?  Where?  Reply 25 words or less.*_

The answer comes with obvious pain in the cat's voice.  _*It was Sawgrass, the only one away when you warned us.  He had been in Tev.  I'll work on getting Aravis his meeting*_

Ernie fumes.  “And why didn't you listen to us, you stupid fuzzy hairballs!”

Aravis doesn't think his chances of successfully scrying the rat are high, but the Company preps for battle just in case.   An hour later Aravis blinks, almost in confusion.

“I got him.  The Rat.  I've got him.”

Through the sensor he sees an enormous black Rat, easily the size of a large horse.  It has its hairy snout in the bloody remains of a cat carcass.  The ground around the Rat, to the full extent of Aravis's vision, is covered with smaller rats, swarming and squeaking.  The air is filled with their furious cacophony.  Aravis also notes a few rats here and there that are also abnormally large, though not so huge as the Rat – more like the size of sheep.

He quickly relays to the others what he sees.  The Company finishes buff and prep.  They don't often make use of the _scry_-and-_teleport_ tactic, but this seems like just the opportunity.

“Ready?” asks Aravis.

“Yeah,” says Grey Wolf.  “Let's ruin his day.”

...to be continued...


----------



## EroGaki

Plumpypuss


----------



## coyote6

EroGaki said:


> Plumpypuss




I'm sure it sounds much more impressive in the original language, Cat. 

Or maybe not.


----------



## Piratecat

Yeah, we were laughing pretty hard at the name. Not to his face, though - _Plumpypuss will *cut *you._ Anyways, it's bad form to mock a God. We learned that early on with Pikon.

You see, Sagiro knew that Pikon was a special God - the only one in Charagan when the Travellers arrived. But all that we knew was that he is the God of the farmer, and that the only time he got mentioned was on a holiday in his name when the farmers got the day off of work. We thus concluded that Pikon and his worshippers were lazy gits who laid about all the time. This didn't end up going over well with any priests of Pikon we met.


----------



## kuragara

Everett said:


> So... did Grey Wolf's player take his name from the two protagonists of Joe Dever's role-playing books?  I've always wondered.




To answer your question, nope.
Grey Wolf was originally my monk in MERP many many many moons ago.


----------



## Everett

Ah, thanks.


----------



## Joshua Randall

It seems like the black goo is somewhat akin to 



Spoiler



the colour out of space (as in the H.P. Lovecraft story


. I think that the tremendous impact that Kibi sensed was that of a 



Spoiler



meteor strike, again like the HPL story


.

This is very cool. Even if I'm wrong.


----------



## Piratecat

Joshua Randall said:


> It seems like the black goo is somewhat akin to
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> the colour out of space (as in the H.P. Lovecraft story
> 
> 
> . I think that the tremendous impact that Kibi sensed was that of a
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> meteor strike, again like the HPL story
> 
> 
> .
> 
> This is very cool. Even if I'm wrong.



Half right. But it's so, so much worse than that.  Gah.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Half right is better than I usually do.

And I'm still bitter that I was wrong about Mrs. Horn being the secret evil mastermind behind everything.


----------



## Piratecat

Joshua Randall said:


> Half right is better than I usually do.
> 
> And I'm still bitter that I was wrong about Mrs. Horn being the secret evil mastermind behind everything.



That's okay. I'm still bitter that I was wrong about the archmage Cranchus and Parthol Runecarver ("the mysterious 'P'") being the same person, with Parthol having killed Cranchus and taken his place. It was an awesome theory that explained everything but couldn't have been farther from the truth. I feel your pain.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 308*_
*How to Ruin a Rat's Day*

By now the Company packs a collective destructive force that rivals almost anything Abernia has to offer.  When that force is unleashed on unsuspecting victims – look out.

They appear hovering in the air, not wishing to stand upon the seething carpet of rats that stretches for at least fifty feet in every direction.  Grey Wolf opens up with a _sonic lance_.  Kibi casts an _earthquake_ over the entire area.  Aravis invokes _time stop_, and while the world stands still he _shape changes_ into an enormous yellow dragon.  When time resumes he breathes a devastating cone of electricity.

Dranko sneak attacks the flat-footed Black Rat with his whip.  Morningstar casts _firestorm_.  Ernie casts _destruction_.  With the rat still stumbling around on the quivering ground, Grey Wolf lets loose a _greater fireburst_ channeled through _Bostock_.  Kibi quickens a _coldfire_, then reaches down and  bestows upon the Black Rat an _Otto's irresistable dance_.

All of this happens in about 10 seconds.

When the smoke (quite literally) clears, all of the mid-sized rats are dead, the ground is thick with the corpses of small rats, and the Black Rat is covered with wounds, its fur patched with burns and its skin beneath splotched with bruises.   And, best of all, it's dancing a serious jig.

The bad news?  Well, for one thing the Black Rat is still alive, having resisted or saved against much of the magical barrage.  For another, the ground is _still_ alive with living rats, squirming around and quickly covering the dead ones.  It's as if there's a constant influx of the creatures from an Elemental Plane of Rats just off-stage.  Ernie shudders.

The worst news is that Kibi has suffered some kind of backlash from making physical contact with the Black Rat.  In addition to blistered skin and devastating internal injuries, his eyes have gone a flat black.  The others see him preparing another spell and muttering to himself.

“Want to tell us where Tarsos is?” asks Dranko, looking down as the Black Rat spins and twirls.  “We may let you live!”

“And those red-armored guys will turn on you,” Ernie adds.  “You can't trust them.”

“Of course not!” snarls the Rat.   “Do you think I care?”

“Where did you make the deal with him?” Aravis demands.

“Some human town,” says the Rat. 

Aravis turns to Dranko.  “Also, I will _never_ let him live.”  He pegs the Black Rat with a _disintegrate_, which dissolves more of the creature's flesh.  A chunk of its shoulder drops into the carpet of rats and is promptly devoured.  

Morningstar quickens a _searing darkness_ that fizzles against her enemy's resistance, before casting _heal_ on Kibi.   The dwarf was preparing to cast _prismatic spray_, thinking that enemies had managed to surround him.   As the haze fades from his vision and Morningstar's soothing energy fills him, he realizes that he was just about to cast the spell on all of his friends.

“No more touching the rat!” he shouts, alarmed.

“Uh, guys?” says Dranko, pointing to the Rat.  “I have some bad news.”   He noticed that when Kibi was healed, the Black Rat _also_ gained health – a lot of it.   They speculate over the mind-link that whatever happened to Kibi allowed their foe to share life force somehow.  Whoops!

Back to the good news:  while the Rat is dancing and they're hovering five feet off the ground, there's nothing dangerous to worry about, so the party continues to take their shots.    Ernie flies directly over it and attacks with both _Coiled Viper_ and his _spiritual weapon_.   Grey Wolf burns it with _prismatic ray_.  Flicker stabs it through one ear with a well-placed dagger strike.  Kibi smacks it with a _Bigby's clenched fist_. 

But the Black Rat survives, mostly due to its strong innate resistance to hostile magic.  It shrugs off another _disintegrate_ from Aravis, a _flame strike_ and quickened _searing darkness_ from Morningstar, and both an empowered _cone of cold_ and an _earthbolt_ from Kibi.  They have more luck with physical strikes:  Ernie, Flicker and Dranko continue to slice, whip and stab. 

Dranko looks down at the Rat, wondering why it's still alive.  Bleeding profusely, and with bone showing through its ravaged hide in many places, it's still jumping, spinning and shuffling its feet.  With every step it's crushing smaller rats beneath its enormous bulk.

“If nothing else,” Dranko observes, “its dignity is nearly dead.”

The Black Rat stops dancing.  Freed from Kibi's enchantment, it backs up and lowers its bloody snout into the swarm of rats.  Then it opens its mouth wide and seems to _breath in_ hundreds of its smaller brethren.

“Uh oh...” says Ernie.

The Black Rat lifts its head and blasts out a wide cone of rats from its mouth.   The rodents spray over the party, thumping into them, tearing with claws and teeth, and clinging to their clothes and armor.  Flicker and Dranko twist and evade the rats, and Morningstar's _fire shield_ burns them away, but everyone else is now covered with rats, biting and scratching and squeaking loudly.   Ernie, who has harbored a phobia of rats ever since the party's very first adventure, lets out a shriek of terror.

Aravis casts _lightning ring_, surrounding his draconian body with electricity that burns away the rats clinging to his scales.  Kibi punches the Black Rat again with Bigby's Fist, and the creature wobbles noticeably.   Dranko misses three times with his _spiritual weapon_ but lands another crack with his whip.

With all of the party in bad physical shape after the Breath of Rats, Morningstar casts _mass heal_ – which is good for the party, but also, it turns out, good for the Rat.   Its consumption of Black Goo, along with the potent life-force absorbed from the three slain Sparks, has given it a powerful necromantic aura that leeches off any nearby healing energies.  

“Dammit!” Dranko exclaims.  “We just healed the Rat, too!”

Morningstar throws up her hands in exasperation.  “You'd rather I let you all get gnawed to death?”

Ernie is living his own worst nightmare, covered with rats biting and scrabbling at his armor.  Some of them find exposed skin and open up numerous cuts.  Somehow he concentrates enough to fire off a _searing light_ at the Rat, before flying upward a bit.  “Get them off of me, get them off of me!” he shrieks.

Grey Wolf likewise feels the stinging attacks of a dozen or more rats, but he nails the Black Rat with a pair of _lesser acid orbs_.   Flicker swoops down, flanks the Rat with Dranko, and jams his dagger into its neck.  “Won't you just die, you stupid thing!”

Kibi flies himself up to where Ernie and Grey Wolf are hovering and casts a quickened _rainbow pattern_ around all three of them.   When he moves the glittering lights off to the side, the rats detach from their victims to follow and end up dropping back into the crawling carpet of their brethren.  Ernie cheers.  “Thank you, Kibi!”

“Yeah, well,” says Dranko, “I hope there aren't any still squirming in your...”

“Shut up!” Ernie yells. Shut up, shut up!”

Kibi then casts _hold monster_, but the Rat resists.  “Dammit!  That spell never works!”

The Black Rat sees that Dranko is hovering close above its head.  With unexpected quickness it rears up high on its hind legs, grabs Dranko with its forepaws, and lunges with its enormous incisors.  

It bites Dranko's left arm clean off.   Blood squirts sickeningly from the stump.  Dranko has just enough wherewithal to cast _close wounds_ to stop the bleeding, and yell down “I had magic items on that arm!” before he starts screaming from pain and shock.  The arm itself falls into the morass of smaller rodents, where it is quickly devoured.

Aravis fires off two bolts from his _lightning ring_, but both are stopped by the Rat's resistance.   Then he breathes more lightning, which crisps many small rats and scorches the Black Rat, but catches Flicker in its area.

The Rat laughs.  “It's because you're a cat.  Don't be surprised when things don't work out for you.”  But its optimism is belied by a gurgling cough and a battered body.  Its health-leech ability has kept it alive well-past its expected expiration date, but it seems to be having trouble keeping its feet.

Morningstar fires a darkbeam that does only minor damage.  Ernie's _doom_ fails to get through the Rat's resistance, and another _searing light_ likewise fails.   Dranko, going on pure adrenaline and anger, gives the Rat a series of brutal lashes with his whip.  Fittingly, the last snap of the whip yanks out one of the Black Rat's front teeth.

Bostock speaks into Grey Wolf's mind. * “I suggest charging.”*

“I like my arms, thanks,” Grey Wolf answers.

*“Your spells are largely ineffective against it.  Weapons are not.  I am not!”*

But Grey Wolf proves him wrong, casting a maximized _chain missile_ that sends a handful of burning sparks into the body of the Rat.   Dranko, looking down, sees his foe reaching up again to strike... and then a ball of blue lightning starts to burn in its eye socket.   The Black Rat falls lifeless to the ground, where it is quickly skeletonized by the thousands of rats at its feet.

“Back off, everyone!” warns Aravis, and then he clears out the swarming rats with a pair of _fireballs_.   What remains is a puddle of greasy black liquid radiating a palpable evil.  Dranko can see his buckler and magic ring sinking out of sight in the center of the puddle.

“Hey, look.  There goes my stuff.” 

And with that, he floats weakly down and off to the side before collapsing in a heap.  


* *


“It's kind of a low-grade Evil.”

Ernie sniffs the air with distaste as he attends to Dranko's stump.  The small pool of Goo left behind by the Black Rat isn't quite at the same level of Evil as the Black Book in their basement, or the pot of Essence they also have in storage.  Still, none of them feel comfortable looking at or standing near to it.   The Company realizes that they hear none of the sounds of woodland creatures one would expect at this time of day.  Even the animals have the sense to avoid the remains of the Black  Rat.

“I can't believe it ate my arm,” says Dranko bitterly.

“Well, no,” says Ernie.  “It didn't eat it.  Technically it just ripped it off.”

“It was the little rats who ate it,” says Morningstar, nodding.

“Great,” Dranko mutters.  “Thanks.”

They talk for a while about what they can _do_ about the black puddle; it seems poor form to just leave it for unsuspecting passersby to stumble upon.  Maybe positive energy will work?  A _miracle_ and/or _wish_?  _Hallow?_ _Consecrate?_

Flicker smirks.  “Hey Dranko!  Now you can answer the great question:  'What is the sound of one hand clapping?'”

“It sounds like a punch in the nose,” says Dranko.

“What...?  Oh.   You...um... don't happen to mean your _own_ nose, do you?”

“No,” Dranko grumbles, “because if I punch _myself_ in the nose, my finger might get stuck there!”

Dranko manages to light a cigar with one hand.  The smoke forms into the words _Kibi is great_.  But his next puff shows something less dwarf-aggrandizing:  _No permanent harm._

Huh?

Morningstar starts small, casting _consecrate_ on the black pool.  The foul liquid bubbles, and the area becomes holy for a few seconds.  Then there is an gassing-off, a foul stench, the holiness is gone, and the emanating Evil returns.

Morningstar harrumphs.  “That was rude!”

Flicker looks over at Dranko, who is staring disconsolately at where his arm should be.  “Say... you can craft ARMS and armor, right?  Won't that help?

Dranko ignores him.  “You know,” he says thoughtfully.  “Maybe if we fish my arm out, it could end up being a holy relic someday.  'The Hand of the Healer,' they'll call it, except that it'll only do a half-assed job and only sort of make you feel better.  But if you _hit_ someone with it, it'll hurt a _lot_.

Morningstar next tries _hallow_, which will take a full day to cast.  She prays to Ell while the sun crosses the sky above the tall trees.  Her words grow louder and more powerful while the moon is out.   The others rest; Dranko tosses and turns fitfully in his sleep.  

The next afternoon Morningstar completes her _hallow_.  The black puddle hisses and bubbles again, but this time it shrinks as it does so, and within an hour it has entirely evaporated.  It leaves behind a scoured-out depression in the forest floor almost a foot deep.  At the bottom, in some bubbling mud, is Dranko's partially-dissolved left arm, still adorned with its magic items.  Dranko nudges the arm with his foot, turns around, and throws up.  When he has wiped the sour vomit from his mouth, he croaks, “Could someone be so kind as to remove my items from my arm, so I don't have to do it myself?”

He turns to Aravis.  “Forget about it being a holy relic.  Can you _disintegrate_ my arm after I have my new one?”

Flicker quirks an eyebrow.  “Why?”

“I don't want our enemies getting a hold of it and using it against us.”

“Yeah,” says Flicker with a smirk.  “They could raise an ARMy with it!”

Dranko can't help but chuckle.  “My whip hand still works,” he warns.

“You're a cleric, Dranko,” says Flicker.  “Above all, do no ARM!”

“Ell,” says Morningstar.  “I ask that you please produce a new arm for my husband Dranko.  He's a good man who deserves your blessing, and also Flicker is going to drive us crazy until this whole thing is behind us.”

She casts _regenerate_.   At the spell's conclusion a black silhouette of an arm appears on Dranko's stump, and in a minute it fades slowly to a normal, functioning limb.  Unlike the rest of Dranko's body, it bears no scars.    He leans over and gives his wife a kiss.

“Thank you very much,” he says simply.

Aravis clears his throat.  “The next thing to do is to contact the Feline Conclave.”  

Morningstar casts another _sending_ to Plumpypuss, explaining the demise of the Black Rat.  After a brief pause, the response comes back:  _*In six hours, scry me and teleport to my location.  Um, Aravis can do that, right?  Bring your allies if you'd like.*_

With six hours to kill, they get a bit more rest.  Ernie flies up above the trees but sees no settlement within sight of their location.  (They still have no good idea where they are – a drawback of the _scry/teleport_ maneuver.)

Dranko ponders the battle.  “I wonder what I did wrong in that fight.  I mean, in past fights I didn't have my arm bitten off.”

“I think I made the bigger mistake,” says Aravis.  “I had _protection from evil_ up.  I could have picked up the Rat without risking it taking over my mind.”

“It also _hurt_,” Kibi reminds him.  “A lot.”

Six hours later Aravis completes a _scry_, and sees the fluffy Maine Coon 'Plumpypuss' in a forest clearing.  He _teleports_ the party.

And there they are.  Aravis bows low.  “Pleased to meet you, Plumpypuss.”

“The honor is mine,” meows the cat.   “Thank you again for disposing with the Rat.    The Conclave would like to meet you right away.  Can you vouch for all these other bipeds?  Especially...”  

And here Plumpypuss looks pointedly at Ernie.  “...him?”

“Yes,” answers Aravis.  “But why should I be worried about Ernest?”

Plumpypuss says nothing for a moment.  “Well, as long as you're sure...”

The cat turns tail and walks into the misty woods.  It's an older, shaggier forest than the one they just left, with thick hanging vines and a rich smell.   The Company follows, and they all experience a journey similar to the one Aravis took to his meeting with the Great Pack.   The mist becomes too thick to see through, and everyone feels a tingle as if passing through some magical place.  Were they _teleported?_  Did they pass through a portal?

The feeling subsides, and the mist does as well, and then they are in a wide clearing.  There are ancient ruins crumbled about – a low wall here, a smashed archway there.  There are seven cats here including Plumpypuss, in a wide variety.     There is a red tabby with white paws, a huge fluffy white cat, a mottled black-and-grey Manx, a little off-white Siamese, and a lean, grey alley-cat.  A sleek black cat sits above them all on an old stone pedestal.

All of the cats regard Aravis and his friends with twitching tails.  The black cat on the pedestal greets them.  “Aravis, welcome to the Conclave.”

“It's an honor to be here,” says Aravis.

“I'm sure Plumpypuss has already asked you, but I'll ask you again:  are you sure your friends are safe, and that you can trust them?”

“As certain as I can be,” says Aravis.  “I trust them with my life, every day.”

The small white Siamese speaks.  “I still don't understand _how_ we can trust them, Aravis included!  He's probably the same as that Black Rat!  You smell it, don't you?”

The grey alley-cat looks at Ernie and hisses.  “And he has a confederate!  We should be prepared.  Make the other one leave.  Or at least, make them put down their – what are they called, their spell components, the things humans use to effect their magics.”

He looks at Aravis, then at Ernie.  “Yes, put down your spell components.”

“Are you all crazy?” cries Plumpypuss.  “He just slew the thing that killed Sawgrass. _and_ the horse, _and_ the Dog!”

“How do you know?” the Siamese retorts.  “We only have his own word for it!”

The black cat on the pedestal interrupts.  “He tells the truth.  I can tell.”  Then he turns to the Company.  “Aravis, there is a taint on you, that we can sense.  It is not just that you are a human.  There is something fundamentally wrong with you – both you, and him.”

Aravis understands.  He drops his component pouch to the ground and explains.  “If you sense the same thing in both of us, then what you are sensing is that at one point in the past, we were touched by something very similar to what was driving the Black Rat.”

The grey alley-cat hisses.   “I _told_ you!

“Belladonna, hush!” the black cat admonishes.

Aravis continues.  “We used a _wish_, the most powerful spell known to human wizards, to remove its influence.  And, there is a further wish I would like to attempt.  I hope it will provide final proof that I can be trusted.”

“Explain,” says the black.

“I don't know if my magic is powerful enough, but I would like to _wish_ the destroyed essences of the slain animal Sparks back into existence.”

There is much animated meowing at this suggestion.   The red tabby with the white paws arches its back and hisses, “That's blasphemy!  You may be a Spark, but you are still a human.  That is Quarrol's business.  You should not meddle.”

“But others have already meddled,” says Aravis calmly, “and have destroyed the Sparks.  I merely wish to restore the proper, natural order.  Maybe that is why Quarrol allowed the Spark to be born into me.”

The white Siamese nods its head.  “That makes sense to me.”

“How long would this take to do?” asks the black cat.

“A few moments, is all.”

“I think he should do it, and do it right now!” says Plumpypuss.  “What's the harm in waiting?”

“I won't do it without your consent,” says Aravis.

“Then we'll vote,” says the black.  “I am Inkspot, and I will save my vote for the end.”

He turns to the red tabby.  “Four White Paws, how do you vote?”

“I vote 'of course not.'”

To the fluffy white:  “Queen?”

“I vote Yes,” says Queen lazily.  “I don't see the harm.  If he has magics that powerful, what can we do to stop him no matter what he wants to do?”

To the gray alley-cat:  “Belladonna?”

“No.  Absolutely not.”

The Manx, named Claws, votes Yes, as does Plumpypuss.

Finally Inkspot turns to the Siamese.  “Frungycat, how do you vote?”

(As Kibi, translating for the other via _tongues_ over the mindl-ink, shares this last name, Flicker can't help but snicker.)

“I vote Yes,” says Frungycat.

“And I vote Yes as well,” says Inkspot.  “Which makes the vote five to two in favor.   And to enlighten you, since it's clear your friends are listening:  Quarrol sees fit that the Divine Sparks are born into cats who are in the care of humans.  We all keep the names that our humans give us, for it is our prime purpose to make sure the balance between humans and cats stays in an acceptable place, for the good of our kind.

“Now, cast your _wish._”

Aravis takes a deep breath.  “I wish that the Divine Essences that were destroyed by the Rat be restored back to their kinds.”

A wind picks up in the clearing, blowing through the trees and swirling the mist at its edges.  The cats of the Conclave look around nervously, except for Inkspot who looks unusually attentive. 

“You'll have to tell me if it worked,” says Aravis.  “Though I've been given one of your Divine Sparks, I do not have your senses for others of our kind.”

All of the cats start to sniff the air.  A minute later Inkspot stands up and flicks his tail.  “It _has_ worked,” he announces, “for our kind at least.   We can sense it.  A kitten has been born in Trev Lyndyn.  Its humans have named it 'Snapdragon.'   In time it will grow mature, and join us here.  Aravis, Thank you.”

Plumpypuss hops up into an old stump.  “So now you'll all stop doubting him, right?  Right?”

Belladonna and Four White Paws shrink back a bit, humbled.

Pewter, who has been perched on Aravis's shoulder all of this time, has been taking in the scene with great awe.   He whispers in his master's ear:  “This is why I've been calling you 'Boss' all this time!”

“And you're part of me,” says Aravis, scratching Pewter behind the ear.

“Hey, yeah.  Heck, I'm probably the only cat familiar a member of the Feline Conclave has ever had!”

Inkspot fixes Aravis with a stare.  “We feel – most of us, at least, and perhaps the rest of will come around to this point of view – that one of the Conclave was born into you because of the threat the Black Rat posed to us.  Quarrol foresaw that the Rat would arise, and that you would need to strike him down.”

Then he narrows his eyes further and speaks directly into Aravis's mind.  No other present hears what he says next.

_I don't think that's the end of it.  By the Ancient laws of Abernia, the Gods may not walk the earth.  They have to stay in their heavens, and the rules for even the tiniest interventions are prohibitive.  They are limited to divinations and prophecies, and they cannot take a direct hand.  In fact, we, the Conclave, the Herd, the Pack, the... others... are the only divine beings on the surface, of any kind.  Which means that you are the only directly divine human on Abernia.  I don't think that came about simply to help the feline race.  Perhaps there is a place you must go where only Gods are permitted, or a creature you must slay whom only a God can kill.  I am the oldest of the Conclave.  The others don't know how old.   To all of them, I have always been here.  Each of the animal Sparks has a leader such as me...except, now, for the Rats.  Destiny is not finished with you, Aravis.  But it has done well by us for today.  Thank you._

Then out loud, Inkspot says, “I leave you with one last word of warning.  There is _still_ something gravely wrong with you.  You will have to do something about that, or it will be your undoing.  You _and_ your friend.  And though I understand that it is not your fault, I do not think you should stay in this place any longer.

“You are more reasonable than we expected a human to be.   We have found in our experience that humans are an extremely irrational and violent, and though occasionally soft and sentimental, ultimately capricious species.  Even more so than we.  Farewell.”

Aravis answers, “I hope someday you come to understand that humans are more than that.”

“We'd all better hope so,” says Inkspot.  “It is our lot that we cats are, finally, at the mercy of humans.  If harm comes to Abernia, it will be for the humans to prevent, or to cause, and not us.”

...to be continued...


----------



## Sandain

That was a fantastic update


----------



## wolff96

I love the feline conclave.  

How (mechanically) did Dranko lose the arm?  Expanded crit table, some kind of special attack?  I'm curious how that was determined, if you don't mind explaining.

Loving the quick updates the last few weeks -- the fight with the Rat God was awesome indeed, but the council afterword was just great.  

Can't wait to see how the whole thing with Praska turns out...  I wish I lived close enough to sit in on one of these games.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Sagiro said:


> “Then we'll vote,” says the black.  “I am Inkspot, and I will save my vote for the end.”
> 
> [...]
> 
> Finally Inkspot turns to the Siamese.  “*Frungy*cat, how do you vote?”



Someone is a fan of Star Control II! Frungy, sport of kings!

(Or it's a coincidence.)


----------



## Piratecat

I think its mouth was like the old 1e sword of sharpness; if it rolled a crit, off went a limb. I was _really _in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Although personally, I think Sagiro was getting even with me for the time I charmed his character into testing a _sphere of annihilation_ the hard way!

Sagiro was really disappointed that we came in flying. The fight would have been much, much tougher if we were standing on the ground in the middle of that rat swarm. I also seem to recall that he was shocked we were able to scry it. Rolling a "1" on your will save happens to the best of us, I guess.



Joshua Randall said:


> Someone is a fan of Star Control II! Frungy, sport of kings!
> 
> (Or it's a coincidence.)



No coincidence! That's Sagiro's favorite computer game. Frungy, sport of Emperors, is also the game Flicker snuck off to play when we first arrived in Djaw. And did you know Erol Otus did the art for the Zot-Fot-Pik? It all ties together.


----------



## Sagiro

The cat was named by a small child in Djaw who loved the sport of Farangi (Sport of Emperors, played by his parents), but who hadn't yet learned to pronounce it properly.  Thus, "Frungycat."

And, yeah, I totally cribbed it from Star Control 2, the greatest video game ever made.


----------



## Sagiro

A short but eventful update.  

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 309*_
*Maybe Not the Destiny He Would Have Chosen*

After the Company has left the Feline Conclave behind, winding their way down the misty forest path until they emerge into  trackless forest, Aravis shares Inkspot's private opinions with the others.

“What disturbs me the most,” says Morningstar, “is that you died, were brought back to life, and are _still_ tainted from the Black Goo.”

“And that a _wish_ wasn't enough to fully get rid of it the first time,” Kibi adds.

Ernie squirms a bit.

“Hey, maybe a _miracle_ would work,' Dranko offers consolingly.  “Divine magic could work where arcane stuff didn't.”

Aravis sighs.  “I was really hoping that Destiny was done with me.  I guess not.”

Dranko lights up a cigar.  “You know, not all of us can be big deals.  I've never had a Big Honking Destiny.  And it's kind of boring.  So you be happy that you're making a difference.”

A tentacle erupts from Dranko's chest.

Another bursts from his neck, then two more from his left leg, then another through his stomach.  His friends are splattered with gore, rendered speechless with horror.  The nausea of Cleaners is emanating from Dranko's twitching form in waves.

More and more tentacles come wriggling from all over Dranko's body until almost a dozen are protruding outward, waving grotesquely in the air.  Finally one more pokes out of his left eye-socket, bursting his eyeball as it does so.  This last tentacle holds a small glass vial in its suckered tip, and the others can see a small folded piece of paper inside the vial.

Dranko is no longer responding over the mind-link.  Aravis reacts first, stepping forward and casting _temporal stasis_ on his ravaged friend.  Dranko goes rigid, and the tentacles, while still flailing around, are no longer tearing larger holes in the half-orc's body.  Morningstar casts _dismissal_ on the tentacles themselves but this has no effect.  

“Dranko!”  she screams.  “Talk to us!  Dranko!”

Dranko doesn't talk. 

But he _is_ listening.

Oh, to be sure, he feels pain.   It's excruciating, bringing to mind the feeling of being stretched apart by Lord Tapheon.  But foremost in his thoughts is not the physical agony, or the distant cries of his friends.   No, what Dranko is listening to is the Voice.  It speaks directly in his mind, an ancient and unknowable intelligence from an unfathomable realm.  Its thoughts are deep and gurgling.

*“Dranko, I have answered your summons, and I have brought what you so desperately want.  As is written in the ancient laws of the Void, I offer you a bargain.  What I offer can bring you a victory greater than any your kind has ever known.  Its lack will doom you to ruin.   In return, I desire something of yours that you value greatly.  Its import to you is its value to me – it must be something the loss of which you will feel keenly every remaining day of your tiny life.  Perhaps the love of your wife, or the forgiveness of your grandfather.   Perhaps your name, or your face.   Your faith.  Your swagger.  The trust of your friends.  You decide.  I will return, and you may make your offer to me, and if I am pleased, I will give you your salvation, a thing whose value cannot be measured by the mere wealth of kingdoms.    If I am not pleased, or if you have no offer, I will take you instead, a plaything in the darkness.”*

Seconds after bursting out of Dranko, all of the tentacles retract and vanish.  The glass vial is scraped off on Dranko's now-empty eye-socket.  Dranko himself falls to the ground, rigid and unconscious.  He should by rights be dead; only Aravis's _temporal stasis_ is keeping him in the land of the living.

Simultaneously, Aravis _dispels_ the stasis and Morningstar casts _heal_.  Dranko's eyes snap open, and he screams.

“Dranko,” Morningstar implores.  “Please, please talk to me.”

“Oh,” says Dranko, looking up the face of his betrothed.  “So that wasn't all just in my head.”

“Among other places,” says Flicker, trying to make light, although he, like everyone else, is trembling.

“This is officially the worst week of my life,” Dranko croaks.  

Grey Wolf has plucked the bloody vial from the ground and removed the piece of paper inside.

“'Dranko was here,'” he reads aloud.

Dranko pales.  “Oh.  Yeah.  That.”

“Took them a while to find you,” says Grey Wolf.

Ernie does a complete examination of Dranko, and concludes that after Morningstar's _heal_, everything is fine.  “Looks like there was no permanent harm,” he says.

Everyone looks at one another.  _No permanent harm_.

“So the Cleaners can even control my cigar smoke,” says Dranko with disgust.  “Charming.”

Morningstar casts _detect evil_ and Dranko checks out clean.

Aravis sits down and shakes his head.  “This is what happens when you play around in the Far Realms.”

“I didn't!” Dranko protests.  “I threw one little bottle.”

Everyone just looks at him.

“So,” Dranko says.  “Our options are,  I get something and give something up, or I get dragged away and we're doomed to lose.  That's the suckiest bargain I've ever heard!”

“And you shouldn't have to make it,” says Aravis.  “We should destroy that Cleaner instead.”

“No, we can't” says Dranko dismally.  “Because if it's correct, and I don't make a trade with it, we lose.”

“I don't think I believe that,” says Aravis.

“Me neither,” adds Morningstar.  “We've chosen 'water.'”

“Look,” says Dranko.  “There are things that make me what I am, that I would miss terribly, but that I would give up for the rest of you, and what we do.   We've all made sacrifices.”

“You love your eye-patch,” Flicker suggests.  “You could give that up!”

Morningstar glowers.  “I don't trust the Cleaner to keep any bargain.”

“It doesn't matter if we trust it or not!” Dranko exclaims angrily.  “The thing can rip through me out of nowhere and tear me to pieces!”

Aravis stays calm.  “It just means we have to destroy it, or find a way to prevent it from harming you.”

Morningstar nods.  “And how do we know it's done, if you give it what it's asking for?”

“Exactly,” Aravis agrees.  “'...and here's another thing I want, and I'll kill you if you don't make a another bargain...'”

“You could give _me_ up,” offers Flicker.  “And then, when I was dead, Morningstar could bring me back to life.”

“ I think if you were the terms of the bargain, we could never bring you back,” says Aravis.

“Oh.”  Flicker ponders a moment.  “Then let's think of something else.”

After a moment of quiet frustration, Dranko throws up his hands.  “It seemed like such a good idea at the time!  Who _else_ has thrown a bottle into the Far Realms?”

“Maybe there's a reason,” says Aravis.  “When you go fishing in the Void, sometimes you latch onto the big one.”

Dranko hangs his head.  “Yeah.  I just wish this one was the one that got away.”


* *

The party has plenty of questions now about several topics; time for a _commune!_  Morningstar prays to Ell, and soon a holy presence is with her.

_Is _miracle_ sufficient to remove the taint that's on Ernie or Aravis, as detected by the cats?”_

*NO*

_Do we have the means at our disposal to remove the taint from Aravis and Ernie?_

*YES*

_Is the information about those means currently in our basement?_

*NO*

_Is everything the tentacle monster said to Dranko true?_

*IT STRONGLY BELIEVES SO*

_Is there an upcoming battle we cannot win without its help?_

*I DON'T KNOW*

“The future is written in water,” Aravis mutters.

_If Dranko doesn't pay the monster's price, will it drag him into the Far Realms?_

*UNDOUBTEDLY*

_Do we have the means to prevent that, other than Dranko paying his part?_

*NO*

_Does the means at our disposal to cleanse Ernie and Aravis involve a Black Circle item or ritual?_

*NO*

_Kibi suggests asking: Would a _wish_ cast simultaneously with _miracle_ cleanse Aravis and Ernie?_

*YES*

_If Ernie or Aravis were to stand in an area while a series of _hallows_ were cast, would that be sufficient?_

*NO*

_Will the tentacle monster come back for Dranko within the next month?_

*YES*

_Within a week?_

*YES*

_Within three days?_

*NO*

_Will _hallow_ and _miracle_ together be sufficient to remove the taint of the Black Goo?_

*NO.  IT MUST BE ARCANE AND DIVINE TOGETHER.*

(Which makes sense, given the nature of the Black Circle)

“Arcane and divine together,” says Ernie.  He looks pointedly at Aravis.  “Who else do we know that fits that description?  Hey, maybe Aravis is the only one who can fight the deity behind the Black Circle.”

“Huh,” says Dranko, as Aravis gulps. “You know, suddenly spending eternity in the Far Realms doesn't seem so bad.”

_Will casting the Ritual of the Fourth Derivation cause the target to become aware that the Ritual has been performed?_

*NO*

_Did the tentacles cause the 'no permanent harm' message?_

*DRANKO'S CIGARS ARE OCCASIONALLY PROPHETIC.*

Morningstar laughs, and says faintly, “You have prophetic cigars?”

Dranko laughs also, lights up, and blows some smoke.  _Kibi is incredibly intelligent._

“Remember,” says Aravis.  “Ell said 'occasionally.'”

...to be continued...


----------



## blargney the second

*Awesome*.


----------



## coyote6

I'm not sure, but that may be the Best Update Ever.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Awesome!  So we finally get to hear about that in the story hour.  I remember PirateCat making a mention of this a long time ago and was wondering when we'd get to read about it.  Simply awesome!


----------



## Piratecat

Dranko threw the bottle into the void - in retrospect, probably not the best choice I've ever made - while we were trapped in Het Brannoi. It's in post #1262 of this thread, written by Sagiro in February '05.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 310*_
*Holy Jelly!*

Eddings greets the Company upon their return to the Greenhouse.

“Welcome back.  I trust your journeys were exciting as always?”

Dranko rolls down his sleeve.  “Look at this!”

“It's your arm,” Eddings observes.

“But no scars!”

“Ah.  Had that cleaned up a bit then, did you?”

“My arm was bitten off by a giant rat.”

Eddings blinks.  “I'm sorry to hear that sir.  But you appear to have gotten better.”

“And worse,” says Morningstar.

Dranko sighs.  “Yeah, and worse.  I also had a horrible tentacled being from the Far Realms burst out of me.”

Eddings shakes his head.  “Far Realms?”

“The bad place beyond time and space,” Dranko explains.

“If you see Dranko with more tentacles coming out of him,” Morningstar says, “Let us know.”

“I trust I'll have the presence of mind to scream in that event.   Are you expecting a... recurrence?”

“Not in the next three days, no.”

“Very good sir.”

Ernie comes in from the kitchen, munching on a muffin.  “Whatever Ozilinsh is paying you, it's not enough.”

Eddings bows his head.  “That's kind of you to say, but I assure you I'm quite adequately taken care of.”

“Did you ever think your life would reach the point where you regularly talk about tentacles?” asks Ernie.

“And where you magically appear in the middle of hostile armies?” adds Grey Wolf.

“And know what Black Lizard pie smells like?” adds Dranko.

Eddings smiles.  “Often, when you're gone, I have time to reflect on just how boring my life would be had it gone the way I expected.”  He puts his hand in one of his his illusionary eyes and rubs the socket.  “Now, would you like anything?”

“A good dinner,” says Kibi.

“And tonight,” says Dranko, “I'd like to get very, very drunk.”

Eddings produces a fine meal from Icebox, supplemented with his own cooking and an excellent wine.  The Company gets to talking about past adventures, and how things had changed upon their return from the distant past.  On the topic of Turlus/Turlissa, the evil baker-turned-beautiful spy, Eddings says, “I'm still not quite comfortable with that particular... transformation.”

“I miss Turlus,” says Aravis.

“I don't!” Dranko exclaims.

Flicker takes a sip of wine.  “Yeah... remember that time he went out of his way to find out we hadn't been paying our taxes?”

Dranko smiles.  “Remind me to write a thank-you note to the universe for erasing him.”

Morningstar looks pointedly at her husband.  “Just be careful where you drop it.”

Before going to bed, Ernie sends a mushy _sending_ to Yoba.  Her reply:  _*If I have to look at one more map today, I'm going to scream.  Miss you terribly.  Love, Yoba.*_

* * 


July 25, 1832

Dranko wakes the next morning with feeling of dread and a nasty hangover.  He and some of the others had gone out drinking at Flicker's parents' place after dinner, though Dranko's recollection of how _much_ he had imbibed is a bit hazy.

“Good morning!” calls Aravis cheerily at breakfast.

Dranko mutters incoherently at him, something about tentacles.

“Stop worrying,” Aravis suggests.  “Or at least, worry about something you can actually affect.”

Dranko lights a cigar, hoping for guidance.

_Earth magic is the best magic._

“It sure is!” Kibi agrees.

Morningstar issues a _sending_ to Snokas, just to check up on him.  _*How are you?  Aravis?  Sort of divine.  Aravis and Ernie?  Sort of evil-tainted.  Dranko?  Chased by tentacles.  Really, we're about normal.  Your turn.  Morningstar.*_

The reply comes back:  *You're making me miss the adventuring life.  Still in Kallor library.  Who knew there were so many books in the world?   You're a topic of...*

Ernie laughs.  “You'd think Snokas would remember the '25 words' rule.'”

* *

After breakfast the Company heads across town to the Ellish temple.  The grounds are sleepy and quiet in the late afternoon; Morningstar shoos a few acolytes out of the main chapel and closes the doors.

Standing before the altar, she casts a _miracle_ while Aravis simultaneously casts the following _wish_:  “I wish that all remaining taint and side-effects resulting from contact with the evil black goo be forever removed from Aravis and Ernie.”  The others pray silently that this will work.

For a moment nothing seems to happen.  Then, all at once, Ernie and Aravis both experience an extraordinary feeling.  They  feel as though they have just woken from an unremembered nightmare, to find themselves in a beautiful meadow beneath a shining sun.  A spring fragrance fills their nostrils.  They had no idea of the weight that had been squatting on their souls, so long present that it had become an unrecognized part of their beings.  But now that weight is lifted.

A cloud of dark smoke hangs in the air above them for a second, before a ripple of Ellish power disperses it.

Ernie shudders and takes a deep breath.  “I didn't even know...”  He is brought to mind of every ugly thought or bitter word spoken in the past year, and wonders at its source.  “Thank you, Morningstar.  Aravis.”

“I'm glad it worked!” Morningstar exclaims.

“Me too,” says Aravis.  “Now, let's go destroy the Black Circle.”


* *



They _teleport_ directly from the temple to the Ellish holy city of Kallor, though their specific destination is their captured underground Black Circle complex beneath the Cosnor Estate.  At Kibi's previous instruction, the Ritual Chamber has been repaired and prepped for the Ritual of the Fourth Derivation.

Casting the ritual will only take half an hour, and requires three people.  Some of it involves the invoking of questionable powers, but it's a low-level undertaking that should have no lasting effects on the perpetrators.  

Dranko casts _augury_ just be on the safe side, which returns:  *MOSTLY WEAL*.

Mostly?

The wizards check everything one last time, but it all seems in order.  They chant, wave, read scrolls and burn various components in a small iron cauldron.  Half an hour later it's done.  They all feel a bit down in the soul, but it's nothing a _bless_ can't take care of.

“That's stage one down,” says Aravis.  

Next up is the much more involved Ritual of the Seven Stars, which among other things will require a more elaborate arrangement of the ritual room, as well as “moontears steeped in Dustwine” and, of course, Mokad himself.  The next stop will be the town of West Greydust in the Kivian country of Bederen.   Morningstar asks Dranko if he'd rather wait until the tentacles come back, so that they don't interrupt the party at some inopportune moment, but Dranko just wants to get going.  A standard collect-the-thingamabob quest will be just the thing to take his mind off the Cleaner's impending return.


* *


According to their map of Kivia, West Greydust is a small town near the border between Bederen and Delfir.  The closest they've been to it is probably “hookbat pass” to the south-east of the Delfirian Arch, but they opt to _teleport_ somewhere safer.  The Company is soon standing outside the town of Lav-Set in Tev, about 250 miles from their destination.   The time has jumped from mid-morning to early afternoon.

“Time for _wind walk_,” says Grey Wolf.

Dranko perks up.  “We should get the genie to cast it!”

“We always make him cranky,” Ernie warns.

“No we don't,” Aravis replies.  “He comes out cranky!”

“Come on,” Dranko urges.  “It's been a long time since we've talked to the guy.”

Aravis assents and rubs the ring.  A blue smoke issues forth and there is the impressive azure-skinned Al Tarqoz.  The genie lays down a hand of cards with a triumphant expression, but his face darkens as the cards flutter to the ground.  Dranko can see that all of the cards are of the same suit.

Al Tarqoz assembles his composure, effects a smile, and bows before Aravis.  “And how may I serve my most beneficent master today?”

“Say,” Dranko interrupts. “How much money were you going to win on that hand?”

“Assuming that I won – which seemed highly likely – there were over four thousand dirham riding on that hand.   Which I will not now be able to claim, because they will accuse me of cheating.”

“We were worried that you were going to miss us,” says Dranko.

“Please, never worry again on my account.”

“Dranko, you are not making it better,” Ernie hisses.

Aravis smiles at the genie.  “A straight flush was going to win that hand, so I wouldn't worry about it.”

“I'll find out on my return,” says Al Tarqoz.

At Aravis's request the genie casts _wind walk_ upon the assemblage, then hovers in front of the wizard with just the tiniest trace of impatience marring his calm demeanor.

Aravis can't help but look a bit guilty.  “It's been about two years since we've called you!”

“Yes, I know.”

“Would you be happier if we just unmade the ring?”

Al Tarqoz doesn't seem to hear the question.

“I am always pleased beyond words to be of whatever assistance I can, my master.  Is there anything else you require?”

“No.  You can go.”

The genie scoops up his cards and vanishes back into the ring.


* *

The Company hovers a hundred feet above the town of West Greydust; to the west, the sun is starting to set behind the mountains.   Dranko sees some of the locals here and there, mostly farmers in their fields.   Nothing seems suspicious or dangerous, so they land outside of town and walk in via the eastern road.  As a group of armed and well-dressed strangers, they elicit many curious stares.  One farmer near the road puts down a large basket and walks over to them.

“Greetings, travelers.  Are you lost?”

Aravis bows.  “We're not lost if this is West Greydust.”

“It is,” confirms the farmer.  

“We've come from a long ways away,” says Ernie, “looking for something that will save the life of a friend.”

“And you think to find it here?”

Aravis nods.  “We hope.”

The farmer directs them to the house of Seppet, the town healer.  Aravis is delighted to see the holy symbol of Quarrol, God of Nature, prominently displayed above the door.  He knocks.

The voice of a middle-aged man comes from the house, speaking (like the farmer) in a thickly-accented Kivian Common.  

“Come in!”

Leaving their weapons outside the door, they enter Seppet's small hut.

Seppet is a gaunt man with a bushy black beard and thinning hair.  He regards them curiously.  

“May I help you with something?”

Aravis nods.  “The first thing I'd like to do is make an offering to Quarrol.”  So saying, he hands over a small bag with 200 miracs.  

“You are very generous!” Seppet exclaims.  

Aravis bows his head.  “I have recently had good reason to be very thankful to Quarrol.”

“Then you are always welcome in my house.”

Ernie gets right to the point.  “We are looking for a substance, to help a friend who is in great danger.”

“I have a number of salves and curatives,” says Seppet. “I can also cast healing spells on my own.  Is your friend with you?”

“We're set with divine magic,” says Ernie.  “We're looking for something we can find only in this town.  Something called 'Dustwine.'”

“Ah, yes.  I am familiar with the legend of Dustwine.  It is said to be in a pool in the mountains, but no one has been up there for several hundred years.”

Ernie sighs.  “And no one who went up there before ever came back alive?”

“According to the legends, some did not come back, and others said there was horrible creature who lived there.  So people stopped going.  And soon, no one knew for sure what was really there.”

“There's always a horrible monster,” says Grey Wolf, entirely unsurprised.

Ernie presses.  “Can you tell us where the Dustwine was said to be?” 

“Of course.”  He points out the window to where a tall mountain is silhouetted by the setting sun.  “If you walk up the pass, I gather there is a cave some ways up.  I have never been there myself, having no desire to be killed by a horrible monster.”

“Neither do we,” says Ernie.

Seppet excuses himself briefly and returns with on old book.  He flips through its crackling pages for moment.

“Here we go.  Dustwine.  Which would 'drive out the evil spirit.'   Go up the trail of Mt. Temun.  You should see a cave.  I don't know how high up.  But the mountain is not a difficult climb this time of year.  But, yes, a cave, and a... here it is... a pool dripping from a stalactite.”

He flips through another few pages before closing the book.  “That is all I can tell you, I'm afraid.”

He turns to regard Kibi.  “I am not familiar with your kind.  If you don't mind me asking... what manner of creature are you?”

“I'm a dwarf,” answers Kibi.  “A _free_ dwarf.  Kibilhathur Bimson, at your service.”

“And where do you hail from, Mr. Bim-son?”

“From the Kalkas Peaks, and a town called Eggemoggin.”

“I am not familiar with that place.  Where in Kivia is that?”

“We are from across the Uncrossable Sea?,” says Ernie.

“Ooooh!” says Seppet.  “Everyone had the same crazy dream.  I have heard that your land is very dangerous....and  magnificent.   And that there are great riches and terrible monsters.”

“It's very much like Kivia in that respect, says Aravis.  “Places with riches, places with monsters, but mostly places with small towns like this one.”

“I'm afraid to say I find that disappointing,” says Seppet.  “I was hoping for something more exotic.  Not that I am ever likely to go there.”

For another hour the Company regales the healer of West Greydust with tales from Charagan.   After the sun has been fully set for an hour,  Seppet offers to put them up in his barn.  

“Is there anything more we can do?” Dranko asks.

“Your friend donated 200 miracs to Quarrol, and you have delighted me with tales of your homeland.   Also, you are extremely curious to look at.  No, there is nothing more.” 

The Company wakes early the next morning and takes a hike.  It's a lovely summer day and the views from the switchback trail up Mt. Temun grow ever more breathtaking.  Three hours up the path forks, with the main trail continuing up the side of the mountain toward the peak.  A smaller track leads into a wide crack in the mountainside, where old and crude stairs lead into the shadows.

“We always take the dark, narrow path,” observes Grey Wolf.  

“Let's see who else may have,” says Morningstar.  She casts a _thought capture_ at the first stair.  She receives an old thought of someone who hoped that Dustwine would be as useful as the legends indicated.

“That's promising,” she says.  

The narrow stair leads up and around, then descends again and opens into a extremely wide cave with a step-stone path leading down into it.  With the sun now blocked, most of the party relies on a _mass darkvision_ from Aravis to see.

“Wait!” says Ernie, as the others start to descend.  “Can you sense that?”

“Sense what?” asks Dranko.

“Yondalla!” says Ernie excitedly.  “Something down there is holy to Yondalla.”

As they descend further, Ernie's sense of the divine grows stronger.  The way steepens, then opens at once into a truly enormous cavern.  It extends both back and upward farther than they can see with their darkvision.   A reddish fungus on the walls gives a very faint, ruddy glow, but not enough to see.  

They can see, in the center of the cavern, an enormous stalactite poking downward from the darkness, ending about twenty feet above the rocky ground.   It's made of a reddish crystal, or possibly stained ice.  Directly below the stalactite is a stone basin, about three feet in diameter and raised several feet off the ground.  A slow plinking drip of liquid falls from the tip of the stalactite into the basin.   A worn pathway of stone slabs takes a meandering path to the basin's foot.

Ernie's feeling of a divine presence has grown even stronger.   There is no sign of a horrible monster, so he starts down the path toward the basin and (presumably) the Dustwine.  

Shklup!  A cow-sized blob of greenish-brown jelly drops down from the darkness above and lands on him.  A truly nauseating smell fills Ernie's nostrils, and if being borne to the ground by an oozy blob wasn't bad enough, the thing extends a glistening pseudopod and smacks him in the head.

A second blob falls onto Kibi, and Aravis barely leaps out of the way of a third.

Morningstar wrinkles her nose as the putrid smell fills more of the cave, but she has the presence of mind to bring down a _flame strike_ upon two of the jellies.   They are scorched and quivering but not entirely destroyed.  Grey Wolf extends his hand and _disintegrates_ the third one into dust.

Dranko manifests a _spiritual weapon_ which takes a swipe at one of the blobs, and Flicker takes a stab with his dagger, but neither attack has much effect.  Aravis has more success with a _chain lightning_, which causes one of the jelly blobs to explode all over Flicker.

“Augh!” Flicker yells.  “Gross!  Was that entirely necessary?”

Kibi casts _Bigby's clenched fist_.   A fist of force appears, but its punch only glances off the nearest blob.  The dwarf moves and quickens an _earthbolt_ which causes a second of the things to burst.  Ernie finishes off the third one with a _flame strike_ of his own.

Dranko peers upward into dark.  “Why do I think these aren't the real threat?”

Grey Wolf agrees.  “They're probably the _sweat_ from the actual threat.”

No sooner do these words escape his lips than he is proven correct.  A gigantic blob the size of a barn falls from above and lands directly on Ernie, who is lost from sight.  They can barely hear his muffled cries.  The acrid, nauseating smell from the giant jelly is nearly overpowering and sets everyone to gagging.

Ernie is experiencing a bizarre dichotomy.  On the one hand he is partially crushed and being digested by a hideous blob of goo.  On the other hand, the feeling of holiness to Yondalla has suddenly grown much, much stronger.  Could this horrible thing somehow be blessed by the Goddess?  He shares this with his friends over the mind-link.

“Should I hold off attacking then?” thinks Morningstar.

“Give me a second!” Ernie answers.  “And pray to Yondalla!”

Aravis casts a _reverse gravity_ which sends the huge ooze bobbing upward ten feet from the ground.  Ernie is not revealed beneath.  Dranko stoops to peer at the underside of the monster and sees Ernie's foot sticking out from the blob.  He sends his whip curling around the halfling's ankle and he pulls with all his might.  As Ernie starts to slide out inch by inch, Dranko uses his _necklace of bellows_ to knock the blob upward another few feet.  Ernie pops out of the jelly, covered in a slimy film, then falls upward to rest against the bottom of the monster, Dranko's whip still around his leg.

Ernie casts _bless_, hoping to send a message to the blob that they're on the same team.  He gets no feedback from the gesture.

“Fine,” Ernie thinks to the others.  “Get it!  I'll apologize to Yondalla later.”

In answer, the blob extends a huge pseudopod, grabs him, and stuffs him back into the center of its bulk.  Dranko's arm is nearly yanked from its socket.  Then it does likewise to both Dranko and Grey Wolf, who join Ernie in the mass of jelly.  All three can feel digestive juices starting to dissolve their exposed skin.

Morningstar does as Ernie suggests.  She blasts it with a _firestorm_, then follows up with a quickened _flame strike_.    Whoomph!   Those trapped inside feel chilled as Morningstar's cold flames engulf the monster.  Kibi follows up with an empowered _cone of cold_, and bits of the blob are now frozen and flaking away.

But how to rescue their friends trapped inside?  For that, Aravis casts _maze_, and as he hoped, his allies are left behind.  They drop to the ground, sticky and foul.

Ernie senses that the holiness is gone.

Aravis assures everyone that a mindless creature stuck in a _maze_ will not find its way out on its own, and they have ten minutes before it returns.  They spend the time healing and cleaning themselves off.

Ernie, thoroughly confused, casts _divination_.   He asks, “Is it contrary to Yondalla's will that we destroy this creature?”

The answer comes to him:  *Slay the foul beast, and become blessed*.

“Now that's the kind of answer I like!” he says with satisfaction.

Morningstar places a _prismatic sphere_ directly below the jelly's point of reappearance.  Ernie adds a _blade barrier_ at the last minute, for good measure.  The huge jelly emerges from the _maze_ and falls into and through both spells.   

Basically, it explodes – and it's a good thing that the low-frequency bands of color take their effect first, so that the blob dies before it can be sent to another plane.  In its death burst, several objects come flying out of its mass – bone, metal, some clinking coins.   One of these objects is the source of the holiness Ernie has been sensing this entire time; he can see it glowing a soft green amidst the goop.  

He wades over to it, and arrives in time to see a short sword shedding the last of the putrid ooze.  It lies there, pristine, its hilt and handle carved into a cornucopia, its shining blade afire with runes.  Blessings of Yondalla radiate outward from it.

“You're free now,” Ernie says to the sword.  “You don't have to be inside that awful thing anymore.”

He picks it up.  Energy courses down his arm and suffuses him, making his whole body glow green.  The sword speaks into his head, a voice soft but powerful:

_The time draws near that you will be needed in Appleseed.  Tell High Priestess Sunblade that the Crimson Maw is no legend, that her people will drown in a sea of goblin spears if it is left agape.   Together, we can close the Maw and end its threat for all time.  But beware; Maglubiyet has his champion, just has Yondalla has you. _

The voice fades, and a full knowledge comes into his head of the sword and its powers.  He holds the legendary blade _Tava's Righteous Fury*_.

...to be continued...

* +5 short sword, keen, goblinbane.  1/day it casts a 15d6 _flame strike_ that only damages evil creatures.  1/week it can summon the Astral Deva “Tava's Echo.”  1/week it can create a bubble of invisibility that foils both the sight and divinations of goblins.


----------



## Everett

Are there an infinite number of Cleaners in Void?  Were the Cleaners that One Certain Step died to kill remarkable in any way, or were they just like all other Cleaners and only happened to be in a mortal dimension?  Did his death and the battle beyond the black door affect them in any way?  The idea of evil that is infinite and infinitely replenishing is a bit unsettling.


----------



## Joshua Randall

The Far Realm is outside time and space, so I'm not sure asking questions about quantity have any meaning in regards to it.

Hmm. That's rather Kantian, now that I think about it.


----------



## SolitonMan

Thanks Sagiro, this story hour is great!    But I have to warn you, if you continue making frequent updates I'm going to start EXPECTING them!


----------



## Sagiro

SolitonMan said:


> Thanks Sagiro, this story hour is great!    But I have to warn you, if you continue making frequent updates I'm going to start EXPECTING them!




I guess I'd better slow down, then.    (In all likelihood they _will_ slow down; I've had more free time than usual the past week or so, but the upcoming week or two will be on the busy side.)

Regarding Ernie discovery of _Tava's Righteous Fury_, I call the reader's attention to the halfling's stay at the Inn Between, following his long-ago-now death in the golem city of Repose.  From the Story Hour c.10 years ago:

_"Before he returned to the living, Ernie was made to promise two things as payment for being brought back to life.  One was that some time after the party’s current quest, they’d have to come back and help the halflings of Appleseed, whose people will be in a great peril from which only the party can save them..."_


----------



## Everett

Joshua Randall said:


> The Far Realm is outside time and space, so I'm not sure asking questions about quantity have any meaning in regards to it.
> 
> Hmm. That's rather Kantian, now that I think about it.




And yet, there must be space and distance, or the act of throwing a bottle would have no meaning either.  What the Far Realms ARE can't just be philosophical detrius, or you couldn't tell a story about them.


----------



## Piratecat

Everett said:


> And yet, there must be space and distance, or the act of throwing a bottle would have no meaning either.  What the Far Realms ARE can't just be philosophical detritus, or you couldn't tell a story about them.



This is a good example of something that the DM doesn't need to define. If H.P. Lovecraft wrote D&D, the Far Realms are where the Great Old Ones would dwell. They epitomize insanity and wisdom draining; angles are non-euclidean, hideous tentacular monstrosities that Should Not Exist (tm) rule, normal emotions such as hope and pity don't exist, and the dimension is both bounded and eternal. I think of it as a plane full of contradictions. 

There may be infinite "cleaners," but they simply don't care about us. Even though they serve a tremendously important purpose in the campaign (details forthcoming), they're mostly a plot device that has certain rules for when we interact with it. Sagiro will never need to decide how big the Far Realms is (assuming that phrase actually has any meaning for such an odd plane) because we're never going to need to know. I hope.

That brings me to something kind of remarkable about this game. For all that we're almost epic level, we are terribly aware of our own fragility and inconsequence in the multiverse. Yeah, there aren't a lot of mortal combatants who can match us on Charagan or Kivia, but the Emperor's machinations are vast and subtle enough that we often feel we're playing catch-up. It's sort of humbling, and it's remarkable that this power scaling has never once felt strained.


----------



## StevenAC

Piratecat said:


> Yeah, there aren't a lot of mortal combatants who can match us on *Spira* ...



Ahem... some leakage coming through from elsewhere in the multiverse there?  

Never mind; I've used Dranko's little mishap as the ending point for the latest chapter of the Collected Story Hour, now available at the usual place... Enjoy!


----------



## Siuis

Piratecat said:


> That brings me to something kind of remarkable about this game. For all that we're almost epic level, we are terribly aware of our own fragility and inconsequence in the multiverse. Yeah, there aren't a lot of mortal combatants who can match us on Charagan or Kivia, but the Emperor's machinations are vast and subtle enough that we often feel we're playing catch-up. It's sort of humbling, and it's remarkable that this power scaling has never once felt strained.




I find this awesome as well. Do you think it has to do with the slower hand-out of experience (or whatever else you folks use to slow down the leveling process)? I've noticed (and been told, actually) that the character's in this particular game go up in experience at about half the normal rate, which would give ample time to both explore the new level of power each of you has attained upon reaching a new level, and even more time to explore your place in the world(s). There has been a definite lack of the usual "these 15th level people have been around all along, and you're just now hearing about them because you've never asked before" that I've seen... Almost everywhere. I can only hope to emulate this sort of thing in my own games.

As a side note, does anyone remember what chapter reference to the "slave Primes" appears? I actually could use the explanation (since it was much more concise than anything I could come up with) to cut out a lot of rule-mongering going on at me own table, but don't have the time to find it right now...

Well, I guess I could work backwards and use a copy+find+paste, but that would be agonizing.


----------



## Piratecat

Siuis said:


> As a side note, does anyone remember what chapter reference to the "slave Primes" appears? I actually could use the explanation (since it was much more concise than anything I could come up with) to cut out a lot of rule-mongering going on at me own table, but don't have the time to find it right now...



All praise StevenAC! 

[sblock=Talking to Cranchus]Cranchus shakes his head.  “It happens,” he whispers hoarsely.  “It happens.  But it will only set me back a day or two, and 
I’ve already learned something about the Eyes.  I have a theory, anyhow.  These Eyes, they work with Condor’s Plinths to 
allow time travel.  They would need to draw on a huge amount of Earth Magic to work, but by mathematical necessity they 
couldn’t draw power from this earth – from Abernia.  It would lead to some paradoxes and… well, planetary ruin.  So the 
Eyes, the first time they were called upon, must have found another nearby Prime, and used that one.  I’m guessing that they 
created a Slave Prime in the process.”

Aha!  That would be Volpos, the world that the Black Circle tried to cause to overlap Abernia in order to transfer the Emperor 
and his armies.  The world on which the Emperor is, thankfully, still trapped.

“That’s a phenomenon found sporadically throughout the cosmos,” explains Cranchus.  “Slave Primes.  Sometimes two Primes 
get caught up together, and one gets cut off entirely from all the coterminous planes – you know, the Astral, the Ethereal, et 
cetera.  The Slave Prime is cut off from all other planes save its ‘master.’  They are perfect places for a prison, if you want to 
stop someone from escaping via planar travel.  I’ve always wondered how such places come into being.  I guess it must be 
unique in each case.”

Aravis asks, “If the connection between Prime and Slave is severed, would that cause the Slave to be cut off entirely, or freed 
to the rest of the universe?”

“I’d guess cut off entirely,” says Cranchus.  “But that would be extremely hard to do, assuming it’s possible at all.  I doubt 
Condor intended that to happen in this case.  I think the Eyes did it on their own – they needed a world to power Moirel’s time 
travel, and there was Volpos, and wham – Slave Prime.”

Ernie smiles.  “So the Emperor was indirectly responsible for creating his own eventual prison, and probably has no idea?”

Cranchus chuckles.  Dranko lets out a loud guffaw.  “Now that’s comedy!”[/sblock]

I'm a huge fan of the slower advancement; I did the same thing in my last campaign, with everyone leveling once per 10-12 sessions. The story is so good we don't care about leveling much, and we know our capabilities and teamwork down pat. There has never been a case I can think of where a really powerful bad guy pops out of nowhere. Pretty much everyone we've fought is someone who we've heard of for a long time, or someone whose presence has caused ripples in the world already. 

Friggin' rat.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Thanks for the rash of recent updates Sagiro.  I guess they'll have to hold us for the next few weeks.  Although, it's been a while since I've gone back and re-read the story from the beginning.  Ahh, the days of pits and rats


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 311*_
*Dranko's Bargain*

Everyone is mightily impressed by Ernie's new weapon, though perhaps a bit put out by the timing.  It's one more thing on the pile, since even if the time to help Appleseed is merely 'drawing near,' they ought to give this High Priestess Sunblade a heads-up.   Their new itinerary:  leave West Greydust, stop off to visit Evenstar in the mountains, then hop to Appleseed to warn the halflings, and finally pop down to Kai Kin to scout out the Black Circle temple.

Dranko doesn't say what all of them are thinking, though:  somewhere in there the Cleaner could come back.  It makes him sick just to think about.

He takes his mind off it by helping Flicker dig in the dead ooze for loot.  They find a few magical goodies, including a highly-polished shield that can cast _spell turning_.    Ernie flies up to the ceiling of the Dustwine cave and finds it riddled with holes and crevices.  The smell is bad but not overwhelming, and he hears no sound of other jellies.

Grey Wolf flicks of piece of slime from his shoulder.  “So we can tell the town we got rid of _one_ horrible creature, but not _necessarily_ all of them.”

Speaking of loot, Aravis decided to blow a _wish_, right then and there, to turn Zeg's _Robe of the Archmagi_ from evil to good.  Then, in a magnanimous gesture, he gives it to Kibi.  While the dwarf tries it on, Dranko picks up a magical sack that looks empty and reaches inside.  He pulls out a fuzzy sphere like a plush brown tennis ball.  

“Great,” he mutters, tossing it aside.  With a comical popping sound, the ball transforms into a mountain lion which immediately lets loose with a ear-splitting roar.

Dranko takes a step back.  “Er.... nice kitty?  Would you, um, like to go back in the bag?”  He is equally surprised to see the lion obey his orders.  It shrinks as it leaps, and vanishes into the sack.

“I have a bag full of mountain lions!” Dranko announces.  He turns to Grey Wolf's monkey familiar, Edghar.  “If you poop in my shoes one more time...”

While this is going on, Morningstar is steeping a dozen moontears in the basin full of dustwine.    After they have soaked for an hour the Company hikes back down Mt. Temun and returns to Seppet's hut.  He listens wide-eyed to their tale.

Dranko loves this part of his job.  Leaning back in a chair and exuding a casual flippancy, he sums up the encounter.  “So, yeah, basically, there was giant blob of intelligent slime about the size of your barn.”

“Oh my goodness!” Seppet exclaims.  “So that was the terrible monster of legend.”

“It's dead,” says Ernie, “but there may be more.”

“If anyone goes back,” Dranko suggests, “bring a goat and send it along first.  If there are more blobs, they'll drop down on the goat.”

“And are the stories about Dustwine true?  Does it drive out evil spirits?”

“We don't know,” Aravis admits.

As the Company prepares to leave, Seppet bows low.  “You have certainly given a good impression of people from Charagan.  Are so many of you great warriors who can defeat enormous slime monsters?”

Dranko acts casual.  “Nah, we're totally famous there.  They have parades for us.”  No one notices that his eyes take on a faraway look as he boasts.

“Just one parade,” Aravis corrects.

“What did you do to deserve a parade?”

Dranko pulls a huge tooth from his haversack.  “We fought a huge dragon and saved the world.”


* *

The Company _teleports_ back to Tal Hae and spends the rest of the day on logistics.  As the Seven Stars Ritual will require some complex stonework and general retrofitting of their Black Circle ritual room in Kallor, Kibi arranges to have dwarven artisans sent to do the work.   (In fact, he uses the same team that's been repairing Longtooth Keep for them.)  And while they're recruiting experts, they contact Ozilinsh and set him to some of the thornier mathematical equations that need to be worked out.  He eagerly accepts the challenge.

Dranko slips away from his friends and heads to the Manse of the Undermen.   He invites Lucas Blackwell into his office.  

“Lucas, how do you think you would do at my job?”

Lucas peers closely at Dranko.  “Given that I've _done_ your job for many months at a time, I'd say I could perform passably well as the Oracle.”

“Fantastic,” says Dranko. 

“Are you going on another extended leave?”

“No.  However, I have a little problem.  That problem is, a hideous tentacled monstrosity from another dimension is going to take from me that which is most important.”

Lucas blinks.  “Your money?

Dranko laughs.  “You'd think so.  I do have lots of money.  But, no.  In order to get what I need, I'm going to offer... something else.  I think that when I make this bargain, everything is going to change.  And I think that I won't be the leader of the Undermen, and will never have been.   What I think will happen, is that _you_ will be the leader of the Undermen, and I will be your highly able adviser from the shadows.”

“This is similar to what happened to you the last time?”

“Different in specifics, but yeah, similar.”

Lucas sighs.  “Might I advise you to stay out of the sorts of trouble you keep getting yourself into?”

Dranko throws up his hands.  “It's not my fault!  I threw a bottle into the void when giant tentacles were ripping apart a pocket universe, and...”

“Stop,” Lucas interrupts.  “Say that one more time slowly.”

“I threw a bottle into the void...”

“What is the void?”

Dranko makes a face.  “The void is the space left over when sanity dies.  It's a giant black place of whirling and gibbering.”

Lucas winces.  “You are not making yourself very clear, but I'll take it as a given that this Void is a bad place.”

“Yes,” says Dranko.  “And now I'm going to have to give up something that I love.”

“And one day when I wake up, I will be the leader of the Undermen,” says Lucas.  “Are you sure it will be me?”

“No,” Dranko admits, “but it seems very likely.  And if you _do_ get the job, I'll make it as easy as possible for you.”

Lucas scratches his chin.  “Can I leave myself a note about this?”

“You can try.  I don't really know what will happen.  Either way, I want you to know that I'm honored to have you as a friend, and that I think you do good work.”

Lucas bows his head.  “Thank you.”

Dranko laughs grimly.  “Also, in case the monster doesn't accept my bargain, and drags me screaming into the madness...”

“Then I suppose I'll _still_ become the leader of the Undermen,” Lucas finishes.  “Though I promise I won't enjoy it as much.”


* *


Satisfied that things are moving forward, they _teleport_ back to West Greydust the next morning and issue a _sending_ to Evenstar, that they're in the neighborhood and would like to stop by.  The reply is enthusiastically positive, so they _wind walk_ for a few hours eastward toward the mountains.  

The one Ellish shrine in Kivia is extremely well hidden, and for good reason.  For one thing, the Delfirians do occasionally send scouts into the high mountain passes, looking for signs of Bederen incursion.  For another, on this side of the Uncrossable Sea, the night belongs to Dralla.  Doubtless the Mother of Monsters would be displeased to find a pocket of Ellish worshipers. 

 On foot it would be difficult to discover, but Morningstar enters Ava Dormo and scouts the mountains from the air while the others hover.   Knowing more-or-less where to look, it only takes her an hour to spot the temple nestled in a high canyon.  The Company descends, solidifies, and approaches on foot up a narrow trail.  It's well masked, with false tracks leading to precipices and the real one hidden by brush and boulders.  Only Morningstar's dream reconnaissance keeps them on the true path.   In the middle of a steep scramble they are challenged by an unseen guard high above them.

“Stop!  Who is passing?”

“Morningstar of Ell.  Evenstar should be expecting me.”

There is a moment of expectant quiet, and then the voice calls down, “You may pass!  Continue on your present path.”

The trail continues to meander upward for another half an hour, and they don't meet up again with the sentinel.   Finally, in the heat of a cloudless late afternoon, they emerge into a U-shaped canyon.  The walls of this mountain enclosure are dotted with beautifully detailed facades, as all of the buildings are built into the canyon walls.  The party spots numerous sniping holes and high balconies; this little shrine is extraordinarily defensible.  

Evenstar strides out of a nearby building and approaches.  Beside her walks a younger woman in full armor, extremely tall and muscular, a triangle shield on one arm and a huge mace in the opposite hand.

Morningstar bows low.  “Sister, greetings!  Thank you for receiving us.”

Evenstar laughs.  “How could we not?  We are extremely honored.  Allow me to introduce Scola, my bodyguard.”

The tall woman gives a perfunctory nod and eyes the Company with ill-hidden suspicion.

“How long will you be staying?” Evenstar asks.

Morningstar can't help looking around as she answers.  “Just for the evening.  This place is wonderful!”

Evenstar smiles.  “Sisters of Ell have been here for hundreds of years.  We are truly blessed to have this sanctuary.”

“How many sisters are here?” asks Morningstar.  

“Sixty-five, and every one of us a Daywalker.”

Refreshments are brought to the guests inside a dining hall built into the west wall of the canyon.  

“We have a large store of goods,” Evenstar explains, as the Company sups and asks questions.  “We have a reasonable trade with Bederen now that we've made contact.  They sometimes bring wounded soldiers here.  We tend to their needs, and they leave us with supplies.”

She flashes a smile as she adds, “They are thumping the Delfirians, by all accounts.”

After the Company has been fed, Evenstar takes them on a tour of the grounds, showing off the chapels, dormitories, scriptorium and library.   

“So you were _all_ called to be Daywalkers?” asks Morningstar, gazing at the large black triangle hanging over the altar of the largest chapel.  

“Yes,” Evenstar confirms.  “And all on the same day – the first day that there was such an official designation.   We assume that we are meant to prepare for an upcoming trial.  Do you know what it's nature will be?”

Morningstar looks somber as she answers.  “We suspect that Octesian is out there, looking for us in Ava Dormo.  He seems to have perhaps gone insane, and is calling for me personally.”

“Would you like us to send out scouts?” asks Evenstar.

“Anything you can do, yes,” says Morningstar, “but don't engage with him!  Remember, he can kill your waking bodies.”

“But you can do the same thing to him now,” says Evenstar.  “I hope I can be at your side when that day comes.”

“I would feel a lot better if you were there,” says Morningstar.


* *

Before going to sleep, the wizards identify the magic items from their most recent haul.  It includes a +4 shield that casts _spell turning_ once per day, a tan _bag of tricks_, an _ear-cuff of perfect balance_ (+20 to balance checks), a lens (with 12 remaining charges) that doubles the damage from _magic missile_, and a coin* that improves saving throws

After breakfast the next day, Ernie casts a _sending_ to High Priestess Sunblade. 

Ernie sends ahead:  _*I'm Ernest Roundhill. The blade “Tava's Righteous Fury” told me to find you.  The Crimson Maw must be closed. How can I find you?*_

The reply:  _*Ernest?  I am Maple Sunblade.  I am in the Cathedral at Victory.  I look forward to meeting you, and seeing Tava's Righteous Fury for myself.*_

Aravis _teleports_ the Company into the wastelands far to the east, to one of their campsites from their long sojourn to Het Branoi.  From there it will only a few hours wind-walking to the halfling country of Appleseed, and their capital city of Victory.   But before they can leave, Dranko feels a wave of nausea wash over him, and his head begins to pound.

“I think the Cleaner's coming back,” he says, turning green.  The others watch him nervously.

“If worse comes to worst,” says Morningstar, “I will always love you.”

Twelve tentacles rip through space around Dranko – not _through_ him this time, thank Goodness.  Through the ragged holes in the fabric of Abernia, the others glimpse the sickening star-field of that place of _other_, the realm of madness.

Greenish brown and rife with slimy suckers, the tentacles wrap Dranko in a revolting embrace.  One is across his nose and mouth, stifling his breath, though Dranko manages a wry thought that it beats a tentacle through the eye.  The Voice – that timeless, gurgling voice – speaks into his mind.

*I have returned.  What will you surrender to me?*

Dranko makes a great effort to compose himself before answering.  _Look.  All my life, the only thing I ever wanted was for people to know who I was.  I'd be sitting there as a little kid, with some bully beating me up, but I knew that someday I'd be riding in a parade, and all the people who were being mean to me would have to suck it up, because I would be *important.*   I want statues, and I want books written about me, and I want people to know who I am.  The day we actually *had* a parade was the best day of my life.  

And that's what I'm going to give up.  Not the wanting...  but I'll give away any hope that I'll ever be famous._

The Voice grinds in his mind.  *So.  You are giving up your fame.  Yes.  Your desire for it is great.  It tastes strong.  It pleases me.  The tentacles will sing to you.   You have upheld your part of the bargain.  Now, prepare yourself.*

The universe ripples, adjusting to a new reality.

A tip of a tentacle slides sickeningly into the middle of Dranko's head.   _Something_ is placed in his mind.   It's incomprehensible; is it a word?  A picture?  A concept?  A set of instructions?   He can't wrap his mind around it, though it's hideously awful, terrible, _powerful_... 

He blacks out.   His friends watch the tentacle retract from his head, leaving a bloody streak.  The remaining tentacles unwind from Dranko's body and vanish back into their holes, leaving Dranko to fall face-first to the ground, insensate.  Morningstar leaps forward to cast _heal._

Dranko's eyes flutter open, and the first thing he sees is his wife, glowing.   He squints.  

“I'm like Eddings,” he says hoarsely.  “I can see magic.”  And it's true – it seems that he can now _detect magic_ at will.

“Your eyes look okay,” says Morningstar, cradling her husband's head.  “What about the rest of you?   You... you still love me, right?”

Dranko smiles, though his head pounds.  “I still love you.  I couldn't have given that away.  No, I... I gave up any possibility of me ever becoming famous.”  Dranko climbs to his feet, clutching his head.  “I guess I won't get my statue now,” he says sadly.  “But at least I had my parade.”

The others look at him, puzzled.

“You weren't at the parade,” says Flicker.  “You said you had something else important to do.  We all thought it was weird at the time...”

Dranko stares.  Then, in a moment of panic, he digs through his pack for the letter declaring all of the Company as Knights of the Spire Guard.  He scans the paper frantically.

His name is not included.

“Dammit!” he yells.  Then he writes in his name again, after the others. 'Sir Dranko Brightmirror.”

He sits down suddenly,  grasping his throbbing temples.  There's that _something_ lodged in his mind.  He wants desperately to know what it is, but he also knows instinctively that if he were to concentrate upon it, it would drive him irrevocably insane.  

But there are other things in his head, smaller gifts left by the Cleaner.  He realizes that he can open a tiny window onto his memory of the Far Realms, and use the alien insight to _see_ things.  

He tries it.  His eyes bulge and his sanity loses its edge, but he _sees_.  

“I can see everything!” he says hysterically.  “I can see it all!”

And he feels like there are other things he could do, by glimpsing that hideous memory.  “I feel a little odd, things are clearer now, but I can feel something squirming in my brain, I can see so much, the air moving, and I can see the colors come from magic, and I can do more!  I can show you what's in my brain and push you away, and expand my perceptions of things, and there's something more, but I think I'm not ready to think about that yet, and it gave me something else, in my brain, which would destroy anyone who looked at it, so don't do it, because it's there, in my brain.”

Aravis frowns.  “And it will give us some aid against our enemy?”

“Yes!” Dranko exclaims.  “Maybe!  Maybe yes!”

Grey Wolf casts _restoration_ on Dranko but to no effect.

Dranko looks at Grey Wolf, a crazed look in his eyes.  “You know what I think I'll do?  I'll try sleeping tonight, and then I'll forget, and then I'll be better, because they say that sleep is a healing thing, and I need a healing thing.  My brain hurts.  Maybe from all the seeing of things.”

Morningstar is unwilling to wait that long.  She bestows her _protective sleep_ upon Dranko, and he sleeps, and for a time he forgets.  And while he sleeps, she cries.  

...to be continued...


* A _stalwart's coin_, that allows one's STR mod to be applied to Fort saves, one's CHA mod to be applied to Will saves, and one's INT mod to be applied to Reflex saves, instead of the normal ability score mods.  And, yes, it has a 4-sided star on one side.


----------



## EroGaki

Wow, poor Dranko. No statues for him. 

Still, I am mighty curious as to _what _happened to him? Some weird template? A prestige class? Spell-like abilities? I _must know!!!_


----------



## Davek

EroGaki said:


> Wow, poor Dranko. No statues for him.
> 
> Still, I am mighty curious as to _what _happened to him? Some weird template? A prestige class? Spell-like abilities? I _must know!!!_




Who is Dranko ...


----------



## Piratecat

Davek said:


> Who is Dranko ...



*sob *


----------



## RangerWickett

Don't worry, Kevin, your pseudo namesake's still got a 90-foot colossus of his imperial self in War of the Burning Sky.


----------



## LightPhoenix

RangerWickett said:


> Don't worry, Kevin, your pseudo namesake's still got a 90-foot colossus of his imperial self in War of the Burning Sky.




It's a shame no one knows who it's a statue of...


----------



## Piratecat

You guys are killing me. It was so central to Dranko's nature that it _still_ hurts. Which, I suppose, means that it was the right thing to sacrifice. 

This was tricky. My first goal was to not pick something that would have to make all the other PCs change -- so no giving up Morningstar's love for him, for instance. I also didn't want to give up something physical. I could have considered giving up his clerical levels if I wanted to respec the character, since cleric/rogue doesn't merge too well, but his uneasy relationship with his God is one of the things that makes Dranko who he is. And that's when I realized I wanted something that would constantly remind him of what he had given up, so I could milk good roleplaying out of it every time I poked at it like a missing tooth. Its absence had to be just as interesting as its presence.

And what the hell, I didn't think "I wish I didn't have a demon lord who hated me" would go over too well.

I'm sure Sagiro will post the spell-like powers Dranko got from this exchange, which he triggers by burning wisdom. Any substantive use of the abilities renders him unable to cast spells that day and drives him towards the brink of insanity -- a reasonable trade. And I _still_ don't know what ripe, rotten nugget of insanity is lodged in my head for the Adversary to find.


----------



## Sagiro

Dranko's new abilities are:

- _detect magic_ at will
- _repulsion_ and _true seeing_ 1/day, at the cost of 2 pts. of WIS.
- _time stop_ 1/day, at the cost of 4 pts. of WIS.  (Always gives him 3 rounds)

...and there's one more ability he gets that also costs him 4 pts. of WIS, but I'll keep the details a secret until he uses it.  

(Note that the WIS damage is not recovered by _restoration_ or _heal_.  It takes a full night's sleep, or Morningstar's _protective sleep_ power.  A _miracle_ or _wish_ would probably also work.)

And speaking of secrets:  I expect that my many savvy readers will want to take guesses at what's in Dranko's head.  I humbly implore you:  *please don't!*.  It's entirely possible that one of you will guess right, and on the off chance that Dranko/Piratecat doesn't figure it out himself, I don't want to ruin the surprise. 

If you want to e-mail me a guess, I'll tell you privately if you're right.

Thanks!

-Sagiro


----------



## Sandain

I thought Dranko would give up his sense of taste


----------



## Blackjack

Sagiro said:


> I expect that my many savvy readers will want to take guesses at what's in Dranko's head.



Shakespeare's unpublished folio of _Henry IX_?  A Klein bottle full of phlogiston?  A chocolate-greased ham radio in a pineapple syringe?



Sagiro said:


> I humbly implore you:  *please don't!*.



Oops.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> Dranko's new abilities are:
> 
> - _detect magic_ at will
> - _repulsion_ and _true seeing_ 1/day, at the cost of 2 pts. of WIS.
> - _time stop_ 1/day, at the cost of 4 pts. of WIS.  (Always gives him 3 rounds)





All that at the cost of fame?  Looks like a good trade off to me...



> I humbly implore you:  *please don't!*.




Nothing worse than an itch you can never scratch...


----------



## coyote6

Sandain said:


> I thought Dranko would give up his sense of taste




It's been 12 hours, and someone has to say it:

What sense of taste?


----------



## Innocent Bystander

If Dranko gave up his sense of taste I think he'd be licking even more things he shouldn't be


----------



## Everett

What's phlogiston?  Can you chug it?


----------



## Morte

Sandain said:


> I thought Dranko would give up his sense of taste




Same here. I also wondered if it might be his collection of souvenirs.

The actual answer was much better.


----------



## The Axe

Sagiro said:


> ...and there's one more ability he gets that also costs him 4 pts. of WIS, but I'll keep the details a secret until he uses it...
> 
> And speaking of secrets:  I expect that my many savvy readers will want to take guesses at what's in Dranko's head.  I humbly implore you:  *please don't!*.  It's entirely possible that one of you will guess right, and on the off chance that Dranko/Piratecat doesn't figure it out himself, I don't want to ruin the surprise.




Great googily-moogily!  As the story lags the game by some time, I guess that means it hasn't yet come up in the game yet.  That's some planning ahead...


----------



## Blackjack

Everett said:


> What's phlogiston?  Can you chug it?



Yes, and it goes great with a fine cigar.


----------



## Sandain

Sorry to be off topic - is it a coincidence that there is a popular XCOM UFO story hour, and now the people who made the Bioshock games are redoing it as an FPS? and who do we know that is the lead developer for the Bioshock games I wonder?


----------



## MorningstarofEll

These posts don't convey just how creepy Dranko was when he dropped into "tentacle voice".  In campaign full of memorable moments this was one of the creepiest moments for me!  I still shudder both in and out of character whenever he uses a tentacle power!


----------



## Kaodi

And here I though Sagiro was the big voice actor type in the bunch, hehehe...

Anyway, there should be a plus side to not being famous: think of all the things you could get away with because you are not being noticed anymore, hehehe...

Down side: when your mountain lion eats Edghar, it is Edghar whose name goes down in history, hehehe...


----------



## Piratecat

Kaodi said:


> Down side: when your mountain lion eats Edghar, it is Edghar whose name goes down in history, hehehe...



Did you know that I can give negative xp? Just so you know. Just saying.

Ahem.

I'm really pleased that Sagiro perfectly captured my scansion back in post 398. 20 years of Call of Cthulhu has given me a passable "insane" voice; it's cool that I was able to channel how freaked out I really was at that point. 

Heh. This is where I wish we were posting sound files.


----------



## Kaodi

Piratecat said:


> Did you know that I can give negative xp? Just so you know. Just saying.






(  )



> Ahem.
> 
> I'm really pleased that Sagiro perfectly captured my scansion back in post 398. 20 years of Call of Cthulhu has given me a passable "insane" voice; it's cool that I was able to channel how freaked out I really was at that point.
> 
> Heh. This is where I wish we were posting sound files.




Actually, now I feel like I am misremembering who did that one voiceover that was posted on these boards many years ago. I was probably thinking it was Sagiro because I was thinking of his notable clone and ape voices, but I think it was an undead, and that would be your campaign's department...


----------



## Piratecat

Yup, that was me. Sagiro is as good, or better, with voices. Hearing Octesian or Shreen the Fair sets my skin crawling.


----------



## Sagiro

A couple of small points:  I'd say Piratecat and I are about even in the "creepy voices" category.  Pcat does particularly well with undead; readers of his old Story Hour will be familiar with the Lich Hagiok and the ghoulish Soder, both of whom had highly... memorable... voices.  Ew.

Regarding the X-COM story hour: I have nothing whatsoever to do with it.  Also, allow me to take this opportunity to announce that I am no longer with Irrational Games, and haven't been since February.  I have taken on the new challenge of the stay-at-home dad to my two daughters, ages 5 and 2.  It's more tiring than game development, but much less stressful.  My relationship with Irrational continues to be good; I left on my own, on good terms with the company, and I still do some consulting work for them.  Alas that I'm not allowed to say anything about what they might be working on, other than:  it's pretty sweet.

While I'm here:

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 312*_
*Good Thing You Asked*

Dranko awakens, his head a hastily-drained swamp of unwanted memories.  His eyes flutter open and the first thing he sees is Morningstar's worried face.

“I feel better,” Dranko says quietly.  And indeed he does; the damage to his wounded mind has been healed.   His wife helps him to his feet, and she breathes a sigh of relief that his voice is no longer so disturbingly manic.

Dranko looks around at his apprehensive friends.  “If I were going to guess, there's something horrible we'll have to fight at one point – maybe Lord Tapheon – who's going to pry through my brain.   And now there's a trap laid for him.  Or maybe the Black Circle will try to read my mind and get a nasty surprise.  And all things considered, things could be worse.  I can live without the fame.  I couldn't live without all of you.”

Morningstar smiles, reaches out to touch Dranko's brow, and manifests her greatest power.   Some vile creature from Far Realms has placed something in the mind of her husband; now it's her turn.   She shows him by a true Miracle of Ell how much she loves, respects and cherishes him.  The caul of horror the Cleaner left clinging to his psyche is easily parted by Ellish grace, and the dark and writhing vines of insanity are culled by feelings of love and friendship.

Dranko blinks and stares at his wife, his eyes misting.  He has no words, but envelops her in a fierce embrace.


* *

The journey via _wind walk_ to the halfling city of Victory takes about five hours.   The ground below rushes swiftly by, a wasteland of brown and gray rock dotted with old ruins, giving way only in the final hour to farmlands and settled green.   The river that separates Appleseed from the southern lands is dotted (on the halflings' side) by old guard towers, obviously long empty.  Their map is accurate in its placement of Victory at the tip of a lake, the southernmost of a series of finger-like lakes stretching east to west.

Victory is the capital city of Appleseed, and as much a fortress as a metropolis.  It is extremely well defended, with tall and wide stone walls patrolled dutifully by halfling soldiers.  A channel from the lake goes into the city beneath a jutting barbican.

The Company lands outside the outermost wall and de-mists.  The halfling guards at the city's southern gate are polite and no-nonsense. Ernie speaks for the group, announcing their visit with the Yondallan High Priestess.   The guards are thorough in their questioning, but in the end the Company is allowed entry and not divested of their armaments.   There are no papers to carry or fees to pay.

Ernie thanks the gate-guard.  “I've long wanted to see Appleseed.  I spend too much time in the company of kneecaps.”

The guard smiles.  “Just don't cause any trouble,” he says half-jokingly, while eyeing the Big Folk.

Dranko laughs.  “We seldom _cause_ trouble...”

The guard's smile tightens.  “As strangers to Appleseed, allow me to give you this advice.  No one will stop you on the streets or interfere with your business, until or unless you cause a disturbance.  I strongly advise against that, unless you enjoy extended stays in stockades.”

So saying, he directs the Company to the Cathedral of Yondalla, which he says should be easily visible atop a hill near the center of the town, once they've cleared the walls.  There are three different portcullises to traverse, and the narrow entrance to the city leads to a large and bustling courtyard.  Victory is larger than any halfling settlement in Charagan, and is at least half the size of Tal Hae.  Many dwellings are built into hillsides, but these are of sturdy stone and built for defense more than comfort.   The streets wind between the hills, and each hill of any significant size has a guard tower upon it.  As they head in the direction of the cathedral, they are funneled through a number of narrow gates.  

The Company does draw numerous curious stares from the local populace, though everyone is polite and there are no disturbances.   Close-packed dwellings give way to open parks and gardens as they make their final approach up Cathedral Hill.   They gaze up at the edifice, and Kibi can't help but be impressed by the architecture and engineering.  Ernie's eyes are wide; the cathedral is many times the size of the largest halfling structure he has ever seen.  An enormous stained-glass window above the front doors shows the gold-and-green cornucopia and shield of Yondalla.

Dranko laughs.  “I'll bet they have kick-ass dungeons under there, too!”

They are met at the doors by a serene acolyte in green robes.  “You must be Ernest Roundhill and company.  High Priestess Sunblade is expecting you.”

Leaving their weapons inside the door, the Company is escorted to the personal chamber of the High Priestess.   At first her office seems empty, though adorned with ceremonial weapons and shields on the three walls and a huge tapestry depicting a grand battle on the fourth.  But they spy a small door in the back of the chamber, through which wafts the mingling smells of fresh-baked bread and a savory stew.

“Just a moment!” comes a woman's voice.   

The High Priestess Maple Sunblade emerges from the kitchen adjoining her office, bearing a tray laden will loaves and bowls.  She wears an apron over rich Yondallan finery.

“Maple Sunblade, at your service,” she says formally, setting down the tray on a round table.  Ernest makes introduction of his friends, stressing the honorific 'Sir” when presenting Dranko.  Sitting around the table and eating, Ernie tells  Maple Sunblade about his discovery of _Tava's Righteous Fury_.

“I'm flattered that it knew my name,” says Sunblade.  “I'd like to see the sword.”

She sends a servant to fetch it.  Ernie digs around in the _bag of holding_ and produces a bottle of fine halfling ale from Dingman's Ferry as a gift.

“We have had a few visiting halflings from Charagan already,” says the High Priestess.   “They came by ship, from a city called Tal Hae.”

“Hey!” says Dranko.  “That's where I'm from.  Flicker here, too!”

Ernie smiles.  “Since my colleagues have learned to _teleport_, I've been lucky enough to avoid sailing ships.  I find them extremely disagreeable.”

“You must be doing well for yourselves,” says Maple.  “I'm sure there is great demand for your services.”

“Yes and no,” says Ernie.  “We are mostly troubleshooters for our Kingdom.  We're sent to places where wrongs are being done, and we do our best to right them.  We're not traders, and profit isn't really our motive.”

He elbows Dranko before he can object.  

“We're always glad to meet such people,” says Maple, nodding in understanding.  “Though we've been in peacetime for almost a decade now.  The Anlakis have not mounted any real threats in years.”

Dranko gulps a spoonful of stew.  “But now you're about to be attacked by a horde of goblins.”

“I've heard no reports, and our scouts are quite thorough,” says Maple.  "But your news..."

At that moment the servant arrives with _Tava's Righteous Fury_, and High Priestess Sunblade handles it with reverence.

“What is the Crimson Maw?” Ernie asks, as Maple traces the runes on the sword with her fingers.

The High Priestess doesn't take her eyes from the holy blade.  “I don't know.  I've never heard of it.  But we have an extensive library, so perhaps we can find out.  As for Tava's Righteous Fury... Tava was a legendary halfling champion who fought in the very first wars between goblinkind and the halfling peoples, on a world now long forgotten.  It is said to only appear when halflings are in grave danger from goblins.  I'm honored to have seen it, though I was hoping I wouldn't in my lifetime.”

She sits back and stretches.  “The country of Appleseed used to be contested territory with the goblins, centuries ago.  Eventually we drove the goblins into the eastern wastelands, where they tried – unsuccessfully – to rebuild their empire.  Eventually they vanished altogether, probably into the Underdark, which is doubtless more suitable to them.   We make sure our cities are well protected from below, with both fortifications and powerful warding spells.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” says Ernie.  “Because the sword told me the goblins have brought an equivalent champion.”

Sunblade puts down her spoon.  “But brought him _where_?  I think it's time we visited the library, don't you?”


* *


Ernie is allowed to keep _Tava's Righteous Fury_ on his belt as Maple Sunblade leads the Company to the cathedral's library.  It's nothing as extensive as the Vault back in Hae Charagan, but the Library of Victory houses many hundreds of books and scrolls.   There is an extensive section on goblin-kind, with treatises on their military tactics, biographies of past goblin leaders, details of their religion, and speculative writings about their race's motivations. 

Edghar proves the most valuable researcher, as he climbs upon the shelves and reads through dusty parchments.   Within an hour he has found a scroll of goblin folklore which contains an entire paragraph on the Crimson Maw.

Dranko glares up at the monkey.  “How'd he find it?  He's just a monkey.  I mean, he can't _read_, can he?”

Over the empathic link, Edghar chuckles to Grey Wolf.  “Tell him if he wants some pointers on some of the idiosyncrasies of Kivian Common's vowel usage, he should just cast _comprehend languages_ on me, and he'll learn something.”

“Not now,” Grey Wolf hushes.

Taking the scroll from his familiar, Grey Wolf reads.

_*“Of all the legends told of Maglubiyet’s children, one of the most troublesome, if unlikely, is that of the Crimson Maw.  Though evidence is scant, the Crimson Maw is a demi-plane, large enough to house a formidable army of goblins.   Its corrupt nature is said to both strengthen and anger the goblins who gather inside, so that when unleashed, an army barracked and trained in the Maw will be particularly fearsome.  

Worse, given time, priests of Maglubiyet can move the opening of the Maw to any location on Abernia, and so the already empowered army of goblins can emerge behind enemy lines, inside a city – anywhere.   This is done through a goblin artifact called Maglubiyet’s Fang, housed in an iron palace deep inside the Maw.  

All of this is speculative, derived from goblinoid scrolls.  There are no eyewitness reports of the Crimson Maw, and no proof that it exists at all.”*_

Morningstar fires off a _find the path_ right then and there, but it produces no directions to the Maw.   But Ernie hears Tava's voice again in his mind, barely a whisper.

_The Crimson Maw is always open.  While they set to move it, look for goblin holy ground._

After Ernie has shared this message, Sunblade rubs her chin.  “The goblins built many temples in the wastelands,” she muses.  “Though they're all ruins now.”

“So,” says Dranko.  “Looks like we have another decision to make.  Goblins, or Praska?”

Ernie opts for some guidance to answer that question.  Back in Sunblade's kitchen he casts _commune_ while baking a traveling biscuit.  The High Priestess takes notes.

_Will the threat to the halflings of Appleseed from the Crimson Maw come within the next week?_

*I DON'T KNOW.*

Uh oh.  When something is impenetrable by divination, it usually indicates the Black Circle's involvement.

_Is the Goblin menace within the Crimson Maw being instigated, motivated or exacerbated by our enemies in red armor?_

*ALMOST CERTAINLY NOT.*

_Are they being motivated by any outside party, besides the Goblins and Maglubiyet?_

*ALMOST CERTAINLY NOT.*

_Do we have the means or tools that would enable us to go directly to the Crimson Maw?_

*YOU CAN REACH ITS OPENING.*

_In your opinion – and your opinion is well-nigh an order to me – would it be wiser for us to continue our pursuit of Mokad, as opposed to dealing with the Crimson Maw?_

*MOKAD'S PLOTS ARE RIPENING, BUT TAVA SHOULD NOT BE IGNORED.*

Ernie can't help but grumble.  “That's hardly an answer...”

_Is anything else needed beside our military might, and the power of _Tava's Righteous Fury_, to defeat the threat posed by the Crimson Maw?_

*COURAGE, GUILE AND LUCK*

_Will we be more successful if we invade the Crimson Maw, instead of letting them invade us?_

*PROBABLY*

_Will the plots of Mokad and the Black Circle in Kai Kin come to fruition within the next month?_

*YES*
Yikes!

_Will destroying Mokad slow them down?_

*NO*

_Will the Black Circle plots, if successful, result in the return of Naradawk to Abernia?_

*YES*

Crap!

_Are we capable of stopping the current set of plots of the Black Circle?_

*YES, THROUGH YOUR ACTIONS*

_In order to stop them, would it would be wise to strike at the Black Circle in Kai Kin?_

*YES*

_If we use _Mordenkainen's Disjunction_ to destroy the Book of Lies, would the person who's life was protected by it be aware of its destruction?_

*YES*

_ Can I defeat the champion of Maglubiyet?_

*I CANNOT SEE INSIDE THE MAW*

_Is it the wisest thing for me to do, to stay here to protect Appleseed, given the other threats to the world?_

*EITHER WAY, DO NOT STAY IN APPLESEED*

_Will razing the Kin Kin Black Circle temple be enough to stop their plot?_

*NO*

_Is there a specific individual we need to destroy, in order to stop their plot?_

*NO*

_Is there a specific ritual we need to disrupt, in order to stop their plot?_

*YES*


Huh.  So the Black Circle is working on a plot that will bring Emperor Naradawk from Volpos, within a month?  Now that's some news worth knowing!

...to be continued...


----------



## theskyfullofdust

Oooh, decisions, decisions. Which did the party go for?


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> Yup, that was me. Sagiro is as good, or better, with voices. Hearing Octesian or Shreen the Fair sets my skin crawling.




I'd love to hear what Shreen the Fair sounds like.

"I am unkillable, Dranko Blackhope."


----------



## Destil

Everett said:


> I'd love to hear what Shreen the Fair sounds like.




Actually, we had Shreen posted on the board at one point, if memory serves.


----------



## Sandain

Thanks for the updates Sagiro, both personal and the story hour.

May I just say .. 'so long, and thanks for all the Bioshock'

I can't belive you have a 5 year old! It doesnt seem that long ago you shared your photos of your Honeymoon in NZ.


----------



## Sagiro

Sandain said:


> Thanks for the updates Sagiro, both personal and the story hour.
> 
> May I just say .. 'so long, and thanks for all the Bioshock'
> 
> I can't belive you have a 5 year old! It doesnt seem that long ago you shared your photos of your Honeymoon in NZ.



Yeah, I can't believe it either.   

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 313*_
*Familiar Risk*


Ernie, of course, still wants to deal with the Crimson Maw right away. 

Dranko shakes his head.  “What if we get stuck in there, or time moves differently?  Could we risk it?   I mean, don't different onions have different times?”

“It's a demiplane,” says Aravis.  “Unless it actively makes us forget things, I'm not too worried.”

Ernie furrows his brow.  “A demiplane? Doesn't that make it more of a scallion?”

“Forget the herbs!” cries Aravis.  “Yes, there is a potential problem of time differential, but that aside, we can certainly get out if we can get in.  There's always _plane shift._”

“The Maw is clearly the lesser of the two evils,” says Morningstar.

Aravis nods.  “I agree.  But before we deal with the Black Circle, we'll need to scout it out.  I have a plan that will take a couple of days – I want to send a scouting party of cats to learn about the temple there.  I think they owe me a debt of gratitude.”

“There's another thing,” says Kibi.  “If we want to deal with Mokad before doing anything else to the Black Circle, it's still going to be a couple of days before the ritual room in Kallor is ready to go.”

So, over Morningstar's continuing objections, they decide to let Aravis implement his cats-as-spies plan and then deal with the Crimson Maw as quickly as they can.

“Dealing with the Maw shouldn't take long,” says Aravis confidently.  “We should hop in, grab Maglubiyet's Fang, and get out.  If they can't move the opening, it'll no longer be an immediate threat.”


* *


Morningstar casts a _sending_ to Plumpypuss at Aravis's request.  _*We need the name of a cat in Kai Kin, preferably a stray.  Reply 25 words or less.  Morningstar*_

The reply:  _*There is a cat named Set-Set.  I had some dealings with him years ago.  If he's still alive, he's in the foreign quarter.*_

Armed with that minimal information, Aravis _scries_ Set-Set that evening.  Through the sensor, and using _darkvision_, he sees an old and scrawny black ally cat resting on a low stone wall.  With Pewter on his shoulder, Dranko stowed away in the _flask of body pouring_, and with a _refuge_ token in his pocket, he _teleports_.

Set-Set turns his head sharply at Aravis's arrival but otherwise stays put on the wall; he's too old to go jumping from the mere presence of humans.

He meows.  Pewter translates.

“You're strangely like a cat.”

“I am one of the Nine,” says Aravis.

Set-Set rises slowly to his feet.  “How did you sneak up on me so easily?”

“I had magic,” says Aravis.  “I used to see you from a distance and transport myself.”

“Magic?  I don't know that.  How can I serve you?”

Over the mind-link, Morningstar opines, “ I'll be Kai Kin has a prohibition against magic.”

Aravis starts in on an explanation of how he needs a feline scouting team to infiltrate the Black Circle temple in the city.  Set-Set seems extremely confused, and Pewter turns to his master.

“Boss, he's just a cat.  He's not very smart.  He might get distracted by a mouse, and forget all about your instructions.”

“We'll have to take that risk,” says Aravis.

“Can't you do any Cat Lord mojo to make him smarter?”

Aravis thinks for a second before pouring Dranko out of his flask.

“Dranko, you carry our spare _headband of intellect_, right?”

“Yeah.  Why?”

“I need this cat to be smarter.”

Dranko hands over the headband before scrambling up the adjacent wall to get a better look at the city of Kai Kin.   From the rooftop he takes in a broad view of this section of the city – presumably the Foreign Quarter.   That would explain the mishmash of clothing styles, architecture and skin tones, and the wide variety of accents in the general cacophony of Kivian Common.  He spots folk from Tev, Dir-Tolia, Djaw, Delfir, and even a couple from Charagan.

The buildings are close-set and lean over narrow, winding streets.  Though it is night, the Foreign Quarter is bright with lamps and loud with haggling and laughter.  To the south-east Dranko sees the harbor, and to the northwest looms a thirty-foot stone wall.

Aravis drapes the _headband of intellect_ around Set-Set's neck like a collar, casts _tongues_, and tries his explanation again.  When he describes the Black Circle temple, Set-Set shakes his head.

“I've never seen anything like that.”

“It's on the other side of the wall,” Aravis explains.

“Oh.  I've never been there.”

Aravis sighs.   Even with the headband, a normal cat still can't follow complex instructions.  And this particular cat lacks the physical prowess he needs.

“Boss,” Pewter implores, “Just send me.  I'm a cat, I'm smart, I'm agile, and I already know exactly what I'm looking for.”

Aravis gives his familiar a scratch.  “I suppose you're right.”  He bows to Set-Set, thanks him, and takes back the headband.  Then he fishes out his _refuge_ token and ties it around Pewter's neck.

“See if you can organize some other cats to get inside the temple.”

Pewter is skeptical.  “Organize some cats?  Er... ok, I'll do my best.  What are your specific instructions?”

“See if you can find the best way into that temple other than the front door, and anything else interesting.”

“How long do I have?”

“Two days.  We'll meet back here.”

Pewter grins.  “I get two days to myself?  Fantastic!  Just promise me you'll take care of yourself.  You're not going into that goblin place without me, right?”

Aravis is a terrible liar.  “Er.  Um.  No!  Of course not!”

“Boss!”

“I didn't want to tell you,” Aravis admits.  “I don't want you to worry.”

“Of course I'll worry!” cries Pewter.  “First of all, you need me in there.  Second, you'll be in a demiplane, so if something happens to me, who bails me out?”

“The token I tied around your neck.  You bite it, you end up at the Greenhouse.  And if _I_ need _you_, I'll _gate_ you in.”

Dranko has dropped down from the rooftops and taps the wizard on the shoulder.  “Aravis?  I know you like cats and all, but why the hell aren't you turning me invisible and just flying me over the frickin' wall?  I'll fly over the temple and get you  all the intelligence you need.”

“I can't cast invisibility.”

“But you _can_ cast _fly_.  And I can stay hidden pretty well.”

So Aravis does cast _fly_ on Dranko.  As he casts, someone pokes his head into the ally and watches curiously.   His clothing identifies him as Dir-Tolian.  Dranko thinks quickly.

“Thank you so much sir!” he exclaims.  “You healed my wound.”

“You're welcome,” says Aravis.

“Hello?” says the man.  “Are you crazy?  Did you just cast a spell on him?”

Morningstar thinks over the telepathic link:  “Did I mention I think there's a prohibition on spell-casting in Kai Kin?”

“I healed him,” Aravis explains to the man.

“By magic?” asks the Dir-Tolian, aghast.

“Yeah.”

“Have you been here long?”

“No.”

“Did we make a horrible mistake?” asks Dranko.

The Dir-Tolian looks shocked.  “How could you have avoided knowing about the local custom?”

“We came in around 3:00 in the morning,” Dranko explains.

“It shouldn't matter!  Regardless, I will tell you this for your own good.  Do not let the city guard see you doing that!  Or any magic of any kind!”

“So there's a prohibition on magic?”

“Of course there is!  How could you not know that?”

Aravis looks puzzled.  “Where do people go for healing?”

“They go to a temple, where magic is allowed.”

“And what temples are here in the city?”

The Dir-Tolian looks at Aravis like he's daft.  “They have temples to Lotus and to the Black Circle, I know that much.  But I have not spent any time outside the Foreign Quarter.”

“Is there a Black Circle temple _in_ the Foreign Quarter?” asks Dranko.

“Of course not.  Say, why were you in this alley in the first place?”

“I heard him groaning in here,” says Aravis.  “He was injured.”

“And to what God are you a priest?” asks the Dir-Tolian.

“Quarrol,” says Aravis.

“Say,” says Dranko.  “Can I buy you dinner, as a way of saying thank you for telling us about the no-magic thing?”

Morningstar, over the mind-link:  “_I_ told you about the no magic thing!”

Dranko gives the man a handful of miracs.

“This is very kind!” exclaims the man.  “My name is Fahlwyn, by the way.  What are yours?”

Dranko introduces himself as Three Slippery Slopes, while Aravis gives his name as Benson.

“I have been to Kai Kin eleven times now,” says Fahlwyn.  Every time, I am forced to endure, for half an hour, all of the rules and regulations of the city.  One of the first things they tell you is:  no magic!  You should pay attention to those lectures.  I realize you may not take them seriously, but the authorities in Kai Kin will kill you!  They will execute you without a second thought, for any number of infractions that might seem minor to a foreigner.”

Fahlwyn nods his head and departs the alley.  Dranko and Aravis look at one another for a long moment.

Morningstar's aggrieved thoughts come over the mind-link.  “Good job, guys.”


* *


This time it's Aravis's turn to go in the _flask_, while Pewter rides in Dranko's pack.  The half-orc flies up into the night and starts his aerial recon of Kai Kin.   He is struck first by the huge size of the city – not quite as big as Djaw, but bigger than anything Charagan has to offer.  The wall that separates the Foreign Quarter from the city proper continues well out into the harbor, and only Ocirian ships are docked on the “native” side.

In stark contrast to the Foreign Quarter, the rest of Kai Kin is extraordinarily homogenous, especially for a place so large.  The architectural style is mostly a uniform yellowing stone, with rounded red-tile roofs.  Even more unusual is the constancy of upkeep and cleanliness; there are no slums, and no area that is obviously a high-society neighborhood.  (Even a block away from a huge palace – that Dranko assumes is the seat of Ocirian governance – the buildings are of modest size and adornments.)

Dranko selectively chooses a half-dozen rooftops around the city that are high, flat, and not easily seen from either the ground or other rooftops.  At each of these he pours Aravis out, so that the wizard can study the place for possibly emergency _teleports_.

“Let me warn you,” says Aravis.  “Don't start thinking of me as your own private genie.”

Dranko just grins.    

It takes a few hours of slow, sneaky flight before Dranko comes across what is obviously the main Black Circle property in the city.   It's comprised of fifteen buildings on a sprawling several-acre campus, with the majority of the acreage covered in parks and gardens.  Walkways and benches are dotted here and there throughout.   One building – the largest by a good amount –  is most likely the main chapel. 

A few armed men patrol the grounds, but they seem at ease.  From time to time a person in black robes leaves one building and walks unhurriedly to another.   There's no sign at all of anything sinister in the offing.   

“Pewter, new plan” says Aravis.  “Scout out the place, and see if you can get other cats to help, but don't bother finding your way back to the Foreign Quarter.   We'll contact you in two days.  If you haven't heard from us by then, use the token.”

“No worries, boss.  I'll get you your intel.  Just don't get yourself killed while you're gone.”

After dropping Pewter off a few blocks from the Black Circle temple, they _teleport_ back to Victory.   For all of his confidence in his familiar, Aravis feels bereft.

“Kai Kin sucks!” Dranko announces.  “Magic isn't allowed – Morningstar, you could have warned us about that – and everything is the same, and they keep all the foreigners in their own walled-off section.”

“Right,” says Aravis, eager to make some progress.  “Onto the Crimson Maw!”

...to be continued...


----------



## Joshua Randall

Never. Split. The party.


----------



## Piratecat

We meant to make it a nice, fast errand. We got lucky it didn't turn completely pear-shaped on us, but it sets the stage nicely for my favorite party-splitting of all time. 

And anyways, the Crimson Maw is a bunch of goblins. We're about 18th level at this point. How much challenge can stinkin' goblins be?


----------



## The_Warlock

Piratecat said:


> We're about 18th level at this point. How much challenge can stinkin' goblins be?




I have heard those words before. Usually right before the PCs in my run take a header down the stairway of life. This is gonna be a fun read when it gets posted.


----------



## Middle Snu

*Wow!*

Just finished reading the whole thing. This is just a plain awesome story, and I am immensely grateful that you have devoted so many hours to writing it up.

A couple of questions, if you don't mine:
1) At one point, Kay committed a significant portion of the Yrimpa race to a single military operation - did it work, or was it a trap after all?
2) Something that's bugged me for a while: in Het Branoi, when the Vree machine malfunctioned and attracted the terrible Cleaners, Piratecat wrote:


> As far as we can tell, it was like taking a battery pocket flashlight
> and hooking it up to a 220-volt power line. The machine was calibrated for Kibi, not Kibi and two freakin’ artifacts, and the surge in power through the
> Way drew the Cleaners like moths to a flame.
> 
> You should have seen Sagiro’s face as he realized the consequences of what Kibi was doing. It’s fair to say that this wasn’t how he expected the run to go!




So had Kibi not taken the Eyes into the Machine, would the quest have been over? And if so, how to get the third Eye? It's hard to believe that the Vree machine _really_ would have worked, given how much of the Ways were still unexplored at that point.

3) Way back in the Crosser's Maze, the party was given a list of 8 questions and had to pick one to answer. But many of these alluded to things that were only resolved years (real-time) later, like Aravis being 'like a cat'. Were you really prepared to answer all 8 questions at the time--and if so, have any of the answers changed in the meantime?

Again, thanks so much! It's awesome and an inspiration.


----------



## Sagiro

Middle Snu said:


> *Wow!*
> 
> Just finished reading the whole thing. This is just a plain awesome story, and I am immensely grateful that you have devoted so many hours to writing it up.
> 
> A couple of questions, if you don't mine:
> 1) At one point, Kay committed a significant portion of the Yrimpa race to a single military operation - did it work, or was it a trap after all?
> 2) Something that's bugged me for a while: in Het Branoi, when the Vree machine malfunctioned and attracted the terrible Cleaners, Piratecat wrote:
> 
> 
> So had Kibi not taken the Eyes into the Machine, would the quest have been over? And if so, how to get the third Eye? It's hard to believe that the Vree machine _really_ would have worked, given how much of the Ways were still unexplored at that point.
> 
> 3) Way back in the Crosser's Maze, the party was given a list of 8 questions and had to pick one to answer. But many of these alluded to things that were only resolved years (real-time) later, like Aravis being 'like a cat'. Were you really prepared to answer all 8 questions at the time--and if so, have any of the answers changed in the meantime?
> 
> Again, thanks so much! It's awesome and an inspiration.




I'm glad you've been enjoying the story!  Those are some great questions;  here are some answers:

1)  The Yrimpa operation went off very well; it wasn't a trap, and (if memory serves) only 1 or 2 Yrimpa were slain.  Honestly, with Kay's player leaving the game, the Yrimpa have faded into the background of the story.   You may hear about them once or twice more before the game is over, but they're no longer a part of any major plots I'm juggling.

2) No, the quest would not have been over had Kibi gone alone into the Vree's Machine.  The Machine would still not have worked to "fix" the slices, as the Vree were claiming.  The Chaos was more trying to reintegrate all of the slices of _itself_, and _that_ would have worked. Also, Kibi would have gotten some flashes of insight (read:  plot clues) about the nature of the Slices.  That's all tentacles under the bridge at this point, of course.

3) Yes, I was prepared to answer any of those questions at the time.  The only answer which subsequently changed significantly was "Where is Sagiro's body"; I don't think I had yet decided that he had gone into Het Branoi ahead of the Company.  I forget exactly what I _had_ decided happened to him, but it wasn't nearly as interesting as having him be the Lord of the Roses.  (Also, I was pretty sure they weren't going to pick that question.)


----------



## Joshua Randall

Yrimpa is a really fun word to say.


----------



## The Axe

Joshua Randall said:


> Yrimpa is a really fun word to say.




Heh--I don't think I could say it out loud...


----------



## Sagiro

The Axe said:


> Heh--I don't think I could say it out loud...



It's pronounced yer-IM-puh, with a clipped first syllable.  (The "er" sound is very short.)


----------



## wedgeski

Never have I been so glad that email notifications for subscribed threads aren't working. 

I come back after three months to find all these updates waiting for me... and *big* stuff too. Still as wonderful as ever.


----------



## The Axe

Sagiro said:


> It's pronounced yer-IM-puh, with a clipped first syllable.  (The "er" sound is very short.)




Heh---that's actually pretty close to how I had it in my head...


----------



## MetaVoid

I've read it as EE-rimm-puh, also with short E


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 314*_
*Return of the Killer Magic Rats*

Despite Aravis's agitation, it's been an extremely long and tiring day.  The party spends the night at the cathedral in Victory, with plans to tackle the Crimson Maw first thing in the morning. 

Over a _heroes' feast_ breakfast on the front lawn of the cathedral, while most of the Company discuss how to find and assault the Maw, Flicker has become oddly obsessed with flipping a coin.

“Grey Wolf, check this out.”

He flips the coin.  Heads.  He flips it again.  Heads.  Three more times; all heads.

Grey Wolf takes a bite from a muffin.  “Have you _identified_ that thing yet?”

“It's not magical,” says Flicker.  “It's just some random mirac I still had from the last time we were in Kivia.  You know how many heads in a row I've flipped?  Fourteen!”

He flips it one more time.  “Fifteen!”

Grey Wolf quirks an eyebrow.  “Is there a tails?

“Yeah.  See?  Hey Dranko.  Can you confirm there's no magic on this coin?”

Dranko looks over and squints.  “Nope.  Not magic.”

Flicker keeps going and gets another nine heads in a row.

“Let me see that,” says Dranko.  Flicker tosses the coin over to him, and the half-orc takes a flip.  Tails.  He tries a few more times.  Heads.  Tails.  Tails.  Heads.  Tails.  Heads.  Heads.  Tails.

“Huh,” he grunts, handing the coin back to Flicker.

Flicker gets nine more heads in a row before tossing it to Grey Wolf.  “Here, you try it.”

Grey Wolf flips the coin, but when he tries to catch it, it bounces off the side of his hand and hits him in the eye.

“Ow!”

Dranko laughs.  “Great.  An intelligent coin that's adopted Flicker.”

Grey Wolf tries again to flip the coin, but it slips out of his hand.   When he reaches down to pick it up, a bird poops on his head.

“Huh,” says Dranko again.  “So Flicker's super lucky, and you're super... not.  Flick, let's play dice for a second.”

They pull out dice, and Flicker wins 14 rolls in a row.

Ernie, at the other end of the table and paying little attention to these shenanigans, pulls out Tava's Righteous Fury and, with no expectation of success, asks it where they should go to find the Crimson Maw.

His arm is yanked around, the blade pointing steadily to the south-east.  “Hey, guys, I have a direction!”

Morningstar frowns.  “Isn't anyone else worried about Grey Wolf being so unlucky?  Maybe we shouldn't go anywhere dangerous until he's... better?”

“I dunno,” says Dranko.  “There's no new magic on Grey Wolf.  Maybe it's...”

He's interrupted by a shriek from a nearby house.  The Company hurries to investigate, and finds a halfling woman lying on the road, rubbing her back.  She looks dazedly up at on open window.

“I... fell out.  I must have slipped.  Funny, I _never_ leave that window open; the bells from the cathedral are too noisy otherwise.”

She returns to her house, and ten seconds later the Company hears another shriek, followed by the sound of several dishes smashing on a floor.   And as they stand there, puzzled, they can hears similar shouts of alarm and crashing sounds from elsewhere in the city.

“We should get out of here,” Aravis sighs.  “Either we brought this with us, or it could affect more of us before we go into the Maw.”

As they pass a tavern on the way out of town, a shabbily-dressed halfling comes running out to the street.

“Excuse me!” he gasps breathlessly.  “May I interest you in a gambling proposition?”

“It's not just you,” says Dranko.  “It's happening to Flicker here as well.  You're under a magical effect.”

“I am?  Brandobaras must want me to become rich! I've been blessed!”

The halfling takes off running down the street.


* *


Ernie uses his doubts about Tava's Righteous Fury's efficacy in wind-form as an excuse to bust out the _Vyasa Vya_, a.k.a. Burning Sky.  The flying carpet coughs out a gout of black smoke that, as luck would have it, blasts Grey Wolf in the face.

Grey Wolf takes this, as he has all the previous instances of ill-fotune, with resigned equanimity.  “I've had worse.” 

They fly over the countryside, Ernie leading the way on the carpet as he follows the tug of Tava's Righteous Fury.  Ten minutes out of town they see below them a three-cart pile-up at a lightly-trafficked crossroads.   The Company now speculates these wild fluctuations of luck are somehow part of an imminent goblin offensive.

Only after a full day of flight, with a shrouded sun poking a few last rays over the western horizon, does the Company reach a destination of note.   Two hours earlier they had crossed the river at the western border of Appleseed, and the difference in terrain was stark.  Green gave way to brown, and lush to rocky.  And beyond the river, starting out sparse and becoming ever more frequent, have been the crumbled remains of the displaced goblin kingdom.   There are no longer any signs of living goblins, but the Company spies numerous small ruined towns as they soar overhead.  

Now they see a particularly large and (relatively) intact cluster of ruins in a blasted and lifeless valley.  Near the center of the ruins is the outline of a keep, mostly gone now but with a single conspicuously intact building that's been spared erosion from wind and rain by a tall section of the original outer wall.

_Tava's Righteous Fury_ dips to point at that building.

Rather than risk discovery by sleeping right outside, the Company _wind walks_ about ten miles away to make camp.  Grey Wolf solidifies in a mud puddle.   Nothing seems different when they return the next morning; _Tava's Righteous Fury_ still points to the same goblin building, and at a downward angle.   With Flicker in front scanning for traps, they enter cautiously.

It's an abandoned temple, stripped clean of every furnishing, every object, every sign of habitation.  Only a stone altar, wall carvings and the general architecture betray the one-time function of the edifice.  Ernie squirms a bit at the violent acts depicted in the carvings, all perpetrated upon halflings by spear-wielding goblins.  He looks down at his sword and sees it pointing downward and to the left.  Flicker approaches a door on the left wall and examines the lock.  

“I think it's locked, but if I...”

The door pops open.

“Oh.  That was lucky.”

Beyond the door is a smaller chamber, and in the back of that room is a stairwell spiraling down.  Flicker volunteers to go first again.  “Heck, I wouldn't set off any traps if I were blindfolded!  I'm the luckiest guy in the world right now!”

“Yeah,” says Dranko.  “_You_ won't set them off.  Grey Wolf will.  So keep your eyes open, will you?”

Grey Wolf manages not to trigger any traps, though he does stumble down a few stairs before Morningstar catches him.  At the bottom there are three different branching hallways, but _Tava's Righteous Fury_ leads the way to what was probably a torture chamber.  There are no living remains or loose implements of torture, but several pairs of manacles are still chained to walls splotched with aged blood stains.

A wall at the back of the torture chamber has been partially knocked out (from this side), and rough uneven stairs lead down from the hole for about twenty feet before rounding a corner to the right.  A faint red light shines from beyond the bend, and the Company hears a low, distant growl.   

Pay-dirt!

Dranko creeps silently around the corner, following a narrow tunnel as it angles down before emptying into a large cavern.  Something enormous is squatting at the far end, though he's still well over a hundred feet from the thing and so cannot make out much detail.  Maybe it's an enormous dog?  Or a frog?  A spider, maybe?  Whatever it is, it's lit from beneath, as it sits upon the source of the ruddy light.

The half-orc sneaks back to his friends.

“There's something back there.  It's huge, and it's sitting on our portal.  Guess we'll have to kill it.”

Flicker turns to Kibi.  “Can you charm it?”  

“In theory.  But it never works,” Kibi grumbles.  

Instead the dwarf casts _veil_, clothing the party in the illusionary form of rats.   (Or, as the giants from their Quest for Cranchus would say, 'killer magic rats.')  He, Dranko and Ernie make a cautious sortie into the cavern.   It's strewn with boulders, and numerous stalagmites rise from the uneven stone floor.   Kibi, while a rat in most senses, is still not the quietest of creatures.  While Ernie's armor is magically silent and Dranko is naturally stealthy, Kibi can't prevent small rocks from crunching beneath his feet.   The beast, which from a slightly closer vantage seems to resemble a cross between a dog and a toad, heaves itself up a bit on numerous thick limbs.  It grunts, growls, sniffs, and peers across the cavern.  Dranko thinks it has extremely knobbly skin.

It sees rats.

Ernie notes that this creature is tethered in place; a thick metal chain is bolted into a chunk of iron sunk into the stone floor, and the other end is fixed to a metal collar around the beast's neck.

Kibi sighs, and casts _charm monster_.  Of course, it doesn't work.  The dwarf feels his spell slide off the beast's mind.  And now the guardian creature has _heard_ one of the rats casting a spell.   It becomes more alert, and it peers closely at these trespassing rodents.

Ernie and Dranko scurry forward.   Dranko goes further, taking up a defensive position behind a stalagmite only thirty feet away from the massive creature.   He sees that it has eight appendages, six of which are thick arms with sharp-clawed and prehensile hands.  It appears to be squatting on a huge glass plate, out of which a bright red light is shining.  The glass is strongly magical – strong enough to wash out any other nearby magical auras.

The hulking dog-toad narrows its eyes as Ernie runs closer, and decides to take no chances.  It reaches up to its own back with one of its several arms and breaks off a stony nodule from its skin.  It hurls this soccer ball-sized chunk of flesh at Ernie, and when it strikes the ground next to the halfling it explodes in a conflagration of fire and bone.

The rest of the Company takes that as the signal to charge in as well.  Morningstar gets close enough to drop a _flame strike_ on the beast, but it entirely shrugs off the pillar of cold flames.  Grey Wolf pegs it with a _rainbow blast_ which sears it with a variety of energy types.  The creature lets out a loud ululation of pain.

Kibi summons an enormous earth elemental (which tries to start a grapple but gets swatted away), and follows up with a quickened _earth bolt_ that bounces off the beast's magic-resistant skin.  Aravis's disintegrate is likewise rendered inert.

Ernie draws a wand from his belt and manages to make a small hole in the beast with a _searing light_.    Dranko activates his _boots of haste_ before charging in and flanking the enemy with the earth elemental.  His whip cracks and manages to dislodge one of the many protruding nodules on the creature's skin.  Thick black blood oozes out and smokes in the air.

The dog-toad-spider bellow in pain, and glares down at... a rat.  Did that rat just take a chunk out of the monster's hide with its _tail_?   Well, if there's one thing this particular guardian beast can do, it's slaughter little creatures that come too close.  Balancing on its two massive legs, it rips into Dranko with all six clawed hands, dealing enough damage to send a hundred rats to their little rodent graves.   

And yet, somehow, this one survives.  The creature's bestial brain registers annoyed confusion.  Dranko, meanwhile, registers extreme pain and injury.  He may be alive, but several parts of him that are traditionally on the inside are now splattered on the nearby stones.   While Flicker runs up on his little halfling legs and flings an ineffective dagger, Morningstar rushes to cast _heal_ on her husband.  Dranko's pain is washed away.

Grey Wolf begins to summon some lupine speed bumps while the earth elemental takes some ineffective swipes.  Kibi casts _Bigby's clenched fist_ and takes a vicarious swing, but somehow this cumbersome monster manages to dodge.  The dwarf starts swearing at his ill luck.  Why does nothing work?!

Aravis tries again to _disintegrate_ the creature, and while the spell does manage to pierce the target's resistance, it shrugs off most of the damage.  Ernie pegs it again with a _searing light_, and Dranko lands two more perfectly-aimed whip strikes.  

The beast is mightily confused.   It still sees nothing but rats, but it's undeniably getting its gnarled butt kicked.  This one rat in particular is... well, the beast isn't really sure what it's doing.  It tries again to tear it to pieces, but once again the rat survives.    How is this possible?  

While Flicker tumbles into place and plants a dagger in the creature's side, Dranko blinks more blood out of his eyes and tries not to glance down at his sprung ribs.  Again the pain is quickly soothed by a _heal_ from Morningstar, who lets loose a quickened _flame strike_ for good measure.  Grey Wolf's wolves appear and advance, and Kibi's directs his elemental to stop swinging and start pushing.  Ernie slides in to attack with his swords, Aravis fires off a _lightning bolt_, and Dranko doesn't let up with his whip.  

With the beast pushed to the right by the earth elemental, the Company can now see that it's standing upon a huge red glass mirror.  But they don't have much time to ponder the portal's nature or function, as the monster reaches back and snaps two more rocky nodules from its back.  By this time over half the party has moved up fairly close to the creature, and so it slams the two nodules into the ground at its feet.  There is a huge explosion, a fiery grenade blast shot through with bony shrapnel.  Morningstar, Flicker, Ernie and Grey Wolf are devastated, as is the earth elemental.  All but one of the summoned wolves are obliterated.   Dranko, at least, dodges the entirely of the blast by sheltering behind a boulder.

Morningstar flexes her divine might and casts _mass heal_, entirely undoing the guardian beast's hard work, before the rest of the party moves in to finish it off.  Grey Wolf fires an _acid orb_, Kibi lands a punch from Bigby's fist, and Aravis blasts the thing with a _cone of cold_.   The beast is now close to death, its breath quickening, its rocky skin starting to ripple and bulge.

Fittingly, it is Ernie who drives home the killing blow.  “You're standing between me and my sworn duty,” the halfling intones.  “Taste Tava's Righteous Fury!”   He delivers the decisive cut...  and the creature explodes.

...to be continued...


----------



## theskyfullofdust

Giant -toad-dog with exploding warts that explodes when slain  Nice.


----------



## Piratecat

I seem to remember that it was an advanced, reskinned behir with a really nasty area effect weapon. Not that we knew this at the time, of course. All we knew was massive pain and big explosions. 

While a rogue probably shouldn't have the tank role in the group, I'm always amazed by how much damage a high reflex save and Evasion saves me.


----------



## wedgeski

I get the impression from these combats that Dranko spends a lot of time at low hit points waiting for Morningstar to heal him... is this actually the case?


----------



## Piratecat

wedgeski said:


> I get the impression from these combats that Dranko spends a lot of time at low hit points waiting for Morningstar to heal him... is this actually the case?



It doesn't feel that way to me but Morningstar certainly agrees with you. Around this time her player was getting frustrated that there were all these cool things she could do, but she spent every fight healing other people instead. Trying to mitigate that was a multi-step process that involves a few spoilers.  

We're at the stage where monster to-hits have outpaced our AC and every monster can hit us every time with non-iterative attacks. For instance, Dranko's AC at 18th level was 34 (and I don't believe it's gone up any since then); a CR 16 greater stone golem is at +42 to hit. The highest AC in the group is a few points higher than this. 

It was around this point that I made a case for giving all the high AC boosting items to one person who could then try to draw attacks. That would probably help reduce healing and would make sense tactically, but it was seen (by the PCs, not the players) as "Dranko wants all the cool items again!" No one's character liked the idea of one person with all of the cool toys. Everyone has a medium AC instead. It makes my character optimization side twitch a little, but sometimes fairness and good group dynamics should trump tactics. I love that about this group.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

I've never played in a game of that high a level, but having flipped through the MMs a few times and seeing monsters with these insane full attack numbers, sometimes I wonder if there's a certain point where armor is mostly irrelevant except to keep the mooks off you while you deal with the bigger threat.


----------



## Piratecat

Yup. Other than power attack and iterative attacks, moderate levels of armor aren't much better than having no armor at all. I've considered having Dranko do an entire adventure naked, but I expect the other characters would _strenuously_ object.


----------



## Enkhidu

Piratecat said:


> Yup. Other than power attack and iterative attacks, moderate levels of armor aren't much better than having no armor at all...




After about 13th level, our group came to the same conclusion. However, since our major foes always seemed to end up being other humanoids, negating those iterative and power attacks was gold.

One thing that seemed to really help was layered defense. Stone skin + displacement/blur + AC buffs did it for us.


----------



## the Jester

piratecat said:


> yup. Other than power attack and iterative attacks, moderate levels of armor aren't much better than having no armor at all. I've considered having dranko do an entire adventure naked, but i expect the other characters would _strenuously_ object.




do eet.


----------



## coyote6

Piratecat said:


> I've considered having Dranko do an entire adventure naked, but I expect the other characters would _strenuously_ object.




It would be funny -- right up until some giant cranked Power Attack to max with its Huge great axe, and crit-splashed Dranko all over the ceiling and walls. 

You can get higher ACs, with a little work. I had to tone down the AC on an ex-PC turned NPC in my D&D game, as at 18-20th, he could've had an AC that was double-digit points higher than anybody else (mithral full plate + shield + dwarven defender + battlesmith), and had DR 5 or 6/-. He would've been too effective, at least as an NPC ally (anybody that could hit him semi-regularly would be "miss on a 1" versus everyone else, and thus would slaughter the rest of the party). It might've been different if it were a PC. 

(The toned down version had AC 46 or 47 at base, IIRC; he could have had 50, easily. That's before dwarven defender's defensive stance, buffing spells, & the like, never mind Combat Expertise. Or his DR, or 300+ hp.)


----------



## EroGaki

Piratecat said:


> We're at the stage where monster to-hits have outpaced our AC and every monster can hit us every time with non-iterative attacks.




Our group has the same problem when we hit high levels. Now, it is mandatory for all characters to have items/spells that grant concealment/miss chance. Lesser Cloaks of Displacement, armor with the Greater Blurring enchantment, and mirror images are all big things for us; we usually have someone in the party who can craft wonderous items and/or magic arms and armor to accomplish these things, and we use the rules in the Magic Item Compendium to place common enchantments on items. That way, those cloaks of Lesser Displacement can still gain resistance bonuses to AC and stat boosts.

It's a lot of work and gold, but it does help prevent damage so that our resident healer can have fun too.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 315*_
*The Crimson Maw*

The Company resembles a collection of bloody pincushions.  

Had it not been for Morningstar's _mass heal_ seconds earlier, half the party would certainly be dead.  As it stands, everyone has survived, not counting the hapless elemental standing point-blank, and most of Grey Wolf's dire wolves.  One of these has miraculously dodged both of the guardian beast's final explosions; Grey Wolf scratches it behind the ears and feeds it some jerky from his pack before it vanishes.

Without benefit of a second _mass heal_, the party blows many charges of a wand of _cure serious wounds_ to patch up their injuries.  Feeling more himself, Dranko looks at the corpse of the beast and then at his fellows.

“We are some bad-ass rats!”

Now the debate turns to the prospects of a Five Minute Adventuring Day.  It's still morning, but the party has blown a great deal of firepower, especially in the healing department.  They'd very much like to go into the Crimson Maw at full fighting strength, but it's possible that their battle with the dog-toad has been noticed by the goblins, or that its death has triggered some internal alarm.  And of course, every day lost means another tick of the doomsday clock, with the Black Circle's latest plot to rescue Naradawk Skewn looming at midnight.

After five more minutes of heated debate, they decide to risk delay and take a day to recuperate.  This also gives them time to examine the monster's chain and jeweled collar, both magical, as well as to explore this cavern more thoroughly.   Regarding the chain itself, it's enchanted to place a constant _dimensional anchor_ on whatever it constrains.  And on the collar, it turns out that one particular inset ruby radiates the same strong magic as the red glass mirror.  Flicker estimates that the other gems on the collar, if carefully removed, are worth upward of thirty thousand gold pieces.

Morningstar looks thoughtfully at the splattery remains of the monster.  “It's troubling that the goblins are powerful enough to capture and tame this thing.”

Dranko fishes a blanket from his pack.  “Maybe the goblins look through the other side of this, and now they'll see that there's nothing sitting on their portal.”  He arranges the blanket on the mirror, trying to make it look, at a casual glance, like a “faux monster butt.”


* *

On Aravis's behalf, Morningstar shoots off a _sending_ to Pewter.  Not wanting to blow _tongues_ just for this, and thinking it would be good to work out some kind of feline code, they settle on this:

*Hey Pewter.  We are well.  Are you?  One meow for 'dire peril,' two if 'danger,' three if OK, four for 'have info, come soon.”*

The return sending is three meows, followed by a pause, followed by 22 conversational-sounding meows that Morningstar is, alas, not able to understand.

Their attention now turns to the mirror.  Ernie's _true seeing_ uncovers nothing illusory or concealed, but Kibi's _analyze portal_ (spoofed via _limited wish_) is quite revealing.  He learns that in order to open the portal, one must hold the magical ruby from the collar and speak out loud the words “Maglubiyet's Fortress.”  He also gets a brief glimpse of the other side, though this is somewhat less enlightening.  His view is looking straight down, as if from the top of a tall building, at a rocky red landscape, hilly but otherwise featureless.  What he finds strange is that his own point of view seemed to be _moving_.

The Company's only other interesting activity that day is the exploration of a naturally-concealed fissure along the left wall of the cavern.  They spend a few _wind-walked_ hours exploring, as the narrow crack leads to a tall vertical shaft with an ancient ladder.  At the bottom this tube empties into a large connected complex of natural caverns with narrow footpaths, and these lead to more areas long-ago occupied by goblins.   Like the ruins above, these ancient goblin caves have been abandoned for centuries.


* *


_Heroes' feasted_ and _wind walked_, the Company activates the portal early the next morning.   Ernie is still solid and _flying_ via his magic shield, so that he can hold the ruby.

“Maglubiyet's Fortress!”

The mirror loses its reflective property and becomes an opaque shimmering red.  They step onto it, and descend through.

Unexpectedly, they don't _stop_ descending.  All seven of them find themselves in free-fall, solid as rocks and plummeting like them as well.  Ernie's _fly_ spell seems to be failing him.  

Splat!  They land on a hard rocky slope, badly bruised.  A few bones are broken.  Lesser folk would have been dashed to pieces.  High above them a horizontal red disk zips into the distance, soon vanishing into the hazy red air.   Given Kibi's glimpse of the previous day, it's likely that the portal was moving even as they emerged.  Their _telepathic bond_ is still intact, meaning that the portal did not strip them of _all_ enchantments.

Ernie groans, stands, and when the party has collected themselves, casts a mass curative.   The terrain around them is as Kibi expected, little red rocky hills that make it hard to see very far in any direction.   But almost immediately they hear guttural voices sounding from the other side of the nearest hill, not more than fifty feet distant.   Kibi immediately casts a silent _veil_ to make them all look like – what else? – rats.  They scatter like rodents, with Ernie and Dranko moving toward the voice.  Kibi activates _tongues_ and listens to the voices.

“Are you... sure?  Over... there?”

“Yeah!  I can't believe you... didn't... hear it!”

The speech of the goblins is punctuated with gasping breaths.

Ernie crests the nearest hill and sees three goblins soldiers.  They wear red and black uniforms with the symbol of Maglubiyet's Fist prominently displayed.   They are lugging _enormous_ packs on their backs, bulging at the seams and towering over their heads.  Swords are belted to their sides.  They look exhausted, and their sweaty clothes and dog-tired expressions speak of a truly crappy day.

It's about to get much worse.

Ernie rushes forward, and if the goblins are surprised to see a rat here, they don't have time to react.  The rat swipes with a fore-paw and the head of one goblin is shorn neatly from its shoulders.  Ernie cleaves into the next one, sending it reeling.  Dranko's whip trips the wounded goblin and deftly snaps the neck of the third.

Lying on the ground still bound to his heavy pack, badly wounded, and staring at the severed head of his fellow, the surviving goblin croaks, “I surrender!  I surrender!”

Morningstar approaches and casts _mind probe_, stealing answers to her questions straight from the poor goblin's mind without it even knowing:


The goblin, Garogg, is a grunt, and has never heard of Maglubiyet's Fang.
The Iron Tower is several miles away; Garogg indicates a direction.  He doesn't know anything about its specific defenses, though several thousand goblins are camped in its immediate vicinity.
Garogg doesn't know when the army is being deployed.  He has orders to be prepared to move out on very short notice.  If there's a signal to muster, he doesn't know that either.  His commander will tell him.
The Champion of Maglubiyet is, he assumes, the war-chieftain Glemiyal.  Garogg has never seen Glemiyal's face, but his mind contains an image of a tall, heavily-armored goblin with a glowing red sword.  He guesses Glemiyal is quartered in the Iron Tower.
As far as Garogg knows, there are no other living things in the Crimson Maw besides goblins.  And, apparently, rats.
The command structure is fairly standard for large armies.  They operate in small platoons of twenty, with twenty such groups comprising companies of four hundred.  The companies are grouped into four or five divisions, each of which has (he guesses) between ten and fifteen thousand goblins.  His division is called Selkik – all of the divisions are named for great goblin heroes.
The goblins camped in the Crimson Maw have no need to eat or sleep.
Garogg was not born here; like all the goblins, he was born in the Underdark.  
The goblin army has many hundreds of highly trained sorcerers and clerics.  He doesn't know if any of them are capable or raising the dead.
He was walking around with the other two goblins, because the three of them had gotten into some unauthorized fisticuffs.  Now they're being made to run circuits with full pack as punishment.
It will be about an hour before his commander notices his failure to return.
It is highly unusual for a soldier to go missing here in the Maw.
He can't think of much that would explain a random goblin's death.  Sometimes goblins do kill one another in arguments, but that's very rare.   There are two levels of punishment here:  for minor infractions, circuits with full pack.  For major transgressions, heavy objects are tied to the offender, who is then thrown in the lake.
Garogg doesn't recall what it's like to feel fear.  Even now he's having trouble remembering why exactly he surrendered.  He does think he felt fear before being quartered in the Maw, but the memory of that is dim.


Ernie consults briefly with Morningstar over the mind-link, then kicks the goblin savagely in the kneecap.   Morningstar casts _modify memory_ to give the goblin a different recollection of the past few minutes.   Garogg now believes that the other two goblins killed each other in a heated argument, and he himself was injured trying to get between them to stop the fight.  He has no memory at all of deadly rats.

The Company watches stoically as Garogg gets painfully to his feet, unable to put any real weight on the busted knee.  He throws off his 75-lb. pack, takes a few steps, then looks back, conflicted.  With a sigh – and presumably a good idea of what will happen if he returns unencumbered – he again shoulders the pack, winces in pain, and hobbles away over the rocks.



* *


The sky is uniformly red, with no sun or other celestial bodies to explain the source of light.   There are high mountains at the edges of their vision, and no signs of buildings.   _Everything_ here is red, dull, irritating, monotonous, and hot.  Each member of the Company feels unusually tense and uncomfortable.  Dranko grumbles that if the Crimson Maw prevents sleep, they won't be able to regain spells.  Morningstar, a professional, disproves this theory by dropping immediately to sleep.  That's one worry out of the way, at least.

Ernie tries another _wind walk_, but the spell simply fails.   The Crimson Maw itself seems to suppress the ability to fly.  So, on foot, the cluster of rats scurries off in the direction of the Iron Tower.

After a slow hour of marching the Company begins to hear the noise of a crowd.  The sound steadily increases until the party crests a hillock and sees before them the edges of an armed camp.  They are not high enough for a true bird's-eye view, but the camp is filled with dozens of small, crude tents and hundreds of goblins.   A large group of soldiers is performing calisthenics with startling discipline.   Other goblins, all in identical uniforms, are talking or resting.  What's most immediately odd about the camp is the absence of cook-fires or the smell of food.

Rather than sneak through the tents, the Company opts go around, keeping a large enough distance that the nearest goblins won't hear stray rocks or see loose scree sliding down from the ridge.  Soon the camp is  well behind them, and the party makes good time sticking to the ridge-line.   Ten minutes later they again hear approaching goblins, this time a few dozen feet below them, heading toward the camp they had recently left.   These are in fancier versions of the standard goblin uniform, and one of them has a handful of papers.  Morningstar listens with _tongues_, and soon ascertains that these are mid-level officers on an inspection tour.  They are talking idly of the combat-readiness of the divisions, and which companies will be deployed as scouts once the invasion begins.  

Finally the Company labors up a particularly high peak on the ridge and gets a decent look around.  They see a sprawling encampment below, at least five thousand goblins moving amongst a small city of tents.  There is still no sign of the Iron Tower.  As the rats catch their collective breath, Dranko spies a small number of running goblins crest a hill on the far side of the camp.   Two head to a command tent in the center of the goblin mass, while other others continue onward, soon vanishing from sight.  Several minutes later there's a flurry of activity, orders are issued, and about thirty goblins start climbing the hills ringing the camp.   These take up sentry positions along the ridges, one of them not more than a hundred yards from where the party is watching.  It lifts a spyglass and looks around on both sides of the ridge, and others of the hastily-deployed sentries are doing the same.  The rats take shelter behind a boulder.

“Maybe,” Flicker whispers to Dranko, “the goblins have discovered that your blanket is not actually a huge monster butt.”


...to be continued...


----------



## theskyfullofdust

What are the levels of the party at this stage? And how far behind is this update now?

Really enjoying the story and looking forward to learning more about the Maw. 

Thanks for sharing.


----------



## Sagiro

theskyfullofdust said:


> What are the levels of the party at this stage? And how far behind is this update now?
> 
> Really enjoying the story and looking forward to learning more about the Maw.
> 
> Thanks for sharing.



The party had recently hit 18th level at this point -- the fight against the Guardian of the Maw was their first combat at 18th.

The Story Hour is about 25 runs behind the actual game; in "real life" the party is one more session away from achieving 20th level.

In terms of real time, the party entered the Crimson Maw on September 1, 2008.  So, still plenty of catching up to do!


----------



## theskyfullofdust

Thanks  How's play been at nearly 20th level?


----------



## Sagiro

theskyfullofdust said:


> Thanks  How's play been at nearly 20th level?



Challenging!  

At 18th-20th level, and with a 6-PC party that includes two high-level clerics and two high-level wizards (plus an effective spellsword, an optimized-for-sneak-attacks rogue/lasher, and a rogue NPC), there's very little the party cannot do if they want to.   Also, with so much divination magic at their disposal (commune, legend lore, vision, etc.) there's very little they can't find out.  On top of that, I'm a total softy when it comes to handing out loot, so the party is loaded down with powerful magic items.  And, finally, if I challenge them _too_ much, they can whip out miracles and wishes.

The sorts of adventures I can challenge them with have become harder to invent, and I often solve that problem by giving them quests in Unique And Epic Locations(tm) that have unusual rules.  The Crimson Maw, for instance, is a demi-plane that prohibits flight and teleportation.

It's a fine line, though.  On the one hand, limiting the party's toolset makes them approach problems in new and fresh ways*, and often improves the game.  On the other hand, they've _earned_ that toolset, and it's pretty unsporting to keep nerfing their powerful cool abilities.

* In one of the next couple installments, you'll see how the party figured out how to completely do an end-run around an absolutely majestic set-piece I had envisioned.  And you know what?  It was my own damned fault!  You could hear the sound of my head-smack from three blocks down when they realized they could [details redacted].


----------



## theskyfullofdust

I know what you mean. I've never played or ran games at that level before (usually end a campaign around early teens) but I am use to players completly bypassing set-pieces and encounters by coming up with ideas I hadn't anticipated, or something I had forgotten about; and I too have been generous with loot in past games (but not so much these days, I make them earn every item) and regretted it later. Having more political games helped, since they couldn't just slaughter everyone, and having consequences as a result of their actions can help make them think twice about their tactics [burn a village to kill a demon, the king's not going to look kindly towards you, that sort of thing].

Looking forward to seeing how they tackle the Maw and the head-smacking


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> The Story Hour is about 25 runs behind the actual game; in "real life" the party is one more session away from achieving 20th level.




So 25 runs up from our story, who's about to take what in Epic Classes?


----------



## Piratecat

Woot, 20th level! Screw you, Octesian!


----------



## kuragara

*Break out the foul cigars...*



Piratecat said:


> Woot, 20th level! Screw you, Octesian!




Yes it is time to rejoice as Octesian is no more and we are 20th level
Still can't help thinking we're doomed


----------



## Siuis

Congratulations folks! That's what, 2 levels every year you've been playing aye? I wish I had a game whose story was worth that...

Hey PC, what are the odds of Dranko re-earning his fame as some sort of epic reward? For extra points, make him choose between the possibility of recognition, or a colossal elemental's eyeball


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Piratecat said:


> Woot, 20th level! Screw you, Octesian!




Huzzah, hurrah and hooray!


----------



## MorningstarofEll

**whew**

We did it!!!!!!!!!

I don't think I'd ever want to run a campaign at this level..I'm not sure how Sagiro does it.     From my side at least our combats frequently feel like mad scrambles through our character sheets to pull out SOMETHING that will keep us alive a bit longer.    We have some combinations that get used repeatedly but we have to come up with new things all the time in order to make it through.

Everyone except the NPC rouge is a spellcaster and the number of variables we can pull out to try in combat is pretty overwhelming.  I won't give away too many spoilers..but last nights combat had a team of Ellish priestesses helping out as well..so there were something like 17 spell casters on our side of the fight.

The Octesian fight has been hanging over us for just about 5 months in real time.  It lasted 3 sessions..and the sessions were very spread out due to a lot of people being busy with their real lives.  One big reason for a lot of the delays was Grey Wolf and I having a baby   Our baby is  4.5 months old now and we've finally finished the fight!

I feel like we worked  hard and did justice to the story and that feels great!  (and after the last combat I think I am maybe even looking forward to sitting back and casting HEAL, HEAL, MASS HEAL, HEAL for a bit!!!)


----------



## Piratecat

MorningstarofEll said:


> From my side at least our combats frequently feel like mad scrambles through our character sheets to pull out SOMETHING that will keep us alive a bit longer.



_Such_ a satisfying fight.

I don't know about anyone else, but one of my goals when I level up Dranko is to simplify his character sheet. I'm going to get rid of minor magical items that make things harder to track, I'm going to list out what bonuses he gets from where, and I'm going to try to streamline the sheet to eliminate some of the cruft. We'll see how it works.


----------



## MorningstarofEll

Yeah, archiving some of the lower level stuff is a good idea... this combat was particularly challenging because I had the usual 3 pages of character sheet/items, 6 pages of spells (long-ish because I have a one line mini-cheat for each one to remind me what the heck they do and what page of which book to find t hem  in) PLUS 3 or 4 pages of ava dormo abilities, 3 pages describing the abilities of the priestesses involved, the godsend of a cheat sheet you made me, and the handy page KidCithulu made with all of the stuff she cast on me.   I swear when I looked down the page I needed was never there!


----------



## blargney the second

That sounds awesome!  I can't wait to read about it. 

Do you have more to do in the campaign, or was that the capstone?


----------



## kuragara

blargney the second said:


> That sounds awesome!  I can't wait to read about it.
> 
> Do you have more to do in the campaign, or was that the capstone?




Nope, got to go after two more evil red armor 
folk and likely pick a fight with an imprisoned god.
In short, we're doomed
But what else is new?


----------



## kuragara

MorningstarofEll said:


> One big reason for a lot of the delays was Grey Wolf and I having a baby   Our baby is  4.5 months old now and we've finally finished the fight!




yeah, he began his early arrival on the night I working on the miniature for this battle.  I blame the tentacles


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

MorningstarofEll said:


> The Octesian fight has been hanging over us for just about 5 months in real time.  It lasted 3 sessions..and the sessions were very spread out due to a lot of people being busy with their real lives.  One big reason for a lot of the delays was Grey Wolf and I having a baby   Our baby is  4.5 months old now and we've finally finished the fight!




Congratulations on the baby! Another gamer brought into the world.


----------



## Siuis

Ach, you all are killing me!
All these subtle hints (subtle as a Dranko at least) about your cool superawesomebossfightextraordinaire extravaganza, and we don't get to see it! For a good while, at least...

Is anyone sure that these posts all come from the players? Maybe Sagiro is posting all these teasers under psuedonyms; an extra layer of illigitimate rodentry, maybe? Don't know the man enough to put it past him...


----------



## Everett

So, then... what epic classes are the company thinking of taking?


----------



## Piratecat

I don't think anyone has even considered epic classes. At lvl 20, it'll be at least six months before we'll need to think about it. Speaking just for myself, Dranko would continue in rogue or lasher. I don't think we'll be using the Epic Handbook as written in any case. 

I'll post my lvl 20 sheet for anyone curious. This doesn't have the personal history, personal rules or information about his church; it does have the souvenir list and all current combat stats (along with a few typos).


----------



## Joshua Randall

That's actually not that bad of a PC sheet in terms of complexity, for 20th level.

At least you have your attack bonuses written out and don't have to calculate them every... single... time.... (That's my #1 pet peeve when DMing.)


----------



## Piratecat

Joshua Randall said:


> That's actually not that bad of a PC sheet in terms of complexity, for 20th level.
> 
> At least you have your attack bonuses written out and don't have to calculate them every... single... time.... (That's my #1 pet peeve when DMing.)



Thanks. I've worked hard to simplify it; with two archmagi, a sword mage and two near-epic-level clerics in the group, we get a lot of buff spells. Knowing what bonuses come from where really helps. 

Even so, it's amazing how long my attack round can take if I don't start early. Rolling 1d3+1d6+12+7d6 (reroll 1s) for five attacks takes a stupid amount of time; each round it's 5d20 and then 45 d6, of which 40 need to be treated specially. I've either started using Machdice on my iphone to calculate them, or rolling damage during other peoples' turns and making a list. Then I roll my attacks during my own turn and just cross out the damage numbers as they come up. Saves time!

This sheet is simpler and cleaner than my previous version. For instance, I was at a loss as to where my +4 resistance bonus to saves was coming from until I found a scrap of paper two years old that mentioned Dranko was wearing a cloak of resistance +4. Who knew? I had included it in my stats at the time but never wrote it down anywhere else. Quite the mystery for a little while. 

Considering my tentacle bargain, I am going to retrain leadership this level. I'm considering Craft Wondrous Object (oh +5 amulet of natural armor, you're looking _goooood_) or a feat that gives -4 to AC for +2 to hit. Considering how many times I barely miss during iterative attacks, and how much damage I do when I hit, it'd probably be worth it.

One thing this sheet doesn't have is the grand list of unused items we're selling or donating to our followers; I'll be working to liquidate those in the coming game.


----------



## SolitonMan

I just finished re-reading this story hour - mostly from the 914-page PDF (thanks Steve!!) - and finally through the end of the thread.  It doesn't lose a thing on repetition, and if anything is even more entertaining!  

Thanks to all of you for sharing your awesome game on this board!  I'd love nothing better than to be part of such a long-running group, and to share in such epic adventures.  But barring that, this thread and others like it are a personal source of great enjoyment.  Good luck with your continuing triumphs (both in game and out)!!


----------



## SolitonMan

Sagiro said:


> _*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 303*_
> *Looks Like I Picked A Bad Day To Start Casting 'Status'*
> 
> ...
> 
> Something horrible happens.
> 
> Actually, to start with, _two_ horrible things happen.   There's a tiny hiccup in the flow of time around them, and when reality normalizes a split-second later there's an enormous bone construct looming over them.  It's vaguely in the shape of a humanoid but has obviously been cobbled together from hundreds, maybe thousands of bugbear bones.  Its complex interior is full of weird moving parts and rope pulleys that allow various sharpened bits to swivel around and stab outward.     Animated bugbear arms stick out all over the place.   The huge top section tilts down, allowing a synchronized array of over thirty bugbear skulls to look upon  them – but they sweep back and forth, seeing nothing.  Morningstar's _hide from undead_ has foiled them for the moment.
> 
> The second awful thing is that Ernie has become entirely obscured by a cloud of greasy black smoke.   For the first time Morningstar gets a ping from her _status_ spell – Ernie's condition has changed to “undead.”
> 
> ...




I was curious about this on my recent re-read.  What exactly did Zeg do to Ernie to turn him into an undead creature, and more importantly, how did he do it while (apparently) in a time stop?   Did the cloud he created simply surround Ernie while Zeg was time stopped, and the effect occurred once normal time resumed?

This seems like a really cool spell/effect, and I'd love to use it on some enemies.  Any information would be great to hear.  Thanks!


----------



## Piratecat

SolitonMan said:


> I was curious about this on my recent re-read.  What exactly did Zeg do to Ernie to turn him into an undead creature, and more importantly, how did he do it while (apparently) in a time stop?   Did the cloud he created simply surround Ernie while Zeg was time stopped, and the effect occurred once normal time resumed?



I know it's a spell in the Book of Vile Darkness, but I forget the name. KidCthulhu couldn't make that session - I think she was sick - so it's quite possible that Sagiro let it affect Ernie in a time stop even when that wasn't normally possible. It was a _very_ handy way to make sure no one had to play Ernie as a NPC that evening.


----------



## Kaodi

What ever happened in your campaign anyway, PirateCat? Did somebody mention that it ended a few posts or pages back? Did the Defenders of Daybreak carry the day?


----------



## MorningstarofEll

you know I didn't notice the title of that run..but I sure didn't continue casting status as a default spell  for very long!  Maybe I should go back to it..or maybe I just don't want to know these things!


----------



## Joshua Randall

Piratecat said:


> Knowing what bonuses come from where really helps.



Oh yes. Bonus stacking (or not) is both a blessing and a curse. 

I've actually created spreadsheets to track this, using separate columns for each type of bonus and the MAX function to figure out the largest bonus of each type, then summing them up. But doing it by hand can also work if you're not lazy like I am.



> Even so, it's amazing how long my attack round can take if I don't start early.



Have you thought about figuring out your average damage, and then simplifying the damage expressions?

For example on 1d3+1d6+12+7d6 (reroll 1s) I think the average damage is something like 2+3.5+12+7*(4.5) = 49 points of damage. So you could simplify the damage expression to something like 40+2d6.

(I believe towards the tail end of 3.5, the designers recommended doing this with monster damage rolls.)

Of course the downside of this is that you can never get a truly spectacular roll, like a ton of 5s and 6s, that would add up to a lot more than 52.



> or a feat that gives -4 to AC for +2 to hit. Considering how many times I barely miss during iterative attacks, and how much damage I do when I hit, it'd probably be worth it.



Yesss... maximizing attack bonus is the first step towards the Optimizer Side... feeeeel your rage flow through you, then strike down your enemies and your journey will be complete!

(And, oh man, -4 AC / +2 attack is fantastic as a finisher, or if you are about to unleash a full-round attack of like five iteratives!)


----------



## Piratecat

Joshua Randall said:


> Yesss... maximizing attack bonus is the first step towards the Optimizer Side...



First step? Sagiro will tell you I'm the biggest optimizer in the group! I don't go overboard or make choices that are out of character (Dranko's low wisdom and int help confirm this, since every time I lose a skill point I cry a little), but I like having a PC who does a few things very well. My hope is that fun roleplaying helps hide the tendency to optimize, or at least makes it tolerable.

I love rolling dice too much to regularly simplify the damage expression. I'd probably do this if combat was dragging, though. Not a bad idea at all.

Kaodi, the Defenders campaign ended about two years ago in a great, great finale. I shouldn't talk about it here but could write up a summary if anyone is curious. Our current 4e campaign is discussed here.

EDIT: message gotten! I don't want to clog up this thread with more responses to this; I'll holler when I have something written. Thanks for the interest.


----------



## The_Warlock

Piratecat said:


> ... if anyone is curious.






(Threadjack complete, PS, that's a YES in case it was unclear)

Now back to being thrilled with the Adventures of Abernathy's Company....


----------



## blargney the second

Piratecat said:


> I shouldn't talk about it here but could write up a summary if anyone is curious.[/url].



Yes, please!


----------



## Kaodi

Piratecat said:


> Kaodi, the Defenders campaign ended about two years ago in a great, great finale. I shouldn't talk about it here but could write up a summary if anyone is curious. Our current 4e campaign is discussed here.




PirateCat, I doubt there is anyone who used to read your old Story Hour that _isn't_ interested,  .


----------



## Thornir Alekeg

Piratecat said:


> Kaodi, the Defenders campaign ended about two years ago in a great, great finale. I shouldn't talk about it here but could write up a summary if anyone is curious.




I don't know why you would think anybody would be interested in that. Its not like the Defenders of Daybreak story hour had thousands and thousands of page views or anything...

Honestly, your story hour stopping was like the premature end of a TV series.  Please at least give us the two-hour special to wrap the series up. 


Saigiro, please don't get any ideas about stopping *this* story hour early.


----------



## Siuis

That's another yes for the write-up, PC.
ALSO, how does the group dynamic hold together? I know it's a weird question but... How do you guys develop organic relationships with each other? With exception of a single player, there is no way anyone in my group will treat me differently as a character than they would if it were us in person.

I went so far as to yell at someone to "quit refering to the downed guy as the 'dazed character' since he might be dead for all you know!". Entire battles of consisting only of meta-dialogue get iritating though... I admire your verisimilitude.


----------



## Piratecat

Siuis said:


> ALSO, how does the group dynamic hold together? I know it's a weird question but... How do you guys develop organic relationships with each other? With exception of a single player, there is no way anyone in my group will treat me differently as a character than they would if it were us in person.



This erupted quite early on when we had a few complete sessions devoted to the discussion of whether or not we were going to have to kill the prisoner. Oh, we hated those. With a mixture of neutrals and goods, thrashing out these issues was usually painful -- but once we did we never had to discuss them again. Morningstar's character is the remaining neutral (Dranko slowly switched up to NG) and we're sensitive to the fact that she's pragmatic and willing to make some sacrifices others aren't. When there's a tricky moral quandary we vote. Majority rules, minority acquiesces gracefully (with a few justified "I told you so's" when everything goes poorly.)

Interestingly, the group are such good roleplayers that it never even occurs to me to treat the other characters as their players. I know the things which make their heroes angry, and it isn't what upsets the players; we make a conscious effort in combat to make decisions based on what the PCs would know or feel. It isn't always combat optimal, but it's always satisfying. We all really respect the other players, too, so it's easy to do whatever will make the game most fun for them, as well.

I really credit this to the fact that the campaign has been running for 16 years with remarkably low turnover. I forget if the "new guy" is Aravis or Grey Wolf, but they've been in the game for 14 years!

Meanwhile, in tonight's game we found out what happens when you feed wine to a lion, and we found out the hard way what can happen when you don't investigate a problem quickly enough. While we were saving tens or hundreds of thousands of people from Octesian, we lost an entire city to a particularly horrific aspect of a different enemy. Oof.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Piratecat said:


> Meanwhile, in tonight's game [...] we found out the hard way what can happen when you don't investigate a problem quickly enough.



Dude, you found that out, like, nine years ago when you didn't promptly investigate the Oasis Mage's Guild.


----------



## The_Warlock

Joshua Randall said:


> Dude, you found that out, like, nine years ago when you didn't promptly investigate the Oasis Mage's Guild.




OOooh, now that's a low blow...[do you have the feat for that?]


----------



## Shmoo

Bumpy bump bump.


----------



## Everett

I can't pretend that I tripped over the Story hour and *bumped* it, since I know perfectly well where it is.

Any updates on the horizon?


----------



## steeldragons

So I've just "caught up" to the current present of "Chapter 3." (Haven't even thought about starting 1 or 2 yet. My mind is too blown.)

First of all, WOW. Wow to Sagiro the DM. The variety and intricacies of the plots...keeping things interesting and challenging for such a high powered group...

Wow to Sagiro the writer....keeping the read entertaining...making just about any NPC encountered feel like a fully fleshed out realized character...even if they just have one line...the treatment of magic (especially given the sheer amount possessed/usable by the group)...sometimes just stating: "so-and-so casts _xyz_" sometimes going into very nice visual descriptions of effects...and never having it seem cheesy or over- or under-done.

Wow to Piratecat, Avaris, and all of the other players in the group. Keeping their characters real and grounded. i.e. Even though they can use a "wish" to get home simply because they're out of "greater teleports" for the day...they still have concerns about their various futures and their capacity to deal with who/what's next on the "to do list" and there's a very real sense that even as powerful as they are any of them could die. The characters have fear and uncertainty as well as quirks and confidence that is palpable and very life-like.

Wow that you've all been in this group for 16 years!?! Gods you guys are a lucky, and gifted, bunch.

Kudos to all and XPs all around. Can't wait for the continuing story.
Thanks for the adventure.
--Steel Dragons


----------



## Kilroy

Kaodi said:


> PirateCat, I doubt there is anyone who used to read your old Story Hour that _isn't_ interested,  .




I've been waiting for the end for the better part of a decade.  Please don't Wheel of Time us!  

(And a thanks to Sagiro for keeping his alive for so long.  It's appreciated.)


----------



## Sagiro

steeldragons said:


> Kudos to all and XPs all around. Can't wait for the continuing story.
> Thanks for the adventure.
> --Steel Dragons




Hey there!  Thanks so much for your post; we really are a lucky bunch, to have had such low turnover over so many years.   And for me, having wonderful players who stay invested in the game is a large part of what keeps me going.

Speaking of which...  I apologize to all of you for the drop-off in updates.  I'm just going through one of those crazy-busy periods, with other stuff sucking away all of my free time.   Although I left my old job back in February, I've recently taken on a regular contracting gig, which uses up most of the time I'm not spending taking care of the kids.   On top of that, my lovely wife has scheduled me a busy weekend social calendar for the summer.  (Just got back from a camping trip, in fact, which included Aravis and his family.)  The result:  not much time to write Story Hour.  But I'm sure the wheel will turn eventually, and I'll continue writing.  You all still have my promise that this Story Hour will someday conclude!

-Sagiro


----------



## Piratecat

Don't bet on it. Sagiro's a great big jerk, and after what he pulled at the game last night we may throttle him before he has a chance to finish the story. We were _forcibly _reminded that if we like someone, they must be eeevil. It'd been just long enough that the rule had slipped our minds.

Rat. Bastard.


----------



## Tamlyn

Tease.


----------



## Sagiro

It's a short update, but after this long I wanted to post _something_...

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 316*_
*Undermining*

The immediate problem, then, is that they must get past the closest goblin sentry without doing anything the other sentries will notice.  Worse, the ridge grows narrower at the spot where the sentinel stands, its rocky top little more than a three-foot-wide fly-walk with a steep drop on both sides.   The interposing goblin stands at the top of a thin switchback-trail which leads down into the goblin encampment.

After a quick discussion of options over the mind-link, Kibi casts _charm monster_.  “This never works,” he grumbles as usual.

It works!  The goblin blinks a couple of times and looks around in confusion.  Kibi quickly puts on his semi-sentient Cloak of Diplomacy.

“Excuse me!” he calls.  The goblin looks down and sees... rats?   Talking rats?  Is he going crazy?  He had just been tasked with reporting anything unusual, and this certainly meets the criteria.  But... but... that grey one in the front is his friend, he's sure of it.

“We're a special rat task force sanctioned by Maglubiyet himself,” Kibi explains.  “We're here to help the goblin armies, but our mission is very, very secret.  Don't look down, or make any sign that you've noticed us.”

The goblin, Margad, nods slightly.  Kibi hears the cloak whisper in his mind:  _What Margad most wants is to be important.  He's sick of being a grunt in the army.  He wants to be an officer, and he's only waiting for a big break._

“If you help us,” says Kibi, “you will gain special favor with Maglubiyet.”

It's all Margad can do to stop himself from dropping to his knees in thanks.

“Are you a high priest?” he asks.

“My boss is a high priest,” Kibi answers.  “He recommended you as someone we could trust.  What are you current orders?”

“To keep my eyes open for anything out of the ordinary,” says Margad.  “Which, I have to say, you _are_...”

“It's extremely important that you _don't_ say anything about us,” says Kibi urgently.  “You are the only one who can know.   We chose you because we know we can rely on your discretion.”

Margad stands up straight.  “I'm honored, sir.  If I may ask, are you a rat, or a goblin _disguised_ as a rat?”

“It's a disguise,” Kibi confides.  

The goblin scratches his head.  “Who are you trying to hide from?  Everyone here is part of Glemiyal's great army!”

Kibi thinks for a moment.  “We're preparing for the invasion against the halflings,” he ventures.  “We hear they have many rats there, so...”

“Ah!  I get it,” says Margad.  “Clever.  It figures the halfling cities are infested with rats.  I hear they live in filth, and are little more than rats themselves.”

“Can I kill him now?” Ernie thinks over the mind-link.

Margad continues.  “Does the fact that you're already disguised mean that the attack is imminent, or even underway?”

“Soon,” says Kibi.  “You'll receive your orders when it's time.”

“What would you like me to do until then?”

“Continue as you were,” says Kibi, “and be sure to report anything unusual.  Just don't mention seeing us, since we're secret agents.  We wouldn't want you to get in trouble.”

“Of course, sir.  You can rely on me!”

“That's why we chose to tell only you.  Your loyalty is beyond question.   Good luck, solider.”

The rats scamper off.  Margad sneaks a peek at them out of the corner of his eye, then consciously turns his back on them with a self-satisfied expression.  He makes a show of looking in a different direction with his spyglass.


* *

The high ridge continues its vertical undulations, but stays perilously narrow for another mile or two,  Eventually the grade opposite the preponderance of goblins becomes gentle enough for the Company to travel a bit faster on the left down-slope, though the stealthy Dranko, who has little trouble skirting the sentries by himself, stays on the high ridge to better keep an eye on goblin activities.  Minute by minute the pack of rats progresses unseen across the high hills of the Crimson Maw; the light never changes, and the murmur of thousands of goblins becomes an ambient noise as persistent as the ocean.  After several hours the ridge tilts steeply upward; Dranko takes point while the rest scramble behind.   There are a few false summits but Dranko finally gains the peak, and his breath is taken away.  Below him, on a huge plain at least two miles across, camps the bulk of the goblin army, at least twenty thousand strong.   Rising up from the center of the army is a craggy mountain, and atop that mountain Dranko can see what is surely the Iron Tower.   

The Tower is a tall black-iron cylinder, seemingly jammed straight down into the sloping side of the mountain.  From this distance its windows are thin vertical lines of glowing red.  Its top is flat and unadorned.   An enormous wide staircase rises from the flat rocky ground to the massive tower gates, a two hundred foot ascent at least.  The goblin army sprawls right to the foot of that staircase.   Dranko squints, but doesn't see any goblins marching up or down the stairs, or stationed on them.

“That’s quite a staircase,” he opines.

In fact, at a normal walking pace, it would take a good five minutes to climb them.   Not wanting to waste the effort, and put off by the thousands of goblins standing in the way, Aravis casts _teleport_ to get them all to the tower’s roof.

It fails.  It would appear that in addition to preventing flight, the Crimson Maw also prohibits teleportation magic.

Faced with this new tactical conundrum, the Company brainstorms.   Once they get _to_ the stairs, Morningstar could block pursuit with a _prismatic sphere._ _Walls of force_ would be similarly useful.  It’s the getting there that’s the problem.  Illusionary party members could serve to draw off enemy forces, but not enough of them.  Can they bring sufficient firepower to bear, to simply blast through the goblin hordes?  Probably not.  Aravis jokingly proposes that they _gate_ in the dwarves from Gurund, and have them dig them a tunnel to the Iron Tower.  Afterward they can stay in the Maw until they’re angry enough to march out and destroy the Guild of Chains.  

Edghar offers to scout for them.  “I look like a rat and move like a monkey.  Who’s going to catch me?  And I’ve got my Horn of Fog to cover my escape, if it comes to that.”

Grey Wolf finds that unacceptably risky.  

Perhaps they can cast _reduce_ and _invisibility_ on everyone except Dranko, who can use  his Robe of Blending to look like a goblin.  Then Dranko could just carry everyone to the tower.  But even with someone riding in the Flask of Body Pouring, that’s too much weight for Dranko to bear.

Could they summon magical horses and pound through the army before it knows what’s happening?  Stylish, yes, but only Grey Wolf is an expert enough rider to be confident of staying in his saddle.

It’s a thorny problem, and it takes them a good half an hour before Aravis hits upon the simple solution.  They can’t fly or teleport _over_ the goblins, and it’s too dangerous to go _through_ the goblins – so they’ll just have to go _under_ the goblins instead.   All kidding about hundreds of _gated_ dwarves aside, he realizes that he himself is the key to the plan -- he can _shapechange_ into a Digger, the void-mouthed tunnel-making creature employed by the orcs of Nahalm!

The Digger claws away rock like it’s butter, scooping the fill into its huge black maw and seemingly annihilating it.   It’s the perfect tool for a job like this one.  The party moves down the far side the ridge, gathers behind a stand of boulders, and spends a few minutes working out the details before putting their plan in motion.

First, while the others keep a careful eye out for sentries, Aravis uses a Rod of Greater Metamagic _silence_ to quietly _shapechange_ into a Digger.  (Inside his face, the sucking black void-maw feels alien and a little bit scary.)  

Then he starts to dig downward at an angle, intending to start with a 20’ descent so that the long tunnel ahead won’t alert any goblins on the surface.  The Digger’s technique back in the orcish territory naturally made a arched and relatively stable tunnel, but Aravis is no expert.  Scree suspects that Aravis’s tunnels will collapse quite readily, but Kibi – who is an expert – corrects Aravis’s technique.  

While Aravis continues to dig, Kibi casts an extended _persistent image_ to mask the hole with an illusion of seamless, unblemished stone.  It’s not long before Aravis is ready to start the long horizontal bypass beneath the goblin army.

Kibi can’t stop grinning as he follows behind Aravis.  “This is great!  Why haven’t we been traveling like this _all the time?_”

Aravis would be happy to explain why not, but his mouth is not made for speaking.  Also, he’s shoveling rock into it as fast as he can.  It’s tiring, but he soldiers on, the others trailing at a respectful distance.   Every few minutes Scree makes a foray to the surface and pokes an eye out, sending course-corrections to Aravis via Kibi.

“There’s something you don’t see every day:  a thousand goblins doing jumping jacks.”

It’s a slow hour of trudging in the dark, the scraping of the Digger’s claws on the stone the only sound they hear.   They pass the time wondering where the rock goes when Aravis eats it.

Dranko hazards a guess.  “Maybe the rock gets stored in an extra-dimensional stomach.”

Morningstar blinks.  “Did you really just say the words ‘extra-dimensional stomach?’  Have I mentioned that our lives are really, really weird?”

It’s a bit daunting to think that thousands of goblin soldiers are gathered only twenty feet above their heads.  But finally Scree guesses that they’re directly beneath the Iron Tower, and Aravis starts to dig upward, leaving a succession of ramps for the party to use for the ascent.  They have to gain about three hundred feet of elevation, since the bottom of the Tower is embedded high on the mountain.  By the time Aravis runs into an inedible iron ceiling, he’s bone-tired.   He turns into a rust monster but finds that the underside of the Iron Tower is impervious.  (On the other hand, all of the metal on his friends’ gear smells like mouth-watering steak.  The rest of the party sidles away nervously.)

“Can we use _discern location_ on Maglubiyet’s Fang?” Ernie asks.

Morningstar shakes her head.  “Not enough information.”

“Same problem with _locate object_” says Kibi.  “We don’t know what it looks like.”

“Maybe _passwall_ will do it,” Aravis suggests.

“We won’t have to,” says Scree, who’s been scouting around beneath the tower’s bottom.   “I’ve found a chamber in the rock, directly beneath the tower.  That room has an iron ceiling, with a trap-door!”

Aravis tunnels to Scree’s discovery:  it’s an ancient and long-disused dungeon.  Rotting skeletons of long-dead victims are still chained to the wall, though most of the bones lie in dusty heaps below the shackles.  A stone staircase rises up along one wall to a clear trap-door in the iron ceiling.  Ernie goes up to listen, and hears a faint chanting from somewhere higher in the tower.  The trap-door is barred from the other side, but it’s nothing that a _knock_ won’t foil.  Dranko slowly pushes open the trap door as quietly as he can and pokes his head up. 

He’s in a uninhabited storeroom with iron walls.  The chanting is now clearer, still above them, but not too far away.  There’s another door at the far side of the room.  He pokes his head back down and grins to the others.

“We’re in!”

…to be continued…


----------



## SolitonMan

Awesome update!  Brilliant work on the part of the party, tunneling through to their goal - the resourcefulness of the players never ceases to amaze!


----------



## SolitonMan

double post - eliminated


----------



## steeldragons

Saw you were next to last on the list! *gasp* (bump.)

Hope you get a chance to leave another update...soooon. 

I've read all of parts 1 and 2 already. Fantastic. If you won't novelize it, I'll do it for you! lol. Or better yet, a series of graphic novels. 

As always, keep up the remarkable play.
Thanks for the adventure.
--Steel Dragons


----------



## Piratecat

Sagiro has been absurdly busy, and due to Otherworld (there's a few spaces left! For goodness sake, come!) we've even had trouble scheduling the next game. Looks like we get to play twice in October, even if they're both at the end of October.


----------



## Aravis

SolitonMan said:


> Awesome update!  Brilliant work on the part of the party, tunneling through to their goal - the resourcefulness of the players never ceases to amaze!




You should have seen the look on Sagiro's face when we came up with that one.

- Aravis


----------



## Everett

One month since an update from Sagiro.  I'm sad.


----------



## Artoomis

Everett said:


> One month since an update from Sagiro.  I'm sad.




Hmmm.... just maybe he's just skipping a month, just like WoTC?


----------



## Everett

Artoomis said:


> Hmmm.... just maybe he's just skipping a month, just like WoTC?




Well, it's now 6 weeks...


----------



## steeldragons

*Group Portrait 1 of ?*

Well, I think this is as good a time as any to get some info for a large group illustration I've been planning on for some time.

If PC, KidChtulhu, or any of the other players (or other readers, for that matter) would be so kind as to help me out with a few specifics. There are a few things that A) I've forgotten or B) never really were explained/detailed (I'm much more prone to think it "A" 

Just fill in for me, wherever you see a question mark.

I'll start with the ones I have a very clear image of and move on with my questions. Of course, if anything that *I* am clearly picturing that the players don't think is accurate, let me know!

-----------------------------------------------------

Ernie: halfling/male; Hair/Eyes: brown//brown; Armor: plate; Signature items: Flying shield, the Dancing Sword, (and now, as in-hand weapon) Tava's Fury. Ernie is "pleasantly plump" with an almost constant bright smile and innocent purity gleaming from large childlike eyes. Hairy is wavy and hangs, neatly (of course), to the shoulders. I always picture, for some reason, a crimson cloak...but given the Yondallan colors, I'm guessing a forest green or wheat-ish gold might be more appropriate.

Morningstar: human/female; Hair/Eyes: very pale blond/ -?- ; Armor: chain (?), I envision no shield since she is such a heavy/always casting; In hand weapon: flail ("morningstar"). Morningstar has been described (on numerous occasions) as "gangley" or "lanky". She is tall (i.e. as tall as the human men, in my mind's eye), pale with features not UNattractive, but not eye-catching either. Her hair does not hang much past her shoulders. I see her with flail in-hand. She's in a long tabbard over her chain (?) armor. The tabbard is trimmed in inverted black triangles and, of course, upon her chest the black and white triangles/diamond holy symbol given to her by Abernathy. (I know her robes/tunic have been described, quite clearly, as black, but I always see her in more of a very very dark purple or maybe a midnight blue...)

Dranko: 1/2 orc/male: Hair/Eyes: black (?)/ -?-; Armor: -?- (I presume he wears something beneath the robes and magic items); In-hand weapon: whip; Signature items: magic whip, robe of blending, invisibility sash. Dranko's skin is a greyish tint (?). His build is toned but nimble. I have no conception of what his hair style is. He will most likely be drawn with a cigar clenched in his teeth with an "I'm awesome" smirk/look on his face.

Flicker: halfling/male: Hair/Eyes: -?- no clue, assuming brown/brown; Armor: -?- assuming leather; In-hand weapon: -?- (a dagger or short sword?); Signature items: the only thing that springs to mind as a "signature" for Flicker is his ring of blinking...which I think he no longer has, (ring of evasion now?) but had for a long time and used fairly frequently.
Basically, I just see Flicker as an average halfling rogue. More toned and scrappy looking than Ernie, perhaps not even in armor but the halfling breeches, billowy shirt, waistcoat combo. Whatever he's wearing of wielding, he will have an endearingly impish/mischievous yet somehow "innocent" look.


----------



## steeldragons

*Group Portrait 2 of ?*

The mages...

Aravis: human/male: Hair/Eyes: blond (?)/ -?-/beard; Armor: none; Signature items: staff of earth & stone, hat of (?) stuff, robes of the magi. Familiar: Pewter, grey tabby cat. Aravis has a neatly trimmed beard and generally "well put together" appearance (a god of cats would be somewhat naturally particular about their appearance, wouldn't he?). I am picturing his "robes" as more of a smart tunic/cloak combo (color suggestions?), the staff strapped to his back, scrolls, wands and pouches nicely organized around his waist. My biggest question with Aravis is the hat. Is it, like, a big brimmed Ganldalfian-type of floppy pointy hat? For some reason I think it was described that way once...confirmation anyone?

Grey Wolf: Is Grey Wolf human or half-elvin?/male; Hair/Eyes: -?-/-?-; Armor: -?- I know he wears some but not what kind (chain?) and I believe he has a shield, but like Morningstar I can't imagine him ever using it since he's casting all of the time; In-hand weapon/Signature items: Bostock (other items/weapons carried?). Familiar: Edgar, a monkey from the Kivian jungle. (What species would that look like, for my reference?) I picture Grey Wolf with a hooded cloak, almost always up to shadow his face/eyes. Armor, cloak and clothing are generally dark, mostly greys or black. It might be cheesy, but I often picture that hood as being an actual grey wolf head/pelt. Does Grey Wolf wear/have any facial hair. I find it easy to see a dark goatee...but don't think that's ever been described before. I see Grey Wolf peering out from under his hood, a generally pessimistic look on his face while magical energy crackles up and down Bostock. 

Kibi: dwarf/male: Hair/Eye: brown-?-/brown-?-/matching beard, of course (Does the beard have any braiding or other decoration?); Armor: none. Signature Items: invisibility sash, headband of intellect, the diplomacy cloak (I know he has some kind of magic bracers or robes, but can't think of what). Do I recall Kibi having an ioun stone(s)? Familiar: SCREE! "shifting pile o' rocks" earth elemental with sapphire eyes. (We heart Scree  I see Kibi, very simply dressed in (probably mostly browns) simple shirt/jerkin/breeches and heavily adorned with magic items of all types. Rings, bracers, wands and scrolls on his belts and bandoliers. Wild/Earth magic sparking across/among/between his hands.


----------



## steeldragons

*Group Portrait 3 of 3, I guess.*

The really sketchy ones...

Kay: half-elf (right?)/female; Hair/Eyes: -?-/-?-; Armor: -?- (I always pictured studded leather); In-hand Weapon: war hammer, Also armed with a bow and the wood-cutting sword. Signature items: the wood cutting sword aaaaaand...??? Special: the air spirit O'lyanna (sp?). I envision Kay as flying, her Yrimpa blowing about her. I'm thinking slightly longer than shoulder length hair...light brown/dark blond in color? It seemed from my reading, that she favored the war hammer for battle, but was that entirely accurate or did she use some other weapon(s) more often?

One Certain Step: human (Kivian)/male; Hair/Eyes: -?-/-?- (assuming black for both); Armor: plate; In hand Weapon: two-handed sword. Now the BIG question for Step, what do Kivian humans LOOK like?! I mean, their culture and cities are beautifully descirbed and I get/got a definite Asian vibe, but I can't tell/decide if Kivian humans actually appear Asian. In other words, should Step's armor be samurai-esque? That's the big question. However he looks, naturally, he will appear as a model of righteous fury emblazoned with symbols of the sun and rays of light of his goddess.

Snokas: half-orc/male: Hair/Eyes: presumed black; Armor: -?-; In hand-weapon: dual picks. Not a whole lot else to do there. Just need his armor type.

Yoba: I'd REEEEALLY like to include Yoba if there's room (just to offset some of the sausage-fest). Halfling female in plate armor covered with a dark-green, gold-trimmed tabbard set with Yondalla's cornucopia symbol with a magic longsword she weilds two-handed. Just need a hair color and style and eye color.

Also (if there's room) perhaps very small looking out from the background, Tor and Mrs. Horn...maybe even Abernathy himself. 

Anyone or anything else that should be noted/included? Feel free to let me know. I'm really looking forward to this and want to make sure not to forget anything/anyone substantial.

Cheers.
--Steel Dragons


----------



## Everett

steeldragons said:


> Aravis: human/male: Hair/Eyes: blond (?)/ -?-/beard; Armor: none; Signature items: staff of earth & stone, hat of (?) stuff, robes of the magi. Familiar: Pewter, grey tabby cat. Aravis has a neatly trimmed beard and generally "well put together" appearance (a god of cats would be somewhat naturally particular about their appearance, wouldn't he?). I am picturing his "robes" as more of a smart tunic/cloak combo (color suggestions?), the staff strapped to his back, scrolls, wands and pouches nicely organized around his waist. My biggest question with Aravis is the hat. Is it, like, a big brimmed Ganldalfian-type of floppy pointy hat? For some reason I think it was described that way once...confirmation anyone?




Can't recall Aravis' hat having ever been mentioned, and can't picture him with a Gandalfian hat, any more than I can see him shouting "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!"  He has a rather quiet, intellectual demeanor, I think.

Everything else sounds good to me.


----------



## steeldragons

Thanks Everett. I have trouble picturing it also. lol. In fact, it wasn't til I went back and read Parts One and Two in StevenAC's PDFs that I ever saw a hat mentioned. 

But it was. Once when dealing with a demon lord in the Slices in Het Branoi- Aravis pulls something out of his hat (a globe of mercury I think it was?) to offer to the demon in exchange for undoing some torment on Dranko. (this is where I think it was described as "floppy brimmed").

And again (or was it "prior to"?)...when attempting to pass through the gartine arch in Delfir. The Black Circle mage in charge of their capture on the alternate earth shouts to his archers to fire at "the one in the hat!" which was, I believe, indicating Aravis.

Yes, my mind recalls these sorts of things/images/scenes...I'm a visual kinda person. So scary, I know.

But like you said...hard to picture...especially if it's Gandalfesque. If I can't find/get confirmation, I may just scrap it...which then leaves the question...

What's Aravis' hair look like? haha.

Also for Aravis, I'm on the fence as to include the starfield eyes of the Crosser's Maze ...I know he doesn't have it anymore but he had it for a while...and I daresay it was sliiiightly, ya know, imperative to the plot/party's successes. 

--SD


----------



## Piratecat

Wow! We're playing tonight for about the first time in two months, and then playing again for an extended game (whoo hoo!) this Sunday. Illness, babies, a glorious glorious Otherworld and travel have wreaked havoc with our schedule. 

I'll ask everyone these questions tonight, and report back. Thank you!


----------



## Everett

I think I recall those instances, as you mention them.  If Aravis' player wants the hat, well, go to then, but even if it was described as "floppy-brimmed", it just doesn't work for me.  There's nothing Gandalfian about Aravis.  His familiar is a tabby cat who calls him "boss".  Come on.

This thread also points to the fact that Gandalf and the world he lives is/are allegories, profoundly religious in nature (Catholic, according to C.S. Lewis and Orson Scott Card.)  The game's universe is a custom, homebrewed pantheon and mythos.

And of COURSE use the starfield eyes: if they aren't the very definition of awesomeness, what is?


----------



## Piratecat

Great game last night. First time we've played in two months, and we passed a campaign milestone that marks the approach of the end. We've crossed Yulan's Barrier into Abernia's Underdark, and there's no going back. Ever. And the surprise that our enemies have left for us make me hate Meledien _even more_, which I didn't think possible. 

I wasn't able to get everyone's full description, so I'll be emailing everyone and getting it straight from the horse's mouth. I'll then post it here. I'll note that as a Shield of Ell, Morningstar definitely has a shield.  She looks a lot like Belinda McClory (Switch from The Matrix) - almost albino, with pale watery blue eyes.

In the movie, Dranko would be played by an uglier and scarred Adam Baldwin. He has one big scar starting at his forehead and travelling down the left side of his face, right over the eye. He wears an eyepatch over the left eye (mostly because chicks dig the eyepatch, and it lets him see invisible, not because he's blind.)  He was bald for a while but currently has tousled black hair and a black van dyke beard. Eyes are black. Skin color is more of a light brown than a gray. About 6' tall, toned (not super-muscular) and nimble.

His robe of blending lets his clothing look like whatever he wants, which is usually a rich mix of scarlet and black, sort of as if a assassin with more money than sense decided to moonlight as a pimp. The mithral chainmail probably peeks through.  The whip, and the pouch (Heward's Haversack) on his hip, are the only needed iconic items.

> He will most likely be drawn with a cigar clenched in his teeth with an "I'm awesome" smirk/look on his face.

Nailed it! Dranko's also a fan of ostentatious wealth. Not needed for any picture, but last session he just spent virtually every gold piece he had on a Helm of Brilliance. Because of its awesome power, you ask? Nah. It's gloriously shiny.  We'll see how long it is before he loses it.


----------



## thegreyman

I'm thinking Dranko would have got it to hide in some room that the big baddy might stroll into, so, during the big climactic fight, he can grin, point at the baddy, and yell "Nuke 'em Aravis!" (or Kibi, whoever goes first) and watch the big baddy's smirk disappear in a rain of small body parts.


----------



## steeldragons

>...as a Shield of Ell, Morningstar definitely has a shield.  She looks a  lot like Belinda McClory (Switch from The Matrix) - almost albino, with  pale watery blue eyes.

Done and done. As you wish it, so shall it be.

>Nailed it!

Haha. Thanks.

>Dranko's also a fan of ostentatious wealth. Not needed for  any picture, but last session he just spent virtually every gold piece  he had on a Helm of Brilliance. Because of its awesome power, you ask?  Nah. It's gloriously shiny.  We'll see how long it is before he loses  it.  

Haha. Love it. Can't wait for the update(s). But, as noted, whip and haversack. Gottit.

Glad you had a great game...Welcome BACK! haha. Two months is a long time to go. But I've no doubt your group took it totally in stride and grace. 

Sorry to hear about a beginning to an end...though, of course "all good things..." n' all that.

My mind is reeling now! Having (I think) a pretty good sense of Sagiro's creative skills (i.e. BRILliant RBDM-ness!), I shudder to think what he's made/caused/has in store within Abernia's Underdark...Shudder, I say!

Only advice I can possibly think of to give is: Kick. Meledien's. @$$!!!..n' tell her I said "hi" while doing so.  lol.

Thanks very much, PirateCat, for the details and the further leg work.

--Steel Dragons


----------



## Siuis

Ach. You, PC, are a tease.


----------



## Piratecat

Nerdgasm: Dranko just hit 5 times in one round for 254 pts of dmg. Yes, I know it's totally power-gamey, but it's never actually happened before. Don't judge me! 

Greywolf is 5' 10", 165 lbs, half elven, 46 yrs old. Shoulder length loose white hair, dark eyes. Avg build, a little buff. Grey cloak hides elven chain, heavy shield, Bostock as his long (suffering) sword. Edghar is a "monkey monkey." (You know. An iconic monkey. Probably pooping in Dranko's boot.)

Morningstar is 6' tall and very skinny. Long white hair. Wears a magical breastplate. Her clothes and cloak are (literally) woven out of the colors of night. Triangular shield with a triangular symbol in it I'll have to draw. Magical morningstar ( the flail kind with a chain and spiked ball.) 

Ernest is 3' tall, 90 lbs. A true 2nd edition halfling! ("I am a doughy folk!") Plate mail, round buckler, long sword. Brown curly hair, brown eyes, freckles, no boots. Frying pan.


----------



## The Axe

Piratecat said:


> ...
> 
> Greywolf is 5' 10", 165 lbs, half elven, 46 yrs old. Shoulder length loose white hair, dark eyes. Avg build, a little buff. Grey cloak hides elven chain, heavy shield, Bostock as his long (suffering) sword. Edghar is a "monkey monkey." (You know. An iconic monkey. Probably pooping in Dranko's boot.)
> 
> Morningstar is 6' tall and very skinny. Long white hair. Wears a magical breastplate. Her clothes and cloak are (literally) woven out of the colors of night. Triangular shield with a triangular symbol in it I'll have to draw. Magical morningstar ( the flail kind with a chain and spiked ball.)
> 
> ...




Hmm; I've always thought of Edghar as being grayish, and Morningstar as having straight, black hair.  Wow---I wonder where that came from...


----------



## Everett

Always figured she'd have black hair too.  Don't know if it was ever mentioned.


----------



## Sagiro

The wheel of the Story Hour turns slowly, but it does still turn.

Though, first:  One Certain Step, like most men of Djaw, had a deeply tanned face, with mildly-slanted eyes and a straight nose.  I never thought much about the style of his armor, but something with a far-eastern flavor wouldn't be far off, I imagine.  He wielded a burning two-handed greatsword from the moment the Company met him, until the moment of his death.  Also, Step was only 5' 5".

Now, have some long-overdue Story:

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 317*_
*Glemiyal*

A quick glance around this bottommost storeroom reveals only common supplies:  pots of paint, a large number of candles, some stone-cutting tools.   From somewhere above them comes a rhythmic chanting, many voices unified in guttural song.

A single door leads from the room; Dranko listens and hears nothing but the chanting.  Flicker checks for traps before easing open the door, and finds an upward-leading staircase immediately on the other side, ascending some 15’ before ending at another door.  The chanting is louder now, and Aravis opines over the mind-link that it’s probably the sound of the goblins moving the opening of the Crimson Maw to Appleseed.

The plan is simple:  open the door, lay waste, stop the ritual.   It’s a bit unnerving to think that just outside the tower are 20,000 more goblins, but they’ll cut that bridge when they come to it.   Buffing spells are hastily applied, and the Company charges up the stairs and bursts into the chamber beyond.

Ernie, Dranko and Aravis are in the lead, and so are the first to see the large round room, 50’ in diameter and with a 30’ high ceiling.  On the center of the floor is a nine-pointed star, painted red, with candles about it in patterns.    A dozen goblins stand around the perimeter of this circle, facing inward.   On the far side of these chanting goblins is an enormous statue of Maglubiyet, God of the Goblins.  

A thirteenth goblin stands with his back to the heroes, arms raised, body clad in armor.  He’s enormous for a goblin – almost six feet tall – and a glowing red sword hangs by his side.     

But all of this is not really what commands attention in the room.  Suspended above the nine-pointed circle, in a column of red light, is an enormous dragon’s tooth.  It turns slowly, this way and that, occasionally stopping for a second, then twitching to a new position, then resuming its slow rotation.  This must be Maglubiyet’s Fang!

The party cannot think of a single thing going on in this room that they ought to let continue.  With misgivings only from Dranko about the loot they might destroy, Aravis drops a _Mordenkainen’s Disjunction_ in the room, placed so that everything except themselves is caught in the effect.

It all vanishes – the Fang, the circle, the goblins, even the statue.   Everything in the room was an illusion!  Some new things are revealed:  a door behind the statue, along with three surprised-looking goblins who had been maintaining the illusion.  Besides them, the room is empty.

Anxious to move on to the main event while their spells are still active, and also desirous that none of these goblins escape to give warning, the party presses the attack.  Grey Wolf moves up the stairs and casts _chain missile_ at the startled goblins, Dranko whips one in the face, and Kibi tosses a _coldfire_ followed by quickened _magic missiles_ that buzz by Dranko’s head.  

Only one of the three goblins survive this barrage, and he bolts for the door.  Dranko trips him with his whip as he runs by, but the goblin falls into the door, pushes it open, and yells, before Aravis can finish him off with another _magic missile_.  

Onward and upward!   Ernie takes the time to cast _true seeing_ before the party opens the door and dashes up a second flight of stairs; they hear more chanting coming from above.    Ernie kicks open the door again, and sees a room identical the illusionary one below, only this time what he’s seeing is absolutely real.

“Ding dong!” he shouts.  “Yondalla calling!”


* *


Glemiyal, Champion of Maglubiyet and hero-figure to thousands of goblins, turns to the doorway where the interlopers are emerging.   He stands tall and confident, his legendary sword Red Harbinger, Bane of Halflings, pulsing red in his mailed hand.   Despite the fact that Ernie’s own sword, Tava’s Righteous Fury,  should be making him invisible to goblins, Glemiyal is staring directly at him.  Flicker dashes up the stairs on Ernie’s heels and stands beside his friend.  

Glemiyal’s face quirks in a smile, looking back and forth for a second between Flicker and Ernie.  He lets out a deep laugh.

“You?  You two?  You’re the halfling lovers I was supposed to fear?  I must say… your kind is more… adventurous than I expected.  Not that it matters.”

And with a flash, Ernie realizes that he never told Yoba about the Crimson Maw.  Yoba, who has spent her entire life combating goblins.   Yoba would have loved to be here for this fight – and, it would seem, was prophesied to have been.

“Just goes to show you something about prophecies,” says Ernie with a grimace.  

Before Glemiyal can respond, Grey Wolf emerges at the top of the stairs and casts an _acid storm_ into the room, blistering the flesh of almost every goblin present.   He follows this with a quickened _fireball_ to the densest cluster of goblins, but all the enemies are still standing when the acid and flames recede.

The goblins chatter quickly among themselves, and Glemiyal points impatiently at the doorway.   Realizing he’s the only one who can see the _invisible_ heroes, he barks a command. 

“Area spells, centered on the door!”

Four _cones of cold_ are loosed upon the only three in the party who have crested the stairs:  Ernie, Flicker and Grey Wolf.   Flicker leaps and twists, avoiding most of the damage, but Ernie and Grey Wolf are badly frosted.    Then two more goblins drop _confusion_ spells upon them.  Grey Wolf blinks his eyes and discovers that the goblins have changed places with his allies!  No, wait… have they?  He’s not sure.  His mind is fogged.  Flicker shakes his head, suffering a similar loss of focus.  

Ernie resists both of the spells, and so he watches with perfect clarity as Glemiyal approaches him, bats away his short sword, and lands a series of telling blows with the Red Harbinger.   The Halfling-bane sword leaves a glowing red afterimage as it cuts the air, as well as a terrible heat that burns in Ernie’s wounds.  Ernie stumbles and falls, conscious only by the barest of threads, blood pouring from rents in his armor.   But a voice sounds in his head, a voice of comfort and resolve.  _Stand fast._  He knows Tava is with him, and he fights off the encroaching darkness.

The rest of the Company moves up to join the attack.  Aravis _shapechanges_ into a huge yellow dragon, of the kind that he fought at the Battle of Verdshane.  He breaths down a cone of crackling electricity that tears some of the goblins to pieces and further damages several more.   Dranko uses a wand to administer _cure critical wounds_ to Ernie before tumbling into position to stand next to his friend.

Glemiyal chuckles.  “What do you hope to achieve?  There’s nothing here you can do!  No matter what happens here, do you intend to fight off my entire when it arrives momentarily?”

“I won’t have to,” Ernie hisses.

“True,” Glemiyal admits.  “You’ll be well dead by then.”

Ernie spits at Glemiyal’s feet.  “You will not live to see Appleseed.”

Most of the surviving goblins are staring up in horror at the dragon, though the bolstering nature of the Crimson Maw somewhat dulls Aravis’s terrifying presence.  

“Forget the dragon!” barks Glemiyal.  “Kill the rest – especially Ernest Roundhill!  He’s on the ground in the pool of blood.”

Goblin warriors charge the Company.  Dranko deftly trips one with his whip.  The rest flail at the spot where they believe Ernie is lying, but their blades either miss or are foiled by the halfling’s plate mail.

Kibi casts a potent spell, moves up into the room, and touches Glemiyal on the leg.  _Otto’s irresistible dance_ is discharged, but unfortunately, due to a _spell turning_ on the goblin champion, the spell is discharged back upon Kibi.  He starts to caper and stomp, and curses up a storm while executing a flawless Dwarven battle-march.

Morningstar squeezes to the top of the stairs and fire off _mass heal_, undoing all the damage done to Ernie and Grey Wolf by the goblin attacks, and wiping away the _confusion_ from Grey Wolf’s mind.   Then she quickens and maximizes a _searing darkness_ that hisses through Glemiyal’s armor.  

Ernie, still on the ground, uses one of the unique powers of _Tava’s Righteous Fury_, calling down a _flame strike_ directly on himself.  Brilliant grass-green flames pour down from above, roasting goblins in holy fire and burning Glemiyal, while bringing only a soothing warmth to himself, Kibi and Dranko.   Then Ernie gets to his feet, enduring a wicked slash from the Red Harbinger as he does so.

A second later the surviving three goblin sorcerers center _chain lightnings_ on the now-visible Ernie.   Crackling red bolts sizzle and hiss, and Ernie again feels his consciousness slipping away... and again Dranko keeps him up, this time with an instantly-cast _close wounds_.  

Flicker sees that Glemiyal is, for some odd reason, dancing.  He lines up his sword and takes a might hack.

“Argh!”  Kibi shouts in pain and frustration.  “Flicker!  This is bad enough already!”

“What?” Flicker shouts.  “Kibi?  Where are you?  Is that you dancing?  I don’t… I don’t…”  

Grey Wolf reaches forward, grabs the barely-conscious Ernie, and bodily lifts him up and back down the stairs, where he slides behind Morningstar.  Glemiyal sighs as his main target is moved to the back rank, and Grey Wolf moves forward to confront him.  

“Fine,” says the Goblin Champion, shifting his focus to Grey Wolf.  “I suppose you’re next.”  The Red Harbinger flashes, trailing its ruddy light, and Grey Wolf is nearly killed by a vicious series of cuts.   Then Glemiyal gestures pointedly to the stairs; from outside the tower they can all clearly hear the sounds of hundreds of feet charging up the long stairway to the tower.

Aravis, hovering above in dragon form, casts a _chain lightning_ of his own down upon the remaining goblin casters.  Two of the three are annihilated in a shower of gore.   Aravis finishes off the third one with a personalized _cone of cold_. 

Glemiyal sees that his support has been entirely eradicated, but merely shrugs his shoulders, conspicuously unconcerned as Dranko steps forward to face him.  

“I’m displeased,” says Dranko.  “You hurt the man I most respect.  So now I have something for you.”

Dranko reaches into that part of his brain that shouldn’t be examined, and draws a great power from his unnatural connection to the Far Realms.

Time stops.  The light from the Red Harbinger hangs in the air like smeared flame.  Bits of goblin flesh both frozen and charred hang still in the air.  The gushing rivulets of blood pouring down Grey Wolf’s armor cease their trails, becoming glistening jewels.  

Madness laps at the corners of Dranko's mind as he considers.  He reaches into his _bag of tricks_ and pulls out a fuzzy ball, which he then places directly opposite Glemiyal.  _Flanking buddy_.  Then, against what should be his better judgment, he reaches into his own madness and invokes _tentacular nature_.   A horrid brown tentacle erupts from the side of his head, whipping around like an angry snake.    His wisdom is now so low that he couldn’t cast clerical spells if he wanted to.  _But I don’t need to cast spells.  I have a tentacle!_

Time resumes, and Dranko is ready.  He unleashes a ferocious barrage of whip-strikes, flanking with a suddenly-appearing brown bear, and finishes by lashing Glemiyal across the face with his tentacle.  Giggling insanely, he shares a conspiratorial moment with his adversary.  “I have dabbled in powers that even _I_ don’t completely understand!”

Now the goblin champion looks concerned.   He idly slashes at the dancing dwarf next to him, while wondering if perhaps Ernest Roundhill has made a bargain with powers more malign than he would ever have expected from a halfling.

Morningstar casts another _mass heal_ upon Kibi and Grey Wolf.  Ernie does the same for himself, using his _quickscroll tube_ to _heal_ himself.

“Ernest!” calls Dranko.  He gestures to the badly-injured Glemiyal and in a voice bubbling with madness shouts, “He’s prepared for you.  Finish him!”

Ernie calls upon his sword and tries to conjure up the Astral Deva, Tava’s Echo.   Unfortunately for him, the very nature of the Crimson Maw precludes summoning spells.

More unfortunately for Glemiyal, it works anyway.  

There is an awful tearing sound as one of the properties of the Crimson Maw is harshly violated, and Tava’s Echo appears, floating off the ground, her heavenly visage glowing with a soft green light.   She looks with disapproval at Glemiyal and brings her own blade down upon him.  Now it is Glemiyal who is driven to his knees.  

Flicker blinks furiously.  His head is so clouded, so confused… but he manages to gain one perfect moment of clarity.  He looks upon the beautiful face of Tava’s Echo, and then to that of Ernie, his friend for so long.

Flicker grins wickedly at Glemiyal, and shouts “I love you Ernie!”

“I love you too, Flick.”

And Flicker drives his sword through Glemiyal’s gut.

…to be continued…


----------



## wedgeski

Brilliant. Masterful touch having Glemiyal expect both Ernie and Yoba.


----------



## steeldragons

Sagiro said:


> The wheel of the Story Hour turns slowly, but it does still turn.
> 
> Though, first:  One Certain Step, like most men of Djaw, had a deeply tanned face, with mildly-slanted eyes and a straight nose.  I never thought much about the style of his armor, but something with a far-eastern flavor wouldn't be far off, I imagine.  He wielded a burning two-handed greatsword from the moment the Company met him, until the moment of his death.  Also, Step was only 5' 5".




Awesome. Thanks Sagiro. (Good thinking, noting the height. I don't think I would have made/envisioned him that short.) 



Sagiro said:


> Now, have some long-overdue Story:
> _
> -snip-_
> 
> …to be continued…




And Awesome two time...as if I was expecting anything less.

Wedgeski hit it on the head, "Masterful."

Thanks, as always, for the adventure.
--Steel Dragons


----------



## Artoomis

As usual, this is *CHOCK FULL OF AWESOMENESS!*


----------



## Everett

Sigh.

I haven't played in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign in two and a half years.  I really don't ever want to play in one again.

But when I read the adventures of Abernathy's Company, I _almost_ want one.

And that is the highest compliment I can bestow.

(And I'll repeat something I said some time ago, for emphasis: they _really_ gotta do something about Flicker's Will save.)


----------



## Piratecat

Flicker's will save is even worse than you think. It's the poster child for why by-the-book epic play raises up all will saves by 1 point across the board. I think it's single digits... and, unsurprisingly with that low low wisdom, Flicker is blissfully unconcerned. 

I'd totally forgotten about Bag-o-Tricks as flanking buddy. Woo! This was a fun game, and we were SO very pleased Ernie stayed alive to bring about Glemiel's first death.

Wait, _first_ death?

That'd be a spoiler, and possibly not what you'd think.

EDIT: Everett, I'm going to be at Anonycon in Stamford CT the first weekend of December. It's walking distance from the Metro North station. I'm running Mutants & Masterminds and Feng Shui instead of D&D, but I'd love to meet and game with anyone from the story hour who wants to come up for it.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> Flicker's will save is even worse than you think. It's the poster child for why by-the-book epic play raises up all will saves by 1 point across the board. I think it's single digits... and, unsurprisingly with that low low wisdom, Flicker is blissfully unconcerned.




Yeah, natch.  He's just so pitiable when he gets mentally incapacitated.




> EDIT: Everett, I'm going to be at Anonycon in Stamford CT the first weekend of December. It's walking distance from the Metro North station. I'm running Mutants & Masterminds and Feng Shui instead of D&D, but I'd love to meet and game with anyone from the story hour who wants to come up for it.




I'd totally love to!  Will anyone else from Sagiro's game be there?  I played Mutants and Masterminds once for five minutes.  Feng Shui as a dice game just sounds like wackiness.  I'll have to register later; I guess the price will go up a little.

Also, will you ever get your own Story Hour out of mothballs?


----------



## Sagiro

Yeah, Flicker's Will save is pretty much beyond fixing at this point.  He has a 7 Wisdom, and will is a "weak" save for his class.  Some quick Save stats for the party, at 20th level.  (In the Story Hour, they're currently 18th, I think.)

Best Saves:

Ernie's Will: +27
Dranko's Reflex:  +25
Flicker's Reflex: +20
Ernie's Fortitude: +20
Morningstar's Will: +20


Worst Saves:

Flicker's Will: +5
Morningstar's Reflex: +10
Kibi's Reflex: +11
Ernie's Reflex: +13
Flicker's Fortitude: +13


While I'm here:

Best Ability Scores:

Kibi's Intelligence: 29
Aravis's Intelligence: 27
Grey Wolf's Intelligence: 26
Morningstar's Wisdom: 26
Ernie's Wisdom: 26

Worst Ability Scores:

Flicker's Wisdom: 7
Aravis's Strength: 8
Dranko's Charisma: 8
Kibi's Charisma: 8
Dranko's Intelligence: 9
Grey Wolf's Charisma: 9
Aravis's Charisma: 9


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

Sagiro said:


> Worst Ability Scores:
> 
> Flicker's Wisdom: 7
> Aravis's Strength: 8
> Dranko's Charisma: 8
> Kibi's Charisma: 8
> Dranko's Intelligence: 9
> Grey Wolf's Charisma: 9
> Aravis's Charisma: 9




Man, your players are a bunch of power-gamers, with all those Charisma dump stats.  Don't any of you care about role-playing and unique character concepts that don't fit traditional stat patterns?


----------



## Piratecat

It was 2e! I call a mulligan!


----------



## wedgeski

Piratecat said:


> EDIT: Everett, I'm going to be at Anonycon in Stamford CT the first weekend of December. It's walking distance from the Metro North station. I'm running Mutants & Masterminds and Feng Shui instead of D&D, but I'd love to meet and game with anyone from the story hour who wants to come up for it.



So how can we tempt you over the pond for a beer with your UK readership?


----------



## Piratecat

Everett said:


> I'd totally love to!  Will anyone else from Sagiro's game be there?  I played Mutants and Masterminds once for five minutes.  Feng Shui as a dice game just sounds like wackiness.  I'll have to register later; I guess the price will go up a little.



My games (Antiheroes Too and Infestation) will probably fill up quickly. If you think you may come, I'd suggest swinging by their Warhorn site and staking out space. Ernie's player might be there; Cerebral Paladin, Orichalcum and Spyscribe from this forum will also be around. 

Sagiro, sorry for the hijack. I can delete this post later.


----------



## Everett

I never ever tried playing a character with sub-10 ability scores; the dumbness or dimness or clumsiness or droolingness is just not that much fun to role-play.


----------



## Sagiro

Sorry... no Story Hour post today.  But I did want to mention that in tonight's game, some 27-odd runs ahead of the story posted here, I threw the first largely-unchanged monster from the Epic Handbook at the party.  

They wiped the floor with it.  

Going in to the battle, I was wondering if maybe the monster was too much for them.  Sure, it was "only" CR 21, but it had stuff like SR 33, DR 20/+6, terrific saving throws, and it rated to do about 110 points of damage on a full attack.  With 400+ hp, I thought it had a chance of doing some harm.  

In hindsight, I should have expected that a party of seven 20th-level PCs would crush a single CR 21 monster, but I really needed to see the battle unfold to understand how potent the party has become.  A _firestorm_ here, a quickened _true strike_ followed by a spellsword-channeled maximized _orb of acid_ there, and pretty soon you have some real damage adding up.  And by "pretty soon" I mean less than three rounds.

And then, because they do stuff like this, the party _polymorphed_ an elder air elemental into a tarantula and fed it to an enormous oracular toad. I love my players!

-Sagiro


----------



## Piratecat

Sagiro, one thing about this fight - you highlighted a major weakness of Dranko's that I had never even considered. One good chunk of charisma damage and he's a drooling, blank-eyed husk. Scary and exciting! And DR 20/+6 scares me; it means that if I'm not getting sneak attack damage I do no damage at all. 

Thank you for an incredibly fun game. Also? Best prophecy ever.

Talking generally for a second, Sagiro has done something that I consider pretty much remarkable. He's taken 20th lvl heroes in a 16 year old campaign and let us travel somewhere that is completely new to us - new rules, new allies and enemies, new economy, new mysteries about how the world works. That sense of wonder, where we're taking complete joy in exploring even as we're plunging onwards to try and save the world, is everywhere. Enormous oracular toads have something to do with this. I can't wait for next game.


----------



## steeldragons

Concept sketches are well on their way, but I just posted the first two to get ink and color on them. Morningstar and Greywolf.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/art-ga...g/283445-steel-dragons-art-5.html#post5370138

Naturally, if there's anything amiss with their look, outfit, colroing...anything, please feel free to let me know.

In the hopper right now are Dranko, Ernie, Flicker and Step so should see simliar sketchs for them soon.

Still to get to: Aravis (and Pewter), Kibi (and Scree), Kay, Snokas, (and possibly) Mrs. Horn, Tor and Abernathy.

--Steel Dragons


----------



## Sagiro

Steeldragons, those pictures are great!  I look forward to seeing more of them.

Also, here, have an update.  

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 318*_
*Bad Place, Good Place*

Flicker draws his sword out of the crumpled body of Glemiyal, and immediately spots a heretofore hidden goblin darting at him from the side.  He slashes it across the leg.

“Ow!” cries Ernie. “Flicker, snap out of it!”

So saying, Ernie _dispels_ the _confusion_ on Flicker himself.

“Thanks, Ernie.  Though I don’t suppose I’m also imagining that sound of footsteps?”

No, he’s not.  Goblins continue to charge up the stairway outside the Iron Tower.  It will only be a minute or two more before they’re flooding up the stairs.

“We’re going to have company very soon,” Grey Wolf mutters.

Ernie looks at Maglubiyet’s Fang, still spinning slowly in its column of red light.  

“Tava,” he asks, looking up at the Astral Deva, “how do we stop this?”

Tava’s Echo stares at the huge dragon tooth.  “With violence,” she concludes.   At Ernie’s behest, she brings her own weapon down upon the Fang, but some sheath of force prevents contact.   She swoops down and picks up Ernie, then hovers before the Fang so that the little halfling can strike with _Tava’s Righteous Fury._   The fabled blade is uninhibited by the Fang’s protections, and on impact the monstrous tooth tilts and wobbles, rotating off its axis.  Small cracks have appeared.  Heartened, Ernie continues to swing.  

As Flicker gingerly divests Glemiyal of his magical possessions, a huge swell of noise comes from the stairwell.  The goblins have arrived.  Morningstar casts a _blade barrier_ as a greeting, and while the goblins in front stop short at the sight of the whirling knives, the ones in back surge forward and push their hapless allies into the blender.   Only after a few seconds of frantic shouting back down the staircase does the carnage cease.

Aravis and Flicker pick up the looted body of Glemiyal, and heave it contemptuously into the _blade barrier_. Gobbets of Goblin Champion are splattered all over the front ranks of goblin soldiers.   Morningstar smiles and readies a surprise.

It doesn’t take long.  Half a minute later some goblin manages to _dispel_ the _blade barrier_, but as soon as the word spreads to charge again, Morningstar drops a _prismatic sphere_ in the opening to the room.  

Goblins are fried.  Goblins sicken and die.  Goblins are turned to statues, or become gibberingly insane.  Most experience many of these at once.  Eventually, the remaining goblins retreat back down the stairs to regroup and consider.

“Back up everyone,” calls Ernie.  He takes a final mighty swing with _Tava’s righteous fury_ and Maglubiyet’s Fang shatters in a spray of fragments.  The red column of light in which it was spinning fades away.

Tava’s Echo lowers Ernie to the ground.  Ernie bows, and the Astral Deva returns the gesture.  “I am always honored to serve,” the celestial being intones, and with that, it vanishes.

In the lull that follows, Dranko brushes some goblin gore from his shirt.  “Now what?  I say we stroll down the stairs and kill lots of things.”

“Works for me,” says Ernie.

“Hold on,” says Aravis, shaking his head.  “I want to cast a _sending_ to Pewter, to find out if he’s in a safe place for us to _teleport_ to.”

Morningstar casts the spell for Aravis, asking for one ‘meow’ for yes, and two for no.  The return sending is two meows, followed by some long, drawn out meows, and ending with an emphatic single MEOW!  Morningstar relays this, not sure what it means.

“Ah,” says Aravis. “He wasn’t somewhere safe at first, so he padded out the word count of his reply until he _was_.”

“Your cat is so much smarter than my husband,” Morningstar says with a smirk.

Dranko harrumphs, and lights up a cigar.  The exhalation forms into the words “NOT FINISHED.”  

“Hey everyone,” he warns.  “Cranchus is telling us something.”

A remarkably lucky goblin comes stumbling out of the prismatic sphere, takes one look at the draconic Aravis, and flees in terror.  It is immediately burnt to a crisp.

“Hey!” Flicker yells suddenly.  “What happened to the sword?  I had Glemiyal’s sword right here, and now it’s gone.  Dranko?”

The party scans the room, but even with _true_ seeing it’s clear that the _Red Harbinger_ is gone.  

Then they hear laughter, right there in the room with them.   It takes a few seconds before they realize that the laughter is telepathic, and could be coming from anywhere.  It continues for a few seconds.

Morningstar looks up, annoyed.  “Do you have a message, or are you just amused?”

The voice of Glemiyal sounds in their heads.  “Oh, I’m very amused.  Did you forget where you were?  This is the Crimson Maw, and I am Glemiyal, the Eternal Spirit!  So… you killed a body.  Very nice.  Well done.  Unfortunately for you, I have about thirty thousand more, so if you’ll just wait there behind your little shiny bubble, I’ll be along shortly.  Something tells me that your spells and your strength will run out long before I do.”

His mental presence recedes.  Flicker announces that it’s not just the red sword that’s missing; everything he looted from Glemiyal’s body is gone.

Ernie gnashes his teeth.  “I really, really hate him.”

Morningstar shakes her head.  “I think we just get out of here.  We’ve done what we came to do.”

“But the smoke said ‘not finished,’” says Aravis.  

“We should kill him again,” says Grey Wolf, “and next time destroy the sword before it goes to his next body.”

“You have a _Mordenkainen’s Disjunction_ left, in the Cube, don’t you?” Dranko asks.  “That would work, right?

Ernie concentrates on Tava’s Righteous Fury, hoping for guidance.  In response, the sword tugs a bit at his arm – toward the doorway out.

“Have we done it?” Ernie asks the sword.

“Yes, you have,”  it answers.

“The cigar smoke says we aren't,” says Ernie.  “We’re not finished yet.”

“Not finished leaving,” says the sword.

Dranko rolls his eyes at Kibi.  “Stupid prophetic cigars,” he grumbles.

“I’m not very happy with Cranchus right now,” Aravis agrees.

Aravis casts _gate_, hoping that will provide them an easy exit from the Crimson Maw, but it fails --- or, rather, it produces an useless opening like an empty picture frame.

“We must need to get back to the shifting portal, and go through that,” says Dranko.  

The tugging on Ernie’s arm gets more insistent.  Aravis peers out one of the arrow slits.   The mountain atop which sits the Iron Tower is now fully surrounded by goblins, though none are trying to scale the mountain itself.   The huge stairway that leads from the plateau to the Tower is clogged with soldiers.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” he says.  “And I have an idea…”

Minutes later, they’re prepared.   The plan is predicated on the fact that while magic flight is suppressed in the Maw, ordinary wing-flapping flight is still possible.  Grey Wolf has acquired a spell called _flight of the dragon_, which causes the target to sprout huge leathery wings.   He explains the spell to Kibi, who casts _wish_ to spoof _mass flight of the dragon_.  It works on everyone but himself; his earth mage nature prevents it.  He thought as much would happen; his backup plan is to ride on Aravis, already in the shape of a flying dragon.

The party already is under Kibi’s _veil_, and looks like small rats.  Morningstar uses a _miracle_ to spoof _mass invisibility_ as well.  

With everyone ready, Aravis blasts a hole in the roof of the Iron Tower with a _disintegrate_ spell, and seven flying invisible rats launch themselves into the red-gray sky.  Once aloft, Kibi uses his _staff of illusions_ to spoof the visuals of an _obscuring mist_, appearing at the top of the staircase, along with the conspicuous sounds of spell-casting coming from inside.  As hoped, this draws the goblins’ attention away from the sky above.  Even better, two goblin sorcerers cast _cones of cold_ into the mist, which only succeeds in flash-freezing a dozen hapless goblin soldiers.

Following the steady tug of _Tava’s Righteous Fury_, the Company flies away from the Iron Fortress and out over the rocky terrain of the Crimson Maw.  They soar over an enormous lake, around which more thousands of goblins are encamped, and then onward for another two miles, before Ernie’s sword dips downward.   Still a thousand feet ahead of them, a sea of goblins is thronged around six glints of red, spaced somewhat apart but in the same 50’ x 50’ area.   The heroes fly closer, and soon see that the each glint is a horizontal red portal, identical to the one that brought them to the Maw.  Next to each of the portals is a tall goblin wielding a pulsing red sword. 

Dranko reaches into his tentacular madness to invoke _true seeing_ before diving down for a closer look.   It is indeed fortunate that no goblin is both able to see invisible things, and looking up.  Once within 120’, Dranko can see that all six portals are illusions, as are all but one of the Glemiyals.  But there is an actual portal in the area, masked by an illusion to blend in with the rocky ground.  The Company makes a hasty plan over the mind-link, casts some buff spells, and starts its assault with Ernie descending downward nearly to ground level.  

He utters a _holy word_.  “Yondalla!”

Power ripples out from Ernie in waves, and the potent hatred of goblins contained in his sword amplifies the range of the effect.  Hundreds of goblins are dropped stone dead on the spot, and many more are stricken paralyzed and senseless.  Glemiyal is made conspicuous by the fact that he alone is still standing.

Morningstar drops a _flame strike_ on the goblin champion, but this is less efficacious.  Not only does Glemiyal entirely resist the damage, but he holds the _Red Harbinger_ aloft, and  the magics of Morningstar’s spell are wrapped around it.  Glemiyal twirls the black flames around his blade like he’s making cotton candy, and with a flick of his wrist blasts Morningstar with her own spell.

“Ah,” thinks Glemiyal into their minds.  “Clever.  Now come down and join me.  I’m waiting.”

Kibi drops a _spike stones_ in a ring around the actual portal, to discourage goblins who were outside the deathly radius of Ernie’s spell from joining the battle.  Aravis casts _mass haste_ on the group.  Grey Wolf centers a _cone of cold_ on Glemiyal, but again Maglubiyet’s chosen resists the attack.  Dranko swoops down and cracks his whip across Glemiyal’s face, leaving a bloody streak.

Glemiyal smiles.  “If this body doesn’t kill you, maybe the next one will.  Or the one after that.  Either way, I’d best get started.”

The _Red Harbinger_ flashes, leaving trails of red light, and carves bloody chunks out of Dranko.  But Dranko is plenty tough and just a little bit mad.   He smiles back at Glemiyal, while Flicker lands in a flanking position and hacks at the goblin's legs.

Morningstar sighs and tosses a _darkbeam_ at her foe, and is surprised to find that Glemiyal doesn’t dodge in time.  The goblin champion’s eyes are seared in their sockets, and Glemiyal cries out in pain.  Kibi then pegs him with a maximized and empowered _ray of enfeeblement_.   And for a grand finale, Grey Wolf quickens a _true strike_ before descending and channeling a maximized acid orb through an exultant Bostock.   

The sword nearly cleaves the goblin in two, and then Glemiyal’s latest body erupts in a veritable volcano of acid and guts.  The remains of his body ooze out of his armor, pooling in a puddle of smoking sludge.

Dranko gloats above the remains.  “Does it feel bad, getting spanked by a halfling and his friends, twice in one day?”

Then, to the nearest goblins:  “Who’s next?”

Many of the goblins do in fact move closer, but are mutilated by _spike stones_ for their efforts, and halt their advance.  The rest of the Company lands next to the actual portal, and Dranko touches the magic ruby to its glassy surface.  No pass phrase is needed to exit; the portal becomes filled with red light.  Flicker starts heaving Glemiyal’s magic items through it before the goblin’s next body can claim them.   The rest of the party follows, flying out of the Crimson Maw one by one, until only Ernie is left.  

A voice sounds in his head:  _Goodbye for now, Ernest.  I’m sure I’ll see you again._

_I sure hope not_ Ernie thinks back, and then he jumps through the portal.

The heroes find themselves about thirty feet in the air, under a sunny cobalt sky.   Off in the distance, maybe two or three miles away, is the city of Victory on the shores of Green Lake.   It would appear that the goblins had been uncomfortably close to fixing the egress from the Crimson Maw!   Stretched out beneath them is lush farmland, though directly below is a well-ordered apple orchard, rows of trees still a month or two away from harvest.   The only oddity is a thicker cluster of the trees, breaking up the neat lines, about a hundred feet to the north.  Ernie thinks he can see a building of some sort hidden inside the stand of apple trees.

Dranko touches the ruby to the portal, and it becomes an opaque sheet of glass.   Ernie concentrates upon _Tava’s Righteous Fury_ with the intent of destroying the portal, but all he manages is to thicken and harden the sealed-up gateway.  The wizards in the party guess that this thing is now a permanent fixture of Appleseed, hovering in the air, and while the goblins probably have no way to open it from their side, they may someday find the means.

“Can you imagine how angry they’ll be,” says Flicker, “if it takes them a hundred years to get out of that place?”

But that’s a probably for another day, and most likely for the Maple Sunblade and the halflings of Appleseed to solve.  For now, the Company heals up, rejoices in the fresh air, and decides to check out the hut in the apple trees before reporting to High Priestess Sunblade.

It’s physically difficult to squeeze through the dense stand of trunks, but the party is rewarded when they reach the hut and find that a small attached sign reads:  “The Inn Between.”   They rush inside, Ernie and Flicker leading the way.

“Dolly!” cries Ernie.  “We’re home!”

“Come in!  Come in!” shouts Dolly from the kitchen.  “I’ve got lunch almost ready for you.”

“Oh, I do so love this place,” says Ernie, breathing deeply of the aroma of fresh bread.  

“Flicker!  Dranko!” calls Barnabas from his customary table at the back.  “Come over here.  I’ve got a new card trick going, and need some suckers to test it on!”

The Inn Between is the very essence of comfort without pretention – a cross between the Golden Goblet and Ernie’s mom’s living room.

“Ernie,” calls Dolly.  “I could use some help back here.”

In the kitchen, Dolly hands Ernie a spoon and points him to the spice rack.

“I’m glad to see you’re still taking such good care of your friends,” she says.

Ernie grins sheepishly.  “Well, they take good care of me.  They’ve brought me back to life twice!”

“Yes, I know.”

“Is it going to be okay?” asks Ernie quietly.  “Are the goblins going to get out of there?”

“No.  Not for a long time, at least.  You’ve done well, and Appleseed is safe from the Anlakis because of you.  Now, what kind of pies do you think are in the oven?”

Ernie doesn’t smell any pies, but guesses his favorite.  “Strawberry rhubarb?”

“Good choice,” says Dolly with a smile.

“One thing I don’t understand,” says Ernie.  "You told me that one day I’d have to protect the halflings from the Anlakis, but the Crimson Maw was full of goblins."

“Ah, I see your confusion,” says Dolly.  “There is something important to the goblins buried under Appleseed, from back in the days when goblins controlled these lands.  The goblins don’t know that, but there is an Anlaki who does, and he promised to reveal the information about it, if the goblins would do his dirty work and wipe out Appleseed.   In all likelihood, the halflings could have defeated the goblins, but their forces would have been decimated, and the Anlaki hordes would have swooped in and laid waste to the country.”

“Who is this person?  And how can we find him?”

“I wouldn’t worry about him for now,” says Dolly, opening the oven and releasing a sudden scent of strawberry rhubarb.  “Without the goblin armies, the nomads of chaos pose no serious threat.   But you should tell the High Priestess that the Black Spear of Maglubiyet is a hundred feet below the center of Victory.  If they could arrange to dig it up and destroy it, that would probably be for the best.”

“I’m honored to have been chosen,” says Ernie, adding some sage to the potatoes.  “I’m not sure I’m worthy…”

“Ernest,” Dolly laughs, “it’s hard to argue with results!”  She lowers her voice before continuing, and her face becomes more grave.  “But, you’re not done yet.  Not finished.  There are more problems to solve, more evils to fight, and things are coming to a head.  You can feel it, can’t you.”

Ernie nods gravely.  “What is this storm?  Why did Drosh flee?  Can we do anything?”

“I hope so.  Oh, I hope so.  I can’t see, exactly, the nature of what’s coming.  I don’t like the notion of Gods fleeting.  I’m not going anywhere, I promise you that.  I’ll stand and fight if I have to.”

“So will I!” Ernie exclaims.

“Oh, yes, you will.  And if you do your job well, I won’t have to lift a finger.”

Dolly produces a muffin, smelling of cinnamon and rose petals.  “Eat this.  It will help you in your trials to come.”

Ernie takes a bite.  Strength and energy* flood through him to every extremity, even to the tips of his hair.   

The Company spends the afternoon relaxing in the Inn Between, eating and talking and playing games with Barnabas.   When Dolly walks over to clear the table, Kibi can’t help but ask, “Do you know what the thorn in the side of Abernia is?”

“No, not the specifics.  It’s very old, I think, but it’s more your problem than mine.  I’m not Yondalla, you know.  I’m just an aspect of her suited to this place.  No, there are problems you will have to solve on your own – you and your fellow mortals.  Abernia needs your help, Kibilhathur, but you will have to learn how to provide it.”

Ernie has a sudden thought, remembering Glemiyal’s first reaction to him.

“I hope Yoba is okay!”

Dolly makes a face, and Ernie goes pale.

“No, no,” says Dolly.  “She’s fine.  It’s just that…”

“I’ll bet she’s mad,” Kibi interrupts.  “That you didn’t bring her to the Crimson Maw with you."

“No,” says Dolly.  “She’s not mad, because Ernie never told her about it.  Did you?”

“No, ma’am,” says Ernie sheepishly.

“No matter,” says Dolly.  “That’s another thing that’s not really my business.”  

As she walks back to the kitchen, Ernie cradles his head in his hands.  “Killing goblins is easy.  Relationships are hard.”

…to be continued…


* *>> His Strength of Yondalla power has been augmented; now, once per day, he can assign 12 points to distribute between his AC and his Strength, as sacred bonuses.  The augments last 1 round per level*


----------



## steeldragons

Apologies, Sagiro.

I know how exhausting it must be to be showered in praise all of the time. lol.

But it just needs saying..."the Inn Between" as a recurring location and the subtlety of where it pops in is just pure genius. So spot on perfect.

Thanks, as always, for the adventure.
--Steel Dragons
PS. So pleased you like the pix. Workin' on the rest...and then the group piece should be a lot of fun.


----------



## steeldragons

*POSTED: Dranko & Step*

I posted Dranko and One Certain Step. 

http://www.enworld.org/forum/art-ga...g/283445-steel-dragons-art-5.html#post5370888

Coupla questions on each, so look forward to hearing what people have to say. Well, coupla questions on Dranko. Step's really just the hair (long or short?) but he'll almost certainly be in a helmet so it really doesn't matter. (He did wear a helmet, didn't he? hahaha.)

It's weird, having read so much about Dranko, specifically, and thinking I have a really clear idea of what he looks like, I found it really difficult to "pin down" a set look for him as I was sketching. So look forward to comments/thoughts.

--SD


----------



## steeldragons

ERNEST WILBURFORCE ROUNDHILL, COME ON DOWN!

You're the next contestant on _"[Are] The Steel Dragons' Sketches Right?"_

http://www.enworld.org/forum/art-ga...ures-painting/283445-steel-dragons-art-5.html

Let me know. 
--SD


----------



## StevenAC

*Happy Anniversary, Abernathy's Company!*

I only realised today that it's exactly fifteen years since the very first run of the campaign (November 12, 1995).  In celebration, I've added the latest chapter to the Collected Story Hour site, bringing the adventures of Abernathy's Company right up to date -- complete with Dranko's 20th-level character sheet which Piratecat posted a while back.

Happy anniversary to Sagiro and all the Company, and here's to many more world-saving adventures to come!


----------



## Piratecat

Thanks, Steven! Just checked, and we're at 247 games (give or take a game) in 15 years. Almost no turnover, either; Tor and Mrs. Horn's players moved within the first 2-3 years, at which point we added Greywolf and Aravis, and there's been no turnover at all since Kay's player moved. That's sort of remarkable to me.


----------



## steeldragons

*Flicker & Kibi*

I posted sketches of Flicker and Kibilhathur. Hopefully I'll get to Aravis later this afternoon.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/art-ga...g/283445-steel-dragons-art-6.html#post5375881

I'll apologize in advance to Sagiro and co. I seem to recall somewhere along the line reading something about the fact that Ernie is an original/1/2e halfling and Flicker was a 3e halfling. Hope I'm mistaken, but if I'm no, sorry for not being 100% true to Flicker. 

I simply do not do flat headed, square-eared, corn-rowed, BOOTED halflings. I just don't. (Apologies to the Tolkien estate, but you created an archtype, an iconic race of D&D and the fantasy genre. Deal with it.) Halflings have hairy feet!

I have no problem with trimmed/toned/more adventurous halflings. In fact, how I drew Flicker reminds me quite a bit of how I envision my own original halfling character, Carak Hillside (3rd character I ever created, nigh on 28 years ago).

B'anyways...I digress. Flick n' Kibi are up.
Cheers, happy Sunday all.
--Steel Dragons

EDIT: Aravis is up now too.


----------



## Sagiro

First off, thanks to StevenAC for pointing out the 15th anniversary of our campaign.  Piratecat even started another thread about it, here.

Second, here's the next installment. 


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 319*_
*The Ritual of Seven Stars*

Dranko Brightmirror, disguised as a Kai Kin commoner,  sits in a wooden chair on the sidewalk outside a café, affecting boredom.  It’s difficult, because Kai Kin Custard is so damned _good_.   It’s a mixture of warm oats and berries and sugar and cream that’s unlike anything he’s had back in Charagan.   Dranko doesn’t let his delight show as he takes another spoonful.

_Kai Kin may be a city of xenophobes, but they make a mean dessert.  No wonder that guy from the golem city said this was his favorite._

As the afternoon wanes, he’s reviewing in his mind the details learned from Pewter the day before.  Over and over again he steps through the plan in his mind.  For the twentieth time he pulls a folded envelope from his haversack, runs his fingers over it, and puts it back.  Tonight’s the night.  Everything depends on him.  _Praska_ depends on him.


_TWO DAYS EARLIER_

With the Crimson Maw behind them, the Company moves to the next item on the agenda:  Praska, and the Black Circle priest Mokad who inhabits her body.   While the rest of the party _teleports_ to Kallor, Aravis makes sure Pewter is somewhere discrete, and _teleports_ to his familiar in Kai Kin.  The reunion is a great comfort to both of them, and neither are eager to again spend time apart, but Pewter is too excited to be sentimental.  

“Boss!  You’re not going to believe this!  Ok, maybe you are, but still.”

While the Company has been thwarting goblins in an unnatural demiplane, Pewter has been scouting out the Black Circle temple in Kai Kin.  He’s done an expert job, noting the layout, walls, personnel, shifts – everything.  But during his stealthy feline reconnaissance, Pewter has seen one thing in particular that he knows will be of great interest to his master.

“I was up in a tree last night, watching people walking back and forth across the main quad, trying to get a sense of any patterns.   Guess who I saw, plain as plain in torchlight, wearing a Black Circle robe and walking calm-as-you-please from the mess hall to the dormitories?   Rosetta!  Boss, she’s one of them!  She’s Black Circle!”

Aravis lets out a long breath, but avoids sharing in his familiar’s near-hysteria.   “Pewter, we don’t know that.”

“But Boss, I saw…”

“Maybe she’s there undercover.  Or maybe they’ve got someone under an illusion spell to look like Rosetta.  We just don’t know.”

“You can draw what conclusions you’d like,” Pewter sniffs.  “Rosetta’s always had it in for you guys, even though you saved her from centuries of torment, and now we know why.”

“I don’t see that it matters,” says Aravis.  “We can deal with Rosetta later, but right now we’ve got Mokad to worry about.  Have you  learned all you’re going to learn about the layout of the place?”

“Yeah.  I learned a lot.  I hope Dranko’s smart enough to use it.”

/*/


Things are busy back at the Cosnor Estate in Kallor.   A team of dwarves under Kibi’s direction has nearly finished building a ritual space suitable for the Black Circle’s Ritual of Seven Stars, which, if successful, will destroy Mokad's soul and free Praska from all malign influence.  The enormous room Mokad had used for the world-merging ritual is much too large, but the dwarves have built a small “cubicle” in the middle of it, with 10’ high walls cordoning off a 30’ x 30’ area.  

One of these walls has been perforated with holes, and lying at hand are a dozen wooden poles meant to be slotted in a specific pattern.  It’s disturbingly similar to Zeg’s underground laboratory in Nazg Hodeth.   Morningstar shakes her head.  Can this really be right?  Setting up a Black Circle ritual, in the Holy City of Ell?

Grey Wolf and Edghar are overseeing the mixing of powders and tinctures used in the Ritual of Seven Stars, while Aravis pores over the details of how the Ritual is actually performed.   Timing is critical at several junctures.  A small team of Ellish acolytes will be on hand to assist – something to which Morningstar only agreed after numerous assurances of safety by the wizards.  

“It should take about three hours, once started,” Aravis tells the others.  “The good news is, if something goes wrong, or it’s interrupted, we can start again from scratch.”

/*/



_YESTERDAY MORNING_

“Listen up,” Pewter purrs.   Dranko smiles as Aravis translates.

“I’m all ears.”

“The temple grounds are bounded on all sides by a tall hedge – about twelve feet high.  You could probably climb it, but I’d advise against it.  There’s some kind of thorny vine inside the hedges that crawls and twists around of its own volition.  I didn’t test it personally, but it’s certainly some kind of protection against intruders.”

“Got it,” says Dranko.  “Vines of death.  What else?”  

“There’s only one gap in the hedge, and that’s the main gate.  There’s a freestanding stone archway, with a metal-barred gate that’s closed and locked at night.  During the day it’s usually open – guarded by a couple of warrior-types, but they look bored and often nip away for a snack in the mess hall.  It doesn’t seem like they’re at all worried about a break-in.”

Dranko chuckles.  “Could I climb the gate?”

“Yeah, probably.  Sure,” says Pewter.  “But there are guards there, even at night.  You could try distracting them.  Like I said, they’re bored.”

“How about inside the grounds?”

“Almost everyone inside the hedge wears black robes – or black armor and capes, in the case of the armed guards who walk patrols.  Not many visitors – about half a dozen per day – most of whom are there to use the Chair.  You know, the one where you can swap life force for divinations.   In the days I was there, I didn’t once notice a visitor wandering around freely – unless you count Rosetta, of course.”

Dranko ignores that last part.  Rosetta is a problem for another day, and can only serve as a distraction from his main objective.

“I’ll have Flicker’s _Ring of Jumping._  Are there rooftops of other buildings anywhere near the grounds?  What kind of opportunities do they offer?”

“Yeah, there are some two-story homes across the road, so you’re in luck there.   It should be easy to take a running leap and land in the yard, but even at night that’ll make some noise, and someone could see you.”

“How about if I land on a roof?  Is the mess hall near the edge of the campus?”

“Near enough, I guess, if you’ve got Flicker’s ring.  If you can land on the roof, there’s almost no chance someone will see you.  And in the middle of the night the mess hall is usually empty.   Though if someone happens to be there having a midnight snack, they’ll certainly hear you land.”

Dranko is already imagining the scenario, forming plans in his mind about how it’s going to go.

“Aravis, tell me again how this soul-gem thing works.  Or should I just ask Flicker?  After all, he’s got firsthand experience!”

“You’ll need two things,” says Aravis.  "First, this.”  He hands Dranko an enormous diamond, exquisitely cut.  “It’s the most valuable gem we could come up with.  Don’t lose it.  Or spend it.”

Dranko just grins and drops the gem into his haversack.

“You’ll also need a trigger object.  Something you can fool Praska into taking from you.   When she does, she’ll be transported into the diamond.”

“Got it,” says Dranko.  His wheels continue to turn.

“Don’t forget the third thing,” says Morningstar.  “Here.”

She hands her husband a small black triangle made of some light wood.  “_Refuge_ token.  Once you’ve got Praska, break it, and you’ll get teleported back here.  Or even if you don’t have Praska, but something goes wrong.  Don’t take any chances.”

Dranko smiles innocently at her, and she simply shakes her head.




_THE PRESENT_

Dranko finishes his custard, stands, stretches.  The late afternoon sun has started to set while he’s eaten and pondered and run through possible scenarios in his mind.   Nominally this is going to be a trial run, but in case things go well, he’s got the gem and the letter ready to go.   One more time he goes through his mental checklist.

_Robe of blending.  Ring of jumping.  Refuge token.  Letter for Praska.  Mind blank in place.  Incredibly valuable diamond that could buy a lifetime supply of Kai Kin custard and an army of cooks to make it for me._

Dranko ducks into an alleyway and scrambles effortlessly up to the roof of the cafe.    It’s only two blocks to his intended launching pad, and once in place he lies low, overlooking the grounds of the Black Circle temple.  He’s waiting for the sun to dip a few more inches, just enough that it won’t silhouette him as he makes his leap.   He knows what he wants:  the period of dusk when people still think it’s afternoon, and no one has yet noticed that it’s hard to see.

He waits.  Waits.  The sun drops behind the clock tower as it starts to chime the seven o’clock hour.

_This is it_.  

Dranko stands, sprints, and with a final prayer to Delioch, takes a mighty leap across a narrow alley and over the hedge.   With Flicker’s ring it feels more like flying.  He executes a perfect shoulder roll onto the roof of the mess hall, and the combined effect of his magic items and natural stealth makes it a near-silent landing.  The little noise he makes is drowned by the noise of chatter from diners, and the last few tolls of the clock-tower bell.  He crouches, flat, and blends into the shadow of a nearby tree.

Once he is sure that his arrival has gone unnoticed, he peeks his head up to scan the grounds, comparing what he sees with Pewter’s reconnaissance report.  There are four building clusters that form the main complex of the temple grounds, with the mess hall and adjoining kitchens at the southeast corner.  North of him is the library and scriptorium, and to the west, rising higher than the buildings around it, is the tinted crystal dome of the central sanctuary.   Diagonally across the wide lawn are the low-roofed dormitories.  

For half an hour, Dranko watches and observes.    There is no pattern or regimen regarding dinner; priests and guards wander in and out on their own schedules.   The cooks and servants  appear to be lowly novices, wearing Black Circle garb that’s simpler and more drab than that of the more senior priests and priestesses.  There is no sign of the Circle employing civilian help, in the kitchens or anywhere else.  

There is plenty of green space, with trees and benches and stone walkways forming a latticework between the buildings.  Devotees of the Circle talk animatedly with one another as they move about the grounds, and the chatter is disturbingly benign.  A trio of priests walking into the mess hall talks excitedly about translating an old book of medicine that could be used to help stop the spread of some diseases, and another two, sitting on a bench beneath a tree, discus some obscure philosophical notions on the nature of Truth before leaving for the library.   Most of the conversation wouldn't be particularly out of place in a typical Deliochan church, though it's all of a more scholarly bent.

Dranko takes  a deep breath, runs through the plan in his head one more time, and uses his _robe of blending_ to assume the aspect of a servant who earlier retired to the dormitories.  He drops down the ground behind the kitchen and saunters across the lawn, head down but not too far, as calmly as he can manage.   When possible he walks in the lengthening shadows of trees and buildings.  

He has a moment of quickened anxiety when, half way across, he notices Rosetta, sitting quietly on a bench and flipping through a sheaf of scrolls.  She doesn’t look up or show any sign of noticing him, and he bites his lip and ignores her.  His heart has stopped racing by the time he reaches the backside of the dormitories, and when he reaches the spot with the fewest sight-lines, Dranko scrambles up to the roof.  He utters an extra prayer of thanks for the overcast night that hides the moon.

From his perch on the dormitory roof, Dranko observes many of the clergy return to their rooms after dinner.  This goes on for some time, since some come directly, while others have instead gone to the Dome or the library after the evening meal.   Night has fully fallen by the time Praska emerges from the mess hall; lamps are being lit around the quad by servants.

She approaches the west-side door to the dorms, seemingly alone, and Dranko drops down, practically invisible, to stand near the entrance.   There are many other people about, but none within thirty feet of him.  For the moment, the door is closed.  One of his hands is clenched around an absurdly valuable diamond.  The other holds a fancy envelope closed with a round wax seal.   It’s empty, but that’s not the point.

Dranko steps out of the shadows as Praska approaches.  His eyes light up, and the whole of his face breaks into a wide grin, near to bursting with good news he can’t wait to bequeath.  He holds the letter like it’s a precious artifact, something he’s profoundly proud of.  He looks down at it in disbelief, as if afraid it will evaporate before he has a chance to deliver it.  His body language is open and entirely sincere, and he holds out his envelope, projecting a joy that she is sure to share when she sees what it is.

Praska slows down as she approaches, a puzzled look on her face.

“Sav Ket,” she says, quirking an eyebrow.  “I’ve never seen you this excited before.  Is that for me?”

As Praska instinctively reaches out to take the letter, Dranko can’t help thinking how amazing it is that, for once, a risky stratagem, seems to be going off without a hitch.  And that’s when he hears the dormitory door open behind him.   No one shouts, but if Praska touches the letter, she’s going to vanish, and whoever just walked out the door will see it happen, clear as clear in the light of a nearby lamp.  Of all the luck!  Dranko winces, remembering the crazy swings of luck that were affecting Appleseed before they went into the Crimson Maw.

He has only a second to make a decision.  He considers that in the worst case, that’s Sav Ket behind him right now, and Praska is looking at twins.  Slightly better, it’s someone else who has just seen Ket inside.  Either way, he has a contingency plan, and with the fate of his best friend, and also possibly Abernia itself at stake, he _cannot_ let this chance slip away.   

He lets Praska take the letter.  She vanishes, the gem in his left hand becoming warm.  And then, reaching into his personal tentacular recesses, he stops time.

Behind him, a thin Black Circle priestess stands frozen in mid-stride, her eyes just starting to widen.  Across the quad, Rosetta is halted with a page of her book half-turned.  The background murmur of dozens of temple denizens is halted; the only sounds are his breathing, and his heart thumping in his chest.   

Dranko sprints to the nearest perimeter hedge and climbs, ignoring the thorny vines which (fortunately) are as quiescent as everything else.   The moment after he hits the ground, he digs in his pocket with his right hand and finds the fragile wood of his _refuge_ token.  _Snap!_.  He is transported back across the ocean to Kallor even before time has resumed.

_And the best part?_ he thinks wryly to himself.  _When they try to find out what happened to her, they’ll only see her sitting on a quiet bench in Djaw, reading a book.   Their own Book of Lies is going to bite them in the ass._



/*/


Back in Kallor, Dranko recaps his mission with a mad gleam in his eye.  Calling upon his _time stop_ power, bequeathed by a power from the Far Realms, has left him with a highly disturbing demeanor.   After hearing his tale and accepting the gem with Mokad trapped inside, Morningstar blesses him with _protective sleep_.  

While he sleeps, the others put the final touches on the ritual room and the defenses thereof.  Kibi drops tactically-placed _spike stones_ on the wide floor, outside of the 30’ x 30’ enclosure.  Aravis reviews the timing of the ritual with the Ellish priestesses who will be assisting him.  Aravis, who will be the primary caster of the ritual, dons the _necklace of mind-spell inversion_ as a precautionary measure.   He warns the others that no one should approach within ten feet of Mokad while the ritual is in progress.

Certain large-area abjurations are impermissible.  Spells like _forbiddance_, _private sanctum_ and _dimensional lock_ will interfere fatally with the Ritual of the Seven Stars.  But as a final measure, Kibi pours out his own life energy into a simple _wish:_ *I wish that no follower of the Black Circle will be able to find this location for the duration of the Ritual of the Seven Stars.*.  The room ripples, and their skins tingle from the wash of power.

/*/

In a small and ancillary chamber – in fact, the one that once housed the Null Shadow cauldron – Dranko places the hugely valuable diamond gently on the ground.  

“This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you.” 

He brings down a huge obsidian brick and smashes the gem to powder.  Mokad, infesting the body of Praska, appears on the ground in a small puff of smoke.  Before he can so much as blink, he’s pegged with a _dimensional anchor_ before Morningstar fills the room with an _anti-magic field_.

“Praska!” Dranko shouts.  “It’s not too late to change!  I know you’ve only taken this course because you secretly loved me and I married Morningstar.   But there’s still time for you to come back to the light!”

Mokad only has time to raise an eyebrow before Dranko steps back and chuckles.

“Nah, I’m just sh*tting you.  We know you’re Mokad.”  And with that, he, Ernie and Grey Wolf pummel Mokad into unconsciousness.   Just to rub it in, Dranko changes to the form of Ket before knocking Mokad out.  Once the Black Circle priest is down, they divest him of his items, components, holy symbol, and anything else that might allow him to resist or escape, before carrying him out to the ritual room.  There they chain the body of Praska to an altar in the center of a black circle inscribed around with equations and geometric forms.

“Lord,” Dranko whispers, “I know this is disturbing, but I am always your servant.  I don’t _think _this is going to damn my soul to hell, but let me know if it will.  Thanks.”

Wasting no more time, Aravis nods to his Ellish assistants and begins the Ritual of Seven Stars.   The words of power are harsh on his lips, filling him with unease as he speaks them.   For well over an hour he keeps up a stream of chanting, a litany that includes many long strings of numbers and complex equations.   The priestesses toss handfuls of alchemical powders over the body at specific times, synchronized with certain of Aravis’s words and gestures.  The poles in the wall glow in strange and ever-changing patterns.

At the 100 minute mark, a green light fills the circle around the altar, just as it should.   Mokad’s eyes snap open and for a second he tugs futilely tugs at his chains.

“Home,” he says casually.  When nothing happens, he says it again.  “Home.”

Most of the Company are perched atop the ten-foot wall of the enclosure.   Dranko chuckles at Mokad’s discomfiture.

Mokad cranes his neck.   “What do you think you’re doing?”

Ernie looks down and smiles.  “We’re getting our friend back.  Also, and I know this is immature, but:  phbtbbtbbbtbt!”

“We’re performing the Ritual of Seven Stars,” Dranko smirks.

Mokad lolls his head to look at the poles, and laughs for a solid ten seconds.  

“You know,” he says, regaining his composure, “you kids shouldn’t play with the grown-ups’ things.  You believe you have this all figured out, do you?”

His laugh is one of pure contempt.

“We think we might mess it up,”  Dranko admits.

“You THINK you might mess it up, huh?  Well, it’s not going to be MY problem when it goes awry.”

“Oh?  What will happen?”

Mokad ignores the question.  “Which one of you decided where to put the poles?  First of all:  of your seventeen  poles,  I’d say that by happy fortune, you have about four of them in the right place.”

He turns his neck to look at Kibi.  “It’s Kibilhathur, right?  Did dwarves build this?  I hope you haven’t paid them yet.”

Dranko ignores Mokad in turn.  “What were you doing at the temple in Kai Kin?”

Mokad looks at him, seemingly surprised by the question.  “Mostly writing.  Our primary function is to record and preserve information.”

“And bring the Emperor to Charagan,” Dranko adds.

“Yes, that too.  But that’s not my job.  Most of what I personally do is write and illuminate manuscripts.  There’s only so many times one wants to bring down the established order of things.  It’s a lot of work, and I’m happy to leave it to others.”

He glances again at the poles and snorts.   “If you have any vacation sites off plane,  this would be a good time to make sure they’re available.”

“I know you won’t tell me,” says Dranko, “but I have to ask:  Why this fascination with bringing the Emperor back?  He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would command that kind of respect.  Condor certainly didn’t think much of him.”

Mokad peers at Dranko.  “Condor’s been dead a long time, you know.  Look, can I give you a piece of advice?   It will save all of your lives, AND when the Black Circle comes back to reclaim this place, it won’t be a total wreck.  The pole in the 8th hole from the right?  Move it down two holes.  Because where it is now, well... one of you can cast firestorm, right?   That will seem like a wet torch compared to what will happen if you leave that pole where it is. Moving that pole still won’t make the ritual work, but it will prevent you from destroying this room and everyone in it.”

Kibi frowns.  It’s true that there were some… ambiguities… in the Black Circle reference material.  He and the other wizards were confident in their conclusions and calculations, but still… 

“Not that it matters to me,” says Mokad.  “I figure I’m a lost cause.  When the Seven Stars fails, you’ll probably just cut my throat.”

“You mean Praska’s throat,” Dranko growls.

“You don’t understand, do you?  Praska’s gone.   Do you remember the dinner we shared, so long ago?  Praska’s been gone since that night.”

Dranko snorts.  “We know that’s not true, because both you and she were still around, up until when we killed you.  You do remember us killing you?”

“I do remember that,” says Mokad quietly.  “But Praska wasn’t in her body, even before I died.”

“Who was?”

“The Black Circle was.  And the Black Circle can do a very convincing imitation of a little brat.  Now, Aravis?  This next point coming up is extremely detail-oriented.  You wouldn’t want to mess up any of the 36…

“Can’t we gag him?” asks Ernie.

Turns out that with a rag and _mage hand_, you can.   And a few minutes later the ritual moves into a new phase, and Mokad blacks out.  A ghostly vision of Praska rises up momentarily from his body, looks around in terror, and then slams back down into Mokad.

“What if he’s right?” asks Kibi.  “What if that’s not really Praska?”

Dranko looks somber.  “Sometimes you’ve just got to have faith.”

The room shudders.   Aravis glances around nervously; that wasn’t part of the Ritual!  Everyone feels their skin crawl, an itching tingle not entirely dissimilar to what they felt after Kibi’s _wish_.  Nothing else happens, but everyone is thinking the same thing over the mind link.  _Did someone in the Black Circle just cast a counter-wish?_

The minutes pass.  Energy is now traveling in pulses up and down the obsidian lines and curves inlaid around the ritual space.  The Ellish priestesses are sweating in earnest, as one of the more complicated sections of the ritual arrives.   Everyone tenses, wondering how things will go.  Dranko tries to calm himself.   All that one person in Kai Kin would have seen is Mokad and another acolyte teleporting away.   Mokad is protected from divinations by his own Book of Lies.  Every one of the Company is _mind blanked_.  Kibi has cast his _wish_.  How could Black Circle worshipers possibly know to come here?

Minutes later, those in the Company who can see invisible people witness a number of men and women in Black Circle raiment arriving, hovering, in the center of the enormous chamber.

_Crap!_ 

…to be continued…


----------



## Joshua Randall

This is why I undertake all of my evil rituals using _project image_.


----------



## Piratecat

This is my favorite run ever.

Mokad is such a liar, and such a _convincing_ liar. He had us worried. I'm still shocked that the plan to kidnap Praska actually worked. I can't remember being more nervous. The group was not a big fan of sending one person in to kidnap her, and neither was I, but it was one of the few tasks that matched Dranko's skill set really well. 

The aftermath, though? Ouch.


----------



## Artoomis

Sagiro said:


> ..._Crap!_
> 
> …to be continued…




_Crap_, indeed!

Wow, this is _so_ good!  More!  More!


----------



## Solarious

I take it that this is the point in the game where in the aftermath, Sagiro tells the party exactly how badly the Black Circle had to scramble in order to locate Abernathy's Company, in SH style? Well, it looks like we have a treat to look forward to. The next writeup is going to be so much fun.


----------



## RedTonic

I joined just to keep reading this--my unregistered access to Story Hour threads apparently was dismissed some time ago, so I registered, and now I'm briefly delurking. I've been enjoying the Company's adventures for some time, as a friend from another bb recommended them to me, and through them, I've also discovered Sepulchrave's writing--this forum is a veritable library for me. Thank you for sharing with us.


----------



## Sagiro

RedTonic:  I'm flattered that you'd register just for the story; it's a fine community, and welcome to it!  Also, nothing goes to my head faster than being mentioned in the same sentence as Sepulchrave. 

Solarious:  Exactly right!  Here it is.

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 320*_
*How The Other Half Lives*

"Cor Kek!  Cor Kek!"

The Grand Diviner of the Black Circle looks up from his desk and slides his reading glasses down to his nose.

"Calm down, Six Thoughts.  Take a deep breath.  Good. Now, what's this all about?"

"It's Mokad," says the woman.  "He's gone."

Cor Kek straightens up, and thinks for a moment.  This could explain the ominous (if vague) signs from the Morning Portents these past few weeks.  He had figured the warnings concerned the greater mission of the Temple, but now, in hindsight...

"What do you mean, gone?"

"I mean, vanished.  Like he teleported.  And there was someone else - I didn't see his face.  I was coming out of the dorms for evening prayers in the Dome, and one of the acolytes was handing something to Mokad.  He took it, and then the two of them blinked out."

Cor Kek rubs his temples.  Mokad warned him this might happen when he had first shown up in Kai Kin.  "I'm riding around in the body of a girl named Praska," Mokad had said.  "And Praska is the childhood friend of Dranko Blackhope, a member of an extremely formidable adventuring party. Given their absurdly overblown sense of heroism, it's a good bet that they'll eventually try to reverse what I've done."

"Reverse it?" Cor-Kek had scoffed.  "Unlikely!  They'd have to perform the Ritual of Seven Stars, and they'd need YOU.   They wouldn't dare accost us here, and the Book of Lies still shields you."

"Do NOT underestimate them," Mokad had snapped.  "Remember, they were able to plunder the Merging Room in Kallor, which included whole shelves of sacred texts.  They have wizards among them smarter and more puissant than even Tai-En.   They could cast the Seven Stars if they put their minds to it.  And do not forget this - this is the group of so-called heroes that not only thwarted the Merging, but somehow sealed the rift at Verdshane.   Their Ellish witch is probably your equal in the spiritual sphere, and they have a spellsword from Condor's direct line.  These are Alander's Chosen, and you know that because of that confounded dwarvish Earth Mage, our divinations concerning them are... not always reliable."

"Yes, fine," said Cor-Kek.  "These are dangerous people, I understand.  What do you propose we do about it?"

"I propose that I stay here, remain in the _sanctums_ whenever possible, stay _mind blanked_ at all times, and hope they don't get the foolish notion of _disjoining_ the Book of Lies.  We only have to delay them a few more months, and then it won't matter.   But I'll tell you right now - I won't leave the temple grounds without telling you.  If I turn up missing someday, you can bet your last mirac it's Alander's Chosen."


 * *


That was several months ago, and all has seemed quiet, though there was a disturbing report that the Spire had found and destroyed Nazg Hodeth in Charagan.  But now Mokad was gone, and under suspicious circumstances.  Was it, in fact, Dranko Blackhope come to rescue his old friend?

"Six Thoughts, summon Tai-En and Tel-Mek to the Dome.  Have Ashen Cloud bring a pot of divinatory elixir from the stores, and a Scroll of _discern location_. We'll get to the bottom of this."

A few minutes later, Cor-Kek, Grand Diviner, is standing in the Seeing Ring beneath the temple's central dome, surrounded by his most powerful servants.

"Can't we just scry for Mokad?" asks Tai-En.

"No," says Cor-Kek grimly.  "The Book of Lies shields him."

"The Book may have been broken," says Tai-En.  "How else would they have known he was here?"

"True," admits Kek.   He reads the scroll, and names Mokad as his target. Nothing.

"I will _commune_, then," says Cor-Kek.   He spends some minutes chanting in the Seeing Ring, and is granted insight into the Black Circle that encompasses all knowledge.

_"Have Dranko Blackhope or his allies recently infiltrated the temple grounds?"_

*I DO NOT KNOW*

"Crap.  He's in a _sanctum_, or he's _mind blanked_.  Which he'd have to be, if he was just here."

_"Has any member of the Spire Guard conspired to kidnap Mokad?"_

*I DO NOT KNOW*

"...Which means all of them are similarly protected."

_"Is anyone attempting, or planning to attempt, the Ritual of Seven Stars?"_

*I DO NOT KNOW*

"You need to divine the edges," says Tai-En.  "Nothing that directly implies the people involved.  They're all shielded."

"I know how this works," snaps Cor-Kek.  "I'm being thorough."

_"Is there, somewhere in Kivia, a Ritual Chamber set up to perform the Ritual of Seven Stars?"_

*NO*

_"What about in Charagan?"_

*I DO NOT KNOW*

"You don't know?!" says Kek, glancing down at the Seeing Ring.  “Though the lack of certainty is as good as a ‘yes,’ I suppose…”

"They could have _sanctums_ up around the Ritual Room, if that's what they're up to," says Tai-En.

"But that would disrupt the Seven Stars," points out Kek.

"They could be waiting until they start the ritual to drop the _sanctums_," says En. "And we can't just keep casting _commune_ every hour.  For all we know they don't plan on starting for a week!" 

"Okay, okay.  I need more time to consider.  It's possible that they don't even know about the Seven Stars. And in the worst case, they started five minutes ago and we have three hours to plan."

Cor-Kek asks the remainder of his questions, gleaning answers to unrelated problems.  Then he sits and meditates.  The others wait patiently.

Half an hour later he opens his eyes.

"The Circle is with me," he says.  "First, I must prepare a second _commune_.  Then, says the Circle, I must give of myself, and so I will."

Fifteen minutes later, with another _commune_ prepared in an empty spell-slot, Cor-Kek makes his appeal. "Black Circle, source of knowledge, my life is yours.  I pray that the magics preventing me from finding what I seek be stripped away for the next hour, so that I may rescue my friend from death."

So saying, he casts _miracle_.  Then he immediately casts a second _commune._

_Is Mokad being subject to the Ritual of Seven Stars?"_

*I DO NOT KNOW*

Cor-Kek furrows his brow, but is not too surprised that the Book of Lies is stronger than his Miracle.

_"Are Dranko Blackhope and his compatriots engaged in or planning a Black Circle ritual?"_

*I DO NOT KNOW*

Cor-Kek curses.  Could these people have magics powerful enough to thwart a Miracle cast inside a Seeing Ring?  Still, he presses on.

_"Is there, somewhere in Charagan, a Ritual Chamber set up to perform the Ritual of Seven Stars?"_

*YES*

"Ah ha!"

_"Is that place Nazg Hodeth?"_

*NO*

_"Is that place Aza Temg?"_

*YES*

_"Is the ritual in progress?"_

*I DO NOT KNOW*

"Crap.  Too close to the people involved."

_"Are there glowing wooden rods set into a wall in Aza Temg?"_

*YES*

_"Have they been glowing for more than an hour?"_

*YES*

_"More than two hours?"_

*NO*

_"Has the area around them been trapped or safeguarded against intrusion?"_

*YES*

_"Would we circumvent any of the traps by arriving in mid-air?"_

*YES*

_"Is the Merging Room still intact, such that it would be safe to teleport directly inside?"_

*YES, THOUGH THERE ARE PILLARS*
_
"Are the traps mechanical in nature?"
_
*NO*

_"Are they magical?"_

*YES*

_"Do we have sufficient power here at the temple to defeat our enemies and free Mokad, teleporting in as many as we can?"_

*I DON'T KNOW*

"Right.  Of course not."

_"Is the Seven Star Ritual set up inside the original Merging Room of Aza Temg?"_

*YES*

Cor-Kek smiles and rubs his hands together.  That's enough, he decides.  He asks some more questions at the end, then stands up.

"We have them," he says to his fellow priests and priestesses.  "Mokad warned me this could happen.   I should have taken him more seriously.  Alander's Chosen are casting the Ritual of Seven Stars on Mokad, right now, in the Charagan stronghold of Aza Temg."

He turns to Tel-Mek, his bodyguard.  "Fetch Perrin Greybeard - the priest who came here from Charagan the day after the Boundary went down.  If memory serves, he worked on constructing Aza Temg beneath the Twilight City.  We'll need him to describe where we're going so the wizards can _teleport_ us in."

Then, to Tai-En:  "We should have at least an hour before they can finish their ritual.   Find Sen-Pi and make sure she has _greater teleport_ today; if not, we should have a scroll in the library.  Figure out how many we can take between the two of you.   It'll be me, you, Tel-Mek, Sen-Pi, Clavyn, Three Winks, Mon-Zat, and how ever many of Mek's elites we still have room for.  Get them all back here as soon as you can, and we'll start preparing ourselves.  I want _mass fly_ and _mass invisibility_, plus whatever buffing spells we have prepared.  Pull more scrolls from the library if you have to.

“If Mokad was right, we're about to have the fight of our lives."

...to be continued...


----------



## Kestrel

Just wanted to say I really love these kinds of posts.  As a gm, I really can appreciate the bad guy pov and love seeing how the Black Circle got around the plans of the PCs.

Now I have a question: (if you don't mind sharing)  How did you design the Black Circle's reaction to the PC's intricate plans? Was this post hindsight reasoning for the Black Circle's interference or did you come up with the plan on the fly after hearing the PCs plans?  

(I'm a bad gm, and tend to just have the bad guys show up for the climatic fight and come up with a reason why later.  Usually because my players are pretty damn smart and stump me until I've had time to think.)


----------



## Piratecat

Kestrel said:


> Now I have a question: (if you don't mind sharing)  How did you design the Black Circle's reaction to the PC's intricate plans?



I can't speak for Sagiro, but I can guess. Our group has a long history of divining around the edges of things, like when we found Het Brannoi despite the divination sinks. Sagiro has had to adjudicate each of these. I have no doubt that Sagiro thought long and hard about how the bad guys might be able to find us after Mokad disappeared.

This was possibly my favorite post-game hand-out we've gotten. I love that all of Mokad's specious justifications to us, the ones that were so well given they almost had us doubting ourselves, were bald-faced lies. I also love that there was a good reason for this ambush, and that he didn't circumvent our defenses willy-nilly.


----------



## Sagiro

I had an advantage:  Piratecat and I ran through his kidnapping mission over e-mail, which meant I had plenty of time to think about what the Black Circle would do if Mokad was abducted.  And Piratecat's right:  the party has taught me plenty about creative ways to get around _mind blanks_ and _private sanctums_ and such.

Also, the Black Circle folk are expert Diviners, so I didn't hold back -- I figured that anything I could think of, they could think of.  Finally, I had decided that if the party did anything so clever that I *couldn't* easily justify the Black Circle finding them, I'd have Cor Kek cast a _miracle_ in response.  (Kibi's _wish_ was that thing, in this case.)  

That was kind of a shame; Cor Kek would have loved to have that _miracle_ back in the ensuing fight!


----------



## SolitonMan

Sagiro said:


> That was kind of a shame; Cor Kek would have loved to have that _miracle_ back in the ensuing fight!




Speaking of which...  

Hey Sagiro & gang, just wanted to say that I'm still really enjoying this Story Hour, your ongoing adventures are just awesomely fun to read!    Can't wait to see how this battle turns out...if the past is any indicator, the Black Circle invaders will regret their efforts!  

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!


----------



## Everett

Can StevenAC or anyone else tell me what run numbers we first see Praska in?  She's one element of the Story Hour I read so long ago that I don't recall her.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Tsk, tsk, Spire Guard: not trapping the entire volume of the room? Amateur mistake. 

Also, in hindsight (heh), a _teleport redirect_ (to, say, the middle of the ocean) would've been a spectacularly nasty trap to lay for those Black Circle b*stards.


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> Can StevenAC or anyone else tell me what run numbers we first see Praska in?  She's one element of the Story Hour I read so long ago that I don't recall her.




Run #5 (Page 8 of StevenAC's collected Story Hour .pdf):  Praska introduced.  She's was Dranko's only friend growing up in the Church of Delioch.  She sent a letter to Dranko, warning of strange political machinations in the church, particularly regarding Mokad and Califax.

Runs #14 & 15 (Page 18):  Praska is caught spying on Mokad and Califax, and rather than face punishment, flees the church.  She sends another letter to Dranko, that she discovered church money was being channeled to a secret archaeological dig in Sand's Edge.

Run #38 (Page 46):  Praska sends word to Dranko that she fled to Hae Charagan, and has been accepted back into the church there.  She's happy and excited.  But when Dranko goes to visit her, he finds she's been kidnapped by Mokad and the Black Circle.  The Company has a strange dinner with Mokad, during which time he seems to be trying to recruit them, and afterward he releases Praska to them.  She seemed fine at the time, but in fact she had been "attached" to Mokad via a "Morbid Link," which meant that if Mokad was ever killed, he'd immediately take possession of Praska's body.

Run #63 (Page 77):  Califax sends word to Dranko not to trust Praska, but the church can find nothing wrong with her.

Run #108 (Page 150):  In the Crosser's Maze, a version of Praska neither entirely real nor entirely imagined, says:  "I’m part of the Black Circle now, and we know things.  I’ve already foiled several schemes that the church of Delioch was cooking up.  I see everything, and no one can tell.”

Run #131 (Page 161):  The party kills Mokad and prevents him from merging Volpos and Abernia.  He immediately takes possession of Praska's body, though it will be a long time before the party figures this out.

Much later:  The party learns that Praska has gone over to the Black Circle, but does not yet know about the Morbid Link.  They think Mokad is really dead, and that Praska simply betrayed them.

Even later:  The party finds the Book of Lies, finally realizes that Mokad isn't dead, and that Praska isn't in control of her body.


----------



## Sagiro

Joshua Randall said:


> Tsk, tsk, Spire Guard: not trapping the entire volume of the room? Amateur mistake.
> 
> Also, in hindsight (heh), a _teleport redirect_ (to, say, the middle of the ocean) would've been a spectacularly nasty trap to lay for those Black Circle b*stards.




They couldn't have done these things; that much ambient magic in the vicinity would have screwed up the Ritual of Seven Stars.  They had talked about various defenses, like _dimensional lock_ and _forbiddance_, but they would have disrupted the Ritual.  I don't think the party has the spell _teleport redirect_, but it would have had the same problem.


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

These updates have been awesome--I'm looking forward to how this plays out.  But I'm also wondering--do we know who Alander is?  It's not surprising that the Black Circle name for the Company isn't the same as the Company's name for itself, but I'm curious if we know what that name means.  I couldn't remember anything about Alander, but...


----------



## Sagiro

Cerebral Paladin said:


> These updates have been awesome--I'm looking forward to how this plays out.  But I'm also wondering--do we know who Alander is?  It's not surprising that the Black Circle name for the Company isn't the same as the Company's name for itself, but I'm curious if we know what that name means.  I couldn't remember anything about Alander, but...



Alander was one of the original Archmagi and one of the Spire's founding members.  Abernathy was his apprentice, centuries ago.  In the "Before They Were Famous" prologue, found on StevenAC's site, you'll see mention of how it was Alander who gave Abernathy a scroll that ultimately chose who would be in the Company.

Alander was killed when Naloric Skewn (the original Emperor) forced his way back from his prison prime of Volpos, a thousand years after he was banished.  That was the battle at which Naloric was killed, along with Alander, another archmage named Typier, and (it was long thought) Parthol Runecarver.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> Even later:  The party finds the Book of Lies, finally realizes that Mokad isn't dead, and that Praska isn't in control of her body.




Thanks -- I don't recall any of that specifically.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Sagiro said:


> that much ambient magic in the vicinity would have screwed up the Ritual of Seven Stars



Bah, everyone knows that too much ambient magic makes obscure evil rituals _awesomer_. It's in the DMG somewhere.


----------



## Wystan

Just read all of this (Part 1-3) over a week or so....

Amazing... I wish I could find a game as good as this....

I have one that is close and another that is just starting.... but WOW...


----------



## Sagiro

First:  Hi Wystan!  It's always nice to hear from new readers, especially when they feel motivated to read the whole huge thing.  Weclome.

Second, though you won't be reading it for a long time yet, I did something particularly rat-bastardy to the party last game.  I think it left some of my players feeling angry and let down, which is something I can understand.  Without divulging spoilers, what I did made them feel like they had gone through a whole lot of previous effort for nothing.  I tried to assure them that that's not the case, but I'm not sure how much effect my attempts at mollifying them had.   I did what I did for a number of reasons, among which were to add drama and urgency to what they're doing, but also to give them an emotional connection to the game world they've effectively left behind.   My players will just have to trust me on this one, that it'll be a net positive in the end.  

All of this is oddly synchronous with what's going on in this Story Hour as currently in progress.  To wit:

As you may recall, I write my Story Hour by transcribing audio tapes of the sessions.   The main benefit of this is accuracy (especially important for dialogue), but a side benefit is that I get to hear long-forgotten table talk from years earlier.  

Let me tell you:  after last run, when the Black Circle team arrived in the middle of the ritual despite all the precautions the party had taken, my players were quite upset – more upset than I may have ever seen them.  Keep in mind that I had not yet sent them the piece about how the Black Circle had managed it; all they knew was that they had cast _mind blanks_ on everyone, and that the Book of Lies would thwart any divinations about Mokad, and that Kibi had cast a _wish_ (of the XP-using-up variety) specifically to prevent discovery, and the Black Circle had shown up anyway.

In fact, different players were upset for different reasons:

Kibi’s player was upset because she felt like she had blown a _wish_ for no reason – that I was so determined to have this battle take place, that I was willing to break rules to make it so.

Piratecat was upset because he felt like I had broken rules regarding _mind blank_, and that there was just no way the BC should have been able to get there so soon.

Morningstar’s player was upset because I was breaking an unwritten rule about extra-party resources.  Specifically, she pointed out that she theoretically has the entire Church of Ell at her disposal to help with the party’s adventures, but doesn’t call on them because that would be game-breaking and annoying to adjudicate.   She felt there was a tacit agreement, then, that enemy churches wouldn’t do the same.   As an example:  couldn’t Morningstar call upon every 11th level or higher cleric in the church to cast regular _communes_ to answer all the mysteries about the campaign?  And since she doesn’t, in order not to derail things, the Black Circle shouldn’t do it either.  Again, she didn’t know at the time that it was only a small party-sized group of BC adherents that were opposing them; I think she assumed that the only way the BC could have found them so quickly, was by pooling resources of an unfair magnitude.

Ernie’s player felt I had done something unfair in a general way, but described it more as a feeling, rather than point to specific things that were unfair.

And you know what?  All of those feelings were completely fair, given what the players knew.

Only Aravis and Grey Wolf’s players thought it was okay.  Aravis’s player specifically pointed out that they do the same kind of _mind-blank_ skirting tricks on a semi-regular basis.

That very night, after the game, and knowing I had a bunch of disgruntled players, I wrote up and sent around that last piece of the story, mostly as damage control.  

It’s interesting to consider all of this after the fact, because it exposes the weird middle ground between what the DM knows and can do, and what his villains know and can do.   Like I said, there was a feeling at the table of:  “Sagiro was going to have his battle no matter what we did, and so we blew a ton of time and resources for nothing.”   And that’s not an unfair attitude for them to have had; I can completely see where they were coming from.  But that kind of thinking puts me in a bind sometimes.  Maybe it comes down to this question:  should a DM have villains that are as smart and resourceful as the party, and possibly _more powerful_ than the party, to a degree such that, in some cases, there really is effectively nothing the party can do to prevent some of the villains’ short-term goals?   

That’s not to say the DM should break rules by fiat.  Custom magics are great, but should be used with great care, and in such ways that they don’t set frustrating precedent.  I did make sure that the villains had a legitimate way of finding the PC’s out, and they did have to blow a _miracle_ that they then didn’t have in the subsequent fight.  But I still can’t shake the feeling that I could have handled the whole thing better/differently, because my players really were actually, and legitimately, annoyed with me.  I’d be interested in hearing readers’ thoughts on the subject.


----------



## wedgeski

Fascinating. Thanks for the frank insight into your game here Sagiro.

What surprises me here, and believe me I mean no disrespect to you or any of your players by saying this, is that after all this time your guys didn't give you the benefit of the doubt?

Great campaigns are successful collaborations between player and DM, so “Sagiro was going to have his battle no matter what we did, and so we blew a ton of time and resources for nothing” seems an uncharacteristically prickly response from a bunch of people who have forged such an incredible game together.

Still, I can totally understand how their disappointment at failing to protect themselves adequately spilled over into criticism of your handling of the situation, implied or otherwise. That's just what happens when you play D&D at this kind of level, and it would be extraordinary in the extreme if you all made your way through to the end of the campaign without once feeling hard done by.

On the player-DM level, players at some point have to realise that they're pitting their multiple brains against the DM's one. That's several players, all of whom know the game and their characters intimately, conniving (and I mean that in the best way possible!) to out-fox anything the DM throws at them. Great DM's will be up to the challenge a lot of the time, and you've certainly shown yourself to be more than a match on most occasions, but sometimes, rarely, the DM should be able to say, in answer to how the PC's sixteen-stage defensive preparation was breached, that it just was. Bad luck. Trust me when I tell you it wasn't easy, but they did it. Now roll initiative and let's fight! (I say that even knowing that wasn't the case here, although it might have seemed that way to them at the time.)

Perhaps, when dealing with villainy of such vast power and resources (comparable to their own in fact), the time simply comes when the PC's have to accept the fact that they aren't gods, and that there is essentially no plan they can put into motion which agents of equal cunning can't outwit. The only recourse now is to confront the threat, head-on, winner take all.

The alternatives aren't very pleasing at all. The PC's become so powerful, and their players' command of the game so complete, that there is essentially nothing the DM can do. He's beaten. Either that, or the campaign devolves into a battle of one-upmanship with the winner the person who can find the most obscure spell loophole first. I don't really like the sound of that.


----------



## Sagiro

I hear what you're saying... but there has to be a limit to the enemy's power, or what's the point, right?  I control all the dials.  I could have the enemies "win" any time I want, for any reason.  My job is to craft a campaign where the enemies _don't_ have the wherewithal to arbitrarily thwart players' plans, or what's the point in playing?

Perhaps the problem was this:  there's an unspoken agreement hanging over almost every aspect of the campaign, that when I present a challenge, and the players are both clever and thorough about taking it on, that there should be some way to allow them a victory.  Otherwise, why did I give them the challenge in the first place?

The answer, perhaps, lies in how granular one wants to be about it.  If one considers the challenge to be:  "Save Praska by performing the ritual on Mokad," then I certainly did make victory possible.   But the sub-challenge of "prevent the Black Circle from finding out what we're doing" turned out to be too difficult, _despite_ clever and through solutions from the players.  And the players don't really know (and have no way of knowing) what "zoom-level" they should be considering. 

I certainly didn't feel at the time that my players were being petulant or unreasonable.  I felt more like:  "Oops.  Yeah, I sure set the party up to fail at this sub-challenge, as a _part_ of making the main challenge appropriately difficult.  I'd be upset too."

As a side-note, I have no business throwing first-stones here.  I nitpick at Piratecat all the time (in a good-natured way, of course!  ) looking for angles, things he's missed, and "wondering out loud" how the bad guys managed to hose us so badly again.


----------



## Enkhidu

The key, I think, would have been the mind blanks - but to be fair the players had been the first to "up the ante" on that one. I think I'd have been miffed a bit up until reminded of that.

But really, I don't think it would have registered much with me if the Black Circle was obviously underpowered in the spell department when they arrived and had a throw-away line or two bemoaning how difficult the heroes were to find.


----------



## Piratecat

First, please let me say that I think you're misinterpreting what happened last game. We're bummed both in and out of character, and I think a certain NPC did something in character but very stupid, but our (my?) good-natured grousing didn't mean we feel screwed. It meant "of course something like that happened, we should have expected it but hoped it wouldn't happen, and it kills us that we can't affect it." Very different from feeling cheated. The stakes have just been raised, and we're worried. 

That's different from the battle over Mokad. I'd forgotten how much a difference your explanation made, because we really did feel screwed. Interestingly, a big reason for that was the prep time involved - we spent a LOT of time on our defenses. If we'd heard "don't spend two hours planning, because it won't matter. Fight!" we'd be irked and surprised but we'd probably shrug. Wasting that time for (we thought) no reason made it worse. It's the same reason why I love it when a GM says "don't overthink your watch schedule" or "don't overthink your plan, because something disrupts it," and saves what would be 30 minutes of needless planning. 

That's why I love the behind-the-scenes so much. Actually seeing how our enemies out-clevered us made a huge difference.


----------



## wedgeski

Sagiro said:


> I hear what you're saying... but there has to be a limit to the enemy's power, or what's the point, right?  I control all the dials.  I could have the enemies "win" any time I want, for any reason.  My job is to craft a campaign where the enemies _don't_ have the wherewithal to arbitrarily thwart players' plans, or what's the point in playing?



All true. But in the epic-level world of "I see your _wish_ and raise you a _miracle_", I'm not sure you can always succeed at that.


----------



## scrubkai

Piratecat said:


> That's different from the battle over Mokad. I'd forgotten how much a difference your explanation made, because we really did feel screwed. Interestingly, a big reason for that was the prep time involved - we spent a LOT of time on our defenses.
> [SNIP]
> Actually seeing how our enemies out-clevered us made a huge difference.




I think Piratecat hit the nail on the head for almost any game.   The more time/resources the players spend on any plan, the more frustrated they get when the DM does something to totally stop them.

Because 99% of the world is in the DM's control, when the players feel like that 1% you can do is taken away then they get angry.  After all this is a SHARED story, and if the DM is going to cheat and take away that 1% control a player has, then they have to ask why am I playing.  Any good player is there to help shape the story, not to have an oral recessitation by the DM.

Most players understand and even wink/knod when this happens sometimes on minor things, but the unspoken contract most (non-railroad) games have is that when a player really chooses to do something, and is willing to pay the costs involved, the DM lets them do it.

Now, that said, If a DM can show how within the rules they have stopped pretty much anything my character has ever done, my reation typically goes from hurt to gruding respect about how I was out thought.  It's all a matter of perspective, and I have to say on intial reading, my first reaction was that the Company got cheated on that exchange.

The follow up post did explain it away and actually impress me quite a bit, but I have to say my inital reaction was to be shocked that Sagiro had been so well "Railroady" on the player for probably the first time in the whole story...


----------



## LightPhoenix

Sagiro said:


> Only Aravis and Grey Wolf’s players thought it was okay.  Aravis’s player specifically pointed out that they do the same kind of _mind-blank_ skirting tricks on a semi-regular basis.




I fall into Aravis's camp as far as this goes.

My personal philosophy is generally that the players set the bar for what is acceptable and what is not-acceptable by their actions.  There was a SH (I forget which one) I read before that specifically called out_ Disjunction_ as a specific tactic that both players and enemies avoided.  However, if the players chose to use it, they could expect the enemies to start as well.  So, as Aravis have implied, if the players are using _commune_ and _wish/miracle_, they should be expecting their opponents to be doing the same.  It would be a crappy DM move to use it _all the time_, but using it once to ensure a climactic battle seems more than fair to me.


----------



## blargney the second

Goosey*


----------



## Sagiro

LightPhoenix said:


> I fall into Aravis's camp as far as this goes.
> 
> My personal philosophy is generally that the players set the bar for what is acceptable and what is not-acceptable by their actions.  There was a SH (I forget which one) I read before that specifically called out_ Disjunction_ as a specific tactic that both players and enemies avoided.  However, if the players chose to use it, they could expect the enemies to start as well.  So, as Aravis have implied, if the players are using _commune_ and _wish/miracle_, they should be expecting their opponents to be doing the same.  It would be a crappy DM move to use it _all the time_, but using it once to ensure a climactic battle seems more than fair to me.



That brings to mind a related thought I've been having.  _Disjunction_ is a pretty crappy spell to cast on your players at high level.  In 3.5E, the power level of a 20th level party could be game-bustingly altered if a bad guy were to drop a _disjunction_ on them, since magic items make up such a large percentage of the PC's collective firepower.   Understandably, then, I've been hesitant to do this.

On the flip side, Aravis drops _disjunctions_ on my bad guys fairly regularly.  It's not quite as bad when he does it, since most monsters aren't as heavily reliant on items, but it's still something I worry about.  My inclination is to let it go -- that is, continue to be reluctant to use it on the PC's, but not penalize Aravis for casting it.  I'll just have to continue to take it into account when designing encounters.   I can always give enemies different spells/abilities that are similar in immediate power but not so long-term hosing.


----------



## coyote6

You could always adapt the Pathfinder version -- the area effect version only suppresses magic items for 1 minute/level, unless they roll a 1 on the saving throw (then that item is destroyed). You can also target one item, which has to save at -5 or be destroyed. That version has the same effect on artifacts, too.


----------



## Piratecat

The real problem with Disjunction cast on a high level party, even the Pathfinder version,  is that it stops the game cold for three hours while everyone refigures all of their stats without magic item. I'm a big fan of the spell variant where it acts like an automatic dispel for any ongoing spells, and ignores magic items unless it's cast on one specific one.

Regarding the goose/gander discussion above, I'll go out on a limb and say that as players we all agree with this. The difference in this case is that we spent a lot of time setting up a situation that we legitimately thought would be impossible to divine around in the given time. Seeing how we were wrong evaporated our frustration. Now, I know as well as you do that Sagiro wrote the explanation after the fact, so he hadn't necessarily thought through the step-by-step details ahead of time. That doesn't bother me at all. What had seemed like an unusual metagamey "this fight WILL occur!" had yanked me out of my world immersion, something that almost never happens, and the explanation settled me back in so well that I'd completely forgotten the concern until now.


----------



## coyote6

Piratecat said:


> The real problem with Disjunction cast on a high level party, even the Pathfinder version,  is that it stops the game cold for three hours while everyone refigures all of their stats without magic item. I'm a big fan of the spell variant where it acts like an automatic dispel for any ongoing spells, and ignores magic items unless it's cast on one specific one.




There is certainly that. And rolling saves for every magic item might take slightly less than forever, to boot. OTOH, in my high level D&D experience, the buff-dispel buff tango happens anyways, and trips everyone up, and drags everything out -- that just seems to be how high level D&D rolls. 

_Disjunction_ only ever appeared in my game as essentially a plot device -- a bad guy showed up with a scroll or two, used one (with my intention being to scare the carp out of the PCs; any magic items that got zapped would've been replaced by Newer, Better gear), and left the other one as an option to use on the artifact MacGuffin.


----------



## The_Warlock

In my long campaign, the PCs never wanted to use Disjunction, avoiding it like the plague as they perceived the give and take between high level movers and shakers to be something of a détente. Nobody REALLY wanted to use it, under the assumption that if they did, a Disjunction War might ensue.

Then, during the final conflict of the campaign, the villains out to consume the world dropped it right on the PCs. 

And the party clerics fought over who was going to cast the Miracle to get all their spells and items reconstituted by next round. Which is how they avoided numbers re-crunching.

It's definitely a show stopper if the party has expended their high end resources, and I was happy to avoid it until climatically appropriate and entertaining while the PCs avoided it's use as well.

It's certainly a tough call from the DMs perspective, because it can completely ineffectualize a party that isn't prepared or has effective escape plans.


----------



## Joshua Randall

scrubkai said:


> my inital reaction was to be shocked that Sagiro had been so well "Railroady" on the player for probably the first time in the whole story



I concur. It felt railroady to me when I read about it, and the "behind the scenes with the Black Circle" felt like an attempt to justify laying the tracks.

Sadly, I think this particular bit of railroading (if that's what you want to call it) may have deprived the game of going somewhere quite interesting.

Suppose the BC had _not_ found out about the Mokad/Praska ritual and therefor didn't show up to try to stop it. Then the PCs would have deprived the BC of one of their top lieutenants (Mokad), possibly prompting the BC to panic and become desperate. And a panicked, deparate enemy can actually be extremely dangerous for the PCs!

So yeah, I was disappointed in this part of the story... at least based on what we've read so far.


----------



## Quartz

Piratecat said:


> The real problem with Disjunction cast on a high level party, even the Pathfinder version,  is that it stops the game cold for three hours while everyone refigures all of their stats without magic item.




Hijack alert... 

I can't speak for the Pathfinder version, but otherwise I beg to differ. The key to using Disjunction is preparation. You, the GM should have a complete list of all magic items and spells active on the players and NPCs. You also have a pre-rolled sheet of D20 numbers: simply pass or fail each item and in turn. And when Disjunction is used, *you do not tell the players that it is a Disjunction*. Tell them only things like, 'Your sword stops glowing' and 'You fall to the floor'. And don't bother recalculating anything beyond the basics until it's actually required.

The other thing to do with Disjunction is to use it regularly as a means of churn, getting rid of items and opening the way for new ones. Heroes in fiction usually only have a choice few items; DND heroes often end up like Christmas trees unless you take active measures, and Disjunction is one such measure. PCs should be facing Disjunction from about 10th level onwards. Give the BBEG a triggered item with Disjunction in it as his ace in the hole, or have the conjured demon cast Disjunction over everyone - including the BBEG. You just need to be careful that the PCs can still win. And, of course, there are multiple ways of getting the BBEG to waste the Disjunction.

Of course, at Epic levels, everyone has Disjunction Ward or similar as permanent effects.


----------



## Piratecat

With respect, Quartz, you're describing a very different campaign than ours. I'd spend a lot of time snarling in such a game.  

Joshua, I strongly urge you to wait for future updates before deciding whether the Black Circle attack was truly railroady, or whether it made the game go more or less interestingly! Mind you, I'm biased because this is one of my favorite fights of the entire run.


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

It's hard to put yourself in the mindset of a situation that you've only read about through a different presentation, but I think I would have been in the same boat as Kibi's player.  After all, XP is a permanent, highly personal resource--spending XP to cast a wish and then having that wish nerfed would feel really sucky, and it does contribute to that "why do we even try to come up with good solutions to the parts that aren't fights--we'll still have to fight them in the end" feel.

That said, I think the behind the scenes response is a hugely awesome bit of damage control.  It explains why, and it shows resources being spent.  Knowing that the NPCs would have dropped a miracle during the fight if it hadn't been spent on undoing the wish would make me feel a lot better.  It's still rough... but it stops feeling like waving the GM Fiat wand.

As to the question of how to get the balance right... to me, the key is sometimes allowing the sorta anti-climactic victories.  "Hmm... they might try to, but then... but if they... no, that won't work...  ...  Okay, the ritual goes off without a hitch.  Congrats."  The players need to know that the effort that they're spending on being clever sometimes works, even though it doesn't always.  In this case, it's hard to see how the bad guys could get around it... which comes back to why the damage control is so great.  It does two things:  one, it establishes a plausible, reasonable way that the Black Circle could find them anyway; and two, it explicitly tells them that their effort wasn't worthless--stripping out a miracle from the enemy caster ain't nothing, especially assuming that's the only miracle he had prepared.  The combination of the two goes a long way to restoring the trust.  (I also think that it's key that sometimes the Company's plans really do work solidly--that makes this not just another clever plan hand-waved away, but an exceptional example of taking on well equipped and brilliant enemies.  Also, the fact that the Black Circle has a strong divination focus makes the behind-the-scenes easier to swallow.  Sure, the PCs used enormously powerful magic to conceal what they were doing--but they were also taking on the Black Circle in one of its core competencies.)


----------



## Sagiro

Cerebral Paladin said:


> I also think that it's key that sometimes the Company's plans really do work solidly--that makes this not just another clever plan hand-waved away, but an exceptional example of taking on well equipped and brilliant enemies.  ...



You mean, like when I have a glorious charge-or-sneak-through-thousands-of-goblins scenario envisioned, and the players instead figure out that Aravis can _shapechange_ into a $#@! Digger and simply tunnel underneath the whole friggin' army? 

For that matter, consider that, originally, I though it was *highly* unlikely that the party would be able to kidnap Mokad from within the BC temple.  I figured they'd have to have a big battle royale _inside the temple grounds_, which would have been much tougher for them.  But then they described the plan to sneak Dranko into temple, _mind blanked_, and have him hand Mokad a soul trapping item.   I thought about it, and what could go wrong, and whether Mokad was likely to have _true seeing_ up, etc., and in the end, with Dranko making his die rolls, it seemed like the plan should work.  So it did.

Then I thought through what the Black Circle would do in response, and how _they_ might overcome various obstacles, and what their resources were, etc.  And when I did that, it seemed like _their_ plan should work.  So it did.


----------



## coyote6

Yeah, once PCs are casting _wishes_ and _miracles_, any time they fight enemy spellcasters who are of the equal-or-better category, the players have to expect the bad guys to bust out the reality altering magic. The NPCs are almost always going to be fighting for their lives, after all; they have no reason to hold back.

In my game, during the climactic battle against the quadruple digit hp dragon, the PCs had been pounding on him for a bit, and were starting to get the upper hand, and I think anticipating finishing him. Then he rumbled out a "I _wish_ I was in full health" -- I think every player said "oh ^*%$" or some variation. They would have loved an opportunity to force him to make a different wish.


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

Sagiro said:


> You mean, like when I have a glorious charge-or-sneak-through-thousands-of-goblins scenario envisioned, and the players instead figure out that Aravis can _shapechange_ into a $#@! Digger and simply tunnel underneath the whole friggin' army?




Exactly.  In case it wasn't clear, I wasn't criticizing your GMing at all--I think this sequence is in many ways you doing everything right.  But it still hurts a lot to have a wish appear to just fail, which is why I think it's likely that if I had been a player, I would have felt cheated.  And that in turn is why the "behind the scenes" look is so great.  It's not just "trust me, this cost them real resources and they can do this," but rather it's "here's why they were able to do this."

One of the related questions is whether it's possible to avoid those moments of frustration on the players' parts while still maintaining a tense and satisfying game.  My guess is no.  You have to be able to hit them with what they're up against, or else the game becomes just a continuously easy romp, which would not sustain my interest (at least not for long).  But that then means that sometimes the players feel frustrated when their legitimately good, but not unbeatable, plans get beaten.


----------



## Quartz

Piratecat said:


> With respect, Quartz, you're describing a very different campaign than ours. I'd spend a lot of time snarling in such a game.




Very true, and it's a shift that can't really be introduced now, at such a late stage.


----------



## Siuis

I went through something similar just tonight. The end result was something like "you're making stuff up to cover for screwing up!" I feel somewhat screwed, and couldn't put my finger on why- was I just being a poor player?

PC said it best. The DM's actions just stripped away any immersion. I went from playing a game to trying not to argue incredulously, and it left a bitter taste in everyone's mouth. Thanks, PC, for giving me the words on that. It'll help smooth over any hard feelings.

As for the actual battle with the Ritual, and with Mokad... It was close, and I would have preferred to read something about the BC teleporting in-- about 20 minutes too late! But it didn't read like rail-roading. Maybe because of the divination specialty. After all the stuff this party has done I would have thought he'd have the benefit of the doubt. Though I guess I myself would probably have been butt-hurt. I'm not on your level of play just yet though; I've room to grow.


----------



## Shieldhaven

My experience with struggling to be a _good _player and not a jerk (this is not easy for me) is that no matter how much I trust and respect the GM, it is hard to keep perspective when the character and party I care about is getting nailed to the wall by a plan gone awry. A few days after the fact, I sometimes have a bit more perspective, but sometimes in the shorter term there's snarling. 

To be honest, the vast majority of players I know are the same way I am, and I've been on the receiving end many times as well. It's tough, and I think Sagiro handled his campaign's situation optimally. A big part of that came from really solid exposition, beforehand and after, on what the PCs could expect from the Black Circle.

Haven


----------



## Artoomis

On Disjunction:  When my part had that available, we very rarely used it.  Only in extremis.  Why?  Because it not only helped win the battle, but, as a disturbing side effect, destroyed the treasure and put the caster at risk of losing all casting abilities forever (you never knwo when there might be an artifact in the area).

On "suspension of disbelief" (aka "suspension of belief, aka "immersion");  I agree it is most annoying to lose this - the world should hang together and one should not get the sense that the DM acts randomly.  Our current DM helps this by occasionally doing a "behind-the scenes" look at what is happening that the PCs woudl not see or know.

*On this story:  More!  More! I am on the edge of my seat waiting for how this plays out.*


----------



## Joshua Randall

Piratecat said:


> Joshua, I strongly urge you to wait for future updates before deciding whether the Black Circle attack was truly railroady, or whether it made the game go more or less interestingly!



No way, man. This was the last straw. After, like, nine years of reading this story, I'm turning my back on it because of one DM decision that I don't completely agree with.

(Uh, yeah. Joking.)

Re: _disjunction_, for a less scorched earth approach, but unfortunately one that is equally annoying to track the results of, I am fond of using area _dispel magic_ to strip people's buffs. Or even better, a strategically placed 



Spoiler



_Otiluke's dispelling screen_ (I think that's the name -- in the 3e Spell Compendium -- basically a _wall of dispel magic_) over the entrance the PCs are most likely to use. And you'd think my players/PCs would have learned not to charge in blindly after the third time it happened, but no... *shakes head sadly*



I spoilered that so Sagiro won't look at it and get any evil ideas.


----------



## Sagiro

Before I describe this fight, I thought I should mention a metagame note that will shed light on some of the details.  We no longer use XP in the campaign.  Instead, I level the party at a pace that seems right to me, and when they level, each character gets a stash of Action Points equal to [(Level/2) + 5)].  One Action Point can be spent in lieu of 1000 XP for use in endeavors that require them, such as powering a _wish_ or _miracle_, or crafting magic items.  Action Points can _also_ be spent to increase a single die roll, to gain temporary access to feats, or, at the time of this combat, to gain an extra standard action during your round.

I have since disallowed that last usage, since it resulted in the same “three spells every round” pacing that made me dislike the old 3.0 _haste_ so much.  But in this fight, that’s the explanation for how the PC’s are able to accomplish so much.   They collectively used a whopping 14 Action Points in the combat, and the casters were doing “spell, quickened spell, action point spell” almost every round.  

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 321*_
*Gone in 18 Seconds*

_18 seconds._

In a diplomatic encounter, it often takes longer than that to introduce one or two of the participants, preparatory to hours of verbal sparring.  On the field of battle, two armed and armored soldiers might take that long just circling one another, probing for an opening, clanking sword against shield, stumbling in the mud.   

When some of the most powerful spell-slingers and warriors in the world meet to do battle, 18 seconds is enough time for expenditures of energies not seen in entire lifetimes of common folk;  for the mighty to live, die, and live again; for the fortunes of the world to be decided, its course spun anew.

_Consider the hourglass turned at the moment of the enemies’ arrival._

“Curse you!”

Aravis reacts before anyone else.  He casts _time stop_.  The Ellish priestesses are halted mid-chant.  One has just tossed a handful of reagents toward Praska’s supine form; each crystal, mote and flake are suspended, their outlines bright in Aravis’s perception.  Thirteen members of the Black Circle hang  motionless in mid-air, clustered in two _teleport_ groups.   Almost on instinct Aravis _shapechanges_ into his preferred yellow dragon form, then casts _shield_ on himself.  But luck is not with him, and time kicks in sooner than he hoped.  With another muttered curse he lands atop the low stone wall and sends a quickened _fireball_ into the middle of one of the enemy clusters.

The wizardess Sen Pi blinks.  One of her enemies has cast a spell and vanished, and instantly a summoned dragon has appeared.   But she has her orders, and sticks with the plan.   As the dragon is landing, she flies up and over, and waves a hand at the wall riddled with holes.  Over half of the glowing rods are forcibly ejected from their slots, clattering to the ground, some first bouncing off a green translucent bubble of force that surrounds Praska and her altar.  

“Hey!” Dranko shouts.  “We spent all day setting that up!”

The other of Cor Kek’s wizards, Tai-En, has his attention grabbed by the dragon, and while Dranko complains, he attempts to _polymorph_ it into something more harmless.  Aravis can feel his form start to shift, but his draconic form resists the effect.

At the same time, Tel Mek, the Captain of the Black Circle Guard and a supremely accomplished fighting man, flies down to hover next to Flicker.  He buries a black mace in the halfling’s side, and beyond that, some kind of palpable and painful aura is radiating out from his armor.   Flicker’s preternatural reflexes keep him from falling off the wall, but barely.  Tel-Mek, his white hair and goatee peeking out in places from his helmet, snarls down at his opponent.   Flicker responds almost instantly, activating the _hand of glory_ that lets him see invisible things.  He gulps at the sight of Tel Mek towering over him, but slashes several times with his short sword.  He doesn’t even make a scratch.

Dranko sees Flicker in trouble, and puts up a _wall of ice_ that effectively extends the wall upward 30’.  Tel Mek frowns as his quarry is denied him for the moment.  Dranko adds a spur that shields the isolated Kibi from the knots of enemies above him, before running along the wall and vaulting onto Aravis’s back.

Grey Wolf is already casting as this happens, following a quickened _ironstorm_ around one group of enemies with a _chain lightning_.  Electricity tears at the Black Circle devotees, burning their clothes and skin.  None of them die, though almost all are left smoking and in pain.

Three of Tel Mek’s elite fighting unit had been moving toward the dragon almost from the moment it appeared.  They shrug off its terrifying aura and slash at Aravis’s scales with their swords, becoming visible in the process.  Two land telling blows, and blood gushes from the dragon.

_Three seconds have now elapsed._

Cor Kek, Grand Diviner of the Black Circle, recognizes Dranko from Mokad’s many tales.   Black lesions crawl on the cleric’s face, and Dranko can feel sympathetic pustules erupt all over his skin.  But Dranko is tough enough to essentially shrug these off.  

“Is that all?” he taunts.

Cor Kek snorts, turns his bald head to Aravis, and casts _energy drain_ upon the dragon.   Life and magics are sapped from the wizard, and Aravis feels his most potent spells torn from his head:  _greater arcane sight; lightning ring; maze; _ his backup _maze; polymorph any object; _ and most distressingly, his emergency _Mordenkainen’s disjunction_.

“What was that?” Cor Kek scoffs, as he flies upward and out of the _ironstorm_  “Your ride appears to be flagging.”  The Company notes that despite being in the _chain lightning-ironstorm_ apocalypse, Cor Kek appears almost entirely unhurt.

“Boss!” Pewter says urgently.  “That’s him!  That’s Cor Kek, their high priest!”

Even as Cor Kek is exchanging words with Dranko, Ernie, who cannot see the many enemies still _invisible_, is almost screaming over the mind-link.  “Dranko, where are they?”

“To the left of Aravis, and twenty feet forward of him,” Dranko thinks.  “You’ll get a bunch of them.”  

Ernie immediately drops a _flame strike_ on a cluster of the enemy as he hops down from the wall, and then casts _righteous wrath of the faithful_, bolstering his allies.  For the first time since its construction, the Merging Room of Aza Temg is filled with the scent of fresh bread.

Dranko’s _wall of ice_ has caused some tactical difficulties for several of Tel Mek’s elites; as they fly over and around it, Kibi also moves, and when he has line of sight drops a maximized _coldfire_ on the knot of enemies near Aravis.  One of the elites drops from the air, along with an under-priest named Clavyn who never even had time to get his bearings, let alone act in the combat.  Kibi follows with a second (quickened and empowered) _coldfire_, this one catching Cor Kek, Tai En, and two of the elite fighters.  None drop.  A small gem falls from Tai En’s headband, and all of the wizard’s wounds heal.  Crap!

In the midst of the tumultuous blasts and flashing blades, Dranko continues his repartee with Cor Kek.

“You really are the world’s biggest prick.  What’s this whole ‘ending the world’ thing going to do for you, anyways?”

“Ending the world?  Nonsense!  I’m just going to make it more palatable.”

Morningstar, while everyone else has been instinctively firing off spells and attacks, has been considering what best to do to protect her three Ellish priestesses who had been assisting in the ritual.  It’s a miracle, she thinks, that they haven’t yet been caught in some area-of-effect spell and annihilated.    They could flee, except that as a (failed) defensive measure, she had placed a _prismatic sphere_ in the only doorway out of the Merging Room.   With a sigh she dismisses the _sphere_, quickens a _true seeing_, and drops a _flame strike_ exactly where Ernie had cast his.  Tai En and one of the enemy fighters are burned; a second fighter is killed outright; and Cor Kek is entirely unaffected.

Clavyn may have been killed, but the other two underpriests, Three Quick Winks and Mon Zat, overcome their indecision borne from the baffling chaos of their first full-scale battle against equals.  In tandem, even as Dranko and Cor Kek are jawing at one another, and Morningstar is motioning for her priestesses to make their escape, the two Black Circle priests each drop a _flame strike_ on Grey Wolf, Dranko and Aravis.  Dranko evades both,  using Aravis’s larger body to shield himself.  Aravis and Grey Wolf are both badly burned.  Morningstar sighs with relief as her sisters make a hasty retreat from the fray, then turns her full attention to the battle.

_Six seconds_

Drained and near death, Aravis changes back to his human form in order to use his _tongue stud of potion quickening_ to gulp down a healing draught.  (Dranko deftly dismounts to stand again on the wall.)  Aravis would like to target a _greater dispel_ on Cor Kek, but realizes that this will be quite ineffective due to the _energy drain_.  Instead he quickens a _disintegrate_ and fires it at Cor Kek, but the Grand Diviner has come to the battle with _spell resistance_ cast, and the beam dissipates harmlessly.  

Sen Pi flies into position and blasts Aravis, Dranko, Grey Wolf and Ernie with a _cone of cold_.  Again Dranko evades – and so does Aravis, using a charge from his _ring of evasion_.   Grey Wolf is very nearly dead, his skin blue and covered with a frozen rime.   At the same moment, Tai En targets Grey Wolf with _insanity_.  Somehow, despite the beating that his body has taken, he finds the mental resolve to resist the assault on his mind.

Tel Mek has flown over to Kibi, and while the Black Circle wizards are assaulting Grey Wolf, he’s slashing at Kibi with his black mace.  He lands a perfect strike to the dwarf’s chest; the mace pulses with negative energy and saps strength from Kibi’s muscles even as it bruises his bones.

While Flicker takes a bounding leap to Grey Wolf and force feeds him a curing potion, Dranko activates his sash of _greater invisibility_ and unleashes a torrent of whip-strikes at the three elite fighters hovering around him.  The first strike curls in beneath the visor of the enemy’s helm, pulping his face.  The second and third strikes finish off a second, snapping his neck.  Dranko grins at the third.

“This is your opportunity to run.  I suggest you take it.”

“No!” shouts the fighter.  “I will die in defense of the Circle, if I must.”

“You sure will!” Dranko agrees.

Cor Kek does a double-take as he looks at Dranko’s sash.

“Miss Charagan?” he says, raising an incredulous eyebrow.

“Look, I won fair and square!” Dranko retorts.  “Though if you’d rather direct an attack or two to the dwarf over there, I’d be something in your debt.”

Grey Wolf, somewhat healed by Flicker’s potion, pegs Cor Kek with another _disintegrate_.  It gets through the target’s spell resistance, but the Grand Diviner takes only minor damage.   Bostock chides his wielder.

“Perhaps if you would make use of me, instead of resorting to spells, your situation would improve.  I would say that…”

“I’d like to kill you, Miss Charagan,” says Cor Kek, flying further upward, “But you know the old saying.  ‘Kill the wizards first.’”  Cor Kek quickens a _heartclutch_, and Aravis can feel his heart start to leap, literally, from his chest.  The pain is staggering, but Aravis presses down, grits his teeth, and resists the deadly effect.

“Fine, says Kek.  “I’ll do this the old fashioned way.”  

He casts _firestorm_.  The Merging Room is shot through with roaring flames and filled with the screams of the Company.   When the flames recede, both Grey Wolf and Aravis have been burnt to charred corpses.

“Wizards first,” Cor Kek says smugly.  “But Dranko, you can be next.”

But Morningstar is already thinking furiously over the mind-link, and at her urging, Ernie picks up Aravis’s much-lightened corpse and heaves it so that it lands next to Grey Wolf’s.  Then he quickens a _searing light_ that strikes harmlessly against Cor Kek’s armor.

Cor Kek smiles. “I can see this will be quite satisfying.”

Ernie’s face contorts in anger.  “May everything you eat, for the rest of your life, turn to ashes in your mouth.”

Dranko can’t help himself.  “It’ll taste like our wizards!”

“Dranko!” Ernie screams.  He’s not in a joking mood.

The surviving member of Tel Mek’s elites cannot see the invisible Dranko, but slashes through the air where his voice is coming from.  Most of his swings go awry, but one lucky shot strikes the half-orc in the neck.  “A ha!”

_Ten seconds gone now_

Kibi realizes that standing toe to toe with the Black Circle’s most fearsome warrior is not a good long-term strategy.  He can feel malign and damaging energies pouring off of Tel Mek’s armor, but takes the chance, grits his teeth, and casts _Otto’s irresistible dance_.  

“Excuse me, sir,” Kibi says with a grimace, “but would you mind dancing for me, please?”  He touches his enemy's armored foot.

Tel Mek obliges.  Still hovering, he starts to caper and prance, even managing some startling mid-air twirls and spins.  His face turns red and he splutters with rage.  “I’m going to KILL you for this!” he roars, but of course he can’t at the moment, because he’s executing a perfect jig.

Kibi follows up with _prismatic spray_.  Tel Mek resists being turned to stone.  Three Quick Winks turns a sickly shade of green and drops dead on the spot from the poison in his veins.  Kibi feels a backlash of pain as electricity, normally a prohibited element for Earth Mages, is forced out of his fingers; Mon Zat is still alive despite the horrible burns on the side of his head.  Sen Pi is unable to resist the petrification ray, turns to rock, plummets, and breaks in half against the _spike stones_ below.

“Looks like you missed a wizard,” says Ernie.

Kibi wastes no time, quickening a _cone of cold_ that blasts the dancing Tel Mek and kills Mon Zat.

While Kibi unleashes his arcane fury, Morningstar finishes turning the battle around.  She flies to where Grey Wolf and Aravis’s corpses lie smoldering, quickens a _revivify_ on Aravis, casts another on Grey Wolf, and finishes up with a _mass heal_.  The wizards blink, returned from death and finding themselves at full health.  Grey Wolf hears Bostock still yammering away in his head.  “…swing me next time, assuming there IS a next time!”

“Welcome back,” says Morningstar.  Then, to Cor Kek, she says:  “Maybe it should be clerics first.”

“Mages!” yells Dranko.  “See what you can do about keeping Cor Kek from escaping!”

But the Black Circle’s top wizard is also still part of this fight.  Tai En blasts a maximized _cone of cold_, unconcerned that Cor Kek is in its area.  He follows up with a quickened _ice storm_.  Again half the party is badly wounded, and Ernie drops unconscious as large chunks of ice slam into his head and shoulders.  Dranko instinctively casts _close wounds_ on the halfling, immediately bringing him back to consciousness.

Aravis feels good.  _Really_ good.  He realizes with a start that during his brief time spent dead, spells on his person that require a living target have ended, and that includes the _energy drain_!   He pops off a _see invisibility_ and then targets a _greater dispel magic_ on Cor Kek. The Grand Diviner is suddenly stripped of _fly, invisibility_ and _spell resistance_, along with some other minor enchantments.   He falls, but lands atop the narrow wall and manages to keep his balance.   Aravis then quickens a _cone of cold_, striking Cor Kek, Tai En and Tel Mek.  None of them drop, and Cor Kek doesn’t seem injured by it at all.  In fact, for all the sound and fury of the combat, Cor Kek is barely hurt.  His _energy immunities_ have prevented almost all the damage tossed his way.  He still has some tricks up his sleeve, and is confident that he can still wrench the battle back to his side.

Dranko moves quickly up to him, stepping easily on the narrow wall, readying his whip.  Cor Kek is distracted enough that he doesn’t notice Flicker creeping up behind him.

Over the mind-link, Dranko says a single word to his halfling ally.

_Now._

As Dranko lets loose a deadly barrage of whip strikes, Flicker leaps onto Cor Kek’s back and starts stabbing.  As he stabs, he shifts his weight so that Cor Kek doesn’t fall off the wall before Dranko finishes his salvo.   Cor Kek knows pain the likes of which he has never before endured, but he doesn’t know it for long.  It only takes seconds for the pair of rogues to reduce Cor Kek’s head to a gushing ruin.  His body falls lifeless off the wall. 

Only three enemies now remain:  the wizard Tai En, the dancing warrior Tel Mek, and the last of Mek’s elite fighters, a young man named Kerwyn who has been hanging back from the fighting.  Kerwyn cannot believe what has just happened:  Cor Kek, torn apart by a half orc with a whip and a little halfling?  Sen Pi, killed?  Clavyn, Mon Zat, Winks, all dead?  His entire squad destroyed?  Tel Mek, the greatest warrior he has ever heard of, reduced to a ridiculous and helpless mid-air dance?  At least Tai En is still alive…

SPLOOSH!  Grey Wolf targets Tai En with an _acid orb_ that dissolves the poor wizard’s body right out of his robes.  Kerwyn’s eyes grow even wider.  He fumbles in his pocket before the rest of these deadly enemies’ attentions are turned upon him, and snaps a _refuge_ token.  He blinks out.

That leaves only Tel-Mek, still twirling.  As Dranko and Flicker move into position, Aravis gets a _sending_ in his head.

*Rosetta has returned from her mission with vital news.  The spire will convene at the Greenhouse in one hour.  Please attend with your company.  Cornelia. *

Aravis responds:  *We’re in the middle of killing Black Circle villains.  Can we make that four hours?*

As Dranko and Flicker move into position around Tel Mek, another _sending_ comes in.  *Four hours, or at your earliest convenience.  Good luck!*

Tel Mek dies dancing; Flicker and Dranko rip him to pieces.

_Elapsed time:  18 seconds._

…to be continued…


----------



## Tamlyn

Simply awesome!


----------



## SolitonMan

Sagiro said:


> Over the mind-link, Dranko says a single word to his halfling ally.
> 
> _Now._
> 
> As Dranko lets loose a deadly barrage of whip strikes, Flicker leaps onto Cor Kek’s back and starts stabbing.  As he stabs, he shifts his weight so that Cor Kek doesn’t fall off the wall before Dranko finishes his salvo.   Cor Kek knows pain the likes of which he has never before endured, but he doesn’t know it for long.  It only takes seconds for the pair of rogues to reduce Cor Kek’s head to a gushing ruin.  His body falls lifeless off the wall.




Ah yes, just one of the MANY reasons I love this story hour!


----------



## steeldragons

Um...Wow.

Just...yeah...wow.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Cool fight.

But I'm kind of surprised that we're not seeing more save-or-die's getting tossed around. You know, _wail of the banshee_, chained _flesh to stone_, that kind of thing. Particularly nasty against low-Fort mages.

Although if there is some kind of "the PCs won't use too many save-or-die's if the DM also doesn't" detente going on, then I applaud your collective restraint!


----------



## blargney the second

Huzzah!


----------



## steeldragons

Joshua Randall said:


> Cool fight.
> 
> But I'm kind of surprised that we're not seeing more save-or-die's getting tossed around. You know, _wail of the banshee_, chained _flesh to stone_, that kind of thing. Particularly nasty against low-Fort mages.




I saw several. Notably the "heartclutch" on Aravis. Also,at the moment, I'd say the firestorm would qualify as well. But, thankfully, the party (and for a continued 18 seconds of awesomeness, the enemy) saved.



Joshua Randall said:


> Although if there is some kind of "the PCs won't use too many save-or-die's if the DM also doesn't" detente going on, then I applaud your collective restraint!




That seems to be the case of this most awesome of all adventuring parties (and one of the, if not _the,_ longest running campaigns I've ever heard of). And thank the gods. Opinions of "Save or die" not withstanding, this was...just...Wow.

Seriously Sagiro, forget hat I said about a graphic novel, this story requires an animated feature! lol.

--Steel Dragons
PS: Piratecat, the revision of Dranko is coming (soon). I've been sidetracked with holidays and RL shhhhhtuff. Apologies...A "redo" of Aravis (unless his player was ok with the last one), also. I'm leeeeeaning towards an "in acton" group shot (think a Marvel comics or JLA style "coming to get'cha" image) versus a simple "family portrait." What do you or Sagiro or KidChtulu or Greywolf or anyone else think?


----------



## Sagiro

In general I take a dim view of "save or die" spells like _wail of the banshee_ or _finger of death_.  Though I've never outright banned them or anything, my players and I do in fact have a kind of unspoken detente.  

Of course, with the arrival of spells like _revivify_ in the Spell Compendium, I may rethink that policy before the end.   

Aravis's player has pointed out on many occasions that high-damage spells are often "save or die," if the target's hit points are low enough.  I personally don't think of them the same way, though, unless the damage is high enough to kill a full-HP PC in a single round.   Also, Aravis has no qualms about tossing around 40d6 _disintegrate_ spells, which are save-or-die if your HP are at or below around 140.

_Heartclutch_  is not technically save or die.  On a failed save, the target will die in 3 rounds unless someone uses _heal, mass heal, miracle_ or _wish_.

Finally, I don't minding using _flesh to stone_, since the party member can be revived if the party wins the fight, or during combat if someone has prepared _stone to flesh_, or uses a _miracle_ or _wish_.


----------



## coyote6

Sagiro said:


> Of course, with the arrival of spells like _revivify_ in the Spell Compendium, I may rethink that policy before the end.




Yes, I loooove _revivify_. I house ruled it to work if cast within level/2 rounds, too. I much prefer just-died resuscitation magic to "oh, you've been dead for days/weeks/years/decades, let's bring you back" resurrection magic.


----------



## steeldragons

"Save or Dies" or no "Save or Dies"...did I mention the...ya know...WOW!

How do I love this story hour...let me count the ways...ok, or not.. It's a loooot of ways though, lemme tell ya.

Good show (again! As if there was ever a doubt).

Thanks, as always, for the adventure.
--SD


----------



## Siuis

Oh, man. You guys are, as ever, an inspiration.
No epic advancement huh? Wait, no, you still distribute levels. Nevermind... Can't wait to see how you guys look- is it gonna be like in the ELH, where all the idolize show up in flashy but mostly-useless stuff, like a helmet of ioun stones, twelve flaming axes, and a +8 bikini? Well, Dranko probabl will, but I suspect the rest of you all have more taste.
Seriously though, a shadowdancer with a flaming blade? Counterintuitive, that.

Also, did anyone see that young padawan who 'ported out with the refuge token? I'm surprised Greywolf's next words weren't "I _wish_ he were back here". That sort of slip is the thing that bets you guys in the butt a lot. But summoning a now-noncombatant and killing him isn't your style either... Hm. Guess I've got more to learn from you guys than I thought.

Sagiro, is there any hope of Dranko ever getting famous again? Ever? Or even infamous. It's heart-wrenching to know something so important to the guy is forever beyond his reach. Maybe let him blow several feats on epic reputation?

Totally Geelong out too much to be insightful here. Just sort of gushing.


----------



## Everett

The descriptive feel of Sagiro's battle scenes: great, as always.

One reason I stopped playing D&D two years ago was that I'd get very bored with the silliness of playing a series of actions that occur, after all, in six seconds, in half an hour or forty-five minutes of real time.  In a campaign this deep and engaging I wouldn't mind, but do you have any clever solutions to that problem?  Or do you just not consider it a problem?


----------



## Everett

steeldragons said:


> I'm leeeeeaning towards an "in acton" group shot (think a Marvel comics or JLA style "coming to get'cha" image) versus a simple "family portrait." What do you or Sagiro or KidChtulu or Greywolf or anyone else think?




I'd like to see an action shot before a family portrait, yeah.


----------



## Piratecat

Siuis said:


> Sagiro, is there any hope of Dranko ever getting famous again? Ever? Or even infamous. It's heart-wrenching to know something so important to the guy is forever beyond his reach. Maybe let him blow several feats on epic reputation?



Sacrifices have to have costs. Otherwise they mean nothing. 

As for the guy who escaped, we're okay with that. We _did_ regret not getting to listen in as he reported back. Man, the look on his face when he realized there was no one to report to. . .

Siuis, none of us are shadowdancers, and none of us have a flaming blade (although Dranko's whip is flaming nowadays; he turns it off when sneaking around.) Are you thinking of someone else?

Everett, I don't have a big disconnect between game time and combat time. I certainly like this better than 1e's one minute combat rounds. (In Mutants & Masterminds, I'll note, we measure combat rounds not in seconds or minutes but in how many panels on the comic page they take up.)  I agree with Sagiro, though, that being able to use action points for an extra standard action was too powerful; our enemies couldn't do it. We don't miss it much now that it's gone.


----------



## RedTonic

Is there a house rule somewhere about the ironstorm + chain lightning combo, or is that a... canon combo? It sounds like something I'd like to try. :3


----------



## Sagiro

RedTonic said:


> Is there a house rule somewhere about the ironstorm + chain lightning combo, or is that a... canon combo? It sounds like something I'd like to try. :3



Nope, not a house rule.  It's part of the description of _ironstorm_ in Relics & Rituals.  If memory serves, when _chain lightning_ is cast near an _ironstorm_, everything in the area of the latter takes (X+4)d6 damage, where X is the damage the primary target of the _chain lightning_ would have normally taken.


----------



## Siuis

PC, I was actually commenting on all of the pictures in the epic level handbook. It shows all of the iconic characters (even the PrC ones) but with "epic" gear. I know they had to show the difference since they were using a visual medium, but some of the images were jarring and absurd- most notably, the flaming weapon used by the penultimate sneak. I was thinking of a contrast, where most of your party continues with their comfy peasant clothes, neat, maybe plain but functional equipment with a few personal touches; feathered shield, holy symbols, realistic personal flair. I then remembered Dranko having a helmet of glory(?) in all it's obnoxious, jewel-encrusted splendour. I giggled for a minute and wondered what Abernathy's company would look like, decked out all "epic". I was, admittedly, not bothering to be rational at the time 

For Dranko's eternal loss of recognition; I've found that D&D is about overcoming hindrances. That Dranko just _can't_ fix it, rather than needs a lot of effort, is jarring. I'm looking at it in the wrong light, I know. It's bittersweet, and is supposed to evoke this kind of empathy, or the sacrifice was meaningless. I was just putting some thought into the how of going about it, because for me knowing that even going through all these otherwise-legitimate steps to fix something won't work has more impact than just "there is no way". I asked fully expecting you guys to have thought through and refuted the idea already.

Maybe that's my issue? I think in mechanics. It's an extra layer of distance between me and the game world. As long as that's there, I won't be able to have a game like this...
And apparently, "geeking" is not a word, but Geelong is. Thank you, auto correct.


----------



## Joshua Randall

I don't object to _disintegrate _so much because (1) you have to hit with it and (2) the target has to fail a Fort save and (3) you still have to roll those damage dice.

I guess what I was referring to is the contrast between this fight, which was cool (and did involve a few save-or-die's) and something like the following fight, in which mass save-or-die's wiped the floor.

(And, apologies for quoting from another Story Hour, but this really is the perfect example.)

[sblock]







> (from Sepulchrave's story, emphasis added)
> 
> "I…" The Bard began, but never finished.
> 
> Because Mostin, whether in a fit of paranoia, or anticipating an inevitable coming to blows, acted unilaterally, and made a decision which would change the way that the travellers related with the inhabitants of Afqithan. To the others, it also demonstrated the power that an arcanist of Mostin’s stature could wield in Faerie or any of its orbiting demiplanes. He spat a number of syllables out, prompting bows to be drawn or shot, and eliciting a desperate but ineffectual gesture in response from Koilimilou.
> 
> 
> **
> 
> 
> Ortwin experienced a strange sensation which lasted less than a fraction of a second – the merest flash in his mind. Shomei immediately recognized it for what it was – a temporal discontinuity in their vicinity. After it had passed, there was a colossal discharge of magical energy, and the tapestry of reality threatened to rupture completely before it rewove itself. Echoes of Sonics hung in the air.
> 
> *The three Jariliths, Shupthul, the Succubus and twenty-six of the thirty Hell-hounds had vanished: the Captain’s empty armour and arms collapsed to the ground in a noisy rattle. Eleven of the Loquai had been petrified, along with six of their griffon mounts – some frozen with grotesque expressions of terror upon their faces. One other sidhe was dead from fear, and all but one of the remaining steeds had likewise been slain by a phantasmal killer.* Each of the umbral quicklings had been reduced to a pulp by sonic attacks. The female sidhe sat upon a stone griffon with a vacant expression on her face.*
> 
> The last griffon attempted to flee with its petrified rider, along with the four hell-hounds. Mostin turned them into flounders, which flapped impotently in the air before suffocating.
> 
> [...]
> 
> *Mostin’s attack consisted of a time stop, empowered and maximized by the magical trait of the plane to 6 rounds of virtual time, during which he cast haste, a *chained flesh to stone, a chained phantasmal killer, two banishments directed at the demons and hell-hounds*, disintegrations targeting Shupthul and the Succubus Iemazai, an insanity on Koilimilou, and various sonics. *There were multiple redundancies in the spells – some of the Loquai were struck by both the flesh to stone and phantasmal killer.* Shupthul avoided petrification but was disintegrated. Koilimilou succumbed to insanity. The save DCs were 25+ spell level because of Mostin’s augmented Intelligence, and even with the chained spells, most of the targets needed to roll 20s. Koilimilou initially attempted to counterspell the time stop with a greater dispelling she had readied, but failed.



[/sblock]


----------



## wedgeski

Nice post Joshua.

While Mostin's actions are certainly epic in every sense of the word, and while this question would, on the face of it, seem like madness in reference to Sepulchrave's campaign, I have to ask myself: would I enjoy playing in a campaign like that?

For me it goes right back to the recent discussion on very high-level play. With that much power at your disposal, and an unwavering willingness to use it against your foes, doesn't the campaign just degenerate into -for-tat exchanges of obscenely powerful magic, one after another until the inevitable day when you choose the wrong spell or, simply, fail the wrong save?

That's a knife-edge I wouldn't want to walk every single session. It's illuminating to hear about the unspoken agreements in Sagiro's game which reflect upon it.


----------



## shilsen

wedgeski said:


> Nice post Joshua.
> 
> While Mostin's actions are certainly epic in every sense of the word, and while this question would, on the face of it, seem like madness in reference to Sepulchrave's campaign, I have to ask myself: would I enjoy playing in a campaign like that?




It's interesting for me to read someone else saying that, since I decided a long time ago that Sepulchrave's campaign is a perfect example of the difference between great writing (which I think it is) and a great game (which, for me, it would absolutely not be). It's not surprising at all to me that Sep has mentioned on multiple occasions, IIRC, that he doesn't run a tabletop game for the group the way Sagiro is (and most of us are) doing, but rather runs one-on-one sessions with the individual players. 

As a DM who has sometimes had players having the same responses that Sagiro mentioned above, this discussion has been really interesting for me.


----------



## coyote6

FWIW, that trick wouldn't actually work, at least not in 3.5e -- spells you cast with a duration of instantaneous can't hurt anyone else. You can summon, you can dump a bunch of delayed spells -- but there was no mention of Delay Spell.

The scene in Sep's game might've been 3.0 rules, though. Of course, the PCs are way beyond normal power levels -- Mostin apparently has Int 40 at that point. 

(Me, I'd have switched to Mutants & Masterminds or FATE or something a zillion levels ago.  )


----------



## Everett

Siuis said:


> For Dranko's eternal loss of recognition; I've found that D&D is about overcoming hindrances. That Dranko just _can't_ fix it, rather than needs a lot of effort, is jarring. I'm looking at it in the wrong light, I know. It's bittersweet, and is supposed to evoke this kind of empathy, or the sacrifice was meaningless. I was just putting some thought into the how of going about it, because for me knowing that even going through all these otherwise-legitimate steps to fix something won't work has more impact than just "there is no way". I asked fully expecting you guys to have thought through and refuted the idea already.




I don't see that Dranko's sacrifice is meant to evoke empathy from us.  Fame, and the wanting it or needing it, isn't exactly a heroic goal, and Dranko, after all, is some mixture of anti-hero and jerk, ie., Jayne in Firefly/Serenity. (I mean that Dranko is much more like Jayne than Mal.  "We're gonna explode?  I don't wanna explode.") Throwing the bottle into the void was a pretty dumb thing to do in the first place (and totally in character), and the way it came back to bite him also makes sense insofar as a character arc would naturally play out.  I wouldn't expect that he would ever be able to recover his quest for fame -- since after all, he hasn't lost that wish or desire, it's just that if he were to pursue it he'd be dragged off by tentacle-monsters that exist in a dim, OTHERspace totally apart from good or evil.

Really, it's for Piratecat to resolve how he sees fit, or to live with.

And if you think about it, the closest thing the party has ever had to a straight hero was One Certain Step, the NPC.  I'd also say Grey Wolf has a kind of heroic cast -- quiet and good with both a sword and a spell.  And Tor Bladebearer and Kay fit the hero mold, but they're ancient history.  That's it.  Morningstar's just a professional, Aravis is an intellectual, Ernie and Kibi are likeable in a hobbit-sense but not how you usually think of world-savers.  Flicker is Flicker.


----------



## Everett

Siuis said:


> Maybe that's my issue? I think in mechanics. It's an extra layer of distance between me and the game world. As long as that's there, I won't be able to have a game like this...
> And apparently, "geeking" is not a word, but Geelong is. Thank you, auto correct.




If that's your issue, then I agree: this campaign "works" because everyone involved has their hearts in it.  That's why we read it. (Personally, it's the only thing I read on here -- Sepulgrave's SH, while impressive-looking, doesn't get me interested.)

And "geelong" on google and wikipedia only turns up a city in Australia.  So what's it mean?


----------



## LightPhoenix

shilsen said:


> It's interesting for me to read someone else saying that, since I decided a long time ago that Sepulchrave's campaign is a perfect example of the difference between great writing (which I think it is) and a great game (which, for me, it would absolutely not be).




I've thought the same thing at times as well.  I can totally imagine Sep's game as an e-mail game, or a PbP game.  Playing in it always seems a little unwieldy to me.  Of course, that suggests the question of where it stops being a game, and where it starts being a shared story.  If the actual _game_ part of "role-playing game" is minimal and incidental, does that really make it a game anymore?  Would (to continue using Sep's example) Mostin's attack really be playing the game, or would be it considered simply part of the story?  Normally we speak of RPGs as blurring the line between game and story, but just like that line can sharpen with regards to the game side (ie, tabletop strategy games), it can sharpen with regards to story as well (ie, a shared narrative).

For me, and me alone, my feeling is that you need to be playing a game to consider it a game.  That is, Mostin's "I Win" attack is not actually playing a game.  I'd say that while Sagiro does a good job challenging his players, their group is starting to approach that line as well, and this battle is evidence of that.  It seems to me that this is the biggest problem with "Epic" level games, and not the whole mechanical side of things.  It also seems to me that is why the beginning levels are the most fun for people; it's where the lines between game and story are interwoven, where they are blurrier.


----------



## Quartz

Piratecat said:


> As for the guy who escaped, we're okay with that. We _did_ regret not getting to listen in as he reported back. Man, the look on his face when he realized there was no one to report to. . .




You mean your arch-villains don't have Clones, Contingent Resurrections, pending Lichdom, or other ways of returning from the Dead?


----------



## Piratecat

Quartz said:


> You mean your arch-villains don't have Clones, Contingent Resurrections, pending Lichdom, or other ways of returning from the Dead?



Yeah, that hadn't actually occurred to me until I read this. Thanks a lot. I _knew_ we should have gone back to Kai Kin and dropped three or four earthquakes on the temple complex. We didn't, though, because aside from neutral-and-pragmatic Morningstar we want to be the heroes. Becoming city-leveling bullies isn't really our thing. 

LightPhoenix, for what it's worth, in the round where both Aravis and Greywolf died I thought we might have a TPK on our hands. Plenty challenged!


----------



## Joshua Randall

City-Leveling Bullies sounds a lot meaner than Spire Guard, that's for sure.


----------



## Piratecat

We played tonight. Sagiro is a giant rat bastard, roles are reversed, Dranko's normal combat style has definitely been torn out of a rut, it is in fact possible to hate Meledien even more than I previously did, the term "meat-shield" can sometimes become quite terrifyingly literal, never throw out your old magic items, and - possibly for the first time in years - Dranko is looking at death. Justifiably so.

Rat. Bastard.


----------



## blargney the second

Has he grown into a dire rat bastard?


----------



## Innocent Bystander

blargney the second said:


> Has he grown into a dire rat bastard?




Wouldn't it technically be 'advanced' into a dire rat bastard?  Though I don't recall seeing a DM advancement table in the DMG


----------



## Siuis

Everett said:


> And "geelong" on google and wikipedia only turns up a city in Australia.  So what's it mean?



No clue. I tried to explain my lack of cohesion with "geeking out" and my phone changed the word. I can neither preview nor edit my posts, either; my browser crashes and I lose the message. So I corrected myself in a later post.

Games like Sepulchrave II's are interesting as a diversion, but unless everyone is on the ball, or some folks get plot armor, it quickly becomes a no-fun endeavor. I'm going to attack an advanced Vecna (I have 48 hitdice, and redundant caster levels) and while there's an in-game reason for it, I'm kinda hoping my character will die. It's surreal.

I am, as ever, interested in seeing how the story hour here pans out. Abernathy's company are quite a fine crew, and engaging- this is the only SH I've read where I care about the story several times more than the metagame. I don't care what Dranko's exact HP total is; I care that he's still alive. That's rare to find online.


----------



## Vargo

Siuis said:


> I don't care what Dranko's exact HP total is; I care that he's still alive.



Didn't you hear?  Dranko is dead!


----------



## Piratecat

Vargo said:


> Didn't you hear?  Dranko is dead!




Son of a monkey! Sagiro was a designer on Thief, so I think that's "my" Dranko! I had no idea.


----------



## Sagiro

Heh.  I had forgotten all about that!


----------



## RangerWickett

Piratecat said:


> Son of a monkey! Sagiro was a designer on Thief, so I think that's "my" Dranko! I had no idea.




And E.N. Publishing killed Emperor _Drakus_ Coaltongue in the prologue of War of the Burning Sky. Man can't catch a break.


----------



## Siuis

Ach. Poor Dranko, famous for dying. The guy just can't catch a break. Heh.


----------



## Destil

Siuis said:


> Ach. Poor Dranko, famous for dying. The guy just can't catch a break. Heh.




Wait, what? Poor who? I don't remember anyone like that in the Company, and they're all famous...


----------



## Sagiro

A long update, but probably the last one before the new year.  Happy holidays everyone!


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 322*_
*What Rosetta Was Doing*

It takes just over an hour – and a very busy hour at that -- to reconstruct the ritual chamber.   Most of this is spent procuring the backup sets of reagents and repositioning the poles, while Kibi uses _stone shape_ to spot-fix numerous instances of cracked masonry and splintered rock.   In the middle of this clean-up, Praska lifts her head and blinks confusedly.

“Dranko?” she says in a small voice.

The half-orc, using the _decanter of endless water_ to spray away some of the gore, looks up.  “Yeah.”

“What happened?”

Dranko sighs.  “You’re still Mokad.  You’re not fooling anyone.”

Praska chuckles.  “Yeah, I’m still Mokad.  You got me.”

“And who’s this?” says Dranko, hoisting up Cor Kek’s headless body.

Mokad’s eyes go wide.  “You killed Cor Kek!  He must have been trying to rescue me.”

“Why would he have bothered?” asks Dranko.  “I mean , you’re kind of a jerk.”

“Perhaps he was my friend,” says Mokad, his voice flat.  “You probably understand that.”

Aravis scoffs.  “You would have used him the same way you use anyone else.  Like Praska.”

“You know nothing,” Mokad sneers.  “You assume that because someone doesn’t share your world view, they cannot maintain friendships?  I guess it’s true what they say, about how narrow-minded you goody-two-shoes types are.”

Aravis chuckles.  “You mean to say, you would not have sacrificed Cor Kek, to bring back the Emperor?”  

“Of course I would.  And he would do the same for me, in a heartbeat, and rightfully so.  Because _we_ are willing to make what sacrifices are necessary in order to make the world right for us.”  

“Why do you want to bring the Emperor back so badly?” Ernie asks.  “Is he going to bring you all puppies or something?”

“The Emperor is the rightful ruler of Abernia,” says Mokad.

Dranko drops Cor Kek to the ground.  “Yeah?”

“Yes.  And King Crunard is a usurper.”

Dranko walks over to stand above Mokad, still chained down and _anchored_.  “I would tell you that you could discuss this with Cor Kek in whatever afterlife you believe in, but we’re about to annihilate your soul.”

Mokad laughs.  “Ah, yes, the Ritual of Seven Stars.  You think it’s going to annihilate my soul?”

“That’s what it says on the box,” says Ernie.

“Maybe when you’re done, your wizards should take another look at the fine print.”

Kibi motions to the corpses of Mokad’s would-be rescuers.  “Your friends wanted to stop it badly enough.”

“Oh, it will kill me just fine,” says Mokad.  “But you may find that my soul will not so much be annihilated, as bent on revenge from the afterlife.”

“That’ll work, too,” says Dranko.  “Frankly, I don’t see how it would be much different than now.”

Mokad is silent for a few seconds, then speaks again.  “What do you suppose is going to happen to Praska when you finish this ritual?”

“You won’t be inside of her,” says Dranko.  “That’s pretty important.”

“Do you want her to have any remnants at all of her old personality?”

Dranko narrows his eyes.  “Why do you ask?”

Mokad chuckles again, a sound the Company has grown to detest.  “Because I can see to it that she doesn’t.”

“Fine,” says Dranko, turning his back to Mokad.  “You do what you need to do.”

Mokad shifts, stares at the ceiling, and becomes quiet.  His eyes are glassy.

“One last thing,” says Dranko.  “Everything you did to me when I was younger, I forgive you for.”  Then to Aravis: “I trust you, and believe in you.  Let’s do this thing.”

For the second time Aravis begins casting the Ritual of Seven Stars, assisted by Kibi, Grey Wolf and two Ellish sisters willing to take the risk.   A few minutes in Mokad lifts his head one final time.  “Almost done,” he says.  “This is your last chance, Dranko.  Praska as you know her hangs by a thread.  If you wish to ever see your friend again, you will let me go.”

Dranko shakes his head at Aravis.  “God speed, Mokad.  God speed.  Delioch will protect her, no matter what you do.”

“Then I’ll see you on the other side,” says Mokad, and these are last words he utters.  The ritual progresses and he becomes comatose for the remainder.  Three hours later, as all five of the ritualists toss handfuls of alchemical powders onto Praska’s body,  a tremendous white light shines up from the altar like a pillar of divine wrath, a _flame strike_ in reverse, and for ten long seconds the girl’s small body issues a piercing double-scream, man’s voice and woman’s voice mixed in suffering.  Her back arches, and it seems that her silhouette will snap from the strain she exerts on the chains that hold her in place.  

The light fades, and Praska’s body settles on her stone slab, and the energy bubble surrounding her fades away.

Ernie and Dranko rush to her side.  Ernie casts _heal_.

“Praska, are you there?  It’s me.  Dranko.”

Praska’s eyes flutter open.  She bends her neck to see the two faces at her side, their expressions studies in anxiety.

“Ernest?  Dranko?”  Her voice wavers, but carries the overtones of curiosity and mischief that Mokad could never emulate.

Dranko’s face breaks into a grin.  “Took us long enough to figure it out.”

Morningstar, suspicious to the last, casts _detect thoughts_, and everything seems normal.

As Kibi moves to unwind the chains that bind Praska to the altar, Aravis steps forward.  “Praska, what’s the last thing you remember?”

“I was in Hae Charagan.  Just now.  I was eating some stew.  It wasn’t very good.”

“What year is it?” asks Dranko.

Praska realizes that no one else is laughing at the question.  “1831,” she says.  “It’s July.”

Dranko sighs.  That was 13 months ago.

“Remember that day Mokad took you captive, and poisoned all of us?”

“Oh, Gods, yes,” says Praska.  “That.”

“While Mokad had you kidnapped, he prepared your body as his little place to run to when he died.”

Praska says nothing for a second.  Then: “What does that mean?”

“Well, we killed him, months and months ago now…”

“Really?” Praska interrupts.  “You killed Mokad?  Good for you!”

“Not really,” says Dranko.  “We killed his body.  But his soul then took over _your_ body.”

Praska seems to take note of her surroundings for the first time.  She sees all the trappings of the Black Circle, and the bloodstains on the stone.  Kibi lifts the last of the chains from her legs.  She seems suddenly pale, tiny, afraid.

“No…”

“He has been riding around in you ever since,” says Dranko grimly.

“I don’t see how,” Praska protests.  “I was eating in the temple, about five minutes ago…”

“It’s August,” says Ernie.  “And it’s 1832.”

Praska gasps.  “My Gods!”

Dranko motions to the bodies piled in the corner:  “They came to stop us from freeing you.  They failed.”

Praska sits up and rubs feeling back into her legs.  “So, what has he… have I… been up to all this time?”

“Trying to destroy the world,” says Dranko.

“Really?  I didn’t succeed, did I?”

Ernie is just suspicious enough to pop another _dimensional anchor_ onto Praska.   “It’s just to keep you safe, in case they try to grab you again,” he explains.  “And no, you didn’t succeed.”

“Wow,” says Praska.  “I’ve been trying to destroy the world as a Black Circle priest.  Once you know I didn’t actually _do_ it, it’s kind of neat, when you think about it.”

Grey Wolf clears his throat.  “Except for the part where you killed me, and Aravis twice, technically.”

“Oh,” says Praska, at a loss.  “Sorry about that.”


/*/


The Ellish sisters offer to take care of Praska, since the Company really ought to be heading to that Spire meeting about now.

“Well,” says Praska with a smile.  “I can see that you wouldn’t want to invite me, if I’ve been trying to kill everyone all this time.  Mokad!  What a bastard!”

Dranko nods agreement. “He really was kind of a prick.  But now we’ve dispersed his soul, and I trust Delioch will have pity on him.”

“I hope Delioch gives him a wedgie, honestly.”

“We’ll be back, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow,” says Dranko.  “Stay out of trouble.”

Flicker has just about finished scooping all the magical plunder from the battle into his _bag of holding_.  Morningstar insists that her share of the treasure be accounted for in minor magical items – weapons and armor, mostly – that will then be used to equip her Daywalkers.

Kibi uses _stone shape_ to temporarily entomb the bodies of their foes, until they can return with more time to consider proper disposal of them.    They only leave out Cor Kek, whose body is stripped of all but clothing, enchanted with _gentle repose_, and stuffed into the _bag of holding_ along with the loot.

“Time to go,” says Aravis.  “Let’s hear what Rosetta has to tell us.”


/*/


The Greenhouse is packed.

“Sorry we’re late,” says Dranko, as the Company enters via the front door.  “We were unavoidably detained.”

The members of the Spire already present turn and stare at the gore-splattered party.  Lady Cornelia, High Priestess of Pikon, can’t contain a gasp.  “What happened to you?”

“We’ll talk about it after the meeting,” says Aravis.  “First we want to hear what Rosetta has to say.”

Kibi ignores the many guests and flags down Eddings.  “Ale, please.  The good stuff from the basement.”

“Make it two,” says Ernie.

Ozilinsh hops over to them, buzzing with his usual energy.  “Nice to see you all, though I daresay you’ve looked better.  Everyone alive?”

“Two thirds of our mages died,” Grey Wolf deadpans.

“But they got better,” Ernie adds quickly.

The archmagi Fylnius and Alykeen are there, nibbling on cakes and chatting with Rosetta herself.   Dranko can’t help himself.

“Well, Rosetta!  You’re someone we haven’t seen in a long time!”

She looks over from her conversation and nods politely, though Morningstar thinks her look conveys ill-concealed suspicion.  She is gesturing with her left hand as she speaks; her right hand is stuffed into a pocket of her shirt.

Salk, foremost of the archmagi since the death of Grawly, comes guiltily out of the kitchen licking his fingers and being roundly tsk-tsk-ed by Eddings.   He joins Duke Nigel, who is talking with a woman the Company does not recognize.  The Stormknight Dalesandro and King Crunard’s advisor Yale come down the stairs; most of the guests have come that way, via the secret room connected to Ozilinsh’s tower.  Yale bows before the Company.

“Nice to see you all again!”  She notes the spattered blood and adds, “Looks like you’ve been plying the trade.”

Dranko can’t help but notice that King Crunard himself is conspicuously absent, and asks after the health of His Royal Majesty.

“Troubled,” is Yale’s reply.  "He does it to himself, of course, as he has been doing for his entire reign.  As you may recall, the King is not naturally immune to the Masking, and so conducting certain aspects of his business has always taken a toll.  As such, he has enforced downtime, so his brain can recover, after hearing too many reports of too many things he is not equipped to handle.  I’m both happy and displeased to say the Masking is deteriorating rapidly, though I think it’s probably a net benefit.  Anyway, his life is not in jeopardy, and he should recover within a few weeks.  I am authorized to speak on his behalf until then.”

“It’s an honor to have you here,” says Dranko. 

“Really, the honor is ours,” says Yale, “given the great deeds done by your friends.”  As an afterthought she adds, “And you too, I suppose.”

Dranko forces his smile as he seethes.

“Where’s Wellington?” asks the archmage Alykeen.  “I was hoping to talk to that boy.”

“Sorry,” says Yale.  “He’s been assigned.  He’s with the… Salk, what do they call themselves?”

“’The Happy Harriers,’” says Salk with a laugh.

“Ah, yes,” Yale continues.  “Wellington, Glade and Royce have joined with Junaya and Jerzembeck’s team, and they are all currently in the Gahantropalas Forest, repelling an invasion of ‘forest demons’ that’s threatening the entire population of the island.   Apparently there are thousands of them now, so we have our other elite strike team dealing with the problem.  I mean, since you’ve been off doing things no doubt equally important to our collective safety.”

Rosetta snorts, but everyone else in the room nods, as if it’s beyond question that the Company spends all of their time engaged in vital pursuits.  

“We should start,” she says, “but I suppose we can wait a few more minutes for the last couple of attendees.  Koenig and his apprentice are coming, correct?”

“So we have time to change?” Morningstar asks, forcing a laugh.  She does want to get out of her gore-soaked robes.

Rosetta raises an eyebrow, only now realizing just _how_ sickening is the Company physical state.  “You _will_ be telling us what you’ve been up to, I trust?”

Dranko gives her a pointed look.  “You’re the one who summoned us to this meeting, so you should probably go first.”

“Yes, I did, so why don’t you hurry along and clean yourselves up.”  She waves vaguely with her left hand.

“You know what?”  Dranko takes a step toward Rosetta.  “I’m pretty sure we can have this conversation without you being so condescending.”

Rosetta smiles.  “I’m not being condescending.  Perhaps you shouldn’t project.”

Over the mind link, Dranko fumes.  _I hate her *so much*_.

Aravis chides.  _No bloodshed in the Greenhouse!_

Ernie joins in the hate.  _We took her out of God’s Thorn; we can put her back!_

Morningstar sighs.  _I just want to hear that she did some good for our side._


/*/


While they wait for the last stragglers, making small talk, there’s a crash from the center of the room.  Fylnius had just put his feet up on a low table, and it snapped in half, dumping plates and mugs onto the floor.

“I’m so sorry!” the old elf exclaims.  

But many of the others remind him that the waves of extreme luck, both good and bad, are still rippling through the world, and he can hardly be blamed.

Aravis grumbles.  “I was hoping the Greenhouse was immune to that.”  He repairs the table with a _mending_ cantrip.

“Especially given what we have in our basement,” Morningstar adds.

“What exactly _do_ you have?” asks Salk.

“A giant Black Book of Evil,” says Dranko.  “Also some black goo that turns people irrevocably evil.”

“Not true,” Ernie protests.  “I got better!”

“Yeah,” says Dranko, “with both a _wish_ and a _miracle_.  And anyway you should be proud that I know such a long word!”

Yale looks thoughtfully at the table.  “That is why Portia and Attrius aren’t here, you know.  They’ve been assigned to guard the High Priestess of Corilayna, who many people are blaming for the rash of bad luck.”

Dranko nods.  “But it’s not her fault, is it?” 

“We don’t know,” says Yale.  “She maintains personal innocence, but she is clearly hiding something.”  

Several of the Company leap immediately to the same appalling guess.  

“Corilayna fled,” says Ernie, eyes going wide.  “In advance of the coming storm, just as Drosh did.  Think about it.  When Drosh fled, souls weren’t going to the afterlife until another deity stepped in to take His place.  And now Corilayna has left, and everyone’s luck is going bonkers because no one’s regulating it.”

“As soon as another God takes over the aspect of luck, things should go back to normal,” Dranko says.  “But the Adversary is coming, called by the Black Circle.”

“We think he was trapped somewhere beyond the Abyss,” adds Aravis.  “The rituals in Het Branoi were designed to break down the barriers that held him.  But we stopped that.  He’s still trapped.  But the Black Circle almost certainly still has something planned.  Something new.”

“Yes, says Rosetta.  “The Black Circle does indeed have something else planned.”

Conversation quiets down at this, and as the archmage Koenig has recently arrived, Rosetta declares it’s time for her to share her important news.  With her right hand still in her pocket, she tells her tale.

“I have been on a secret mission, shall we say, since you all saw me last.  I apologize that I didn’t tell you where I was going, but the knowledge of where I was, in anyone’s head, could have compromised things at any time.  It’s the Black Circle I was dealing with, and as you…”  And here she looks pointedly at the Company  “… are particularly aware, their divinatory prowess is unmatched.”

Aravis mutters over the mindlink. _That does make a convenient excuse for her, doesn’t it?_

“The Silver Shell has certain counter-divinations, ways of finding out what the Black Circle is up to, and I am now in a position to tell you about something I have recently learned.  A fortunate stroke of luck has occurred in the last day, allowing me to infiltrate the heart of the Black Circle in Kivia.”

There are many murmurs at this, and Grey Wolf manages to keep a straight face as he says, “Really!”

“Yes,” says Rosetta.  “And it was no mean feat, I assure you.  Few people on Abernia could have done it.”

“How could they possibly have accepted you?” asks Dranko innocently.

Rosetta outwardly ignores the intimation.  “I was well-disguised.  I have certain spells at my disposal known only to the Shell, and I was able to divide my mind, leaving one half exposed to the Black Circle.  For all intents and purposes, I _was_ a member of the Circle.  That half  had a carefully constructed history, and a personality different than my own.  I told them I was from a branch of the Black Circle near Bederen, and gave them some intelligence that they could have found out anyway – events on Kivia, and nothing to do with Charagan, I assure you.  I needed to provide them with bona fides, and an excuse for being there.  It got me in the door.  The other half of my brain was able to slowly make investigations into what the Black Circle was up to.”

Rosetta waits for the whispers of the assemblage to die down again, before pointing to the unfamiliar woman who had been chatting with Duke Nigel.  “I would like to acknowledge my partner  Etria, who was vital in keeping me alive, uncompromised and sane.   You are probably not familiar with Kai Kin – a city on the southern coast of Kivia…”

Ernie pipes up.  “I hear they have delicious custard!”

Rosetta stops her narrative and peers at the halfling.  “You know about Kai Kin?”

“I’ve uh, heard the name, in conjunction with the dessert.”

“It’s in a country called Ocir in south-central Kivia,” Rosetta explains.  “They are extremely insular, xenophobic, but still one of the more powerful countries on the continent.  They have a large army, and the Black Circle is very strong there; though they are not intimately tied to the government, they wield a great deal of influence.   Remember, in Kivia, the Black Circle is seen as benign, which we all know is a lie.  But certainly well-meaning citizens of Kivia – and you also know this from your previous visit – are inclined to give them life energy in return for answers to questions.

“I think the use of all that collected life energy is currently an integral component of the Black Circle’s main ongoing plot, a plot I believe to be dangerously close to its conclusion.  That is why I called this emergency meeting, the moment I learned what it was.

“I confess, though I had been in the Black Circle temple for months, I had been somewhat stymied.  I knew that there was a scheme brewing, and I knew who had information about it, but they are extremely capable when it comes to keeping secrets.  Even from me.  I knew that their high priest, an extremely formidable man named Cor Kek, kept extensive notes on this project but in a place I could not access.”

Ernie can hardly contain himself, knowing that Cor Kek’s remains are currently in Flicker’s _bag of holding_.

“But you were able to access it just recently,” Grey Wolf prompts.

“Yes.  Because after many months of scratching around the edges – and I can’t explain this, and I worry that this is part of a trap that is still in the process of closing – all of the Black Circle leadership in the temple at Kai Kin teleported away, _en masse,_  all at once.   I realized that that was my chance.  I burned several scrolls, some of them the only ones of their kind in the possession of the Silver Shell, and I managed to force entry into the inner sanctum of Cor Kek beneath the temple.   I found his notes, took them, and immediately teleported out, to a designated sanctum in the temple of Pikon in Hae Charagan.   I then spent the next hour reading Cor Kek’s journal.  I thought time was probably of the essence, and having read Cor Kek’s plots, I am now certain of it.  I don’t know where he is, but I assume that any moment he will discover the theft."

She scratches her nose awkwardly with her left hand.

The old woman Etria speaks up suddenly.  “You can tell them what it cost you , you know.”

Rosetta rolls her eyes, but Etria just stares at her, so she pulls her right hand from her pocket.  It’s black, withered, shriveled to half its original size.  All of the fingers are useless twigs.

“The cost of holding Cor Kek’s journal turned out to be my right hand,” she says simply.  “It cannot be regenerated.  I did divine ahead of time that it wouldn’t be fatal, and thought I might not have the time to remove the traps.  So I went ahead and opened it, and this is the price I paid.”

No one speaks for a few seconds after that.  Rosetta only seems annoyed that she was asked to bring it up.

Morningstar breaks the silence.  “I hate to be rude, but given all we know about the Black Circle, how do we know your mind has not been compromised?”

Rosetta puts her ruined hand back in her pocket and nods to Morningstar.  “Etria?”

Etria stands up.  “As you most of you know, I am Duke Nigel’s court wizardess, and have been for many years.   On Rosetta’s recent mission, I was her failsafe.  In Kai Kin there is a section of the city in which they house the foreigners.  I spent three months cooped up in a small boarding room,  only coming out for meals, and to keep up my front as a merchant.  In that room I used a number of magical spells and devices, designed to monitor Rosetta’s mental state at all times.  We had a means to _teleport_ her away if anything went wrong.  Fortunately nothing did.  Inasmuch as you can trust my judgment – and I am a wizard of no small means – I can say that Rosetta’s mind has not be tampered with during the operation.”

“I would feel better if we could question you under truth magic,” says Morningstar.

“I would be happy to let you,” says Etria.  “I understand your desire for certainty.”

“Etria,” Rosetta snaps.  “You don’t have to do that.   We all know that you’re fine.”

“No, I think Morningstar is correct,” says Etria.  “You know how strong the Black Circle is.  Put yourself in their shoes for a moment.”  

High Priestess Cornelia casts several truth spells, including _zone of truth_ and _detect lies_, and Etria appears to believe everything she says concerning the mission.  When that appears to be enough for the assembled dignitaries, some of the Company grumble.  “We were questioned under truth magic,” says Morningstar pointedly,  “but that didn’t stop you from suspecting us anyway.”

Rosetta sighs and looks directly at Morningstar.  “I don’t believe – I never believed – that you are consciously working for the Black Circle, or betraying us in any way.   But you had prolonged contact with them without knowing the extent of their power, and I still think that that level of scrutiny was, and continues to be, entirely warranted.”

She thanks Etria, who sits back down.

“Let me get to the heart of the report,” says Rosetta.  “Why we are all here.   And I know you say this house is inviolable, but When Cor Kek returns and discovers his journal is missing, he will try to divine our whereabouts, and they may have a means to penetrate it.

“It turns out that the Gate at Verdshane,  which Ozilinsh’s company so commendably sealed up, you especially, Aravis, is only one of _two_ weak points between Volpos and Abernia.  The second one, heretofore unknown, is the one the Black Circle is currently attempting to breach.  It is, according to the journal of Cor Kek, an enormous ring of gartine, in Il-Drosh, in Kivia.  Even the Black Circle’s knowledge of this is imperfect.  

“There is a series of ravines in Il-Drosh, covered by a magical fog, they think, and warded from all divinations from without.  Even inside, the Black Circle believes divinations will not function.  It is a heavily enchanted area.  No one has a visual record of having been there.  And the gate – this skysteel ring – is supposedly guarded.  Droshian necromancers set an army of undead to guard it many centuries ago.  It is not entirely dissimilar to the gartine arches we have seen elsewhere, in that it needs to be activated in some way.”

And at the mention of this tremendous gartine ring, the Company’s thoughts are harkened back to a poem, a set of five verses found by One Certain Step in his church library almost two full years ago.  Four of the five of these verses have long since been deciphered, their predictions and warnings come to pass.  But the fourth never made much sense until this very moment.

_read the signs as the shadows flow
see a fearsome emerging foe
light must rive the last of five
but don’t expect to come back alive

read the signs, you are not alone
those from lands that the foe called home
are fighting the war on a distant shore
to barricade the circle door

know them then by their mix of blood
man and holbytla and child of wood
know them each by their foreign speech
in the court of cats on the day of reach

tell them the door is close at hand
the foe can come forward in any land
his armies will roll through a skysteel hole
and turn their home to a bed of coal

go with them to your certain doom
and be the one in the lightless room
if the light will thrive you must contrive
to go with them to the last of five_

…to be continued…


----------



## steeldragons

Merry Christmas and happy holidays, Sagiro & Company.

>"You must spread some experience around before giving points to Sagiro again."

Anyone else _infuriated_ by this lil' pop up?! Even for people who I can't even remember giving XP to/or the last time I did...this comes up! Sucks.

BUT, have a very merry and I'll lookin forward to the continuing awesomeness in 2011.
(Group drawing might be done by then too. 

-Steel Dragons


----------



## coyote6

All those times Rosetta spoke so respectfully about Cor Kek & his might, I can't believe that Dranko didn't drop Cor Kek's head in front of her.


----------



## Piratecat

coyote6 said:


> All those times Rosetta spoke so respectfully about Cor Kek & his might, I can't believe that Dranko didn't drop Cor Kek's head in front of her.



The essence of comedy is timing.


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

I love that Mokad keeps inspiring doubt.  I don't know about your players, but I kept worrying that Praska was going to come back without her memories, or personality or something.  Also, I love the fact that the Black Circle attack had collateral benefits--keeping the other side's high-level people occupied can pay off in unexpected ways. 

I'd give you some xp, but I can't.  At this point, I'm surprised that there's anyone left who can.


----------



## Everett

Cerebral Paladin said:


> I love that Mokad keeps inspiring doubt.  I don't know about your players, but I kept worrying that Praska was going to come back without her memories, or personality or something.




So was Mokad bluffing?


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> So was Mokad bluffing?



Oh, hell yes he was bluffing.  Mokad knew exactly how screwed he was, and was saying anything and everything he could think of to stop the ritual.  Pretty much everything he said concerning the ritual, from the moment he was kidnapped, was a lie.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> Oh, hell yes he was bluffing.  Mokad knew exactly how screwed he was, and was saying anything and everything he could think of to stop the ritual.  Pretty much everything he said concerning the ritual, from the moment he was kidnapped, was a lie.




I see.

So... is he dead and gone and *annihilated* this time, or is his soul still out there somewhere, moaning and plotting?  Or is that just a bit of an open question?

Also: how long has the campaign gone on in game-time?  I've always assumed, somehow, that the passage of time was roughly equivalent to the real-time 15 years you've been playing, but if they killed Mokad "months ago" and Step received his prophecy "two years ago", then, not so much.  5 years of game time?  They were summoned to the tower in 1828?


----------



## wedgeski

Fun update as always! Let me just take this chance to wish Sagiro, Piratecat, the rest of the Abernathy crew, and everyone who enjoys this Story Hour, a great holiday!


----------



## Joshua Randall

Everett said:


> They were summoned to the tower in 1828?



April 1, 1828, to be exact.

Making this story the best April Fool's Day joke _ever_!


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> I see.
> 
> So... is he dead and gone and *annihilated* this time, or is his soul still out there somewhere, moaning and plotting?  Or is that just a bit of an open question?
> 
> Also: how long has the campaign gone on in game-time?  I've always assumed, somehow, that the passage of time was roughly equivalent to the real-time 15 years you've been playing, but if they killed Mokad "months ago" and Step received his prophecy "two years ago", then, not so much.  5 years of game time?  They were summoned to the tower in 1828?




If the party's understanding of the Ritual of Seven Stars is correct, Mokad's soul has been annihilated.

As far as in-game time goes:  four years and four months have elapsed between the party's summons to Abernathy's tower (April 1, 1828), and the Spire meeting described in my last post (August 3, 1832).  The relative time experienced by the party is somewhat greater, since the time they spent in Het Branoi is not otherwise accounted for.


----------



## Destil

Sagiro said:


> If the party's understanding of the Ritual of Seven Stars is correct, Mokad's soul has been annihilated.
> 
> As far as in-game time goes:  four years and four months have elapsed between the party's summons to Abernathy's tower (April 1, 1828), and the Spire meeting described in my last post (August 3, 1832).  The relative time experienced by the party is somewhat greater, since the time they spent in Het Branoi is not otherwise accounted for.




What about the time spent in the past? Did they return after the same amount of time had passed?

Sounds like 13 months in Charagin has passed since the attempt to merge the two planes using Grey Wolf, if that's how long Mokad's been in Praska's body.


----------



## steeldragons

Not to be rude to the interested parties...BUT...Mokad=GONE!!!

YAAAAY!!! Abernathy's Company! Huzzah!

Now...that Meledien chick...?


----------



## Sagiro

Destil said:


> What about the time spent in the past? Did they return after the same amount of time had passed?




They arrived back from their excursion into the past, to find that about seven weeks had passed in the "real time" world.  During that seven week span, the Spire's divinations indicated that the Company did not exist.  But it's a _little _more complicated than that, since their trip to the past was during the time-had-been-altered time-line.  The quick summary:

October 4, 1831:  The Sharshun rewrite history while the Company is safe in the Greenhouse.

[The party spends a little over a year of relative time finding Het Branoi, exploring Het Branoi, and cavorting around in the past)

November 23, 1831:  The Company arrives in the present again, having fixed history.

So, while the world has only seen 7 weeks go by, the Company has experienced (if memory serves) around 13 months of adventures, which included the time spent in Het Branoi during which _no_ objective time was passing in alternate-history Abernia.


----------



## coyote6

So they've taken 5 years and 5 months to get to where they are now. That's not too bad.

(In my Rise of the Runelords PF game, the PCs started the week at 4th level; a day and a half later, they'll be 6th.)


----------



## Everett

steeldragons said:


> Not to be rude to the interested parties...BUT...Mokad=GONE!!!
> 
> YAAAAY!!! Abernathy's Company! Huzzah!
> 
> Now...that Meledien chick...?




We won't see that Meledien chick for a long time to come in the Story Hour.


----------



## jmucchiello

Sagiro said:


> Dranko motions to the bodies piled in the corner:  “They came to stop us from freeing you.  They failed.”



So they restarted the ritual where every little detail needs to be just right with a few dead bodies "piled in the corner"? WHAT? Shouldn't they have been moved to another room at a minimum?

And they waited 3 hours before applying the gentle repose to Cor Kek? Something just seems wrong about all of that.


----------



## Piratecat

jmucchiello said:


> And they waited 3 hours before applying the gentle repose to Cor Kek? Something just seems wrong about all of that.



What's he going to do, develop salmonella? We just needed him to be non-dribbly long enough to get him to the meeting. After that, we didn't much care. 

Still, we've learned from that time we killed Srapa, the lizard that kidnapped Flicker in Het Brannoi. We didn't remember that we'd stuck his corpse in a bag of holding for a good eight months. Yecch.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Srapa is my favorite bad guy from this story hour. I realize he gets overshadowed by people like Mokad, Octesian, et al. but still -- Srapa is my favorite. It's not often that one lizard can cause that much trouble for a party of high level PCs! 

I like to think that he has a _clone_ waiting somewhere...


----------



## Everett

jmucchiello said:


> So they restarted the ritual where every little detail needs to be just right with a few dead bodies "piled in the corner"? WHAT? Shouldn't they have been moved to another room at a minimum?




I guess the ritual doesn't much care.  Cor Kek's soul wasn't about to get up and interfere.  

Don't recall Srapa.  Sounds like a Slithzerikai name (Spiderweb Software's Avernum series.)


----------



## jmucchiello

Everett said:


> I guess the ritual doesn't much care.  Cor Kek's soul wasn't about to get up and interfere.
> 
> Don't recall Srapa.  Sounds like a Slithzerikai name (Spiderweb Software's Avernum series.)




Runny bits of gore and blood could run into diagrams painted on the floor in a most disagreeable manner.


----------



## KidCthulhu

Steel, to answer your question about group shots of the company, I'd love to see a family portrait style thing, say with all of us relaxing around the Greenhouse living room.  Have you ever seen the Endless portrait that was done for Gaimen's Sandman?


----------



## KidCthulhu

Sagiro said:


> Oh, hell yes he was bluffing.  Mokad knew exactly how screwed he was, and was saying anything and everything he could think of to stop the ritual.  Pretty much everything he said concerning the ritual, from the moment he was kidnapped, was a lie.




It doesn't hurt that Sagiro himself is one of nature's greatest liars.  The man is scary good at prevaricating.


----------



## Everett

jmucchiello said:


> Runny bits of gore and blood could run into diagrams painted on the floor in a most disagreeable manner.




Yeah, but they just weren't going to, you know.  The Black Circle had their try, they failed, they're done (for now).  There wasn't any storytelling or gaming challenge in such a thing happening for Sagiro to present to the company.


----------



## Sagiro

jmucchiello said:


> So they restarted the ritual where every little detail needs to be just right with a few dead bodies "piled in the corner"? WHAT? Shouldn't they have been moved to another room at a minimum?



Regarding this:

1. "Ground Zero" of the ritual -- the altar with Praska's body, along with the inscriptions adjacent to it, were protected by a force bubble throughout the entire combat.

2. Most of the complex parts of the ritual were the spoken words and the thrown alchemical powders.  The battle didn't have much effect on these, since they had backup supplies of the reagents.

3. Seven high level adventurers and three priestesses of Ell worked on the cleanup for over an hour.  _Stone shape_ and _unseen servant_ can work wonders!  Fixing up the wall with the holes and then re-inserting the poles was the trickiest bit, but three wizards with 24+ INTs can accomplish great things in a short time.

(Also, what Everett said.)


----------



## Everett

August 16th, 2009:



Sagiro said:


> For the record, the Story Hour has now fallen about 30 runs and 2.5 years behind the actual game, which is still going but kind of entering the home stretch.
> 
> By which I mean we may only have 2-3 years left before it all ends.




Uh huh.


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> August 16th, 2009:
> 
> 
> 
> Uh huh.




No, really.

It's entirely within the realm of the possible that we'll be finished the campaign by August 16, 2012.   It all depends on how frequently we play.  My rough guess is that we have about 25 sessions remaining, and we play about 3 times every 2 months.  That works out to about 16 months left, which would be May of 2012.

We'll see!


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> We'll see!




Well, just as a f'r instance, spending the morning zoned out re-reading older game runs while presumably at work, I noticed that dozens and dozens of runs ago, while they were investigating slavery in Djaw, the party found out that Tor Bladebearer had been mentally coerced into serving a rival army.  Aren't there a LOT of loose ends like that to tie up before the game comes to an end? (And what will the endgame look like, anyway?  Epic combat with the Emperor himself, perhaps?  Aren't we supposed to see him in the flesh, soon?)


----------



## Piratecat

Everett, we dropped a lot of plot threads recently when something more important came up. I suspect that certain things will remain unresolved. It happens, it's a big world. I'm not sure if I want to clean up minor plot threads when all is said and done (assuming we live.) We're going to have enough trouble with the major ones!



Sagiro said:


> My rough guess is that we have about 25 sessions remaining, and we play about 3 times every 2 months.  That works out to about 16 months left, which would be May of 2012.



Clearly, my friend, you're on the Mayan calendar. That perturbs me.


----------



## Wilhem

WOW.....WOW! just read through the whole thing from start to finish. I'm not sure my girlfriend will thank you for the couple of months spent catching up, but I certainly feel they have been enriched. What a lucky group you are, fantastic players and a suitably, amazingly devious DM! I'm very jealous, makes me even more determined to find a group and start roleplaying again. Can't shake the image of Pewter as a cockney cat though!


----------



## Joshua Randall

You have to leave some loose ends for the campaign's sequel. Duh.


----------



## Siuis

Personally, I'm assuming the adversary, who scared all the traveling gods to this world in the first place, is on his way. It makes small amount of sense, seeing as how some of the travelers (or the other gods, I can't keep em straight :/ ) are traveling again.

But who knows? There have been plenty of twists and turns and, worse, following through without twists and turns. I'm looking forward to about 4 years of reading material to come :3


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 323*_
*Dead in the Water*

The Archmage Salk leans forward on the couch.  “Does the Black Circle know _how_ to activate this gartine arch?”

“The details were not included in Cor Kek’s journal,” says Rosetta, “but that doesn’t meant they don’t know how.  I think we have to assume that they _do_ know, given the other details I read.  Please, allow me to continue.  There’s more.

“As I said, there’s an army of undead guarding the portal.  It’s called the Sworn Legion, and is nigh-undefeatable by mortals.  The Legion is warded against positive energy, and they cannot be turned while in a place so holy – or unholy, if you will – to Drosh, God of Death.  But as you know – and I understand that Ozilinsh’s Company is at least partially responsible for this – apparently Drosh is no longer exerting any influence on Abernia.  Therefore, a weakness Drosh never thought he’d have to worry about when setting his defenses, is now being exploited.”  

Dranko groans.  “Uh oh…”

Rosetta smiles grimly.  “The Black Circle has sent their strongest necromancer, and its own army of undead to defeat the Sworn Legion and activate the skysteel ring.  For while the Sworn Legion could thwart any assault by living men, it is entirely ill-suited to fight other undead.  And while I don’t know where this army of undead _came_ from, or how they propose to get it _over_ there, it’s certain that they have one.”

“We know where it came from,” says Aravis.  “The huge army of undead that vanished, last seen walking into the river near Kai Kin…”

Ernie nods.  “And undead don’t breathe, and don’t care how long they walk.”

More clues fall into place.  The Company  recalls that the necromancer  Zeg had notes on keeping undead preserved while under water for long stretches, _and_ on the topic of improving their ability to fight other undead.   And one of Aravis’s visions from the Maze was of some large skeletal creature striding under water.

Rosetta frowns when she hears all this, but does have one piece of good news.  “They wanted to have their two most potent necromancers involved in the attack – Zeg and Ten Old Bones – but Zeg could not be contacted, so they proceeded without him.  Their timetable was important to them.  And that’s the most troubling thing about all of this.  As far as I can tell, the army may already _be_ there, in the ravines.  At least, because of the restriction on divinations, the Black Circle has no better plan than to get their undead army into the ravines, and march them around until they find the place.”  

Ernie smiles.  “That must be particularly frustrating for them!”

“Oh, I hope so,” Rosetta agrees.  “Unfortunately, I’m hard pressed to think about how you could do better.  And they have a head start, and can split up into multiple scouting parties, and here you are, listening to me talk.  They could be finding it and opening that gate right now.   Given that they have _some_ means of communicating with Naradawk on Volpos, he’s probably waiting on the other side of the Skysteel ring, ready the moment it opens.”

She turns to the Company.  “I am told  that you are the likeliest members of the Spire Guard to take this job.”

Over the mind-link, the party decides that they’ve heard enough, and it’s time to share their good news with the assemblage.

“We’re going to make your afternoon,” says Ernie.

“I hope so,” says Rosetta, raising an eyebrow in curiosity.

Ernie holds up the _bag of holding_.  “Inside this bag is the body of Cor Kek.”

“And all of their other leaders are dead as well,” says Aravis.

“The reason you saw them leave,” says Kibi, “is that they left to find us.  Which they did, though that didn’t go very well for them.”

“I saw you this morning,” says Dranko to an increasingly wide-eyed Rosetta.  “I walked right past you while you were sitting on a bench, reading a book.”

“And you ignored me?” 

“It seemed like the thing to do.”

Rosetta nods her head.  “It _was_ the thing to do.  That was exceptionally good judgment on your part.”

“Thanks.”

Dranko then explains briefly about Mokad and Praska, how he infiltrated the temple at Kai Kin, used a gem of soul trapping, and then how they performed their ritual back in Kallor.

“Wait,” Rosetta interrupts.  “You performed the Ritual of Seven Stars?  On your own?  Are you aware of the danger to your souls –  to your inherent _goodness_ – from performing Black Circle rituals?"

Dranko shrugs.  “I was aware that my friend’s body was possessed by a big jerk.  Anyway, they showed up about half way through, and we killed them all.”

“Was Tel Mek with them?” asks Rosetta, leaning forward eagerly.  “Tai-En?”  She describes the members of the Black Circle leadership.

“We think so,” says Aravis.  “We killed twelve altogether.  Only a single guard fled.  After killing them all, we performed the ritual.  Mokad’s soul is gone forever.”

“Hmm,” says Rosetta.  “There might be someone left who could resurrect Cor Kek.  There’s not much you can do about that, though it would take them a great deal of time.   My goodness.  Cor Kek, Mokad, Tai En and Tel Mek, all in one day.  Most impressive!”

“Someone should check out Praska quite thoroughly,” Aravis suggests.  “Just to be sure.  It turns out Califax was right all along.”

Rosetta turns to Duke Nigel.  “I think that these members of the Spire Guard should be taken off of the suspect list.  Because, while I would believe in large amounts of subterfuge and deception on the part of the Black Circle, a plan that involves slaying their High Priest, and their strongest warrior, and their most accomplished wizard, AND Mokad… well, that stretches even my imagination beyond credulity.”

Ernie blinks.  “We were on a suspect list?”

“Of course you were!  Based on your constant interactions with the Black Circle, it was only prudent.   But either way, I don’t have the time to investigate you further; you’re needed to save the world a fourth, or maybe fifth time.  I’ve lost track.”

Aravis smiles at her.  “Well, it’s nice to be off your suspect list.  And so you know, you’re off of ours too.”

“You have a suspect list?  What did you suspect me of?"

Dranko grins.  “When Pewter saw you in the Black Circle temple, we thought ‘either she’s a horrible turncoat, or she’s really clever.’”

“I’m glad it’s the latter.  Understand that my mistrust of you has never been borne of personal dislike.”

Over the mind-link, the Company all agree that this statement does not apply in the other direction.


/*/


The Company spreads out their map of Kivia on the table of the Greenhouse living room.    Where once it represented thousands of square miles of mystery and adventure, now it's mostly familiar. 

To the far northwest, the bellicose kingdom of Delfir is separated from its neighbors by the Gorkandi mountain range, though there is an egress into Tev (not far from the Delfirian Arch) via “hookbat pass.”   Due east of Delfir lies Bederen, a sparse and Spartan country that is also home to Evenstar and her cadre of Ellish devotees. To the south are the sprawling farmlands and green hills of Tev.  

Moving south-eastward, the simple country of Dir-Tolia borders Tev; the two are strong trading partners, and the bustling free city of Trev-Lyndyn stands watch by the Tev-Bilin river that forms the border between the two countries.  

The center of Kivia is dominated by the Endless Wood, a vast and dense forest nearly five hundred miles on a side.  To the north of the forest is Anlakis, a warlike country of loosely-allied nomadic tribes, all of whom revere Tiria, Goddess of Chaos.  Bederen has built a stout stone wall along its border with Anlakis, stretching in a 250-mile diagonal across barren rocks and hills.

Moving clockwise from Anlakis, one finds the halfling kingdom of Appleseed abutting the Endless Wood on its eastern border.   South of the forest are the hot grassy Plains of the White Sun, where sit the five Jewels of the Plains:  Mirj, Djerreth, Djaw, Fanaam and (technically) Levenmud. This last city rests on the shore of the Sea of Snakes, and is considered by travelers no more of a “jewel” than Mirj is considered hospitable.   The majestic metropolis of Djaw occupies both the geographical and cultural centers of Kivia, boasting not only the largest population of any city in the known world, but also an abundance of art, science, magic, fine cuisine, cutting-edge architecture and sport.  The White Sun Cartel is the most powerful economic force on Kivia, the Guild of Chains operates a thriving slave trade, and the Jewels are said to be capable of fielding an army the better of any on the continent.

To the south of the White Plains are the secluded and xenophobic kingdoms of Seresef and Ocir, the former being famous for its exquisite gemstones, the latter for its position as the Black Circle’s base of operations.  The city of Kai Kin, second only to Djaw in size and influence, lies along Kivia’s southern coast, where the 1500 mile Eternal River empties into the Sea of Strife.  

The lands to the southeast of the Eternal River, while comprising approximately 35% of Kivia’s landmass, are largely desolate and unpopulated.   (The only country marked on the map east of the river is Gurund, the dwarvish state largely in thrall to the Guild of Chains.  The Stoneguard Mountains run parallel to the Eternal River, and Gurund is sandwiched between the two.)   To the far southeast of Kivia is the Jungle of Dreams, wherein still sits, in all likelihood, the bottle containing the magical City of Zhamir.   To the far northeast are the blasted rocky plains of Surgoil, home to giants, beholders and blood foxes, and the beholder tower hiding Het Branoi’s modest exterior.

And across all of those lands, from Delfir to the jungle, from Appleseed to Kai Kin, the Company has ventured in these last few years.  Only one area of the map remains unexplored:  the farthest east, labeled “Il Drosh” by a single runic letter.  It lies to the north of the tremendous Black Bay that separates it from the Jungle of Dreams. The cartographer who drew this map – someone named One Far Wanderer – has warned that this region’s depiction is “…largely based on rumor and myth – let the traveler beware.”   In particular there are two features on this part of the map that invite curiosity and dread:  a series of long gashes haphazardly drawn, and a spot of blackness in the center of rough concentric rings.   

The gashes are probably the ravines mentioned in Cor Kek’s journal.   (The black spot is something else entirely; the Company will learn its nature in time, and won’t like it one bit.)  Ernie traces an idle finger over the jagged marks.

“The moment we found out that no one had ever been there to map it, we knew we’d have to go there some day.”

Dranko scratches his stubble.  “How will we know which necromantic army is which?”

Aravis thinks about the skeletal army they encountered in the wastes west of Djaw.  “The one that has the huge, multi-legged skeletal things on its side is the bad one.  But I’m far more worried about how we’re going to seal the portal permanently.”

“It’s just gartine,” says Grey Wolf.  “Can’t we disintegrate it?”

No one knows.

/*/

With the meeting of the Spire adjourned, the Company spends some time identifying and divvying up the loot from their battle with Cor Kek.  Eddings, exhausted, looks exasperatedly at the crumbs on the couch where Salk had been sitting, as well as the general disorder all around the Greenhouse.  Ernie orders him to sleep, and the party cleans up the mess with cantrips and _unseen servants_.

A few of the items are slated for unquestioned destruction:  an unholy mace, a wand of _mantle of evil_, and a bird skull that can cast a _commune_ once per week, with a human sacrifice taking the place of the usual cost of life-force.  There’s also a token of _unholy aura_ that ought to be destroyed.

The majority of the loot is standard-issue stuff:  amulets of health, rings of protection, cloaks of resistance, periapts of wisdom, various armor and weaponry with low-level enchantments, and a pile of healing potions.   These will be distributed to the Ellish Daywalkers, with a few set aside for the Undermen’s adventuring party.

A few items are more interesting:  a heavy mace that drains strength from those it damages; a ring of darkvision; some wands and scrolls imbued with mid-level spells. 

Finally the wizards get to the top-tier stuff:
-	A stone (with 8 charges remaining) that automatically heals you 5d6 if you start your turn at half health or lower. 
-	A suit of +5 plate mail that drains life from anyone standing next to the wearer. 
-	A holy ring of Delioch that allows the wearer to transfer healing done to himself, to another wounded person within 120’.  
-	A small green weapon gem that can change the damage type done by any weapon, to any type the wielder desires.
-	A large silver coin that allows a re-reroll of any d20, once per day.  

And finally there is a smooth gray stone sphere, about the size of an orange, that is identified only as “Cayyat.”  The wizards have no idea what it does, though it radiates strong transmutation magic and is activated by someone holding it and concentrating upon it.  Also, fortunately, it’s not inherently evil.  Flicker thinks he removed it from the body of Cor Kek.

Aravis wants to test it out right then and there, though Grey Wolf convinces him to at least take it outside the Greenhouse first.  Aravis sighs, but grudgingly admits that activating a powerful and mysterious item, one last in the possession of a Black Circle priest, should be done in a less risky venue.  He takes it to the Greenhouse roof.

The gray stone is slickly smooth in his hand, polished to a nearly reflective sheen.  Gripping it in one hand, he activates it by mere concentration, and feels it compress slightly in his grip.  Before him a rift opens in space, a rectangular doorway filled with opaque gray light, pulsing slowly.  The ball floats up and out of his hand, stopping to hover before the doorway at the height of his eyebrows.  It slowly spins in place.

Aravis reaches out and touches the surface of the rift and finds it solid but slightly yielding, like a flexible _wall of force_.  Kibi, whose curiosity has brought him to the roof on Aravis’s heels, casts _greater arcane sight_ and is nigh certain it’s a portal.  Aravis walks to the “back” of the gray doorway and finds it as impermeable as the front.

After five minutes, both wizards note that the portal’s pulsing is quickening, as is the jerky and random rotation of the hovering sphere.   Dranko, also present, casts _moment of peril_ to see if something bad will happen within the hour.  He gets no result.  Aravis reaches up to grip the sphere, but it’s as fixed as an _immovable rod_, and its rotations nearly break his wrist before he is obliged to let go.  Willing the portal to close causes no discernable change.  

“Great,” says Grey Wolf.  “We’ve opened a portal, and we can’t stop it, and it’s on our roof.”

Kibi casts _limited wish_.  “I _wish_ I knew what this was going to do!” he exclaims.  The answer comes to him immediately.  _*In forty-eight more minutes, the portal to Cayyat will open.*_

“That was pretty limited,” grumbles the dwarf.

Dranko calls Ozilinsh on the crystal ball, but the ex-archmagi has never heard of Cayyat either.  “The planes aren’t really my area of expertise,” he says apologetically.  

“Who’s the expert among you?” asks Aravis.

“Semek,” says Ozilinsh.  “Trouble is, he’s dead.”

For the next 45 minutes or so, the portal pulses ever faster, and the sphere’s rotation reaches such speeds that it would burn the skin from the fingers of anyone willing to grip it barehanded.  Then, without fanfare, the ball stops spinning and the portal brightens noticeably.

Aravis reaches out and plucks the gray stone sphere from the air.  With a shrug he puts it in his pocket, then rubs his chin for a second, staring at the portal.   Unable to contain his curiosity, he steps through.

He is standing on the wooden deck of a large cabin, high on a hill, overlooking a lake and surrounded by high snow-capped mountains some miles off.   In the middle of the deck, behind him now, is a freestanding gray rectangle.  For a ten-count he gazes upon this bucolic sight, mutters “Oh, to hell with Castle Blackhope,” and steps back through.  As he hoped, he emerges onto the roof of the Greenhouse.

“So, what?” says Dranko.  “It doesn’t actually go anywhere, then?”

When Aravis raises a quizzical eyebrow, Dranko adds:  “You stepped in and came right out the other side.”

“Time would appear to move differently in there,” says Aravis.  “I was there for at least ten seconds.”

Kibi joins Aravis on his next attempt.   The sky in Cayyat is  blue and clear, though not quite the same shade of blue as what they’re used to, and the clouds are a soft orange, perhaps reflecting the light from the half-sized orange sun.  Turning around they see that the deck is attached to a large log cabin, and through large glass windows they can see that the inside is beautifully appointed, with paintings and fine furniture and thick carpets.  

A large black circle is set into the north(?) facing wall.

After giving a count of 60 this time, Aravis and Kibi step back onto the Greenhouse roof, and again the others report that they appeared to have spent no time inside. 

For their third foray, the entire Company goes in except for Morningstar and Grey Wolf.   This time, standing on the deck and squinting into the sunshine, they hear footsteps approaching from inside the cabin.  A door opens, and standing before them is a small goblinoid creature, just under four feet high, with gnarly green skin.  He wears servant garb.

“Hello,” says Aravis, as the goblin steps slowly out into the deck.

“You’re not Cor Kek,” the goblin observes.  “Who are you?”

“He’s dead,” says Dranko.

“Dead?  Did you kill him?”

“He attacked us,” says Kibi quickly.

“Well, kind of,” adds Dranko.

“Oh,” says the goblin, a smile spreading across his face.  “Pleased to make your acquaintance!  My name’s Gibbil.  Welcome to Cayyat!”

“What was your arrangement with Cor Kek?” asks Aravis.

“I didn’t  have an arrangement with him as such, sir.  I just maintain the place.”   

“It’s beautiful,” says Kibi.

“Thank you, thank you.”

“Are you happy here?” asks Ernie.

“The work’s not so bad,” says Gibbil.  “Cor Kek was kind of jerk, though.”

“He sure was!” Ernie agrees.

The rest of the Company introduce themselves, after which Gibbil asks if he can get them refreshments.   “And there’s a staircase off to your left,” he adds, “if you want to head down to the lake for a swim.”

“You’ll find the new management here is less jerky,” says Aravis with a smile.

“Would you like a salary?” adds Ernie.

Gibbil looks at Ernie curiously.  “Now what would I do with money?  I’ve got everything I need right here!”

“Is there anything you’d like?” Ernie asks.

Gibbil thinks for a second.  “Yes.  I’d like to be treated with respect!   And not be bossed around so much.”

“Done,” says Ernie, and they both smile broadly.

“Time works differently here than it does back home,” says Dranko, looking expectantly at Gibbil.

“That’s what Cor Kek told me,” answers the goblin servant.  “Far as I understood, there’s no time passing wherever you come from.  Don’t pretend to understand these things.  They’re well beyond me.  I’m just a humble goblin.”

“How long have you been here?” asks Kibi.

“I’ve been here forever.   I come with Cayyat!”

Gibbil shows them around the interior of the cabin.  “Over there’s the library.  We’ve got some laboratories too, and an observatory, though Cork Kek said it was worthless to him.  Bedrooms are down that hall; eight of ‘em, not large, but large enough for folks your size.  And of course, you have a ritual room, through that door there, for all of your mumbo jumbo thaumaturgy.”  

The Company assures him they won’t be using it, recent history notwithstanding.

A thought pops into Dranko’s head.  “Who owned the place before Cor Kek?”

“That was a long time ago,” says Gibbil.  “It was a devil.”

“Did _he_ treat you with respect?”

“Oh, no, he was worse than Cor Kek.  I mean ‘devil’ quite literally.  My understanding is, Cayyat got created by some wizard a long long time ago, and I was created too, at that very moment.  I’d say Cayyat’s about four miles on a side, with the lodge here at the eastern-most edge.”

“Now _this_ is a major rope trick,” says Aravis.

“When was the last time Cor Kek was here?” asks Dranko.

“When there’s no one here for five minutes, from my point of view, the place shuts down. I don’t even exist. I think Cor Kek said he could only use it every month or so.   And you can only stay for two months at a time – our time, I mean.  Mostly Cor Kek came here to read, and make stuff in the laboratory.”

“That’s what we’ll do, too,” says Aravis.  “That, and take nice vacations.”

“There are some hiking trails through the foothills, and around the lake,” says Gibbil.  “They’re very nice.”

Dranko nods at Ernie.  “Ernie here’s an excellent cook, if you’d like us to make you anything.”

“_I’m_ an excellent cook, thank you very much,” says Gibbil, standing up a bit straighter.  “Don’t need any help, if you please.”

Dranko fishes a torch out of his pack and hands it to Gibbil.  “Could you just hold this for a second?”

“Hm,” says the goblin, turning it in his hands.  “Pine.  Pitch.  Looks about 3 years old.  You should get a new one.”

Ernie throws up his hands.  “Dranko, Gibbil is _not_ going to be our torchbearer!”

“Oh, I couldn’t leave here,” says Gibbil, handing the torch back to Dranko.  “I’m part of this place.  It just wouldn’t be right.  Plus, I’d probably just disappear if I tried.   Cor Kek told me never to try it.  So did the devil, for that matter.”

“Ever meet the wizard who made this place?” asks Dranko.

“Nope.  The devil killed him before he had a chance to use it.”

“It’s almost like new,” Dranko exclaims.  “We’re just the 3rd owners!”

“Cor Kek redecorated the lodge,” says Gibbil.  “My understanding is that the Black Circle is some kind of church of knowledge.  All about learning stuff.”

“And evil,” says Dranko.  

“Mostly evil,” adds Ernie.

“Really?” says Gibbil.  “Cor Kek was standoffish and rude, but mostly he just read, and made his trinkets.”

After a lull in the conversation, Gibbil rises on his toes.  “Well, stay as long as you want, as long it’s no longer than two months.  And I should mention, your grace period’s almost up.  For a little while after you open Cayyat, you can come and go as you please, but soon no one will be able to come in until the whole thing resets. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my nap.  If you need anything,  just wake me up, last bedroom on the right.”

The Company had briefly debated whether or not to set out that very day for Il-Drosh, despite their somewhat depleted spell reserves.  Now the question is moot; not only will they have time to rest, but they’ll be able to spend sixty-odd days crafting magic items ahead of their mission to stop Naradawk’s arrival.  


…to be continued…


----------



## Siuis

> Undermen’s adventuring party.



waidaminnit. I thought the combination of Dranko giving up fame and PC training out Leadership severed the company's connection to the Undermen. Oh, wait that was just the being leader thing. Dranko still "works" for them huh? Gosh, time travel and timeline changing is confusing.

Neat birthday read! Especially Cayyet. If I were to get the proper feats, O moustachioed DM, what would go into making my own little slice of paradise? Or is does it use craft: plot (req: DM, awesome 13 or higher)?


----------



## Everett

We haven't heard anything in the Story Hour about changes in Dranko's Undermen since he struck his deal with the tentacles.  Sagiro would have to fill us in...



Sagiro said:


> The Company spreads out their map of Kivia on the table of the Greenhouse living room.    Where once it represented thousands of square miles of mystery and adventure, now it's mostly familiar.




I've thought many times that the Story Hour needs an index.  One day I may just start writing one...


----------



## Destil

Has a a map of Kivia ever been posted? It turns out I had the place largely mirrored in my head aside from Surgoil.


----------



## Piratecat

The map is poster sized, hand drawn, extremely awesome, and would be a major PITA to scan. We could conceivably take photographs of it and then stitch'em together in Photoshop.


----------



## Davek

How about a commercial scanner, it might not be that expensive. (Clarification: you don't need to buy a commercial scanner, most print shops should be able to do the job. By the way, please don't take this as a demand that you spend money to please your fans ... just a mild suggestion )


----------



## Siuis

Spend his own money, heck. If I could get permission to take the file to kinko's and get a poster made out of it, _I'd pay to have them scan the map_ at a commercial scan-ey place.

Wouldn't even use the thing. But it would be darn nice.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 324*_
*Overland Flight*

“Will you be staying long, then?  Maximum allowable time?”

The goblinoid creature Gibbil, caretaker of Cayyat, bounces on his toes, hands folded behind his back.  

“Probably,” says Grey Wolf.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting the rooms made up?  One for each of you?  Any special instructions?”

Flicker asks if they have a smoking room.  Morningstar requests a bedroom without lamps, candles or other lights.  Gibbil scuttles off.

Cayyat’s laboratory, presumably designed and stocked by Cor Kek, is magnificent, putting to shame the Company’s basement operation in the Greenhouse.   The glassware is enchanted to be nigh-indestructible, the reagents are perfectly preserved and in abundant supply, and everything is meticulously labeled.   The party gets down to business, scribing scrolls, brewing potions, crafting wands, improving armor, and copying spells.

There are no spell-books in the library, though most of the tomes touch on the theory and history of necromancy.  The party leaves them alone, though all are intrigued by a heavy metal door at the back behind the westernmost stack.   It’s locked, but that proves little impediment to Flicker, who springs the door open in less than a minute.  

He pulls it open, and the entire Company feels like they’ve been punched in the gut by a _Bigby’s fist_.  Flicker blacks out and drops to the floor like an empty puppet.   Ernie quickly casts _magic circle vs. evil_ and hurries forward until Flicker is in its area.  Flicker groans and gets to his knees, squinting through the doorway.  Even inside the protective circle, he feels a malign heat pouring out of the small room beyond the door.

“Huh,” he says, rubbing his head.  “I was so sure it wasn’t trapped.”

“It wasn’t,” says Aravis, gesturing.  The inside of the room is small, more like a large closet, but the back wall is lined with shelves, holding almost a fifty books, all with black leather spines.  The titles are in a strange language.  It’s not clear if the palpable evil is coming from one book or all of them.

“You know,” says Morningstar,  “we could take all of our evil stuff from the Greenhouse and toss it in there.”

A few of them crowd into the closet, protected by Ernie’s spell.   Kibi casts _comprehend languages_ and realizes that the books are not technical – philosophy, history, politics – but at least one of them is radiating the overwhelming evil of the Black Goo.

Ernie picks up one of the books and carries it gingerly out of the closet, but it burns his hands and he’s obliged to drop it.   They replace it using fireplace tongs.

“I think the ink in all of those books is Black Goo,” says Aravis.  

Flicker closes the door, locks it again, and then jimmies with the lock to make it even _more_ secure.  Morningstar casts _detect evil_, and finds a residual taint that lingers (but is fading rapidly) on Ernie and the fireplace implements.

“We’ve made evil tongs,” says Grey Wolf.  “Lovely.”


/*/


Weeks pass, relatively speaking.  Stuff gets made.  The Company enjoys swimming in the warm lake at the bottom of the hill, and going for walks through the surrounding woods.  Flicker busies himself by removing the many black circles that have been mounted, drawn, and etched into the walls around the lodge.  

When the two months are nearly up, the party gathers in the large main room, drinking tea (served by the ever-attentive Gibbil) and contemplating their next move.  They have rolled out their map of Kivia again onto a long table, the corners weighted down with plates.

“Here’s my theory,” says Dranko, puffing on a Blacktallow cigar.  “I think I know where the portal to their world is, inside those trenches.  It was put there by Drosh, right?  And Drosh isn’t stupid.  So it’s not close to the edge, because someone might stumble upon it.  He wanted to give his undead guardians a chance to protect it.”

“So,” says Aravis, “you’re saying that it’s in the middle?  That’s hardly…”

“No!” Dranko interrupts.  “He wouldn’t put it in the exact center, because he’d know that’s what _everyone_ would think.   That spot’s probably trapped.  It must be _near_ the center, but not exactly.  So we go there, near the center, and listen for the sounds  of fighting.”

Flicker scratches his head.  “How do we know where the center is?”

“I don’t have to think of everything, you know.”

Grey Wolf smiles.  “I like the part about listening for the sound of fighting.”

“Anyhow,” Dranko continues, “I’ve made everything I’m going to make, and you can only pee in the lake so many times before you get bored.”

The others stare at him.

“Which is zero times,” Dranko hastily amends.

Gibbil bids the party a fond farewell, and seems extraordinarily pleased that his guests also wish him well.  “Good luck with your quest!  I hope to see you again before long.”

They step out of Cayyat and onto the Greenhouse roof.  Dranko has two months of beard (not having shaved while on hiatus) and uses his _robe of blending_ to make himself look shabby and tattered before re-entering the Greenhouse.  Eddings looks at him, blinks once, and comments dryly, “Ah.  I see you’re going in disguise.”

Ernie laughs.  “Dranko, were you expecting to disconcert Eddings?  I don’t think that’s possible at this point.”

Eddings chuckles and nods.  “What is the next item on your agenda, if I might ask?”

Dranko reverts to his normal look.  “We’re going to fly to the far corner of Kivia, where our enemies have an army of undead that’s going to pry open the world and let the Emperor through.  We’re going to find them and stop them.”

Eddings blinks again.  “Is that likely?  And soon?”

“Yes, and yes,” says Grey Wolf.  

Eddings nods.  “So, you’ll be the saving the world as usual.  Very good.”

The party briefly discusses _teleportation_ destinations.  There are three possible options, all of which are about equidistant from where the ravines are marked on their map.  They could appear in the Jungle of Dreams, or the halfling town of Victory in Appleseed, but they decide upon the desolate plains of Branoi to north-eastern Kivia, since that’s marginally closer.  After a last farewell to Eddings, Aravis casts _greater teleport_ and in an instant they’re standing in a bleak and barren land.  It’s cold, and dark, and  they realize that this is still the very same day as their battle with Cor Kek!  It was already late afternoon when they entered Cayyat, and the _teleport_ has moved them several hours forward.  Still, they’re well rested, and can navigate by starlight.  Wind whistles over the rocks and scrub.  There are no blood foxes in sight.

Grey Wolf notices that Flicker isn’t wearing his armor. 

“Oh, right,” says Flicker.  “I wanted to see if this would work across the ocean.”  He thinks for a second, and instantly his armor is there, on his body, fully buckled and strapped.   Dranko had added the _called_ enchantment to several of their armors while in Cayyat.

“What if it failed?” asks Grey Wolf.

“I’m sure Aravis would have teleported me back for it.”

After some brief argument, they decide to summon the genie Al Tarqoz to cast _wind walk_.  

“It’s not right,” says Ernie.  “He’s like a slave.”

Flicker disagrees.  “It’s nothing like that!  We let him go back where he comes from, every time!”

Aravis uses the ring, and the blue-skinned genie appears before them.   Just as he did the last time they called upon his services, he lays down a hand of cards.  “Ha!  This time there won’t be any… uh…”

“Good hand,” says Aravis, as the cards flutter to the snow-dusted earth.  “Probably was a winner.”

Al Tarqoz composes himself.  “Ah, my most munificent master!  I’m certain that you have a fine explanation for ONCE AGAIN summoning me away from a game I was about to win, this time on a hand that was going to earn back many of my possessions and a good deal of my dignity?”

“That wasn’t the same game, was it?” asks Kibi.  “When we summon you, is time passing for you?”

“No, it was not the same game.   And yes, in my homeland, time is passing right now, I assure you.  I’m certain that my friends and business associates are assuming that NOTHING untoward could be going on regarding this hand of cards.”

“They _do_ know you’re a genie, don’t they?” asks Aravis.

“Oh yes.  I’m sure they will accept all of this without question.  Now, how can I serve you?”

“We’d like you to cast _wind walk_,” says Aravis.

“And we’re sorry!” Ernie adds.

Al Tarqoz smiles.  “I exist merely but to do your bidding, my most benevolent master.”  He casts his spell, and when Aravis assures him they need nothing more, the genie scoops up the cards, sighs, and vanishes.”

“He’s really pissy,” says Dranko.

Morningstar sighs.  “ You would be too, if someone kept summoning you.”


/*/


For many hours, the bleak landscape of north-eastern Kivia rolls by beneath them.   The sun rises, struggling to spread its thin, cloud-filtered light over the cold stone ground.   Kibi endures the long airborne journey with stoicism, though he envies Scree safely tucked away in his _familiar pocket_.   

The northern edge of the of the Stongeguards approaches, jagged snow-capped peaks jutting into the bitter air.   The mountain range is wide as well, stretching twenty miles west to east.  They are about half way across, flying high above the mountaintops, when they start to feel discomfort.    Three minutes and three miles later, it has grown worse, and also quite recognizable.  It’s the distress they felt in the locked closet of Cayyat, and in the presence of the black book in Kallor, and the Black Goo from Het Branoi.  

By the time the Company has reached the edge of the mountains, they are having trouble progressing.  The evil emanating from – _somewhere out there_ – is like a psychic headwind.   Figuring that the source of this is at ground level, they angle upwards, and so are able to make more lateral progress without the radiating evil become overwhelming.  Eventually they see, far down below, what’s almost certainly the source:  a black spot, like a huge shadow on the ground.  It might be an enormous crater, or a flat-black lake.   There are no clouds in this part of the sky, which gives them a decent view, and given their current altitude the black blotch must be dozens of miles across.

Even thousands of feet above the ground, the Company, quite literally, cannot bring themselves to fly directly over the black crater.  Evil is blasting upward from it like heat from a volcano.  Aravis briefly wonders if he’s seeing Naslund, the Gods’ necropolis from one of his Maze visions.  He rightly discards the notion.  Kibi thinks this might be the thorn in the side of Abernia, of which he once dreamed.  

They decide to backtrack and go around the distant evil spot, mightily disturbed that they can feel it so powerfully, miles in the air.  

“Why in the world aren’t there any _good_ places in the world like that,” Dranko grumbles.

The party descends to a lower altitude once they have given the evil crater a wide enough berth.  The terrain is, if anything, becoming more bleak and lifeless.  There are no streams, no vegetation, so signs of natural wilderness.*

Three hours after leaving the Black Crater of Evil behind them, they spy a large patch of mist down below, at ground level.   It’s probably about a thousand yards on a side, vaguely square-ish in shape, and rises fifty feet from the ground.   Dranko looks for signs that it’s roiling, and sees none.

“It’s so dry here,” says Ernie.  “How can there be mist? It’s not natural!”

They swoop down and fly into the mist, and it’s not damp inside, though it is chilly.  It’s a thick fog, obscuring their vision beyond five feet or so, and making the Company nearly invisible in their gaseous form.  They’d been warned that the ravines beneath the mist would be shielded from divinations, though their _telepathic bond_ stays active as they probe the white vapors.   When they are convinced that there’s nothing interesting inside this patch of mist (and have found the ground to be unblemished by trenches, ravines, or anything like them), they fly back up out of the haze and continue onward at high altitude.

A few minutes later they see more patches of fog, varying greatly in size.  The smallest are no more than thirty feet in diameter, while the largest they see is at least twenty miles on a side.  None of them show any signs of movement within; there is no breeze, and the areas of mist lay like unmoving shrouds on a dead landscape.   It is clear that they are unnatural; while they don’t have sharp edges, they are all of a uniform height, and give the impression of being spell-effects like _obscuring mist_.   They form an archipelago of cloud islands in a sea of blasted rock.

Then, ahead of them, they see the largest patch of mist by far.  It extends past the edges of their vision in all outward directions.   Another hour of scouting shows that this block of fog is almost a hundred miles on a side, in a rough square.  Like all the others, it rises to a height of fifty feet from ground level.  Beyond it are more smaller patches, but this is clearly the largest.  Flying low over the top of it, the party sees no sign of movement within, nor hears any sounds.

Aravis decides that they should examine the ground along the southern edge of the mist – the side that faces Black Bay.  They drop down to near ground level, though Dranko decides to test the fog again and flies into its interior.  His connection with the others over the mind-link is cut off when he descends about fifteen feet into the fog.  Interesting!

They land on the ground.   There are no footprints, but they do find what they were looking for – bits of bone flakes and fragments scattered among the stones.   After some more scouting, they find that there’s a swath of ground, several hundred feet wide, littered with tiny bone chips.  It seems as though a large skeletal army did in fact pass this way, coming from the bay and vanishing into the enormous cloud of mist.

Aravis picks up the largest fragment he can find, and casts _vision_.  He guesses that he’ll be unable to divine the undead currently, and so poses the question:  “How long ago did the undead pass this spot?”  The universe answers him:  _*Six and a half days.*_

“That’s quite a head start,” says Grey Wolf.  

Aravis does some quick math in his head.  If the bone army is moving four miles an hour, and the mist simply covers a big open space, the army could have easily covered the whole thing in a week.  But if the hidden ravines are labyrinthine enough, it could take months to explore them all.

They’ve now been traveling and scouting for almost 13 hours.  Before sleeping, they split up, and spend another three hours skirting the entire perimeter of the fog bank in two groups.  They meet on the far side, and confirm that neither group has seen any more bone chips.  Cor Kek's army has gone in, but it hasn't come out again unless it left in the exact place it went in.  Finally, Aravis _teleports_ them back to where they started.   Grey Wolf uses his _Mordenkainen’s Cube_ to make them a _magnificent mansion_, and they pile in to go to sleep.

They’re bone tired.

…to be continued…


*  After this description, Ernie’s player *kidcthulhu* uttered:  “One does not simply wind-walk into Mordor!”


----------



## coyote6

"Bone tired" -- I see what you did there.


----------



## jmucchiello

Sagiro said:


> Eddings nods.  “So, you’ll be the saving the world as usual.  Very good.”




I hope Eddings has a proper British butler accent -- John Gielgud from the movie Arthur.


----------



## Thoras

Same comments as everyone else, but amazing as usual.  I've read the entire thing now and it's definitely inspired me to try DMing, despite the fact that I'm new to even playing the game.

I'm not sure why, since the description doesn't really make it out that way, but for the giant crater of evil they skirted around, I have this picture in my head reminiscent of one of those scene's in games/anime etc.  The one's where you see this huge fount of earth energy erupting up into space, but instead of green, it's this writhing rope of greasy black energy, heh.


----------



## Duncan Haldane

Piratecat said:


> Even so, it's amazing how long my attack round can take if I don't start early. Rolling 1d3+1d6+12+7d6 (reroll 1s) for five attacks takes a stupid amount of time; each round it's 5d20 and then 45 d6, of which 40 need to be treated specially. I've either started using Machdice on my iphone to calculate them, or rolling damage during other peoples' turns and making a list. Then I roll my attacks during my own turn and just cross out the damage numbers as they come up. Saves time!




Apologies for the extremely late reply.  I got very far behind, but I'm enjoying catching up.

Sagiro, I know I've posted this a few times in the 10 years or so that I've been reading this story hour, but you are a fantastic DM with a wonderful group of players.

A friend of mine was playing a rogue in mid-teens, and he set up a fishing-tackle box (single layer) for his attacks.  D20s in one row, then the other rows contained each of the appropriate dice for the attacks in progress (eg different weapons), then sneak attack dice.  One column for each attack, and columns had the same colour.

So he would just announce who he was attacking, as well as secondary targets if the first went down, and he'd shake the tackle box and expose the results.  As long as you can add up quickly it works well.

Oh, and as an aside, I didn't know till just now that Morningstar and Grey Wolf's players were a couple.

Keep up the good work and I'll keep reading.


----------



## Piratecat

Duncan Haldane said:


> Oh, and as an aside, I didn't know till just now that Morningstar and Grey Wolf's players were a couple.



They weren't originally; although they were friends back in college, during the course of the campaign the players fell in love, got married and had a child. Which is pretty damn awesome.

Here's our photo from the game's 15th anniversary. From left to right that's Kodiak (Kibi), Sagiro, Piratecat (Dranko), KidCthulhu (Ernie), and (Gray Wolf). Morningstar's player is taking the picture, and Aravis's player wasn't there that day.


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

Re: damage calculation:  with 7d6 (reroll 1s), it might be worth doing some substitutions of equivalencies.  7d6 (reroll 1s) is equivalent to 7d5+7 (assuming that you reroll 1s on the rerolls as well), which makes the overall expression 1d3+7d5+1d6+19, which is I think substantially more straightforward.  d5s aren't particularly common, but you can get prism-style dice which work just fine, or wacky irregular sided dice which can be made to work if they're shaped very carefully.

In general, I don't like "reroll 1s" as a common mechanic, because it makes for time delays while being strictly equivalent to simpler dice code changes.  There can be some fun involved, because "I never roll ones" is kinda cooler than "I get to add x to my total and roll smaller dice."  But it's usually not a gain on net, imo.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 325*_
*A Tale of Two Dragons*

“I suspect we’re caught in some kind of trap.”

Morningstar conveys this to the others via the mind-link, and the rest are inclined to agree.  After all, based on Scree’s scouting report, they should have emerged from the mist in well under a minute, but it’s been over twenty minutes now, and there’s no end to it.  Still, they decide to press on.


/*/


That morning, after a _heroes’ feast_ breakfast and discussion of plans, the Company had decided to send Scree on a reconnaissance mission, before the whole group plunged blindly into the unnatural fog.  Scree was amenable as always, sunk into the ground at the edge of the cliff, and relayed his observations through Kibi.

“I’m heading straight down … okay, I’d say I’ve gone about thirty feet.  I’m sticking my eye out of the cliff face; oh, still misty.  I can hardly see at all.  I’ll go down some more … Good rock.  Quartzy.  Strange, but solid.  I’m poking my eye out every so often … hey, I’ve come to the bottom, and it’s still foggy … No, wait, there’s another cliff.  It’s terraced, you see.  If you scaled down the cliff by a rope or something, you’d find yourself on a ten-foot ledge at the top of _another_ cliff!  Oh, and I’ve found the bottom of the mist!  Here, just a minute … Ah, I see.  Now I’m at the bottom of a ravine.  I can see the bottom of the fog layer, a couple hundred feet above me, I think, right where the ledge is.  The ravine is about fifty feet wide down here … Hey, there are more bone chips too!  Maybe it’s the Black Circle army?  Or maybe the undead that already live here?  Who knows?”

“Can you feel any tremors nearby?”  Kibi had asked.  He wanted to know if Scree could sense the proximity of the skeletal army.

“Yeah.  I feel a bunch of little tremors.  Like there are things moving around within a few miles of me, in multiple places.”

“Their army is fanning out,” Kibi had told the others.  

“Ooooh, look at that!” Scree had then exclaimed.  “A giant!  No, wait.  It’s just a statue of a giant’s legs.  The top part is in pieces, on the ground.   The face looks worn.  The whole thing does …  hey, now I hear something.  Sounds like wind blowing somewhere past where this ravine bends out of sight.   Getting louder.  Oh, whatever it is just turned the corner.  Judging from the bone fragments flying around, a huge blast of wind is coming down the ravine this way.  I’ll just sink back into the stone and stick an eye out … Huh.  Nothing happened, though my eye felt tingly when the wind blew past.  Now it’s gone, and it’s quiet again.”

Kibi had then recalled his familiar, after which they made their final plan.  Morningstar cast _control weather_, hoping that a good gale-force wind would sweep the mist away.    But while it did have _some_ good effect – she increased visibility inside the fog from 5’ to almost 30’ – it mostly just churned the mist in place.  Some magical force kept it from dispersing.  Still, it didn’t sound like they had far to go.  150’ of mist, then 200’ more to the bottom of the ravine.   One they had cast their buffs, including _hide from undead_, Aravis _shapechanged_ into his accustomed dragon form, and Morningstar rode on his back while the rest flew on the flying carpet _Burning Sky_.  Down they rushed, expecting to reach the bottom in less than ten seconds.

/*/

That was almost half an hour ago now.  They are clearly moving – individual curls of mist are whipping past their faces, and Morningstar’s pale hair streams out behind her like the tail of a kite – but they’ve seen no sign of the bottom of the mist layer, let alone the floor of the ravine that Scree had described.

Kibi, who hates flying with a passion, is gripping the sides of the carpet with whitened knuckles.  “This doesn’t seem to match Scree’s report,” he says morosely, though by now that’s abundantly obvious to everyone.

Five more minutes pass, with no change.  Morningstar reiterates her opinion that this is at best some kind of defense mechanism that hedges intruders, and Flicker thinks that perhaps it’s a trap from which they cannot escape, but a minute after that the mist ahead actually starts to clear, and in rapid succession goes from thick, to wispy, to not there at all.   

They have arrived in the ravine exactly as Scree described.  It’s about fifty feet wide, and stretches away in both directions at least a hundred feet before bending away out of sight.   The walls are two hundred feet high, sheer, and made of a smooth gray quartz-like stone streaked with black striated veins.  The ground is made of the same.   

The broken Giantish statue is also there, smashed and wind-scoured.

Dranko wonders out loud, “How does anything get weathered down here?”

Morningstar realizes with a start that her _control weather_ spell is no longer active, though by rights it should have lasted for hours.  There is no breeze at all here in the ravine; high above them the thick white fog hangs still like a cotton blanket.  There are no animals, no sounds, nothing that betrays any hint of why this place is here.

Aravis rubs his chin.  “My suspicion is that Drosh had a blind spot for things moving through the ground.”

Which seems true; whatever magics that were active in the mist were evidently bypassed entirely by Scree.  Down here below the mist, Dranko finds that his inherent ability to _detect magic_ works just fine, suggesting that the prohibition against divinations only applies _across_ the mist and not beneath it.

There’s nothing to recommend one way over the other, so the Company picks a direction at random and heads down the ravine; after all, this place isn’t going to just scout itself.   A five hundred feet the ravine bends away to the left, continues on for three hundred feet, and splits.  There are bone fragments down both of the new branches, so once again they choose randomly, flying along about half way up the ravine’s height, Morningstar still on Aravis’s dragon-back and the rest on the flying carpet.  While the ravines vary somewhat in width, they are all of an unnaturally uniform height, and the quality of the stone never changes.  Dotted here and there are more statues of giants, all in varying poses and states of decay.  Most are broken in places, and weathered smooth to the point where few facial features remain.

Nearly an hour has passed, when the party rounds a corner and sees something approaching, several hundred feet ahead of them.  It seems that a force of undead has _also_ just turned a corner, and now the two groups are facing each other.   The Company is still enchanted to be invisible to non-intelligent undead, so they proceed, though cautiously.

The undead contingent consists only of skeletons, many dozens of them, mostly of human sized, but a dozen or so of a giantish variety standing some twenty feet high.  All of their bones are inscribed with glowing blue runes, on arms, on legs, even on the tops of their skulls.   None of them are reacting in any way to the party; it seems their spell is holding, so they rise up a bit higher and move to fly over the enemy.  (Though they are not entirely sure that this _is_ the enemy; the odd runes lend to the theory that these are the indigenous undead population.)

A few seconds later, a second group of skeletal creatures rounds the corner:  four little flying skulls the size of large crows, and a huge skeletal dragon.  The skulls have gems in their eye-sockets:  a red gem in the left eye and a black one in the right.  All of them, and the dragon as well, have blue runes etched upon them.

The dragon pulls up when it sees the party.  Oops!  It screeches loudly at the army below.   The Company hastily starts casting buffing spells, as the rune-covered dragon and its accompanying flight of skulls draws nearer.  It is precisely at the moment Aravis realizes he’s seen those runes before – they belong to an obscure language he ran across while perusing some of their pilfered Black Circle books – that the skulls let loose their attacks on him.

Twenty _magic missiles_ streak from their black right eyes – five per skull – and all of them slam into Aravis’s draconic body.  He has scarce time to recover before they each launch _fireballs_ at him, engulfing him (and Morningstar) in a small inferno.  He survives the attack, the _fireballs_ triggering his _energy buffer_, though he is severely scored and burned.  Aravis responds by quickening a _shield_ spell and breathing out a massive cone of electricity.   The dragon doesn’t even try to avoid the blast, and comes away scorched and smoking.  The skulls zip around in the air, partially dodging the blast.   None of the flying enemies have dropped.  The many humanoid skeletons below are now looking up to observe the aerial battle, though none can do anything about it.

Kibi watches the skeletal dragon approach, and wonders what kind of breath weapon it might have.  Negative energy?  Or maybe positive energy, since it’s presumably designed to fight other undead?  Whatever the case, he doesn’t want to find out the hard way.  He casts _control undead_ upon it.   The dragon jerks to a halt as if caught in a net.   Kibi smiles.

“Curse you!” spits the dragon.

“Don’t attack me, or any of my friends,” the dwarf commands.

“Yes, fine.”  

“Where is your master?” asks Kibi.

“I don’t know.”  The dragon’s harsh screechy voice drips with frustration and contempt.  

“Then how will you find him?”

“I will fly back to where I saw him last.  He has ways of locating us, or calling us to him.”

“Has he found what he’s looking for?” asks Kibi.

“Maybe.”

“Are you all still marching?”

The dragon sneers.  “I fly, I don’t march.”

Kibi sighs.  “Is the army still on the move, then?”

“The army is still searching, if that’s what you’re asking.”

That tells Kibi something important, at least.  The dragon doesn’t think Ten Old Bones has found the Skysteel Hole.

“Attack those stupid flying skulls,” he commands.

The dragon groans, but turns to do as it is bidden.  Morningstar, herself singed by the barrage of _fireballs_, casts a healing spell on herself and Aravis.   Grey Wolf uses a wand of _fly_ on Dranko, before quickening an _ironstorm_ down among the ambulatory skeletons.    As even more skeletons come into view around the distant corner of the ravine (including four more flying skulls), Ernie pops one of the nearby skulls with a _positive energy ray_.  All that remain are its two gems, which plummet to the ground.  Dranko (now flying) and Flicker (already flying) become a flank-and-destroy team, their weapons magically augmented to allow sneak-attacks on the undead.  Together they finish off a second of the nearer set of skulls.  The dragon, firmly under Kibi’s command, destroys a third skull in a flurry of teeth and claws.  “The dwarf!” it cries in frustration.  “The dwarf is making me do it!”

The fourth and final skull in the group targets Kibi with all of its attacks.  Five _magic missiles_ strike him, and the _fireball_ triggers his _energy buffer_.  Aravis takes some fiery splash damage, and glares.  In retaliation he sends a _chain lightning_ into Grey Wolf’s _ironstorm_ down below.  Skeletons explode – nearly every one of them in a 40’ radius, in fact.  The ranks behind them start to fill in the gap; some instinctively avoid the plinking iron filings, but others wade mindlessly into the killing zone.   More skulls move up as well.

Kibi continues to query the dragon.  “How far back in the ravines did you last see your master?”

“Miles away,” barks the dragon.  “Days ago.”

Unfailingly polite, Kibi requests that the dragon descend and take on the humanoid skeletons.   Given how many of them there still are, Kibi instructs:  “Use your full breath attack capabilities on the army below you!”

“Whatever you say,” answers the dragon, a bit too eagerly.  It flies down and hovers over the mass of undead.  Kibi frowns, and figures it can’t hurt to fill the canyon with _spike stones_, just in case.

A _darkbeam_ from Morningstar and an _ice storm_ from Grey Wolf take out another flying skull.  Grey Wolf then casts _fly_ on himself and absents himself from the party’s clustered formation.

Down below, the smaller skeletons grind themselves down upon the _spike stones_, unaware that they’re killing themselves.   The giant-sized ones seem to be a bit smarter; they stop moving through the spikes, and instead pick up their shattered brethren to use as missile weapons.  Dranko dodges two armored skeletons, but a third smacks him right in the chest.  He sees that their blue runes continue to glow even after de-animation.  

Ernie drops a _flame strike_ on two of these larger specimens.  Flicker and Dranko flank and annihilate another skull like a two-headed blender.   Then the dragon, facing dozens of its fellow skeletons, opens his jaws and breathes.

Nothing comes out, save a tiny gasp of stale air, an impotent cough.

“That was my best,” it chortles.  “Anything else?”

More of the skulls target Kibi, but he weathers the storm of _magic missiles_ and _fireballs_, and that’s the last serious attack these undead are able to make.  Aravis shows how dragon breath is supposed to work, blasting most of the remaining skeletons on the ground into charred fragments.    Grey Wolf terminates another skull via a maximized _greater fireburst_ channeled through Bostock.  Morningstar and Kibi’s controlled dragon finish off all the rest of the enemy except for a single giant, which finally topples due to the incessant chipping from the _ironstorm_. 

Kibi orders the skeletal dragon to lead the Company to where it last saw Ten Old Bones.  It’s large enough that he rides upon its back along with Dranko and Flicker.  Ernie, Grey Wolf and Morningstar ride upon Aravis’s back, and the pair of dragons makes excellent time.  They fly through the canyon maze at great speed for the next fifteen minutes.  They only pull up short when Grey Wolf, under the effects of _enhanced senses_, hears something ahead.  They all stop, and they all hear it.  It sounds like wind.

“Do you know what’s causing that sound?” Kibi asks the dragon.

“Wind.  It’s blown on us before.”

“What happened to you when it blew on you?”

“Nothing,” says the dragon.  “It tingles.”

“Does it affect anything that’s not undead?”

The dragon laughs.  “How would I know?”

From around a distant bend in the ravine, the wind comes, just as it did when Scree was first scouting.  They can see the cloud of bone debris kicked up along its leading edge.  High up, the bottom of the mist layer is stirred by the gusting air.  They have about fifteen seconds until the wind reaches them.

For a couple of seconds they think they might try riding it out, but then they see that as the wind passes by some of the giantish statues ahead, one of their stone arms is snapped off.  Dranko feels his blood run cold.

“We’ve got to find cover!  Aravis, can you make us a shelter?”

He can.  Even as the party flies down to ground level, Aravis casts a _secure shelter_, and they swoop in through the door as quickly as possible.  Aravis himself has to hastily shrink down to human size in order to fit.  

“Wait out here until I come back,” says Kibi to his dragon, before closing the door to the _shelter_.  And just in time, too!  The door has been closed only three seconds when the wind reaches it, and their little house shudders and vibrates as the gale rushes past.  Dranko fishes a long strip of jerky from his pack, opens the door a tiny crack, and pokes the jerky into the wind.  It instantly becomes much heavier, and when Dranko pulls it back, he finds that the exposed section has turned to stone.

“Well,” said Kibi.  “Hiding in here was certainly the right thing to do!”

After a minute or two, the wind dies down almost instantly.   Scree gives the rest the all-clear, and they leave the shelter.  The dragon is still there, waiting for them.

“What are the capabilities of Ten Old Bones and his army?” Kibi asks it.

The dragon looks as though it would puff up proudly, if it had any flesh to puff.  “His army is vast.  Tens of thousands.  It will roll over you.”

“Is it broken into more groups like the one you were part of?”

“For now,” croaks the dragon, “but we’ll all be together before too long.  Ten Old Bones can contact us when we’re close enough, and guide us to him.”

“What does he look like?” asks Kibi.

“Like a skeleton.”

“Is he a lich?”

“Why?  Does that scare you?”  The dragon chuckles again, a grinding, rattling sound.

“Answer the question,” demands Kibi.

“I don’t know what he is, and that’s the truth.  He’s very old, and very powerful.  More powerful than any of _you_, I can tell you.  But he’s like you.  Human-ish.”

“Does he wear anything in particular?” asks Dranko.

“Clothes,” says the dragon.

Dranko shakes his head.  “Describe the clothes.  Are they unusual?  Honestly, it’s like talking to a child.”

“I don’t need to answer you,” spits the dragon.

“Yes you do,” says Kibi.  “I command you.”

“Fine.  He wears black.  A cloak.  Those things on your legs… pants.  And he is adorned with various magic trinkets.”

“What kind of spells can he cast?” Kibi presses.

“I don’t know.”

“Did he create you?” asks Dranko.  When the dragon shakes its head, Dranko adds, “Then why are you working for him?”

“Because the person who _did_ create me works for him.  His name is Six Bone Shards.”

“Is he also with the army?”

“No.”

“Are there any living creatures in your army?” asks Kibi.

“I don’t think so.”

“Spellcasters?  Other than those skull things?”

“I don’t know,” says the dragon, exasperated.  “I’m not privy to the abilities of every creature in the army.”

“How about this, then,” says Morningstar.  “Are there more creatures as powerful as you, or more powerful?”

The dragon doesn’t answer at first, until Kibi glares at it.  “I don’t know.  Fifty maybe.  That’s only a guess.”

“And what are you all looking for?” asks Kibi.

“A tower,” says the dragon.  “And a great ring of metal.”

At this point Kibi thinks he only has about a minute left before his _control undead_ expires, and he has no desire to endure the revenge the creature will doubtless try to exact.   With only the tiniest of moral pangs, he orders the dragon not to defend itself, and Flicker, Dranko and Grey Wolf smash it to pieces.

…to be continued…


----------



## Piratecat

This was the best saving throw for a monster to fail _ever._ Even as we speak, someone is hopefully painting a Boris Vallejo-style black light velvet poster of Dranko and some gorgeous bikinied warrior riding the bone dragon into battle.

Gorgeous bikinied _female _warrior. Nice try!

Also, note to self: find Six Bone Shards and kick his butt.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> At this point Kibi thinks he only has about a minute left before his _control undead_ expires, and he has no desire to endure the revenge the creature will doubtless try to exact.   With only the tiniest of moral pangs, he orders the dragon not to defend itself, and Flicker, Dranko and Grey Wolf smash it to pieces.




Did it have any last words?


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> Did it have any last words?



Nothing particularly memorable.  It knew this was coming.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Love Cayyat! Although I'm jealous, because when I made a timeless demiplane for my PCs to use, they were too paranoid to use it. Such a waste.


----------



## Everett

*Okay:*

What other Story Hours on here would y'all recommend?  I'd kill for another good campaign to read while at my day job.  Idle browsing hasn't found anything that engages me enough to keep going...


----------



## steeldragons

Everett said:


> What other Story Hours on here would y'all recommend?  I'd kill for another good campaign to read while at my day job.  Idle browsing hasn't found anything that engages me enough to keep going...




Well, I'll be shamefully pluggy and recommend my own! hahaha. Steel Dragon's Tales of Orea. It is just kinda getting off the ground...not nearly the epic length and levels of Sagiro's campaign (not yet, at least 

I'll also recommend Iron Sky's Rise of Felskein. I found it to be thoroughly engaging (especially the early to mid-levels). Wonderfully creative foes/storyline. Was an enjoyable read for me. 

There's also the "Rose in the Wind" SH which I have also found very engaging and enjoyable. This one, and its predecessor are both also archived by StevenAC in pdf form for easy reading.

Enjoy.
--SD


----------



## Neurotic

don't forget several stories from [MENTION=143]Lazybones[/MENTION] - most going from humble beginings to epic fights

Start here

My favorites: Travels through the Wild West and Doomed bastards


----------



## Piratecat

There's a sticky story hour index up at the top of this forum which is awesome for finding other good storyhour authors, and you can always start another thread asking folks what they like. I definitely encourage you to find and read other stories! Nevertheless, please don't hijack this thread for that purpose.

Thanks.


----------



## Siuis

Galloping Bollocks, this is the eighth time I've gone "zounds! PC has posted somethi-- oh a mod message."

So, Bump, and also no surprises when this thread rises to it's former glory once again.


----------



## steeldragons

gah! Last space?

Bump!

Hope all's well.

--SD


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 326*_
*Undead Collision*

The Company confers.  How to best find the Skysteel Hole in a maze of canyons a hundred miles on a side?  Morningstar tries a quick excursion into Ava Dormo, but finds the region warded, filled with impenetrable blackness.  After reviewing several other options, most of which would be far too time-consuming, they decide that Kibi will use _limited wish_ to spoof _commune with nature_.  But the spell will only have a radius of 20 miles, and as the wizards think the edge of the mist is closer than that, they decide to keep moving center-ward for a bit.  (Otherwise, some of their 40-mile diameter circle will be wasted.)  

_Hide from undead_ is recast, and onward they fly.  There are no dead-ends in this exaggerated labyrinth, but many loops that bring them back to places previously explored.  Progress is slow, but Kibi is certain that, on the whole, they are headed in the right direction.  More of the canyons are dotted with the broken giantish statues, their presence now making a gruesome sense in light of the petrifying wind.  Morningstar clings to Aravis’s draconic back while the others ride on Ernie’s flying carpet, and all of them at a high altitude so as to be less vulnerable to threats on the ground.  

“Why do we always fly so high?” groans Kibi, and he wonders if closing his eyes would make things better or worse.  It helps that they have to land periodically, so that he can use his dwarfish senses to figure out how far they’ve come.  Once he’s convinced that they’ve moved more than twenty miles from the edge of the ravines, he sits upon the rocky floor and casts his spell.  

Kibi has never before effected _commune with nature_, and is nearly overwhelmed by the sensory overload.  His eyes roll upward into his head and only his natural affinity for stone (along with his mighty intellect) keeps him conscious and focused on what he senses.  He has chosen to divine the layout of the ravines, the locations of powerful magical creatures, and the presence of any living people.

The ravines stretch out from him in all directions, interconnected in a weaving labyrinthine map.  There are many hundreds of “powerful magical creatures” appearing on his mental diagram as glowing gray spots, and these vary greatly in potency.  Kibi guesses that the run-of-the-mill skeletons aren’t showing up at all, but that creatures like the blasting skulls and bone dragon are pinging the radar.    

The density of the glowing dots increases toward the center of the maze, and culminates at a location so bright that there must be over a thousand powerful undead creatures clustered there.  This locus of activity – most likely the spot where armies of undead are clashing – is in a final long ravine, one which terminates at the only pure dead-end revealed by the _commune with nature_.  That ravine is almost half a mile long, and the concentration of undead is about a thousand yards from the dead-end.   

Kibi can detect two distinct types of undead there.  One matches that of many small “scouting parties” similar to the ones the party has already encountered.  The other is unfamiliar, and presumably those are the Droshian undead, set here to guard the Skysteel Hole.   The dwarf frowns; he can’t be sure which side is winning.

Only a hundred feet short of the terminus there is a gap in Kibi’s perception of the ravines – mostly likely a building of some kind.  The gartine arch, perhaps?  But there are four undead beings in that gap, of significant power, that are of the Droshian type.

There is one final creature, more powerful than any other, and this one is high up, near to the ceiling of mist that caps the ravines.   This being, which Kibi assumes must be the necromancer Ten Old Bones, is, if anything, slightly more powerful than himself.  

As for living creatures, there are none, save for those in the Company.

Kibi’s perspective returns to his own person, and he sums up his discoveries.  “They’re already fighting at the Arch!”  As the Company immediately sets out again, the dwarf shares the remaining details.  He estimates that the hot spot is 12 miles distant in a straight line, but closer to 20 given the winding route they must take.   Only one path through the maze will lead them true; all other paths and branches lead to reverses and loops.  

Half an hour later, as they round a bend in one of the canyons, they see a cluster of some 30 black-clad figures below them.  These aren’t the blue-runed skeletons of the Black Circle, but the Droshian defenders set here to repel intruders.  Despite the active _hide from undead_ spell, these creatures fire a volley of arrows at Aravis’s draconic body.  The party is flying high and fast enough that most of the arrows miss their mark, and they opt to continue on at full speed rather than try to explain to these creatures that they’re on the same side.

“You know what?” says Dranko as they speed away.  “If these guys are shooting arrows at skeletons, it’s probably not working out very well.”  Ordinarily, the party knows, any skeletons in this place would be controlled by Drosh, Kivian God of the Dead.  But the old rules have lost their application in light of Drosh’s abdication.

Soon enough the party encounters a second group of Droshian undead, but these are headed in the same direction as themselves, and don’t manage to hit with a single arrow before the Company is out of range.  They fly onward through the ravines, whose only feature is the scattered petrified remains of giants.  Kibi leads them, the one true course still etched into his mind.

Finally, up ahead, they see the back end of the battlefront.   Black-clad humanoids wielding oversized falchions are battling by the hundreds with skeletons covered with glowing blue runes.  Farther ahead the battling undead forces grow denser and the fighting more intense, before the ravine makes one final ninety-degree bend.   They are high enough that neither side has taken notice of them, or at least with enough alarm to alter their battle plans.  They take the opportunity to cast some buffing spells (including _indomitability_ on Morningstar) before turning the final corner and facing the last long ravine.

They take the turn, and see that the final thousand yards is a clogged mass of raging war.   Forces in numbers impossible to estimate are engaged in countless melees, surging forward and backward like ocean tides.  The ground is stone, but most of that is covered with splintered bones or the fallen cloaked remains of the Droshian defenders.   Inasmuch as a single front can be identified, the Black Circle army is pushing it inward toward the dead end, while the Droshians are trying to force it back.

In the center of the ravine, a hundred yards from the dead-end, a tall but narrow tower of quartz and adamant soars upward a hundred feet.   It seems to grow organically from the stone floor, and at its apex is a wide stone platform.   At the edge of this platform, nearest to the end of the canyon, is a black stone obelisk set about with white glowing runes.  Four oversized Droshian guards stand atop the tower, hacking apart an endless progression of skeletons coming up through a trapdoor in the roof.  

The Company makes for the tower at top speed.   As they draw near to the heart of the fighting, they can see strange creatures below them mixed in with the rank-and-file skeletons:

There is what looks like an enormous bone buckyball, 20’ in diameter at least, with sharpened giantish elbows protruding from its surface.  It looks like an gigantic skeletal flail head rolling to and fro across the canyon, crushing Droshian defenders (along with many of its allies) and impaling them on its spikes.

There is something like an enormous bone spider, reminiscent of a construct the party fought years ago, consisting of two huge concentric bone rings resting on eight long jointed bone legs.  The rings rotate  independently, and it fires bolts of hot red energy from an agglomerated “head.”  

There are two particularly large and well-equipped giantish skeletons, towering almost as high as the spiky ball, wearing custom steel mail and laying waste with enormous thick-chained flails.

And finally there is a dragon.  This one is larger than the specimen recently controlled by Kibi, and a good deal larger than Aravis in his draconic shape.   Unlike every other Black Circle combatant here, the dragon has gray, rotting flesh clinging to its bones.  It circles lazily around the top of the tower, deigning now and again to breath a black mist upon all the undead upon it.  

All of this is set against the backdrop of the Skysteel Hole.  In the stone wall that marks the dead-end of the ravine, a gigantic ring of metal is pressed into the rock.  It sinks below ground level at its base, so that it more resembles an inverted horseshoe.  It doesn’t seem to _lead_ anywhere; its entire empty center is simply the rock wall.  None of the undead seem concerned with it; the tower is clearly the focus of everyone’s attention.

That the Company should have arrived at this moment, given the many days the Black Circle forces have been searching, is a staggering coincidence, an unnatural stroke of luck.  It seems that the wild fluctuations in probability brought about by Corilayna’s absence have thrown a potentially world-saving gift to the Company.  Now they just have to claim it.  


/*/


The Company wonders where in this mess Ten Old Bones is hiding; according to Kibi’s vision the most powerful being here was high up near the mist layer, but there’s no immediate sign of him.  More urgently, they see that the stream of skeletons pouring out through the tower roof is threatening to overbear one of the four Droshian guards and push it over the railing.  They move to assist, swooping in to the tower top and wondering how powerful the dragon is.  Dranko’s whip and a _rainbow blast_ from Grey Wolf clear about nine of the skeletons, which provides enough of a respite that the Droshian guard pushes away from edge and regains solid footing.

Ernie casts _blade barrier_ across the entire ravine at ground level, cutting off the encroaching skeletons from the tower.  Aravis casts _Bigby’s clenched fist_ and sends it to aid the tower-top guardians.  It bull-rushes a particularly large skeleton right off the roof, which falls pleasingly into the _blade barrier_ below.

Ah, but the dragon.   It flies over and hovers, observing these unwelcome newcomers to the fray.   To its surprise, they seem to be alive.  It breathes upon them, a massive cone of _horrid wilting_ that draws the vital fluids from their bodies.   Grey Wolf, Ernie and Flicker are struck more fully, and are left so weakened that another such blast would surely finish them off.  Having done that much, the dragon flies up and away, stopping again some 40’ above them, and fires off _magic missiles_ at Dranko.

The half orc is indignant.  “You hit me with magic missiles!  You son of a bitch!”  

The dragon thinks directly into Dranko’s head.  “That’s what you’re worried about?  You should not have come here, mortal.  You will die.”

“Yeah, well,” thinks Dranko in reply, “we kind of killed everyone else in the Black Circle.  Ten Old Bones was the only person left.”

The Dragon chuckles.

Although they are still either on dragonback or the carpet, the individual members of the party can also _fly_ on their own.  Morningstar casts _mass heal_, entirely undoing the effects of the dragon breath, before disembarking from Aravis and flying out of cluster formation.

Kibi quickens a _wall of force_ in mid-air, directly above the _blade barrier_, hoping that it will impede the dragon’s flight.  Then he casts his own _Bigby’s fist_ to join Aravis’s. 

One of the massive flail-wielding skeletons stops laying waste for a moment, and with a gesture _dispels_ the _blade barrier_.  The other one does likewise, _dispelling_ one of the _fists_.  The huge bone spider spins its top ring about so that the head is facing a preponderance of the party.  It fires off a ball of green energy that, by sheer luck, is halted by the _wall of force_.  Green light plays all along the wall, illuminating it for all the combatants to see.

Dranko and Flicker go after the dragon, launching themselves from the carpet to assume flanking positions.  Though the dragon nips Dranko with its jagged teeth on his way by, the two heroes carve large chunks of flesh out of the dragon’s putrid corpus.  It snarls with surprise.

_*Bother.  What a nuisance you all are.*_  The voice sounds telepathically in the heads of all the Company.   Ten Old Bones!  _*I’ll give you five seconds to leave.  After that, the chances of your deaths will go from ‘highly likely’ to ‘assured.’*_

Morningstar doesn’t buy it.  “Zeg sends his regards,” she says grimly.

*Unlikely. Zeg is dead.  You’re going to make me do this myself, aren’t you.  So tiresome.*

“Nah,” Dranko responds.  “You should just let your monsters take care of it.”

*I was hoping they would be sufficient; I do HATE exerting myself.*

Aravis guffaws.  “So, not only are you a coward, but you’re lazy, too!”

Grey Wolf ignores this exchange and fires a _disintegrate_ at the dragon, but its body is preternaturally tough, and it resists most of the damage.   Ernie has a better idea:  he maneuvers the flying carpet until it rises above the _wall of force_ and casts _bolt of glory_.  A beam of radiance lances from Ernie’s fingertips, looking for all the world like _Tava’s Righteous Fury_ in flight, and it blows a foot-diameter hole right through the bulk of the dragon.  Bits of rotten organs and rancid flesh spray out the far side.  The dragon dips a bit in mid-flight, but retains its equilibrium and  growls in pain.

Aravis reverts to his human form and casts _lightning ring_ surrounding himself with a small electrical storm.

The dragon responds to the brutal assault upon itself with some kind of quickened healing, though it’s not much compared with the damage it’s taken, and then twists around mid-air like a cobra.  Dranko finds himself looking into its dry, dead eyes, and before he can make any kind of witticism, the dragon savages him with claws and teeth.  His own blood splashes everywhere.  The dragon then flies downward slightly, putting the _wall of force_ between itself and the majority of the party’s casters.

Morningstar sighs, and absorbs a passing swat of the dragon’s tail as she moves to _heal_ her husband.  He plants a quick kiss as she arrives.

Kibi has been intently surveying the scene.  All of these antics with the dragon are well and good, but the real issue here seems to be that an endless crowd of skeletons is entering the tower at ground level, and emerging at the rooftop to harry the Droshians defending the obelisk.  It’s only a matter of time before their press will become overwhelming.  More of the Black Circle army is surging into the ravine all the time, and it’s clear that they are slowly but surely grinding down the Droshian’s defense.   He glances at the rock face with the Skysteel Ring pressed into it, but decides that’s too risky.  Instead he targets one of the ravine walls.

With an _earthquake_.

He’s not certain what effect this will have; the stone here is strange, at once both natural and constructed, and with properties of ancient enchantment that he cannot guess at.  Will it resist his spell?

No.  No it won’t.  With a sound like an avalanche, a colossal volume of rock breaks free of the wall and collapses to the ground like a tidal wave.   The sheer quantity of dislodged stone buries everything in its path as it sweeps from left to right.  A huge cloud of dust rises up like a mushroom cloud, but in the canyon itself, everything in the vicinity of the tower is buried in ten feet of gray-green rock.  Skeletal limbs and heads poke out here and there, but in matter of seconds the entire melee has ceased.  The huge spiky bone-ball stops rolling, rocking futilely in place.  The bone artillery-spider cannot free its legs, though the rotating rings still function.   The two flail-wielding giants are buried up to their chests, effectively paralyzed.

Most importantly to Kibi, the ground-level doorway to the tower has been entirely blocked off.   There may still be a hundred or more skeletons _inside_ of it, but he has effectively turned off the tap.

The spider does manage to swing its head around, and it blasts Dranko and Morningstar with a burst of green energy.  But Dranko and Flicker maintain their focus.  Flicker waits until the thing becomes distracted by Dranko, and nearly severs its tail with a series of knife-slashes.  When it becomes distracted by _that_, Dranko starts shearing off chunks of its head with his whip.  

At the second whip-snap, the dragon starts to chuckle again.  Its body almost seems to be vibrating.  Dranko doesn’t hesitate; he strikes twice more, and the second time he caves its head in entirely.  

_Goodbye_ thinks the dragon into Dranko’s head.  And with a last bitter laugh, it explodes. 

Dranko sees it coming with a split-second of lead time, and somehow finds the one safe vector within the blast radius.  Morningstar and Flicker are not so lucky.  Morningstar suffers pain that she _knows_ should be indicative of death, and indeed if not for the _indomitability_, she’d have been eviscerated.  As it is, sharp thorns of bone have gouged the entire right side of her body.

Flicker, unprotected by magic and unable to dodge the eruption, is blown into a hundred pieces, his guts splattered obscenely into the _wall of force_, where they slide down to splash upon the rocks.

…to be continued…


----------



## wedgeski

Y'know, I've killed an inordinate amount of PC's with death throes of one kind or another over the years. They really can be extremely dangerous.

Great update!


----------



## theskyfullofdust

FLICKER!! Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Poor little guy, blown to bits by an exploding dragon. May he rest in pieces 

Great update. You really know how to work an epic battle. Considering this is 3.5, how hard/time consuming is it to design these encounters?


----------



## steeldragons

*stares agape at halfling entrails smearing their way down a wall of force.

*blinks. rubs eyes. looks again.

*stares agape as tears form in his eyes.*


----------



## Piratecat

And were it not for the indominability, which left her at 1 hp, I believe Morningstar would have been at -45. Something absurd like that. Just _brutal._


----------



## Innocent Bystander

That was awesome!  Great thinking on Kibi's player's part to bring the walls down.

Is this the first time Flicker has died?  Anyone remember who's all died, at what points, and if anyone has bit it more than once?


----------



## Tamlyn

I think Flicker has died at least once before and when he came back was told to focus on Rogue levels.

Of course, I may be wrong.


----------



## Sagiro

Tamlyn said:


> I think Flicker has died at least once before and when he came back was told to focus on Rogue levels.
> 
> Of course, I may be wrong.



Wrong, but close! 

When Mrs. Horn died (the first death in the Company), Flicker decided himself to focus on rogue levels.

Other deaths: 

Ernie, killed by anvil-handed golems
Aravis, killed by Null Shadows
Grey Wolf, Kay, Makel and One Certain Step, all "killed" in the Crosser's Maze, but they were alive again when the rest escaped.  Those so slain suffered irrevocable wisdom loss.
One Certain Step, Makel and Snokas were also all killed in more conventional ways.  It's a tough world for NPC's!

Interestingly, the killed characters have been brought back to life in every single case, though Makel and One Certain Step went on to die again in more heroic fashions.


----------



## RedTonic

Yay! The SH update made the rail commute up to Boston bearable this morning.

If I may ask, assuming it's not too off-topic, have you house-ruled any 3.5e spell modifications? I remember discussion about houserules previously, but I can't recall if they were for 2e/3e. Or do you keep divine and arcane magic (excepting custom spells) RAW?


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> Wrong, but close!
> 
> When Mrs. Horn died (the first death in the Company), Flicker decided himself to focus on rogue levels.
> 
> Other deaths:
> 
> Ernie, killed by anvil-handed golems
> Aravis, killed by Null Shadows
> Grey Wolf, Kay, Makel and One Certain Step, all "killed" in the Crosser's Maze, but they were alive again when the rest escaped.  Those so slain suffered irrevocable wisdom loss.
> One Certain Step, Makel and Snokas were also all killed in more conventional ways.  It's a tough world for NPC's!
> 
> Interestingly, the killed characters have been brought back to life in every single case, though Makel and One Certain Step went on to die again in more heroic fashions.




At this point, OCS is still the last character they lost who stayed dead, and his death was a long-coming plot point.  Makel's was a plot point as well.

I assume they'll ressurect Flicker, but in the middle of Mordor...?


----------



## Everett

Anyone want to take odds on a PC death while in the dead lands?


----------



## Innocent Bystander

I guess only counting current party members only that's 4 down and 3 to go.  Anyone want to start a pool?


----------



## Tamlyn

Sagiro said:


> Wrong, but close!




Thanks for setting me straight!


----------



## Piratecat

Sagiro said:


> Other deaths:
> 
> Ernie, killed by anvil-handed golems
> Aravis, killed by Null Shadows
> Grey Wolf, Kay, Makel and One Certain Step, all "killed" in the Crosser's Maze, but they were alive again when the rest escaped.  Those so slain suffered irrevocable wisdom loss.
> One Certain Step, Makel and Snokas were also all killed in more conventional ways.  It's a tough world for NPC's!



I think (but am not sure) that Sagiro is forgetting someone, but I may be misremembering or have my timing screwed up. It's also possible it hasn't happened yet, and I should avoid spoilers. It's also worth mentioning that we lost several people in that last climactic fight against the Black Circle, but we got to them in time with revivify. 

At this point in the game the closest Dranko has come to death was in Het Brannoi when he was being squeezed to death in the claw of a giant demon. Grappling is NOT his friend. That said, improved evasion and a high reflex save has literally saved him from thousands of hit points worth of damage.


----------



## Duncan Haldane

Piratecat said:


> That said, improved evasion and a high reflex save has literally saved him from thousands of hit points worth of damage.




But Arrogance has cost him a few points of damage too!  Remember failing to save against the iron/ligtening combo (forget the exact name of the spells) from friendly fire?


----------



## blargney the second

Duncan Haldane said:


> But Arrogance has cost him a few points of damage too!  Remember failing to save against the iron/ligtening combo (forget the exact name of the spells) from friendly fire?



Dice have a way of kicking you in the nads for being confident in your character's abilities.


----------



## Davek

blargney the second said:


> Dice have a way of kicking you in the nads for being confident in your character's abilities.




Played a game of Boothill once where my character was hell on wheels. got into the last fight and took down 4 of 5 bandits without a scratch, the entire gunfight was within close range too. The remaining bandit got on his horse and took off. At about 100 yards he fired blindly back at me with his pistol. Roll 100 to hit, then rolled 100 for hit location. I'm down with a terminal hole in the head ...


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 327*_
*The Door Close at Hand*

The voice of Ten Old Bones sounds in their heads, a dry chuckle mixed with a sigh.  *I did warn you.  And I liked that dragon.  I suppose I’ll have to make another one when all this is finished*.

“There will be nothing left of you,” Aravis retorts coldly, before _shapechanging_ into a fly to make himself less visible.  While Ernie heals Morningstar, Kibi casts _xorn movement_ and sinks beneath the rocky ground.  It tingles slightly with Earth Magic, and even with his highly attuned senses he cannot determine whether the rock is natural or worked.

Dranko uses another charge of his _wand of indomitability_ on his wife, then flies upward toward the misty ceiling of the ravine.  He remembers what Kibi learned from his _commune with nature_, and guesses that Ten Old Bones must be lurking in the fog.  He sees nothing, but hears the necromancer’s voice in his head. 

*You can’t see me, and you won’t be able to.  I have become one with the Sheltering Mist, and the mist is impenetrable.*.  Dranko focuses his _detect magic_ upward, and sees that the edge of the mist is like a smeared glass pane to his magical senses.

“Out of curiosity,” thinks Drano, “How do you intend to pry open the gate and let your stupid Emperor through?  Without, you know, being misty?”

While Morningstar casts _true seeing_ and flies around to other side of the tower, Ten Old Bones repsonds.

*Ah.  Here we go.  Like this.*

The Skysteel Ring starts to glow.

“Um,” says Dranko, sweating.  “That’s a reasonable  answer.   And how are you doing that… up there… made of mist?  And why are you doing this?  If the Emperor shows up, you’re not going to get to play with your fun undead anymore.  He’s not going to respect you or treat you well, you know.”

*Your ignorance is astounding.*


/*/


Around the distant corner of the ravine, a new mass of Black Circle skeletons is surging forward, and while they will certainly be greatly slowed by the rubble from Kibi’s _earthquake_, Morningstar spies another flight of about a half-dozen flying skulls heading their way.

Dranko and Kibi fly down to the top of the tower, to examine the rune-covered obelisk.  Dranko, inevitably, licks it.  Kibi casts _comprehend languages_ and finds that that the runes have no clear direct translations.  They are symbolic of different magical types – his best guess is that they stand for divination, enchantment, etc.  Some of the runes aren’t part of any language, symbolic or otherwise, but the shapes themselves lend the obelisk power.  

All at once, the dozen or so skeletons atop the tower, fighting against the four larger Droshian defenders, explode in a shower of bone fragments.   The defenders are blown to bits, and the _Bigby’s fists_ are annihilated.  Dranko manages to put the obelisk directly between himself and most of the shrapnel, but Kibi is bloodied by a spray of bone chips.  Simultaneous with the explosion, ten wraiths come flying upward out of the tower.  They look like semi-substantial black curtains, with glowing eyes and shadowy auras.  They scatter once out in the open.

Finally, one more being emerges from the tower.   He’s a humanoid, emaciated, and wears fraying black robes.  His body is surrounded by about twenty silver globes that shift and slide in slow orbits around him.   He floats down to stand alone next to the obelisk.

“You’re such a big liar,” says Dranko.  “Up in the mist, huh?”

*Yes, fine.  I lied.  Now be quiet, and leave me alone for a moment*.

Ernie flies to a spot ten feet above the head of Ten Old bones, and in close proximity to some of the wraiths.  He casts _holy word_.  *NAUGHTY!*  A flash of green and gold light bursts from his hands, a holy emanation smelling of fresh bread.  Several of the wraiths buckle, though they aren’t paralyzed as Ernie was hoping.   Bones doesn’t even flinch.  Ernie quickens a _know opponent_ upon the necromancer, but is hardly surprised when it has no effect.

Aravis shifts into human form, and fires off two ineffective _lightning bolts_ from his _lightning ring_ before casting _reverse gravity_ at the top of the tower.   Ten Old Bones starts to rise for a second before regaining control of himself, and standing again upon the tower roof.  He appears to be able to fly.

Grey Wolf toys with the idea of casting _Mordenkainen’s Disjunction_ on Ten Old Bones, but worries about striking the obelisk as well, and possibly triggering some unwanted reaction.   He _might_ be able to place it so as to get the necromancer without also encompassing the obelisk, but it will be a very tricky bit of casting.  He warns the others about what he’s thinking, so Morningstar flies up and away from the tower top.  In case Grey Wolf decides against his _disjunction_, she casts _greater dispel magic_ directly on Ten Old Bones.  Three of his seven active enchantments are stripped away, though not, as she was hoping, his _fly_ spell.

Grey Wolf goes for it.  He drops his _disjunction_, and succeeds in avoiding the obelisk while still getting Old Bones.   The _reverse gravity_ is removed, and the only obvious effect on the necromancer is that all of the silver globes around his body wink out.

The Company also experiences a moment of mental silence; for just a second, Ten Old Bones is not in their heads.  But then he reestablishes his telepathy, and lets out a tremendously aggrieved sigh. 

_*You are so ANNOYING!*_ he laments.  _*Do you have any IDEA how long I’ve been working on this?  And now I’m going to have to…  oh, this is bothersome!”*_

Ernie musters little sympathy.  “Do YOU have any idea how long WE’VE been working on this?”

_*You just got here!*_ Old Bones retorts.

Kibi summons a huge earth elemental next to Ten Old Bones on the tower roof.   His _protection from good_ has been disjoined, and so the huge stone creature has no difficulty grabbing the old necromancer in an earthen fist.   Ten Old Bones struggles for  a second but realizes he has no chance of wriggling free.

“It’s my birthday,” says Dranko.  He shifts into position and cracks his whip several times at Ten Old Bones’ exposed head and legs.  Chips of skull and leg bone are sent flying, and the damage is substantial, though the necromancer looks more annoyed than seriously injured.  

The wraiths go after Kibi, Aravis and Grey Wolf.  Kibi is the only to have life force drained from him; Grey Wolf resists their attempts to suck his vitality, and Aravis is protected by the _wall of force_ that Kibi cast earlier.  

Dranko glares at Ten Old Bones, stuck in the elemental’s grasp.  “We love this world,” he says, “and we get annoyed when people try to destroy it.”

_*Not nearly as annoyed as I am, I promise you!  This is GALLING.  This is INTOLERABLE!*_.  And he really does sound exasperated.

“Shut up and get more grappled,” says Ernie.

Ten Old Bones utters a strange and potent syllable, and one of the runes on the obelisk glows brightly.  Then he vanishes from the grip of the elemental and reappears higher up.  He tries to take control of Dranko’s mind, but the half-orc proves indomitable.  And then the little silvery globes reappear all around his body.  

_*I should have been finished by now,*_ he grumbles.

The syllable that he uttered hangs in the air, filling the canyon with unnatural echoes.  The glowing gartine ring, the Skysteel Hole, glows very brightly.  Light starts to flicker inside its circumference, as if someone is starting up a movie projector aimed at the wall within its circle.  The Company can see hazy mountainous terrain beyond, as if the gartine ring is becoming a gateway to another world.

_*If you’re not here in a few minutes, you’ll be much happier in the long run.  Now, please, I’m still VERY busy.  Yes, you’re all very powerful, and I’m very impressed, but it’s not going to make any difference.*_

Ernie uses his sword Tava’s Righteous Fury to begin summoning the Astral Deva _Tava’s Echo_.  Then he quickens a _silence_, centered next to the obelisk, in case Ten Old Bones is manipulating it verbally.  Aravis fires off two more bolts from his _lightning ring_, this time at the wraiths.  Then he flies up and over the _wall of force_ and casts _maze_ on Ten Old Bones

One of the little silver globes around the necromancer vanishes, but Old Bones himself does not.

“I officially hate him,” says Ernie.

The flight of skulls, each with one red and one black gem in its eye sockets, has nearly arrived.  Morningstar casts _darkburst_, which clears out skeletons in a huge radius, cold flames flashing them to powder.   She also gets the five skulls in its effect, but none are destroyed.  

Kibi quickens _mirror image_ on himself, and eight more dwarven wizards appear.   Then he moves away from the wraiths around him, and their parting swipes only serve to pop two of the images.  He follows up with a _greater dispelling_, again on Ten Old Bones, but there is no observable effect.

Grey Wolf hacks futilely at the nearest wraith with Bostock.  The sword is just as frustrated as he is as the wraith’s insubstantiality foils every attack.  *Ah ha!  No, wait.  Yes!  No!  Dammit!*

Dranko launches another flurry of whip strikes at Ten Old Bones.  The silver globes may block targeted magic, but they have no effect on a whip.   More pieces of the necromancer – whom Dranko and the others are increasingly (and correctly) suspecting  is a lich – are liberated.  The final whip snap knocks off a finger, which goes spiraling down to the ground.

“You know what that is now?” Dranko taunts.  “A spell component.”

*This is SO ANNOYING!*  Ten Old Bones sounds nearly overcome by the sheer rudeness of the Company’s attacks.

On the wall where sits the Skysteel Hole, the flickering projector image becomes fixed and clear, like a huge picture window looking out upon an alien landscape.   It is now easy to see that a vast army is camped just on the other side of it.    And up to this window strides an enormous figure, twenty-five feet tall and clad in blood-red plate mail.   An enormous black sword is slung onto his back.  This being takes off his helmet, revealing a twisted and pitted face the color of a deep bruise, a dirty purple, with eyes like glowing orange coals.

Emperor Naradawk.

The Emperor unslings his sword and moves it slowly forward until it taps against the space within the Skysteel ring.   He looks up at the Company swarming around Ten Old Bones atop the tower.   Then he jams the sword into the ground next to him, crosses his arms, and waits.

Ten Old Bones looks down and  sees Naradawk waiting to take a final step into Abernia.  He barks another weird syllable, but when nothing happens, he frowns.  Then he vanishes, reappears some fifty feet higher up and casts _exhaustion_ upon Aravis, Ernie and Dranko.  They are sapped of strength and mobility; Aravis’s limbs go dead. 

_*We don’t want to keep the Emperor waiting.  He’s just going to be annoyed.  With me!*_

“Not at the top of my list of concerns,” says Aravis.

Ten Old Bones repeats the syllable, again with no effect.  He considers for one more second, then throws up his hands.  

*You silenced the obelisk!  AAAARRRRGGH!*

“You’re welcome,” says Aravis.  Ernie smirks.

*Weeks of preparation, and you put a stupid silence spell on the obelisk!  When this is done, I’m going to KILL you!*

_Tava’s Echo_ appears, and immediately heals Ernie.

“Now that I have healed you, Ernest, what is on our agenda?”

“Preventing the Emperor from coming through.”

“Oh dear.  You seem to have landed yourself in a pickle.”

Aravis is only able to move because he’s flying, though he is only barely able to move his arms.  Somehow  he manages to fire off an _anti-magic ray_ at Ten Old Bones, but it has no effect.  Then he quickens _stunning breath_, changes into dragon form, and breaths a cone of electricity.  Again, the lich is entirely unharmed.   Ernie flies up to the lich and lands a solid blow upon it, but Bones’ bones feel like iron, and the blade makes only the slightest scratch.

Five buzzing skulls arrive, and blast Morningstar with their full magical armament.  (It would have been six, but a flying Droshian defender catches up with the trailing skull and knocks it off course with a falchion before pursuing it downward.)  Still, five is plenty.  Morningstar is engulfed in five concurrent _fireballs_, which are followed by 25 _magic missiles_ that zip into the dissipating smoke.  She is terribly burned and scored, but retains consciousness.

Kibi flies upward and catches all five skulls in a _prismatic spray_.  Three are blasted to pieces by elemental energies, and a fourth is turned to stone, after which is plummets to the ground.  Grey Wolf exchanges more blows with a wraith.

Dranko then experiences a moment of great and sudden clarity.  His whip is capable of dealing sneak attack damage to undead, but he needs a flanking buddy, and Flicker is no longer available.   But that can be solved…

He reaches deep into his mad soul, drawing upon the powers of the Far Realms.  He casts _time stop_.  Everything around him freezes.  He thinks about his plan, and giggles out some sanity.  He moves up to Ten Old Bones, reaches into his _bag of tricks_, and gingerly removes a fuzzy ball.  He has no idea what it will become, but with another little giggle, he balances it carefully on Ten Old Bones’ time-frozen head.

He prepares his whip.

Time restarts.

A warhorse appears directly on the skull of Ten Old Bones.

“Surprise!” Dranko yells.

Ten Old Bones doesn’t understand what’s happening, but while he manages to sidestep a bit as the horse slides off and down to the waiting rocks far below, the hapless equine provides exactly the distraction Dranko needs.  

His whip cracks, perfectly placed, several times.  The lich's shoulder bone is sheared away.  Its teeth are forcibly extracted.   Its lower jaw is crushed.

*A horse?  For the love of…*

“Everybody loves horses,” says Dranko, before a final snap of his whip removes the skull from Ten Old Bones.

The Emperor has been watching all of this with great intensity.  He is now staring directly at Aravis, and his eyes are wide with anger.   Aravis smiles at him.  Dranko flips him off.

And even as the Company sees Naradawk silently mouthing the word “No!” over and over, and pounding the planar boundary with his sword, and gesticulating violently, the image vanishes, and the wall within the Skysteel ring becomes just a wall, as solid as stone cold truth.

…to be continued…


----------



## RangerWickett

Huh. I really thought they were going to lose there.


----------



## coyote6

_Bag of tricks_, for the win!

I may have to point this post out to all of my players. They're always selling the little things.


----------



## Siuis

And with this, Dranko cements his place as the most popular man that can never be famous _ever_.

Seriously, that is the coolest rogue trick ever. I will make a note of having horses appear on peoples heads from now on.


----------



## theskyfullofdust

Nice update. And good use of a Bag of Tricks. And, phew. For a minute there I thought the Emperor was going to get through.


----------



## carborundum

Genius! Just imagining him placing a furry friend on the head of an incredibly powerful lich had me giggling like I was touched by the Far Realm myself 
Thanks for another awesome update!


----------



## Orichalcum

Wow, it's really awesome how Aravis and that horse totally saved the world!


----------



## Destil

Orichalcum said:


> Wow, it's really awesome how Aravis and that horse totally saved the world!




Hey, now. You're forgetting someone very important: Grey Wolf's silence spell was critical.


----------



## Orichalcum

It's true. My apologies.  Though I think that was actually Ernie's silence spell? Now there's a great hero.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Effulgent epuration (sp?) is a pretty good spell, but alas not enough for Ten Old Bones.


----------



## Piratecat

Orichalcum said:


> It's true. My apologies.  Though I think that was actually Ernie's silence spell? Now there's a great hero.



*sob*

But desperate times, desperate measures. It was the last thing I could think of. I was as astonished (and pleased) as anyone else that it actually worked.

I think the first real tide-turner in this fight was Kibi's _earthquake_. That's what let us concentrate on the real threats.


----------



## jmucchiello

There has to be a way to work in that old saw: For want of a nail, the battle was lost. Maybe something like, For a point of SAN, the battle was not lost.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

So is that the end of the major black circle players?  The party has sure killed enough of them.


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Best Villain Ever PLUS Best Villain Death Ever!

Wonderful stuff, and a great reminder to keep your character sheet up to date. You never know what's going to come in useful.


----------



## Enkhidu

Innocent Bystander said:


> So is that the end of the major black circle players?  The party has sure killed enough of them.




There's a phylactery around somewhere that says no, I think.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Oh right, he was a lich.  Yet another item on the party's to do list.


----------



## Piratecat

Innocent Bystander said:


> So is that the end of the major black circle players?  The party has sure killed enough of them.



Avoiding spoilers - at this point we're pretty sure it is, and we're feeling pretty damn pleased with ourselves. Emperor thwarted! There are still red armored jerks around (Meledien, Tarsos, and Octesian (last seen banished into Dream)), but we've tromped on the Black Circle leadership and all the major players we know about.  Clearly we have nothing else to worry about on that front.

*twitch*


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 328*_
*Unexpected Guest*

The mopping-up stage is extensive.  

Following some quick healing and _restorations_, and while Dranko hastens to find Flicker’s remains (as well as loot the now-quiescent corpse of Ten Old Bones), the others investigate the interior of the tower.  They discover that nearly the entire measure of the building is a single wide, winding staircase that goes from ground to rooftop.  The only other feature is a chamber about half way up – containing a second obelisk, identical to the one on the roof.  That would explain why Old Bones was inside the tower when the Company arrived.  

As for the lich himself, Dranko finds that his bones are already brittle and decaying.   After retrieving Flicker’s head (the only obviously recognizable piece of his remains), Dranko relieves Ten Old Bones of his magical possessions.  

“Flicker would have loved this part,” he says.

“I miss Flicker already,” says Ernie.

Aravis smirks.  “I feel like he’s all around us.”  

“In fact,” says Dranko, “a little piece of him is with me right now!”

It’s easier to joke about it, knowing that Ernie plans to raise Flicker from the dead.

Dranko ducks as a splinter of bone whistles past his head.   Oh, right.  There’s still a battle going on, though it’s lost most of its urgency.   The large Black Circle arachnid artillery platform has stopped firing; its barrel is pointing downward, and it can’t rotate its ring because too many of its structural bones have snapped.   Kibi’s rockslides continue to slow the general melee to a near-standstill.

As Dranko loots the lich, Aravis looks on thoughtfully.  “He’ll have a phylactery somewhere,” he says.  “We’ll need to find it and destroy it, or Ten Old Bones will be able to come back to life.  Well, undeath, anyway.”

The lich’s magical stuff consists of:

-	An arcane scroll containing _horrid wilting_ and _greater dispel magic_
-	A second scroll containing only the 9th-level spell _effulgent epuration_, a powerful abjuration that Bones had been using in the battle.  (It was what created those silver globes that absorbed incoming spells.)
-	Standard battle gear:  _cloak of resistance +4, amulet of charisma +6, ring of protection +5_
-	A _ring of wraiths_, which can summon eight Dread Wraiths every 24 hours.
-	A set of _bracers of armor +8, greater fortification_

And finally, in a deep interior pocket of his black robe, they find a large ellipsoid of clear crystal, the size of a grapefruit.  Etched into its smooth surface are blue runes, identical to the ones found on every skeleton in the Black Circle army.  It identifies as a _runic lens_, and it bolsters the power of linked undead, particularly when fighting other undead.   And they’ve seen this object before; sketches of it were among the papers in Zeg’s office, in the warren that housed the Necromantic Forge.

“Why aren’t we smashing that thing right now?” asks Grey Wolf.

“Wait,” says Dranko.  “We could march home with our own undead army at our back!”

“If we’re going to do that,” says Aravis, “I’d rather march it to Kai Kin and knock the whole place down.  Poetic justice.”

Dranko shrugs.  He also gives the _runic lens_ a quick lick.  Glassy, but a bit gritty where the runes are etched in.

Rather than co-opt the army, they take the _lens_, and place it and the _ring of wraiths_ atop the looted body of Ten Old Bones.   With everyone standing back, Aravis casts _Mordenkainen’s disjunction_.   The items cease being magical.   The large bone artillery spider immediately collapses under its own weight, its no-longer-fortified bones unable to provide sufficient support.   Grey Wolf, flying high, sees that the front between the two competing armies has immediately shifted, with the Droshian guardians pushing back the invaders.

Morningstar laments that, ironically, they haven’t attempted to Turn undead even a single time.  They correct that problem, and generally unload all of their remaining firepower into the Black Circle army.   Their assistance turns the battle into a rout, and while the Droshian undead keep an eye on these strange living interlopers, they make no hostile moves against the Company.  

Before they leave, Dranko catches a glimpse of something glinting in the bone wreckage below.  He realizes that they haven’t looted the little flying skulls, each of which has its eye sockets filled with one ruby and one jet, respectively.   The party spends some time popping out gemstones, and in the end Dranko is holding a pile of extremely valuable jewels.   He’s not as good an appraiser as Flicker, but he guesses he’s got between 100k and 200k worth of gold piece value.

“I could make a loincloth out of these!” he exclaims.

The others wince, wishing they could unthink the inevitable imagery.

Morningstar groans.  “That what _modify memory_ is for.” 


/*/


With nothing left to do here in the mist-capped ravines of Il-Drosh, the Company flies straight upward.   As with their descent, the escape takes longer than it should given the distance traveled.  Some forty-five minutes later the mist thins, and then abruptly they are above it, flying in open air.   It’s nighttime, but the moon is nearly full, low in the sky.  Once free of the thick foggy ceiling, Morningstar fires off a _sending_ to Rosetta.

_*Bad news:  we saw the Emperor.  Good news:  Thwarted him.  Army leader Ten Old Bones; lich but killed.  Drosh undead now clearly winning.  Flicker dead.*_

There is no response, and Morningstar thinks that, for whatever reason, the spell didn’t make it to its intended target.  She casts again, this time uttering her message to Yale.

The response:  *Excellent news, though we’re sorry to hear about Flicker.  We were starting to wonder what happened to you.* 

“Strange,” says Morningstar.  “We’ve only been gone a couple of days.”

“Maybe not,” says Aravis.  “Maybe while we were in the mist, time was passing more quickly out here.”

Either way, the Company wants nothing more than to _teleport_ back to the Greenhouse for some rest.   They do so.  Eddings greets them at the door.

“Nice to see you back!” he exclaims.  

“When did you last see us?” asks Ernie.

Eddings is quite used to this kind of odd question.  “Just under two weeks,” he says.

“Could have been worse,” says Grey Wolf.  They talk for a bit about the timing.   Corilayna, Goddess of Luck, is still AWOL, and the laws of chance are still in occasional flux.  It’s possible that a particularly fortuitous surge of fortune caused  them to arrive in the nick of time to stop Ten Old Bones.   Or maybe the mist really does extend time?  They’re not eager to go back and experiment.

After a quick freshening up, Ernie has a message delivered to the Chuch of Yondalla, asking that they prepare for Flicker’s resurrection the following day.  Then they contact Ozilinsh on the crystal ball, and soon they are sitting with him in the living room giving him a full info dump.

Ozilinsh is raptly attentive.  When he asks for more detail about what Emperor Naradawk looked like, Dranko uses his _robe of blending_ to assume his features, albeit on a smaller scale.  

“Some of us might have made rude gestures at him,” says Ernie, glancing at Dranko.

Dranko clarifies:  “I totally flipped him off.”

“Was that wise?” asks Ozilinsh.

Ernie laughs.  “Dranko’s hoping to get Tapheon and Naradawk to start fighting each other over Dranko’s soul.”

“Right,” says Ozilinsh.  “Because the demon wasn’t powerful enough to be the most powerful creature who specifically wants you dead.”

Ozilinsh comments that he doesn’t recognize what kind of creature the Emperor is, but that’s not surprising.  His grandfather was a human, who became corrupted by Black Goo.  Who knows what effect that would off on his progeny?

On the subject of phylacteries and how to find them, Ozilinsh answers:  “With great difficulty.  Liches aren’t typically careless.  If I were him, knowing what I do about the Black Circle, I’d expect Ten Old Bones’ phylactery is inside a _divination sink_.  In which case you’ll have to use good old-fashioned detective work to find it.”

“How long before he reassumes his old form?” Aravis asks.

“A couple of weeks,” Ozilinsh guesses.  “Maybe a month, if you’re lucky?”   Abernathy’s apprentice laughs and shakes his head.  “Once again – and you may be growing tired of hearing this – the kingdom is in your debt.”

Kibi smiles broadly.  “No, we don’t grow tired of hearing that.  Say it all you want.”

Ozilinsh smiles back.  “Abernathy knew something when he picked you, that’s for sure.”

“Say,” says Dranko.  “Where’s Rosetta?  She didn’t answer our _sending_.

“Oh, right!” says Ozilinsh.  “Rosetta is gone again.  And we’re specifically not to know where, just like last time.  She left about three days after you did, on some ‘vital mission against Black Circle interests.’  She took Etria with her.  Given that her mission against Cor Kek was such a success, we’re inclined to trust that she knows what she’s doing.  No, we’re more concerned with Cencerra’s whereabouts than Rosetta’s.”

As the Company knows, Cencerra and her adventuring company have been missing for over a year, ever since they headed through a gartine arch on the Dwarven island of Karth.  Others have been sent to follow up, but none have even been able to _find_ the arch.   Grey Wolf mentions that perhaps they should look for her themselves, and this leads to a review of the many loose ends to which the Company might still attend.  At the top of the list is raising Flicker and finding the phylactery of Ten Old Bones, but below that are such tasks as:

-	Vanquishing Thewana/Davarian and the Delfirians, while rescuing Tor in the process.
-	Putting a stop to the predations of the Guild of Chains.
-	Morningstar “slaying again when the time comes for the Throggun’s ascension.”  The blood mark still itches on the back of her hand.
-	Defeating Parthol Runecarver in Kynder Hold.
-	Kibi removing a splinter from Abernia, as per the planet’s specific dream-delivered intructions.
-	Destroying the other two Cauldrons (brothers to the Cauldron of Null Shadows), mentioned in the Black Circle library.
-	Wiping out Darkeye and the Sharshun in their fortress hidden in the Greatwood.


Dranko idly lights a Blacktallow cigar while they chat, and blows out a stream of greasy smoke.  It forms into the words “not lying.” Well, not every prophetic exhalation is going to be immediately obvious.

By the time Ozilinsh has departed, it’s early evening.  The party heads out reluctantly to perform the necessary task of informing Flicker’s parents that their son is dead.   Ernie invites Crick and Mora for a private chat in a back room, where he gently explains how Flicker died bravely, and in the act of saving the world.

“But I plan to bring him back to life tomorrow, if you don’t object.”

Crick and Mora most vociferously do not object.   But Morningstar explains that it’s possible that Flicker is happy and content in the afterlife, and may not _want_ to come back.

“Well, he did die a hero,” says Crick.  “To think I have a son who died fighting a dragon!”

Ernie smiles.  “And if things go well tomorrow, you still will!”

Crick laughs.  “Oh, he’ll be insufferable about that, won’t he!”

Ernie buys a round for the house, and Crick drinks with the Company as they regale the Smoke House with tales of Flicker’s adventures.   Dranko delights in retelling about the time Flicker was trapped in a sapphire while his friends pursued him through Slices of the Abyss.   Ernie recounts the time that Flicker surprised them by starring for a Farangi team in Djaw.   Mora is absent for most of this, but eventually the laughter of the room draws her out, and she sits quietly, listening to stories about her son.   They spend several hours there, drinking and recounting and laughing, all the while wondering if Flicker will choose to come back from the dead, or if his part of the story is truly over.

/*/

It’s late in the evening when the Company heads home for bed.   Eddings greets them at the door.  He looks nervous.

“You have a visitor,” he says stiffly.  “He awaits your pleasure in the living room.”

They seldom see the unflappable butler looking so distraught, so they enter cautiously, and there is indeed someone sitting on the sofa, his head bowed so they cannot see his face.  But when all are assembled, he raises his head so that can get a good look at him.

Parthol Runecarver smiles thinly.  “I let myself in,” he says.

...to be continued...


----------



## jmucchiello

There doesn't seem to be any reference to Mr. Runecarver since 2008 (real time -- aside from one in 2010 where he is referenced as part of mistaken identity). So I ask, "Why do they need to 'defeat' him?" 


> - Defeating Parthol Runecarver in Kynder Hold.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Because he's a bad moth--

_Shut yo mouth!_

I'm just talkin' 'bout [-]Shaft[/-] Parthol Runecarver.

Ehem. Sorry.

He's major bad news. I'll let Sagiro or one of the players fill in the details.

= = =
Other thoughts:



> “Right,” says Ozilinsh. “Because the demon wasn’t powerful enough to be the most powerful creature who specifically wants you dead.”



Heh, I don't remember Ozilinsh being that sarcastic. I blame Dranko.


> Morningstar “slaying again when the time comes for the Throggun’s ascension.”



ZOMG, I've been waiting for this for like nine years.


----------



## Kaodi

I do not recall if anyone suggested this before, PirateCat, but I think there is a rule somewhere that there can be two supporting characters with the same name in a story. And, if by chance, the second guy with that name becomes famous and part of the main cast, well, at least the first guy could have the same name as a real hero,  . Even if the second guy was an enchanted horse, a mystical whip, or an underling who was renamed as part of his payment for being returned to life...


----------



## Innocent Bystander

I might have to go through the pdfs again, Morningstar “slaying again when the time comes for the Throggun’s ascension.” doesn't ring any bells.


----------



## Thoras

Innocent Bystander said:


> I might have to go through the pdfs again, Morningstar “slaying again when the time comes for the Throggun’s ascension.” doesn't ring any bells.




I believe it has something to do with the demonish ogre thing that had been turned to (stone?); which the company brought back to life at one point.


----------



## Piratecat

Innocent Bystander said:


> I might have to go through the pdfs again, Morningstar “slaying again when the time comes for the Throggun’s ascension.” doesn't ring any bells.



Waaaay back, on our way to find the Crosser's Maze within the city in a bottle. It's been a while.

For folks who forget Parthol Runecarver, he was an archmage who faked his own death centuries ago and stayed hidden until we revealed him. It was he who paid for that early expedition in the desert that released the blood gargoyle. He's as self-interested as they come, evil to a fault if it gets him more power. Last we heard he was still trying to bring over the Emperor, although not allied with the sharshun or the Black Circle.

Frankly, he's kind of a dick who keeps trying to kill us.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 329*_
*It’s Blood*

There’s a moment when no one’s heart is beating.  Dranko breaks the silence.

“Why is he in the house?”

None of his friends answer right away, so Parthol himself does.  

“Because I wanted to talk with you.”

Some in the party look at Eddings.  No hostile creature can enter the Greenhouse uninvited, after all.

“He came down from the upstairs,” he says.  “But he didn’t look like that at first.  He looked like Salk.”

Aravis stares holes at Parthol.  “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“And are you a _simulacrum?_” Dranko adds.

“No,” says Parthol.  “No.  There are only so many of those one can make before one grows a little short of life force.”

“Are you a lich?” asks Dranko.

“No.”

Dranko tries to look nonchalant.  “Because we killed the last one…”

Morningstar hasn’t said a word, but her face is a thundercloud.

“You don’t look happy to see me, Morningstar!” exclaims Parthol.  “But I’m not here to fight.  Which is good.  I’d hate to damage your furniture.”

“Shut up and talk,” Dranko spits.

“My, you are rude for world-saving adventuring types!”

“How many times have you tried to kill us?” Dranko blurts.

Parthol smiles. “Zero.”

Dranko shakes his head.  “What about your simulacrums?”

“Technically twice,” Parthol admits, “but I didn’t expect them to kill you.  They were tests, which you passed quite nicely.  I wanted to know how powerful you were, how worthy you were…”

The old wizard looks around, and raises an eyebrow.  “Where’s the little guy, by the way?”

“Dead,” says Morningstar.

“I’m sorry to hear that.  How did it happen?”

Grey Wolf leans forward.  “You should be getting to the point more rapidly.  We can replace the furniture if we have to.”

Parthol sighs, and gives a small chuckle.  “I’m here as a show of good faith, to give you information that you probably don’t have.   And, to let you know that I’m on your side.”

Over the mind-link, Dranko groans.  “Oh God.  He really _is _on our side.  The cigar smoke!  It said “not lying.”

Parthol continues.  “Would you prefer that I try to kill you some more?  Because honestly, I’d rather you stay alive, so that you can fix things.”

“How come you weaseled out and changed sides?” asks Dranko.

“Pragmatism,” answers Parthol.  “My plans will not go so well if the Black Circle gets its way.   Aravis, I’m surprised you don’t agree with this sentiment.  You two as well, Kibilhathur and Grey Wolf.  Wizards should be ruling things.  The most powerful, most intelligent people should be in charge.  It has been my intent all along to drag the other archmagi,  kicking and screaming if necessary, to where they belong: on top, ruling the kingdom.  

“In fact, if I and Alander and Typier and your current crop of archmagi had been running things all along, we’d probably be in charge of Kivia by now, which soon, I imagine, you are going to wish that we were.”

“And why is that?” asks Ernie, tight-lipped.

“Assuming of course that we solve the bigger problem, do you fully understand that Charagan is just a backwater compared to Kivia?  How long do you think it will be before the Ocirians decide that Charagan would look good as a protectorate or vassal state?   How long before an invasion fleet shows up on the shores of Charagan that makes the Delfirian force look like an army of child’s toy soldiers? 

“We’ll sink their ships!” says Dranko.  “Boom!  Blub blub blub.”

“What about a thousand ships, guarded by their most powerful spellcasters?  This is the kind of thing that wizards would be thinking ahead about.  Power is the way to rule properly, and the wizards have it.  But that’s neither here nor there.  

“I’m here to earn your trust, so I’m not going to hide anything from you.  It’s true that I was in communication with Naloric Skewn, and also his son Naradawk, because…”

Dranko interrupts.  “How?”

Parthol smiles indulgently.  “Magic.  You wouldn’t understand.”  He turns to Aravis, Kibi and Grey Wolf.  “Frankly, you wouldn’t either.  I’m a bit beyond you.  But I _don’t_ think I’m powerful enough to take on all of you, and all of the archmagi.   Also, I’m not powerful enough to take on Naradawk and his cadre by myself.  But if I get the two of you to fight, one would be destroyed, and the other weakened.  Then I could probably defeat the winner.  That was kind of the whole point, up to now.  I still wouldn’t mind if it worked out that way.   I think Charagan and the people in it would be better off if I were in control.   But we have a bigger problem, as you probably know.”

“Yeah,” says Ernie.  “A problem that’s twenty-five feet tall with purple skin.”

Parthol shakes his head.  “You mean Naradawk?  No, that’s not what I’m talking about.”  He puts his feet up on the coffee table.  “Are you up on your religion?  Do you know why the Gods came here in the first place?  They were escaping, from the Adversary -- a God before whom all other Gods quailed.  And now Drosh is gone.  Corilayna is gone, too -- and if anyone understands the odds of this world surviving, it would be Her.  Clearly, something very bad is about to happen.  The Adversary is probably on his way.”

There is silence from the Company.  Most of this they knew or guessed already,

“Do you know what the Black Circle is?” Parthol asks.

“A pain in our butt!” Ernie answers.

“No.  I mean do you know, literally, _what it is_?”

After a beat of silence, the party admits that they do not.  Parthol sits up again on the sofa.

“This is what I’m going to share with you.   It may give you a better understanding of what you’re dealing with.  How familiar are you with the Kivian pantheon?   Yulan and Manisette are the Kivian Gods of Time and Creation.  They created five Greater Gods, who in turn were tasked by Manisette to create the Lesser Gods.  They were instructed to create one each, but one of them, Palamir, God of Magic, in his pride created four instead of one.  And those four were imperfect, mere demigods.  

“As punishment, Manisette unmade Palamir, and then recreated him as the God of Duty and Loyalty.  But Manisette was a Goddess of Creation, not destruction, and apparently did not do a very thorough job.  Some of the essence of that God of Magic never left the world, and it hovered above Abernia, waiting.

“That’s half the story.   Now, the Adversary – there’s a reason he’s not here, wreaking havoc and warring again with the other Gods.  He was trapped, and prevented from following the Travelers here.   But a part of the Adversary, some piece of his body or his will, still managed to pursue the fleeing Gods through the reaches of time and space.  It arrived some time after they did.  It fell to the surface of Abernia, and just for a moment, an incredible pall of malevolence was thrown back and flung up from the surface.  But it didn’t last long.  A sliver of time later, it was reformed by the hovering essence of Palamir, an imperfectly unmade God of Magic.   It gave the Adversary tangency, agency.  Do you understand what I’m saying?  The Black Circle _is_ the Adversary, at least in part.  It is a God of Magic, infused with the evil of the Adversary.  All of the Black Circle adherents, from their lowliest neophyte to whomever was promoted to High Priest when you killed Cor Kek,   are working, whether consciously or not, toward bringing the Adversary here in His entirety.

“Not you, not I – no one on this world wants that to happen.  Honestly, all of my intrigues to get control of this Kingdom don’t really matter, if an insanely powerful God is going to show up and have things His way.”

Ernie pipes up.  “So why are the Black Circle so obsessed with bringing back the Emperor?”

“Because,” says Parthol, “The Emperor has the best chance to bring the Adversary here.  With him in charge, every resource of the Kingdom would be dedicated to finding a way to accelerate the Adversary’s arrival.  Of course, the current crop of Black Circle followers may not realize that consciously; they may believe that the return of Naradawk is the end goal.  But collectively, this is all about the God and His return.

“Do you know what made the Emperor evil in the first place?”

Grey Wolf answers.  “The black goo.”

Parthol nods.  “And have you figured out what the ‘black goo’ is?”

Ernie goes pale.  “I just did.  It’s from where the hand of the Adversary hit the ground.”

“Quite literally,” says Parthol, “it’s the Adversary’s blood.”

“So that’s what is in that crater…” Morningstar breathes.

“And it’s what the Black Circle has been using to power their rituals,” Ernie adds.

“Yes.  So.  Now you have a greater understanding of the scope of your problem.   I will attempt to learn more; some of this information has only recently become known to me.  Honestly, it hasn’t been my focus recently.  I had other things to consider.    

“It took me a long time to figure out how to get into this house.  It’s very well warded.  Abernathy showed all of the improvisational genius of Alander, his master.  He’s probably even greater than Typier was at abjuration.  But for all that, Abernathy didn’t take into account the vagaries of the eddies of Astral travel.”   

Dranko squints, and realizes he can see a very thin silver line, like a shimmery rope, projecting out the back of Parthol’s body.

“Unfortunately,” Parthol continues, “it won’t last, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to do it again.  Honestly, it was a great stroke of luck that I was able to slip in here when I did.  I only have another minute or two.  I’ve said what I wanted to say.   Now I’ll go back to researching how we can take care of this problem.  And when the Adversary is taken care of, one way or another,  which wizards willing he will be, we can get back to the question of who should rule Charagan.”

“Why us?” asks Morningstar.

Parthol looks thoughtful.  “There’s something about you.  I don’t know what it is.  But Alander did, and Abernathy after him.  I knew Alander very well.  He was second only to myself in power and knowledge.  He had prescience, as did Abernathy.  They picked you for a reason, and I trust that reason.  If anyone is going to save Abernia and everyone on it, I think that Alander thought it would be you.”

Parthol gestures to Aravis, Grey Wolf and Kibi.  “Even you, who came on afterwards.  Do you know how all of you were picked?  Abernathy wrote your names on a scroll, but he didn’t _know_ your names, or even what he was writing.  He was merely casting a spell perfected by Alander centuries before.   Originally there were seven names.  The next day there were three more names:  Kibi, Grey Wolf, Aravis.  How did he know that?  Your guess is as good as mine.  I don’t have prescience.  I merely have a towering intellect.  

“I may not be able to Astrally Project here again.  The Greenhouse actually accounts for it, just not in every case.   It’s self-adapting.  Next time, you may just have to invite me in.”

“How can we contact you?” asks Dranko.

“You won’t.  _I_ will contact _you_.   I am not reachable.  You see, while I trust _you_, I don’t know that the rest of the archmagi would tolerate me if they knew where I was.”

Dranko can’t help himself.  “Do you have a lackey in Kynder Hold, or someone we can send a message to?”

Parthol looks surprised for the first time since his arrival.  “Kynder Hold?  Very good!”

“Oh, we’ve known that for years,” says Dranko.

“Really.  I’m getting soft in my old age.  How did you find out?”  

Ernie gives Parthol a grim smile. “I’ll tell you this much:  the information _didn’t_ come from a wizard.”  

Parthol chuckles.

“Before you disappear…” Dranko begins.  But it’s too late.  Parthol vanishes, leaving no trace.

Dranko fumes.  “And like I said, according to the cigar, he wasn’t lying.  He also had a silver tail.  Did anyone think that was weird?”

Aravis explains about _astral projection_, and how that meant they couldn’t have really killed Parthol even in the best case.


/*/


With much to think about, the Company goes to sleep.   That night, Aravis receives another vision from the Crosser’s Maze.  It is a direct vision, witnessed through the eyes of his wandering fragment.

_There are two people in a small but fancy room – probably in an inn.   Light and faint noise come through a closed window. 

You’ve seen these two people in a previous vision, though only in silhouette, and before they were armored whereas now they are not.  You can see them plainly this time – a tall, muscular woman and an extremely short and stocky man.  You don’t recognize their faces, though both are dotted with unsightly black lesions.  The woman sits comfortably in a chair, while the little man paces.

“What’s taking him so long?” barks the man.  “He said he’d be here an hour ago.”

“Are you in such a hurry?” asks the woman.  “Personally, I hope he finds some reason to delay.  I don’t know about you, but I enjoy sunlight and breeze.”

The man stops pacing and scoffs.  “Pfah!  I’m starting to think we can’t believe a thing the man says.  Or even that he is who he claims to be.  His story makes no sense.  And on top of everything else, Annon Dun is a myth.   There must be a way down that’s closer.  Naradawk certainly thought so – or at least his father did.”

“Naradawk is no longer relevant,” says a voice in the doorway.   The two others turn to look.  A third person enters the room, a tall man, gaunt, with stringy black hair and sallow skin.  “As if he ever was,” continues the man.  “But his agents of orthodoxy have failed again, and he’s back to square one in his little prison world.  No matter, I have...  “

He trails off, then looks around sharply.

“Do you know that you’re being watched?”

“What?” the woman jumps to her feet.  “How?  By whom?  I thought your abjurations couldn’t be....”

“Quiet!” orders the tall man, and the woman falls silent.  The newcomer looks slowly around, almost like he’s sniffing the air.  

“Ah,” he says, finally.  It almost seems like he’s looking at you.  “Fascinating.  We’re being observed in a way I’ve never encountered.  A wizard named Aravis Telmir is spying on us from a transcendentally overlapping frame of reference.  He’s bypassing our protections because they don’t exist in his unique locus – in some sense he’s not watching us, but our spatiotemporal reflection.  But I can remedy that.  Aravis, since I owe you some small debt, I’ll forgive this rude intrusion into our private business.   You can apologize in person when we meet, right before Abernia’s inevitable paradigm shift.  Now, if you’ll excuse us...”

The man waves his hand dismissively in your direction, and the vision ceases abruptly. 

_
…to be continued…


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

In addition to the omen from the cigar, there's more evidence that he's on the same side as the PCs (at least for now):  consider just how annoying and obnoxious his behavior is.  That's much more consistent with the pattern of annoying allies than with the pattern of likable villains.


----------



## RedTonic

Yay! More updates! <3 Thank you, Sagiro.


----------



## blargney the second

Oh. My.

Sagiro, you are brilliant.


----------



## wedgeski

Man, serial updates. I'm drinking these in. Awesome stuff!


----------



## Piratecat

Cerebral Paladin said:


> In addition to the omen from the cigar, there's more evidence that he's on the same side as the PCs (at least for now):  consider just how annoying and obnoxious his behavior is.  That's much more consistent with the pattern of annoying allies than with the pattern of likable villains.



See? Kind of a dick! The fact that he's telling the truth makes him that much more annoying.

That very very bad guy who just dismissed Aravis's vision? We've heard of him and have seen his image before, though we've never met. I won't spoil it, and it's quite possible that no one will remember (we didn't!), but bonus points to anyone who can guess.


----------



## Kaodi

...I thought it was Octesian and his buddies. I guess I was mistaken?


----------



## Sagiro

Kaodi said:


> ...I thought it was Octesian and his buddies. I guess I was mistaken?




In that vision, the first two people are Meledien (long-time red-armored nemesis) and Tarsos (red-armored villain who got through the Gate at Verdshane before Aravis closed it.)  The third person -- the man who detected Aravis watching -- is someone who has party had certainly heard of, but (I'm pretty sure) had never seen.  They have since figured out who it is, though I forget exactly how they learned his identity.

Octesian, a powerful Dreamwalker, was a red-armored contemporary of Meledien from early in the campaign.  The Company learned (via another one of Aravis's Maze-o-grams) that Octesian went to try rescuing the Adversary by traveling to where the Dreamscape meets the Far Realms.   He got too close, failed, went crazy, and is now making his way back to Abernia, killing as he goes.  You haven't heard the last of him, I assure you.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Oh that's some damn fine update you got there Sagiro.  Another round for everyone! 

The infamous 'P' returns.  And uninvited into their home no less.  At least it sounds like their home security system is adaptive.  But still, might have to burn that couch now.


----------



## KerlanRayne

Sagiro said:


> And finally there is a smooth gray stone sphere, about the size of an orange, that is identified only as “Cayyat.”  The wizards have no idea what it does, though it radiates strong transmutation magic and is activated by someone holding it and concentrating upon it.



I really like this item. So it takes an hour to activate and can give you a maximum of two months of 'free' time. How often can it be activated?


----------



## Joshua Randall

> Parthol nods. “And have you figured out what the ‘black goo’ is?”
> 
> Ernie goes pale. “I just did. It’s from where the hand of the Adversary hit the ground.”
> 
> “Quite literally,” says Parthol, “it’s the Adversary’s blood.”



I _knew_ it!

Now I just have to figure out where the mirror-universe Mrs. Horn fits into this whole mess, and I'll have it all wrapped up in a neat bow.


----------



## steeldragons

I'm not even playing this and I crapped my pants (figuratively) when I read Parthol was sitting _IN _the Greenhouse...astral form or not!

Too late now, but what woulda happened if someone had dropped a _dimensional anchor_ on his astral butt? hahaha.

Still, as always, great writing and a great read! Thank you Sagiro (and players) for an unforgettable story.

I have no clue who the guy who recognized Aramis is though...I was assuming the red-armored crew initially. But Sagiro's explanation seems to indicate that it isn't Octesian.

Can't wait to read on.
Cheers.
--SD
PS: the group pic(s) is(are) still in the works.  I haven't forgotten.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 330*_
*No, Not Even For One Measly Week*

Aravis’s vision is the main topic of conversation over breakfast.  The party quickly deduces that the first two people are Tarsos and Meledien, red-armored servants of the Emperor.  But who was the pale man with stringy hair, and what debt might he owe to Aravis?  No one recognizes him, not even when Aravis draws out a sketch.

“Annon Dun” is also something heard once before – a place name, though not even the Hae Kalkas Sages’ Consortium knew anything about it.  Some in the party vaguely recall thinking that Annon Dun was the name of a distant continent, perhaps even the one that turned out to be Kivia.  

But finding nothing specifically actionable about the vision, they turn to a more important task:  the raising of Flicker from the dead.  They march in procession to the Temple of Yondalla bearing the little halfling’s remains, and Ernie instructs his friends to lay the salvaged pieces upon the altar.  As congregants file in to witness the ritual, Ernie sets out their recently-acquired gems, and burns incense of cinnamon and blacktallow.   Flicker’s parents, Crick and Mora, watch apprehensively from the front row.  Soon  the fane is filled to capacity; no one has performed a _resurrection_ here in living memory.  

When the crowd has quieted, Ernie speaks.  “Yondalla, Flicker is your child too.  I know sometimes he’s a little reckless, and he values gold more than a person should, but he is a good and true servant to you.  He has saved the world, and saved us, more times than I can remember.  He is brave, loyal, and true... and we need him.  Will you send him back to us?”

He casts _resurrection_, and when he’s finished, the components vanish.   Flicker doesn’t immediately come back to life, which is not unexpected, given how long it has taken in the past.  But instead of days, only ten minutes pass before Flicker’s silhouette appears around his remains, and then forms into a whole and uninjured body.  His eyes flutter open, and clerics of Yondalla move to cover him with soft robes.

Ernie smiles.  “Welcome back, Flick.”

Flicker sits up suddenly and stares back, wide-eyed.  “Ernie! I had a full house!  I was finally going to beat him!”

Ernie is obviously taken aback.  “Er… you consented to come back, didn’t you?”

“Yes!  I know!  But did you have to do it right _then?_”  

A murmur goes through the crowd.  Those who don’t know Flicker are clearly scandalized, while those who do are trying not to laugh.

“Do you… do you want to go back?” asks Ernie.

Flicker lets out a long breath.  “No.  If I wanted to stay more than I wanted to come back, I would have stayed.   And thank you!  Say, did we win?”

“Yeah,” says Dranko.  “We beat him, temporarily at least.  Want to see?”

Dranko pulls out the skull of Ten Old Bones.  This time the assemblage lets out a collective gasp of horror.

Aravis whispers harshly: “Not here, Dranko!”

Ernie looks heavenward.  “Dranko, _please_ don’t play with the lich’s skull on Yondalla’s holy ground.”  

As Dranko sheepishly stows the skull, Flicker’s parents come rushing forward to hug their son.   “It wasn’t an easy choice,” he tells them.  “Heaven is… really nice.”  Then, to the party, he adds:  “I was back at the Inn Between.  It was different this time, though.  I could have stayed there forever, and it would have been all right.  Oh, and before I forget:  when this is all over, we have to do what Belshikun asks us to do.  That’s what Barnabas told me to remember.  I asked him how we’ll know when it’s all over, and he said, ‘assuming you’re alive, you’ll know.  And if you’re not, it won’t matter.’

“Thanks for bringing me back.”


/*/


After a celebratory lunch, the Company sits in the Greenhouse living room and discusses various threats and objectives.  They have a surplus of life-force to power some _wishes_ and _miracles_, and there are plenty of options for adjusting the world to their benefit.

*>> The party went up to 19th level after Flicker was resurrected.  We use Action Points in lieu of XP, and at leveling boundaries I allow the party to burn excess action points as XP to power spells like wish and miracle.*

They settle on three things:  Two of them are Ten Old Bones’ phylactery, and learning about the mystery man from Aravis’s vision.  For the third, Ernie decides that he can better serve Charagan and Yondalla by forsaking his martial training and becoming purely a cleric.  (He has long been feeling that he is serving neither role satisfactorily.)  After some closeted discussion with Morningstar, Ernie casts his _miracle_.  Something changes inside of him, something small but with an anticipatory potential.   There is no immediate shift in his abilities, but Ernie is satisfied that _something_ has been put in motion, and that now it’s in Yondalla’s hands.

For Ten Old Bones, they spend both a _wish_ AND a _miracle_, thinking that it will take such extreme measures to achieve that sort of result.  Morningstar and Aravis cast together:  _”We wish and pray that any and all phylacteries and soul objects connected with Ten Old Bones be irrevocably destroyed, and his soul be freed to pass on to its final destination, with no possibility of return.”_

A powerful wave of magic rushes outward from them, and both casters are treated to a brief vision:  beneath the collapsed ruins of Nazg Hodeth, one-time lair of Zeg and home of the Necromantic Forge, there is a small leaden box.  Inside that box is a collection of bugbear teeth.  One of these, indistinguishable from the others, quietly disintegrates.

With that taken care of, Aravis casts again:  _“I wish to know everything possible about the third person in my most recent vision from the Maze.”_

There is a moment when he realizes that his magic will be blocked.  Whoever that person is, he has massively powerful abjurations and wards protecting him from divination.  _Mind blank_ is only a part of it.  But Aravis’s power is also formidable, and despite all of the target’s defenses, his name slips through and comes to Aravis’s mind.

*Seven Dark Words*

There are groans all around the room.   The Mad Sculptor!  The architect of Het Branoi, whose grand experiment to rescue the Adversary was doomed to failure, and who afterward wandered the Slices carving little statuettes of Kibi.  He seems to have recovered from his madness, returned from wherever he ended up after Het Branoi was destroyed, and now has assumed a leadership position among their enemies.   Great.


/*/


With Flicker back on his feet, Dranko takes him to check in with the Undermen.   They stop by Turlissa’s bakery en route, but this time, far from seeming happy to see him, she merely eyes him coolly, and with a trace of curiosity.  Dranko figures she’s just waiting out the one customer in the shop, but even after the store is vacant save for the three of them, Turlissa betrays no mischievous familiarity.

“You’re looking surprisingly yourself today,” she comments.

“Should I look like someone else?” asks Dranko.

Turlissa glowers.  “Is this another silly test?”

Dranko laughs.  “Talk to me like I should know stuff but have forgotten it.”

Turlissa isn’t laughing.  “If this is what we’re playing at, I can’t tell you anything more than last time, whoever you are.”

Dranko tries to convince her of his identity by telling her about the secret entrances to the Guild, but that only makes her more standoffish.  “Convince Lucas,” she says finally, before turning her back on him.

Dranko disguises himself as Turlissa as he and Flicker enter the Manse via the abandoned tenement entrance.  When several Undermen look surprised to see ‘her’ there, he drops the disguise and assumes his own visage.   He expects immediate recognition and deference, but instead the closest guild member jumps back and draws a blade.  

“Who are you?  How did you get in here?”

Flicker shakes his head and decides to stay out of this, blending into the shadows.  Dranko scratches himself.  “Why do you want to kill me?  I’m Dranko.”

“Who?”

A terrible feeling comes over Dranko.  This is, after all, the first time he’s been back here since giving up his fame to a creature from the Far Realms.

“Have you ever seen me before?” he asks the man.

He hears the sound of more blades being draws, all around him now.

“Should I have?” says the rogue.  “Let me ask you again:  how did you get down here?”

“Sorry,” Dranko explains.  “I’m a special agent of Lucas’s – I don’t often come here.”

“Then why don’t you walk with us, and we can tell Lucas about it.”

Dranko’s preternatural senses tell him that one of his underlings is about to place a dagger against his neck.  He quickly disarms him, tripping the fellow with this whip and sending him sprawling.  The other half-dozen Undermen jump him, but it takes him only about fifteen seconds to knock them all unconscious and leave them snoring in a heap.   Alas, the sounds of the lopsided battle bring more footsteps toward them from several directions. 

He is relieved to hear the sound of Lucas’s voice.  “Stop!”

Dranko smiles and waves.  “Hi Lucas!”

“Back off of him,” barks Lucas to the encroaching guild members.

“You know this man?” asks one of them.

“Yes,” says Lucas.  “He’s an informant.  He’s here to see me.”

“How did he know how to get down here?”

“He’s a _trusted_ informant.”  He snaps at Dranko.  “Now, you, come with me.”

Lucas marches Dranko down the hallway to the Guildmaster’s office.  Flicker catches up and joins them.  Once they are inside with the door closed, Lucas sits down in a chair, and motions Dranko to sit in the Oracle’s customary seat.

“Of course,” says Lucas, already feeling a headache coming on, “you have a good explanation for this.”

Dranko nods.  “Remember the time when I came back and I didn’t know who you were, because everything had changed?”

“Yes.  But you know who I am _now_, so that didn’t happen this time.”

“That’s exactly right,” says Dranko.  “Except for one thing.  Last time I was here, everyone knew I was the head of the guild.”  

“Um…” says Lucas.  “No.  No they didn’t.”

“Let’s assume this,” says Dranko.  “I got hit on the head again, and this time I forgot why I’m supposed to keep it a secret when I’m here.”

Lucas manages not to cry, which is something.  But he can’t help but blurt, “Can’t you stay out of trouble for _one measly week?_”  

“If it makes you feel any better,” says Dranko, “we just saved the world from the Emperor, and destroyed an evil lich in the process.  Really.”

“Dranko, I know your extracurricular activities are very important, and that we’re all in your debt once again, but…”   

“Oh, and I have tentacles,” says Dranko.

Lucas stares at him.  “Invisible tentacles, apparently.”

“No, I can sprout them when I want to.”

“I don’t want to see that,” Lucas says quickly.

“Neither do I, honestly.”

“So,” says Lucas rubbing his temples.  “Someone hit you on the head, and you didn’t forget who _I_ was, or how to get in here, but you forgot about all the protocols that you set up yourself, about the hierarchy of the Guild leadership?”

“As far as I know, I never set those protocols up.  Can you explain them to me?”

_Ye Gods, he’s not paying me enough_.  “You are the Oracle,” says Lucas.  “I am who everyone _thinks_ is the Oracle.  _You_ are who everyone thinks is an assistant, an agent, who doesn’t spend much time here, and you are someone who does not _ever_ use his actual personal appearance.”

“What appearance do I usually use?” asks Dranko.

“Oh, gods, you don’t remember, do you?  You said it was some baker you knew once.”

Dranko changes into Turlus.  “Yes, that,” says Lucas.  “That’s what you look like when in the Manse.  For your own safety, you said, the true identity of the Oracle should not be known.  Of course now a dozen different members of the guild have seen your actual face…”

“So have me beaten up and thrown out!”

“I just told them you were a trusted informant,” says Lucas.  “How is it going to look if _now_ I have you beaten and thrown out?  It will look like I don’t know what I’m doing!  Look, I’ll think of something else.  But please, _please_ stop losing your memory.  For someone who claims to be part of a group that saves the world all the time, you are the most infuriatingly vacuous, bafflingly obtuse…”

“What actually happened,” Dranko interrupts, “was that I traded away my fame.  Back then, everyone knew who I was.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” says Lucas harshly.

“No, that’s the way it really was!” Dranko insists.

“That’s never the way it’s been!”

Dranko tries one more time.  “I traded my fame to a tentacular entity from the Far Re…”

“STOP!” shouts Lucas.  “I don’t want to know any more details about this.  I will take it on faith that now you know how everything works, and we’re all fine, and I will smooth things over with the Guild.   Now, would you like a report?”

“Yeah,” says Dranko.  “That would be great.”


…to be continued…


----------



## Piratecat

Oh, lordy, it hurts just as much the second time. Whatever that far realm entity was, it was monstrously powerful. It reknit reality and caught me completely off-guard in the process. Poor Lucas.

For the record, after the tentacles I retrained my _leadership _feat for _reckless offense,_ which allows you to take -4 to AC for +2 to hit.


----------



## RangerWickett

A beautiful resurrection ceremony. A little odd that they brought a skull up there with them, though. I wonder who would have done that. I've read a lot about those famous heroes, and none of them seem so crass. It sounds like something a random vagrant would have done, but I don't remember seeing anyone else with them.


----------



## carborundum

Fantastic ceremony, nice job guys!

Say, PC, had you forgotten about the whole fame thing by this stage or did you just want to see how it had all justified itself retrospectively in the evil DM-mind?


----------



## Piratecat

carborundum said:


> Say, PC, had you forgotten about the whole fame thing by this stage or did you just want to see how it had all justified itself retrospectively in the evil DM-mind?



I hadn't expected the change to be quite this. . comprehensive. It wasn't just reality that was unraveled, it was history too. And while "my" past instructions to Lucas made complete sense in retrospect, they never even occurred to me at the time.


----------



## RedTonic

What's this "action points instead of XP" system? Is there a published variant on that or is it houseruled?


----------



## Piratecat

RedTonic said:


> What's this "action points instead of XP" system? Is there a published variant on that or is it houseruled?



Here's the old first draft I wrote up for Sagiro, with some strike-through added on things that later got dropped. It's changed since this, too, but most of the fundamental house rules are correct.


----------



## StevenAC

Loved the scene with Parthol.  Another chapter is now available on the Story Hour site, taking the story up to his cliffhanger appearance.  And I'll just note that the complete-in-one-file version of the Story Hour is now _just_ under a thousand pages!


----------



## Innocent Bystander

StevenAC said:


> Loved the scene with Parthol.  Another chapter is now available on the Story Hour site, taking the story up to his cliffhanger appearance.  And I'll just note that the complete-in-one-file version of the Story Hour is now _just_ under a thousand pages!




Just wanted to say thanks for all the work you've done putting them together.  I love going back and re-reading them.


----------



## Kilroy

So, when is Dranko getting removed from the Before They Were Famous section?


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 331*_
*Angry Jack*

Lucas leans back, takes a deep breath, and tries to pretend the encounter is just beginning.

“The Guild is doing well, I’m happy to say.  The gem trade is thriving, and we have numerous merchants set up as fronts for our business.  The ruler of Seresef is happy with our progress, and Greta tells me we have upwards of 150,000 gold pieces in our coffers at the moment.”

“That’s what I like to see!” Dranko exclaims.

Lucas continues.  “The downside is, the gem trade is our sole trans-ocean business venture that has met with any success.  The White Sun Cartel has managed to shut down all of our other operations before they could gain any steam.”

Dranko frowns, but Lucas just shrugs.  “Honestly, as long as the gem trade remains fruitful, I don’t much care.  None of our other ventures, even had they panned out, would have been a tenth as lucrative.   I have the usual misgivings about having all of our eggs in one basket, but they’re very nice eggs.”

“Sure,” says Dranko, nodding in agreement.  “And think of it this way.  If that basket falls apart, we’ll salvage what we can, and then I’ll start a  war against the White Sun Cartel, to shake things up a little bit.”

Lucas opens his mouth, closes it again, thinks for a moment.  “I suppose you did just defeat a lich, and prevent the Emperor from arriving here, so perhaps you really can win a war against the powerful mercantile arm of the Jewels of the Plains.  You know best.”

Dranko just smiles.

Lucas clears his throat.  “I continue to send out feelers looking for Farazil, but have not learned anything new.  Octavius Hightower leads our efforts on that front, and he’s very good.  I expect we’ll have some news there before too long.

“Other than that… there is one small item, that I thought you might take a personal interest in.”

Dranko looks properly intrigued.  “Tell me!”

“There has been some extracurricular burglary taking place in Tal Hae recently.  The perpetrator is someone very accomplished, and whom we have been unable to pin down.”  

“It wasn’t Flicker, was it?” asks Dranko with a grin.

Lucas sighs.  “The fellow calls himself Angry Jack.  We know don’t know much about him, just rumors, that are placed all around the city.  They are largely untraceable, but they all speak to Angry Jack’s fame and prowess.  We don’t know if he works alone, or has accomplices.  But it seems that he is doing his best to make a name for himself, and it’s reached the point where it’s imperative that we bring him in.  Does any of this sound familiar to you?”

“Yeah,” says Dranko.  “It sounds like me!”

“Exactly,” says Lucas.  “Which is why we thought you might be the right person to deal with him.”


/*/

Morningstar is deep in thought, a magical quill held uncertainly in her hand, when Dranko bursts through the Greenhouse door.  

“Would anyone like a fun extracurricular activity?”  he asks.

“I’m not sure I want to know,” says Ernie, coming into the living room from the kitchen with a platter of bread and cheese.  “Do I?”

Morningstar sets down her pen.  “I nearly died,” she says quietly.  “In fact, I’m pretty sure I _did_ die for a second, and it would be very bad if I died again without having produced my holy writings for Rhiavonne.”

“How about this,” Dranko offers.  “You help me out with this, and then I’ll help you write.  It’ll only take an afternoon. There’s a wannabe ‘me’ out there we have to deal with.  Remember how I did the Oracle, way back when?  We’ve got the same thing here, with someone calling himself Angry Jack and spreading rumors about himself.   I’d like to have a little chat with him.  I could do it solo, but stuff like this is much more fun with you guys along.”

Aravis perks up.  “I could _scry_ him.”  He’s quite eager to try out a new spell – _greater scrying_ – which takes less time than the plain version, and is harder for subjects to resist.   With Dranko’s blessing he casts the spell, naming Angry Jack as his target.  In his mirror he sees a broad-shouldered man in a run-down looking apartment, dressed like a servant.  Though the walls are cracked and the window is filthy, the furnishings are actually quite nice; there are painted shields hanging behind him, and he eats off a metal plate with his feet up on an ottoman.  He does not appear to be armed.  

“I suppose that’s him,” says Dranko, upon hearing Aravis’s report.  “Though he could have some kind of magical defense in place.”

For fun, Kibi casts _veil_ to make every last one of them look like Sagiro Emberleaf, before Aravis casts _greater teleport_ and brings the whole Company right into the room with the man.  Grey Wolf laments over the mind-link that it would have been more satisfying to kick open the door.

“Hi, Angry Jack,” says Dranko, motioning to the man’s plate.  “Do you have enough for all of us?”

The man looks entirely unperturbed by this.  “Oh,” he says, looking a bit bored.  “You here to see Angry Jack then, are ya?   He’s downstairs cooking up some more grub.”  His accent is decidedly lower-class, and he takes another bite of his fish.

_I’m not buying it,_ says Aravis over the mind-link.

“Stay where you are,” Dranko instructs the man.

The man doesn’t leave his chair, but he calls down the stairs.  “Hey Jack!  You got some visitors here!  Just blinked in all magic-like!”

“Fine,” comes a voice from below.  It sounds gruff and annoyed.  “Send them down.”

Dranko blinks.  _Huh._

“I gotta warn ya,” says the man.  “Jack don’t like surprises.” 

Dranko peers closely at the man.   He’s got good instincts for this sort of thing, and he doesn’t _think_ this man is lying.  Maybe this servant and Jack have some shared enchantment that makes one detect as the other to magic spells?

_Let’s just settle this, shall we?_ thinks Morningstar.  She casts a silent, still _detect thoughts_.   She picks up the man’s surface thoughts quite clearly.  _Oh sh*t. Sh*t sh*t sh*t.  Who are these people?  All I have to do is get them downstairs, and I can get the hell out of here…_

Morningstar shares this with the others.

“Just put down your food for a while,” says Dranko.  “And we’ll have a little talk.  Just you, and me, and my associates.”

“You all look the same, you know,” says the man.

He’s thinking:  _I can get out through the window.  All I have to do is distract that one and… that one, and I’ll be able to make it.  I may cut myself, and it’s two stories down, but I know how to fall…_

Grey Wolf sidesteps over to stand directly in front of the window.

“I want you to know,” says Dranko, “that we’re not here to kill you.”

“Are you here to kill Jack then?” asks the man.

Dranko sighs.  “However, if you want us to _continue_ not killing you, you’ll have to stop pretending that you aren’t Jack.”

“Oh, I’d love to be him,” says the man with true sincerity.  “You really think I’m him?”

We can do this two ways,” says Dranko grimly.  “You can keep lying, and we can leave you unconscious or dead.  Or, you can be honest, and I will make you a more friendly offer.  Which would you prefer?”

The man is thinking:  _I’m way outnumbered, they’re festooned with magic items, and one of them’s probably reading my mind…_

Morningstar smiles.  

Now he’s thinking: _that one._

Aravis smiles.  

_They’re all reading my mind?_

They all smile.

_Aw, sh*t._ Out loud, he says, “And what is your offer?”

Dranko stares steadily at him.  “What’s your name?”

“It’s Jack,” the man finally admits.

Drano raises an eyebrow.  “Your name is actually Jack?  And you call yourself Angry Jack?  Don’t you think that’s a little obvious?”

“No one has figured out until now,” says Jack.  “Who are you?  And what is your offer?”

“We are representatives of the actual Thieves’ Guild.  The Undermen.  You’re familiar with it?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so.  And you’re thwarting it.”

Jack smiles bitterly.  “Good.”

“Why good?”

“Because you deserve it,” says Jack.

“And why do we deserve it?” Dranko asks.

“For not recognizing talent when you saw it.”

“Did we turn you down?”

Morningstar detects strong resentment from Jack at that comment.  

Jack splutters.  “You don’t even remember… say, in what capacity do you serve the Undermen?”

While Grey Wolf cracks his knuckles, Dranko says, “If you’re smart, you might think I’m an enforcer.”

“Yes,” Jack admits.  “I was turned down by the Undermen.”

“Why?”

“I wasn’t good enough, apparently.  And also… also they said my attitude was not appropriate.”

“Huh,” says Dranko.  “But I can see that you’re a man of potential, of vision, and highly motivated.”

“That’s true,” says Jack.  “But still not good enough for you lot.”

“I’m guessing you’re also a lying pain in the butt to work with, and you’ll make your friends look bad to make yourself look better.”

“Yes, that’s more or less a paraphrasing of what they told me ten years ago,” says Jack.

Dranko is taken aback.  Jack  looks like he’s in his early 20’s.  “Ten years ago?”

“I’m more skilled than I was back then… and I was quite good.”

“Look.” says Dranko.  “Do you mind if I say something trite?”

“Say whatever you want.”

“You remind me a lot of me.”

Jack smiles.  “I’m better looking.  In fact, you look like a fop.  But that’s not really you, is it? What do you really look like?”

“You’ll never know,” says Dranko.

Jack laughs.  “Are you afraid?  You have me outnumbered, seven to one!  I see.  Hiding behind illusions.  Is that how the Guild works?”

Kibi thinks: _He really DOES remind me of you!_

Dranko ignores him.  “Let me get this straight.  You were turned down when you were 12 or 13 years old?”

“So?”

“Back then, somebody different was running the Guild, and they didn’t always recognize talent.  I would like to foster your skills.”  

Jack sits up a little straighter.  “You’re offering me a paid position?”

“I would like to mentor you,” Dranko clarifies.

Jack gives a disgusted snort.  “And what if I don’t wish to be ‘mentored?’  I think I’m doing quite well on my own, thank you.”

Dranko shakes his head.  “What you’re doing right now, is not acceptable to the Guild.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.  But that’s okay.  Your choices are, you can leave the city, or you can have access to a vast amount of wealth and knowledge, and the opportunity to hone your skills.  It’s up to you.  Or we could kill you.”

“I don’t doubt that you could,” Jack admits.  “Though you did need to bring a half-dozen friends.  Are they all with the Guild?”

“Nah,” says Dranko.

Aravis smiles benignly at Jack:  “We’re here for the sport.”

“And I didn’t want to do my homework,” Morningstar adds.

“If they really want me back,” says Jack, “maybe I should make them work a little harder.”

Dranko sighs.  “Look.  We don’t _want_ you back.  We want you nullified.  But frankly, I think you have great potential, and I’d like to see that developed.  But we don’t _need_ you.  We just _like_ you.”

“Well, _he_ does,” Kibi clarifies.

“You said I could leave the city,” says Jack.  “If I start operating in another city, you’ll leave me alone?”

“Of course,” says Dranko.

“When do I have to decide.”

“I’d prefer now.”

“Otherwise you might run,” says Grey Wolf.

Jack puts up his hands.  “How can I run?  You all just appeared in my house!  You can probably _scry_, am I right?”

“You were thinking about jumping out the window not long ago,” Dranko points out.

“Pffff.  Fifteen feet at most.  What kind of operator do you think I am?”

“You’re a pretty good second story man,” says Dranko.

“No.  I am an _exceptional_ second-story man, and I have a great many other talents besides.   First among them, keeping an intensely unflappable demeanor.”

Well, _that's_ certainly true.  

“There _are_ people who are better than you,” says Dranko.

“Not many, or I would have seen someone like you long before now.  But I’m not as good as you, that’s clear.  So, if I become an accredited member of the Undermen, I could rise to great heights?”

“You could rise to great heights right now,” says Aravis.

“He’s talking about _reverse gravity_,” Dranko adds.

Jack falls silent, and thinks for a moment more.

“I accept,” he says suddenly.  “What are the conditions?”

“You need to stop operating independently.”

“Accepted.”

“And I think your talents will be wasted on simple burglary.   We may use you for more important jobs.  What drives you.  Money?  Fame?  Excitement?”  

“Yes, though more the money and fame than excitement.  And I do enjoy physical challenges.”

“How good are you?”

“I’m extraordinarily good.”

“How do you feel about travel?”

“I’d prefer to stay in Tal Hae,” says Jack.  “I think you’ll find my local knowledge of great value, even to an organization like yours.  In fact, I will bet you ten gold pieces that I know at least five things that no one else in your guild knows about Tal Hae.”

Dranko takes a step back.  “Not necessary.  We’ll have someone contact you.”

“How do I know that the next visitor I get won’t be an assassin?” asks Jack.

“Because if we wanted to, we could turn you to dust in less than five seconds.”

“Really?”

Aravis casts _disintegrate_ and vaporizes a chair.  For the first time, Angry Jack’s demeanor becomes somewhat flappable.  While his mouth hangs open, Dranko slaps down a handful of coins.

Jack regains his composure.  “For me?”

“Consider it a signing bonus.”

“Thank you,” says Jack.  “Oh, and I didn’t catch your name.”

“I didn’t give it.  And I’m not going to.  But we’ll meet again.”

“Do you need to be shown the way out, or will you disappear?”

In answer, Aravis _teleports_ the party away.  Back in the Greenhouse, Dranko smiles broadly.  “I love you guys!”


/*/


In the Manse, later that day, Dranko returns, this time looking like Turlus the baker.  No one glances at him or stops him as he goes to report to Lucas.  He shares the details of his encounter with Angry Jack.

When Dranko is finished, Lucas just puts his head in his hands.  “Gods, just what I need.  Another one of you.”


…to be continued…


----------



## RedTonic

That was great--at least what's his name gets to help Aravis and the others kick that burglar into line.


----------



## Everett

RedTonic said:


> That was great--at least what's his name gets to help Aravis and the others kick that burglar into line.




Who, the half-orc?  Was he an adventurer at some time?


----------



## thegreyman

I think he's someone's cohort.  Kibi's maybe?


----------



## steeldragons

HA! 

Wait...who? That Lucas fellow is interesting...

(Sorry PC ;P )


----------



## RedTonic

Is he a half-orc? I just thought he had dental problems. Anyway it's nice to see the heroes sharing the limelight like that!


----------



## Everett

steeldragons said:


> HA!
> 
> Wait...who? That Lucas fellow is interesting...





Right, the leader of the Undermen.  The guy with dental problems does his laundry, I think.


----------



## weiknarf

Wait, are you guys talking about Snokas?


----------



## Tamlyn

weiknarf said:


> Wait, are you guys talking about Snokas?




That's what I was thinking. Now HE'S someone worth remembering.


----------



## Piratecat

You know what this is? This is a thread full of people who forget I wield a banhammer!  (Or don't care. Almost certainly don't care. *sob*)

This was a wonderful side adventure -- all roleplaying, completely fun, and emotionally rewarding as it called back to Dranko's origins. It let us preen a little before we go get our asses kicked. This sort of thing puts adventuring in perspective.


----------



## carborundum

You know what this is? This is a thread full of people LIVING you guys' campaign 

Now that's a compliment!


----------



## Kaodi

Well, it could always be worse: the curse could extend out beyond the game, right? 

Anyway, I wonder whatever happened to that game Sagiro used to play in? I think it had most of the same people player different characters, but I always wondered who the heck the DM was...


----------



## Davek

Kaodi said:


> Well, it could always be worse: the curse could extend out beyond the game, right?




What curse ...


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> You know what this is? This is a thread full of people who forget I wield a banhammer!  (Or don't care. Almost certainly don't care. *sob*)




What's a Banhammer?  OH -- it's like a protractor, right?  That's it -- the guy with bad teeth used to do appraising for the company when Flicker wasn't around.  Until he just vanished one day in a puff of cigar smoke shaped like a little question mark.  Weird.


----------



## carborundum

Something seems weird these days. The world is greyer, less interesting... and I've just worked out what it is.

The rapid-fire updates have retreated ;-)


Can't wait to find out what happens next!


----------



## Piratecat

Sadly, I'm no longer talking to Sagiro. Not after what he did last game. Shattering our 20+ year friendship probably seems a small price to pay for his RBDMing, but still...

Here's a hint. In comparison to last game, Dranko actually getting killed two games ago was the _good_ part. *shakes fist*


----------



## The_Warlock

Sounds like villainy is in the air. Excellent, we await the details.


----------



## Eccles

Piratecat said:


> Sadly, I'm no longer talking to Sagiro. Not after what he did last game. Shattering our 20+ year friendship probably seems a small price to pay for his RBDMing, but still...
> 
> Here's a hint. In comparison to last game, Dranko actually getting killed two games ago was the _good_ part. *shakes fist*




Wait... who getting killed?


----------



## jmucchiello

Sadly, it will be years before we find out what that was all about, in-game.


----------



## Solarious

If history were any indication, we'll be waiting 5 years for the context of that remark. It took that long from the first mention of True Resurrection to the actual post of that run.


----------



## Everett

I agree.  You can't tell us that Dranko's going to die when we won't find out how for another year or two.  Well, you just did, so you CAN, I guess, but you really shouldn't.  We can only be sure that he didn't die famous.


----------



## Everett

Solarious said:


> If history were any indication, we'll be waiting 5 years for the context of that remark. It took that long from the first mention of True Resurrection to the actual post of that run.




Sagiro mentioned a time-frame out to the end of the game several months ago.  2 years?  2013?


----------



## Everett

Actually, he mentioned it like two years ago and I brought it up again several months ago.

Just for comparison's sake, George R.R. Martin's _A Dance with Dragons _will be released in three weeks.  It's the fifth book of a series that has been in progress about 4 years longer than Sagiro's campaign.


----------



## Kaodi

Everett said:


> Actually, he mentioned it like two years ago and I brought it up again several months ago.
> 
> Just for comparison's sake, George R.R. Martin's _A Dance with Dragons _will be released in three weeks.  It's the fifth book of a series that has been in progress about 4 years longer than Sagiro's campaign.




I think Sagiro's Storyhour and that of that... ummm... other DM in his group (what is that guys name?) have been going on for more than sixteen years at this point. I thought one of those two games was close to twenty...


----------



## Everett

Sagiro's game began in 1995, IIRC.

There's another DM in Sagiro's group?  I suppose that must be Morningstar.  Though there was this guy she was seeing for awhile... hmm... One Certain Step, that's right.


----------



## jmucchiello

Everett said:


> Just for comparison's sake, George R.R. Martin's _A Dance with Dragons _will be released in three weeks.  It's the fifth book of a series that has been in progress about 4 years longer than Sagiro's campaign.



Thankfully, Saigro updates more often than George.


----------



## steeldragons

Everett said:


> Sagiro's game began in 1995, IIRC.




Oh! So just a few years ago then. hahahah. Ugh. Where DOES the time go?!



Everett said:


> There's another DM in Sagiro's group?  I suppose that must be Morningstar.  Though there was this guy she was seeing for awhile... hmm... One Certain Step, that's right.




Yep. Nice pair they made. Shame what happened to him. 

LOVE! It's all meant in goodfunlove for this most excellent Story Hour and real life group of exceptional personages! I'm envious with every post I read.

--SD


----------



## Everett

jmucchiello said:


> Thankfully, Saigro updates more often than George.




Actually, George blogs constantly.  Would that he spent half that time writing.


----------



## jmucchiello

Everett said:


> Actually, George blogs constantly.  Would that he spent half that time writing.



Blogging about being a novelist does not correlate to "updating" as it applies to the story hour. Updating the story hour is releasing a new installment. Blogging is NOT writing book 6 of A Song of Fire and Ice.


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

I'm just going to drop this in here with no further comment.

Neil Gaiman's Journal: Entitlement issues...

And hope fervently for a new update to this Story Hour when Sagiro has the time to write it.


----------



## Kestrel

Thanks Mathew, that was a great read


----------



## Everett

jmucchiello said:


> Blogging about being a novelist does not correlate to "updating" as it applies to the story hour. Updating the story hour is releasing a new installment. Blogging is NOT writing book 6 of A Song of Fire and Ice.




Yes, that's exactly what I was saying in so many words.  It doesn't lessen my respect for his writing, but I do wish he would learn that the football score means far less than Westeros.  He never will, of course.

And I've read Gaiman's "GRRM is not your bitch" before, and while it's dryly witty in Gaiman's facile way, he chose to simply ignore GRRM's endlessly wishful thinking about meeting deadlines that created the whole mess.  Had he written at the end of _A Feast for Crows_ in 2005, "the next book is going to take a very long time indeed -- five or six years, I'd guess, I've never been good at deadlines", folks would have grumbled, but the fan world would not have blown up in his face.  But he chose to write, "no sweat, folks!!  ADWD next year, I hope!" and then he chose to announce that every year for the next four years.  And then he chose to publicly feel sorry for himself on the blog all the time.

Idiotic.

This is not meant to steer the thread off-topic -- just a reply to the two GRRM posts that preceded me.  Just to remind, we got here by comparing process times of two epics, and by chatting about the guy with the oversized teeth whom the Company asked for directions to Kivia once.


----------



## Piratecat

Guys, this isn't the place for an authorly digression, please.  It's an interesting topic, but better suited for the media forum.

We played last night; Sagiro reports that there's only a small chance that he'll be able to do an update before he heads out on his family vacation. That pushes the next update out to a month from now or so unless we get lucky.

Last night was game #260. We have about 9 more games left before the end of the campaign. I have trouble believing this. 

In other news, I am pleased to report that a Daern's Instant Fortress proves efficaceous in oh so many unusual circumstances, and that last night we kicked it old school by getting swallowed by horrible gargantuan creatures.  Hilarity - and an excessive amount of digestive acid - ensued.


----------



## Sagiro

Piratecat said:


> We played last night; Sagiro reports that there's only a small chance that he'll be able to do an update before he heads out ...




Well, here's a small update.  It turns out that made the chance a bit better.

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 332*_
*Shipsorrow Pinnacle*


It is mid-evening, and over dinner at the Greenhouse the Company discusses what should be next on their agenda.  Their thoughts turn to the three red-armored villains still at large:  Tarsos, Meledien and Octesian.   The last of these, according to one of Aravis’s Maze-dreams, is marauding through the Dreaming looking for Morningstar, while the other two are in the company of the Black Circle adept Seven Dark Words.  Aravis fumes at not knowing what that evil trio is up to, but it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to find out anything more via divinations.

Dranko suggests that the party search for Cencerra and her adventuring group, long missing after they had set off to explore beyond a Gartine Arch on the Dwarven island of Karth.  That group, once the Spire’s elite strike force, had served the cause well.  They had cleared out one of the Black Circle bestiaries, and slain all of Lapis’s original party, and prevented a second Blood Gargoyle from being released into the world by Black Circle agents.    But no one has heard from them for well over a year, and attempts to communicate with them or divine their whereabouts have been uniformly unsuccessful.

Morningstar brings up the possibility of rescuing Tor from the clutches of the Delfirians, but there’s the nagging problem that Tor doesn’t _want_ to be rescued.   When that generates little enthusiasm,  Morningstar also considers that they could venture into the Greatwood to seek Darkeye and the hidden fortress of the Sharshun.  “I’m worried that if we leave her for too long, it’s going to come back and haunt us,” she says.  Kibi, meanwhile, continues to beat the drum for liberating the enslaved Dwarves in Kivia. 

After some back-and-forth on these possibilities, the party decides that they will head to Karth, to see  if they can learn the fates of Cencerra & Co.   From discussions with Ozilinsh, they know that _scry_ spells and their ilk have failed, and that _true resurrection_ had no effect.  (There was not even an inkling that Cencerra’s soul was in an afterlife, declining to return, which makes the Spire hopeful that she is still alive.)  On the other hand, _commune_ spells have resulted in answers akin to what was gleaned about the Company during their seven weeks of presumed non-existence, leading the Company to wonder if the Gartine Arch leads to a parallel world, or takes people back in time.   But the first thing to do is to _find_ the Arch, before worrying about where it leads.

Before going to sleep, Kibi decides to cast _vision_, hoping to learn something more about his dream (now almost a year old) of the “Thorn in the side of Abernia.”  His spell succeeds after a fashion, and he is given a feeling that lasts less than a second:  the emanating hot evil of the Adversary’s blood.  Even that much leaves him staggered, his head aching.  After a calming mug of beer, he shakes his head.  “I thought that the big lake of black goo was the thorn.  Too bad there’s nothing we can do about it.”   Which is certainly true, given that even with protective spells in place, the Company was unable to get within _miles_ of the place.


/*/


The next morning they make arrangements to sail to Karth, opting to eschew the usual _wind walk_.  Kibi feels this is a mixed blessing at best; he _hates_ airy travel, but a shipboard voyage is hardly preferable.   The party finds that their old hired navigator, Sutton, is already out on the water and won’t return for over a week.  (It seems he had gotten tired of waiting on extended retainer, and besides, the Company hasn’t actually paid him in quite a while.)  But the party does find that Mad Captain Lyle, the risk-loving navigator they once hired years earlier, is available and looking for work.  He’s been having some difficulty finding employment after what happened to his last ship.  They find him in the back of a dockside tavern, getting an early start on a day’s drinking.   He perks up immediately at the offer of employment.

“And where be we goin’?” he asks eagerly.

“Karth,” says Aravis.  “And we’d like to go today.  Immediately, would be best.”

“Karth,” repeats Lyle.  He gets a twinkle in his eye.  “Well, come this way.  I’ll take you to my ship, the _Spotted Flotsam_.”

He leads them to the end of a battered pier, and the _Flotsam_ is in sore shape indeed:  peeling paint, broken railings, rusted anchor chain.  “It’s a little run down, but it was all I could afford,” says Lyle.   But while the party still wishes to sail, they see no need to go in a leaky bucket, and so they pop open _Burning Sail_.  

Lyle stands agog as the boat unfolds.  “That’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen!” he exclaims.

“Wait until you see the invisible sailors,” says Dranko.

“Are you tellin’ me I don’t need to bring my own crew?” asks Lyle.

“Well, if you want, you can…”

“No, no!”  says Lyle.  “You don’ understand.  There’s more money in me pocket if I leave ‘em behind!  Invisible crew it is!  All aboard!”

The party boards the ship, and Captain Lyle takes a minute to get used to a crew of _invisible servants_ that obeys his commands with ready precision.   As he steers _Burning Sail_ out of the harbor, the Captain tells the Company, “We can get there faster if we go past Shipsorrow Pinnacle.  I’ve always wanted to run that one!”

His suggestion is met with a nervous silence that lingers awkwardly for a few seconds, until Dranko grins and says, “Shipsorrow Pinnacle it is!”


/*/


Karth consists of one main wedge-shaped island, and a half-dozen smaller islands to the south and south-east.  The large island is about 150 miles north-to-south, and half that east-to-west.  Cencerra and her group had planned to start their search at the only coastal town on the large island’s eastern shore, a place called Elkin’s Bay.   As Captain Lyle sails northward, he explains that the fastest route into Elkin’s Bay will be to come up from the south, though formations of rocky shoals and treacherous sandbars mean that a ship must run past Shipsorrow Pinnacle.  The Pinnacle is a slender spike of rock that extends up some sixty feet out of the water.   The problem, explains Lyle, is that there’s barely room for a ship to squeeze between the Pinnacle and the cliff wall that forms the south-eastern shore of the island itself.   They could try a safer route, going northward dozens of miles before a slow and still-perilous return south, but a successful ‘shoot of the Pinnacle” will shave a day and a half from their sailing time.  

Captain Lyle clearly can’t wait to try it.

Kibi has been down in the small hold, trying not be sick, but comes up in time to hear about the plan to shoot the Pinnacle.  Showing just how little he likes the plan, he asks plaintively, “Can’t we fold up the ship and just _wind walk_ when we get to that point?”

Of course, as they approach the shores of Karth, a storm blows in, tossing _Burning Sail_ about and sending Kibi and Ernie scurrying for the hold.   The sun is setting behind the island, but Captain Lyle thinks there’s enough daylight left to brave the narrows.   Morningstar offers to use magic to quell the winds.

“No!” roars Lyle.  “I want to take the Pinnacle on my own.  How am I going to boast of my skills, if I had a priestess messing around with the wind?”

“How are you going to brag if you don’t get back to port?” asks Grey Wolf.

“I’ll make it,” says Lyle.  “I almost always do!”

He steers the ship toward the island; Shipsorrow Pinnacle is not yet in sight, as rain lashes the deck and wind ripples the sails.  Up and down the ship pitches, as the cliff wall of Karth looms ever nearer.

“This is fantastic!” yells Captain Lyle from the helm.  “I know we’ll make it.  I’ll be a legend!”

Dranko casts _augury_, asking Delioch for a summary of their prospects should they continue on this course.  The answers to such queries are often vague, but not this time.

*WOE*

“God says woe!” shouts Dranko.

Captain Lyle is now laughing maniacally as he steers the ship, his sparse hair whipping in the wind.  “Batten down the hatches!” he cries to his unseen servants.  “The rest of you, either get down below, or grab hold a’ something’!”

The ship plunges down alarmingly, and then up again at a steep pitch.  Thunder rumbles and wild spray stings their faces.  A huge wave sloshes across the deck.

“We’ve got to do something!” Morningstar yells over the din.

“We should let him try it,” says Dranko.  “We can always bail him out.”

“You’re insane,” Morningstar answers, “and you haven’t even invoked your tentacles!”

Through the failing light and shroud of rainfall, the rock tower of Shipsorrow Pinnacle comes into view, a shadow giant so close to the cliff wall that it seems impossible for a ship to fit between, even in calm weather.  In this gale, it’s clearly suicide.  Everyone is grabbing onto ropes and trying not to be flung overboard, and a particularly severe wave sends the ship careening to the point where the prow is pointing straight to the sky, before it crashes back to the sea.   Over the mind-link, Morningstar reminds everyone that they have _refuge_ tokens which will take them safely back to the Greenhouse.  Grey Wolf grips the hilt of _Bostock_ with one hand, expecting that any minute now, not needing to breathe will come in right handy.

Closer, closer.  It’s obvious to everyone except Captain Lyle that shooting the Pinnacle in this storm is madness, but that’s probably why he’s known as “Mad Captain Lyle.”  Aravis, though, has a plan that will get them safely to shore without ruining Lyle’s aspirations.   He shares it with the others, and gets unanimous approval, given the certain alternative.  “Kibi, Ernie,” he thinks.  “You’d best get up on deck right away.”

“Why?” asks Ernie.

“Because in a minute, the hold is going to vanish.”

“Here I come!” roars Captain Lyle into the howling gale.

“Grab ropes!” thinks Aravis.

When everyone is on deck and secure, Dranko activates the _folding boat_, changing it into the smaller longboat version.  As it starts to fold and shrink, the wheel starts to sink into the floor of the bridge deck.  Lyle lets go, utterly aghast.   “Oh no!” he cries.  “What’s happened to the boat?”

Then, just as suddenly, the world blinks, and Shipsorrow Pinnacle is somehow behind him.   Aravis has _dimension door_-ed the boat and everyone on it, a trick that would only work with the smaller form of the ship.  As soon at they’ve cleared the Pinnacle, Dranko orders the boat to expand again.  The wheel rises again beneath Lyle’s hands.  

“No wonder!” shouts the Captain.  “The narrows be enchanted!  Some magic takes away your wheel, and sinks your boat while you cannot steer.  But I got us through!  We lived to tell about it!  We did!  They’ll be tellin’ stories about Mad Captain Lyle and his invisible sailors for a hundred years!  Now, onward to shore!”

…to be continued…


----------



## Arkeus

Well Well....

Just marathoned the whole Story Hour since last Thursday. 

This has been a Awesome Week. Only 2nd story hour i have read (first being Tales of wyre), and i am really impressed- while part 1 was much more session summary it was still good, and by now it has grown into a full fledge story with a very involved plot.

Any other story hour half as good as this one (was quite disappointed in tales of wyre after a bit)?


----------



## SolitonMan

Arkeus said:


> Well Well....
> 
> Just marathoned the whole Story Hour since last Thursday.
> 
> This has been a Awesome Week. Only 2nd story hour i have read (first being Tales of wyre), and i am really impressed- while part 1 was much more session summary it was still good, and by now it has grown into a full fledge story with a very involved plot.
> 
> Any other story hour half as good as this one (was quite disappointed in tales of wyre after a bit)?




I've read and enjoyed the following Story Hours:

By JollyDoc:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/276970-jollydocs-kingmaker-updated-6-18-2011-a.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/249875-jollydocs-curse-crimson-throne-updated-1-29-10-a.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/181237-jollydocs-savage-tide-updated-10-8-a.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/227602-jollydocs-rise-runelords-updated-12-22-a.html

Based in the Halmae:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/42423-welcome-halmae-updated-2-27-07-a.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/251423-rose-wind-saga-halmae-updated-june-16-2011-a.html

By Lazybones:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/story-hour/172826-doomed-bastards-reckoning-story-complete.html (plus check the links in his sig)

I may have checked out a few others over the years, but the links aren't coming up readily at the moment.  I tend to look for threads with a lot of entries - like Sagiro's!    I hope some of these linked SH threads are to your liking.

And welcome!


----------



## RedTonic

Shilsen's Eberron, EternalNewbie's al-Qarim, and Talien's Beginning of the End SH are all pretty awesome. They're still on the first page of this forum.

An Abernathy update was what I needed to begin the last day of this month's classes without being ragingly cranky.


----------



## carborundum

I'll second Shilsen and Jollydoc. 
JD also did an Age of Worms and Shackled City SH - both excellent too!


----------



## Piratecat

This game was hilarious, and my goodness does Sagiro do a fantastic Mad Captain Lyle. Rolling eyes, tilted head, pirate accent, everything you could want. I am not exaggerating when I say that we chose this method *solely* because we were having so much fun roleplaying with the NPC. 

That said, you can bet Dranko was wearing his ring of water elemental command. You know, just in case. Ahem.


----------



## Neurotic

Who? 

Just to join the teast train  enjoying the game imensely.


----------



## Morte

Will this constant "who?" stuff turn Dranko into Priggle?

Enquiring minds want to know.


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Sagiro said:


> “We should let him try it,” says Dranko.  “We can always bail him out.”
> 
> “You’re insane,” Morningstar answers, “and you haven’t even invoked your tentacles!”




That's the quote of the session, right there!


----------



## Everett

Morte said:


> Will this constant "who?" stuff turn Dranko into Priggle?




I sincerely hope not.


----------



## Tamlyn

I've been re-reading StevenAC's awesome pdf compilation of the SH (thanks again, BTW) and was impressed (again) by Sagiro's incredible attention to detail. Specifically, when the party had the null shadow cauldron stolen by "Praska" and were tracking her down. They find her at the underground location where the Black Circle, presumably led by Mokad, had been active YEARS before but hadn't been involved in the story for probably 10+ years in real life. But makes total sense as a hiding place in-game.

Add to that, the party discover that "Praska" was reviewing Black Circle plans to free the emperor and "she" still feels that Mokad's plan was the best idea out there. This was something I missed the first time around, but I think is completely awesome knowing what I do now.

I just wanted to pile further kudos on Sagiro for his attention to detail. The story hour is just as entertaining, if not more so, the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th (or more) time through.

Thank you very much for sharing this with us!


----------



## SolitonMan

Tamlyn said:


> I've been re-reading StevenAC's awesome pdf compilation of the SH (thanks again, BTW) and was impressed (again) by Sagiro's incredible attention to detail. Specifically, when the party had the null shadow cauldron stolen by "Praska" and were tracking her down. They find her at the underground location where the Black Circle, presumably led by Mokad, had been active YEARS before but hadn't been involved in the story for probably 10+ years in real life. But makes total sense as a hiding place in-game.
> 
> Add to that, the party discover that "Praska" was reviewing Black Circle plans to free the emperor and "she" still feels that Mokad's plan was the best idea out there. This was something I missed the first time around, but I think is completely awesome knowing what I do now.
> 
> I just wanted to pile further kudos on Sagiro for his attention to detail. The story hour is just as entertaining, if not more so, the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th (or more) time through.
> 
> Thank you very much for sharing this with us!




Yep, gotta agree.  I'm on my 3rd reading of the thousand page (give or take) pdf of this story hour, and it's totally great!  

However...

I realize it was like nine years ago, but I just finished re-reading the session in which the second Parthol Runecarver simulacrum was fought by the PCs in the street outside the Greenhouse.  The thing that's bugging me is that I couldn't understand why the PCs couldn't see the sim with See Invisibility.  Did I miss something?  Was he using something other than Improved Invisibility?  

Anyway, just wanted to ask while it was fresh on my mind.  Back to reading!


----------



## Piratecat

SolitonMan said:


> I realize it was like nine years ago, but I just finished re-reading the session in which the second Parthol Runecarver simulacrum was fought by the PCs in the street outside the Greenhouse.  The thing that's bugging me is that I couldn't understand why the PCs couldn't see the sim with See Invisibility.  Did I miss something?  Was he using something other than Improved Invisibility?



It was a long time ago! Without going back to check, I'd guess one of three things: (a) Parthol's simulacrum was out of range (b) rules gaffe (c) we didn't think to use the spell (less likely, since I think Dranko had it in his eye patch by then). I'll check when I have a chance.


----------



## Seule

It could have been Superior Invisibility, yes?

  --Penn


----------



## SolitonMan

Piratecat said:


> It was a long time ago! Without going back to check, I'd guess one of three things: (a) Parthol's simulacrum was out of range (b) rules gaffe (c) we didn't think to use the spell (less likely, since I think Dranko had it in his eye patch by then). I'll check when I have a chance.




Thanks Piratecat.   In the grand scheme of things it doesn't REALLY matter, it was just the timing of my re-reading of the old material along with this thread that prompted me to write.  FWIW, the story text does explicitly mention that Grey Wolf cast See Invisibility and went to the various windows of the Greenhouse trying to spot the simulacrum.



Seule said:


> It could have been Superior Invisibility, yes?
> 
> --Penn




Hey Penn, doubtful since the date of the run was 2002, and to the best of my knowledge Superior Invisibility was a 3.5 spell.  But then, my knowledge is extremely limited. 

Hey, happy Friday everyone!


----------



## blargney the second

_Nondetection_ or (depending on your table's interpretation) _mind blank_ could block _see invisible_, especially if the divination has a low caster level.


----------



## Everett

Well, at five weeks from an update, I believe a bump is called for...


----------



## Sagiro

Hey everyone,

A few things. 

First, in real life, the game is _almost_ over.  I'd say between 3 and 5 sessions remain, depending on how things go, and then the story will be complete.  

Second, just as an FYI, the Story Hour now lags behind the game by 33 sessions, or just about 2 years of real time.  So there's plenty more story from a reader's point of view.

Third, the rate of updates is likely to stay slow for the next couple of months, at least.  I have a number of other projects, including writing projects, that ought to take precedence over this one.  I'll keep chipping away slowly, and once the game actually ends, I can cannibalize some of the time spent on game-prep for story-hour writing instead.

Finally, I still promise that I won't stop writing until the entire story is told.  (StevenAC, there's no way I could leave it unfinished after all of your work on the .pdf!)  Now, there may be some plot threads that don't get tied up nicely, but many (most?) will, to greater or lesser degrees, and I hope you (and my players!) find it all satisfactory.  

Oh, and while I'm here, have an update.  

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 333*_
*Downward Spiral*

Though the storm has eased somewhat, it is still lashing the side of the boat with wind-driven needles of rain as Lyle steers _Burning Sail_ into the small harbor of Elkin’s Bay.   The place is hardly a bustling center of trade; the village is almost a token presence, its buildings clustered on a hill overlooking the bay.   Only two small boats are parked alongside the dingy and peeling pier.  A few dwarves, hunched and hooded in the rain, mill about on shore.  One is tugging a large net full of fish, but he stops and regards the Company’s boat with suspicion once the _unseen servants_ start to tie it down.

“How long do ya’ think you’ll be stayin’ here?” asks Mad Captain Lyle.

Dranko wipes some water from his eyes.  “We don’t know.   If we get sucked into another plane of existence, it could be a while.  If not, maybe a week or two.  Wanna go home?  We can do that for you, if you want.”

“In your magic boat?” asks Lyle.

“Well, with magic,” says Dranko.  “Different magic.”

They explain about _teleporting_, and once Lyle is convinced it’s safe, he assents.  “The sooner you send me back, the sooner I can start braggin’ about our voyage!”

In less than a minute, Lyle has been whisked back to Tal Hae.   Dranko folds up the boat, which causes the nearby dwarf to drop his net and stare in surprise.  

“We didn’t want to take up valuable space in the harbor,” Dranko explains.  “Say, can I buy one of your mackerel?”

The dwarf hardly knows what to say.  “I… you… I mean, sure, I guess.  Which one?”

“That one.  And that one, too.”

Dranko gives the dwarf two silver pieces for two of the fish.  

“If you don’t mind my saying,” says the dwarf, “you’re an odd-looking lot.  We don’t see many visitors ‘round here.”

“I can see why,” says Kibi.  “It’s hard sailing to get to this place.”

The dwarf nods.  “You must be in a great hurry, to have tried the approach in a storm!”

“Yeah,” says Ernie, looking nervously at the water.

“Ernie, what’s the matter?” Dranko asks.

“I can’t swim,” Ernie admits.

“You can’t?”

“I don’t need to swim.  I have _word of recall_.”

“So, you fall in a pond, and _teleport_ back to your temple?”

“Yondalla wants me dry.”

They make small talk with the dwarf, whose name is Dellin, as they all make their way up the hill to the town.   They take shelter from the rain in a small tavern called the Sleeping Fish; the five dwarves already waiting out the storm there stop in mid conversation and stare unabashedly as the Company walks in.  Their suspicions are mollified when Kibi offers to pay for all of their drinks.

The party sits at a large table with Dellin, and while Aravis starts drawing a picture of Cencerra, Dranko keeps chatting up their new friend.  When Aravis has finished, Dranko takes the drawing and shows it to the dwarf.

“This woman came by about a year and a half ago.  Have you seen her, or know where she is?  She was here with a bunch of other people, who were also not dwarves, and they never came home.  We think something might have happened to her.”

Dellin looks thoughtful.  “She wasn’t a peasant, was she?”

“Why?”  Dranko is immediately focused.  “What happened to the peasant?”

“And how many were there?” asks Grey Wolf.

“Two,” says Dellin.  “I’ve been here about a year, and those were the only strangers I’ve seen come through this way.   They sailed here like you, though not in a magical boat.”

“There would have been four of them,” says Morningstar.

Dellin shakes his head at the picture of Cencerra.  “Nah, just the two.  They were looking for some gateway, and we figured it was at the bottom of the Downward Spiral.  Came about a year ago, not long after I arrived.”

“What?” Grey Wolf exclaims.

“Never been down there myself, of course,” continues Dellin.  “But the Downward Spiral is like a folded over fissure.  Tonnig knows the history better than I do.  Like I said, I haven’t been in Elkin’s Bay very long.  Moved here from Wissing.  But the locals here say that there’s a holy place, or something, down at the bottom of the Downward Spiral.  We’re not supposed to go trespassing, so I don’t.”

“Has anyone else gone to visit it recently?”

“Yeah,” says another dwarf, who has drifted over to listen in on the odd conversation.  “The smith.  Heckern.  He didn’t come back, though.  Neither did the two peasants, come to think of it.”

Dellin introduces the new dwarf as Chennik, a carpenter.  “True,” Dellin says, nodding.  “Though it’s possible they all came back up, and left some other way, not coming through Elkin’s Bay.”  

“Were the peasants wearing red armor?” Dranko asks.

“No,” says Dellin, looking a bit annoyed.  “They were… peasants.  A man and a woman.  If they had been wearing armor, I would have called them something else.  I remember one was tall and one was short.  Don’t remember which was which, though.  Humans all look the same to me.”

“Those two ragamuffins?” says Chennik.  “Friends of yours?  Surprised they had any friends.  Rude, they were.”

“No, those weren’t out friends,” says Dranko.  “You say they came by a year ago?  Our friends would have come by at least a year earlier.”

Chennik looks at Aravis’s sketch of Cencerra.  “Hey, she looks familiar.  And yeah, there was a group of folk came to Elkin’s Bay around that time.  Dellin, you weren’t here yet.”  He motions to a dwarven woman behind the bar.  “Hey Carba, come over here!”

The woman stands up and stomps over; Chennik shows her Aravis’s sketch.  “Remember her?”

“Yeah, of course,” says Carba.  “I think her name was Sarah.  Didn’t stay long.”

“How many were there?” asks Ernie.

“Three or four, maybe?  They barely stopped in to say hello.  Same as the peasants later on.  They all wanted to know about the gate at the bottom of the Downward Spiral.  Now, I don’t know about any gate, but I told ‘em all the same thing.  Don’t go.  But it’s not my job to stop ‘em.  I just serve ‘em drinks.”

“You said the place was holy,” says Kibi. “To Moradin?”

“I dunno,” says Dellin.  “No one talks about it much.  I think it’s bad luck or something.”

Chennik nods and shrugs.  “That’s the story.  They say that some centuries ago, divine beings created a shrine down there, and since then, it’s been generally understood to leave the place alone.”

Morningstar raises an eyebrow.  “Do you know WHICH divine beings?”

“Dunno,” says Carba.  “But not dwarvish.”

So, it looks like there have been _three_ outings to this “Downward Spiral” in the last couple of years:  first Cencerra & Co., then the two peasants, and then the local smith Heckern.   None returned.  An investigation is most certainly in order!

/*/

Dranko gets to chatting with Chennik for a few minutes.   “What can you tell me about Karthian Oil?” he asks innocently.

Chennik laughs.  “We use it for mining operations.  Completely legitimate.  If sometimes a barrel of it gets smuggled to the mainland and used for nefarious purpose, that’s hardly my business.”

Dranko smiles back.  “The first time I head of Karth, is when someone tried to explode me with a  barrel of your oil.”

“Is that what happened to your face?  Heh, heh!  No, just kidding.  Though you’ll find that we’re friendlier to strangers here on the coast.   They’re less trusting of outsiders as you go inland.”  

“Why is that?” asks Dranko.

“History!  You do know that in the old days, we were slaughtered and enslaved by mainlanders, right?  Ever since then, we’ve tried to limit out interactions with the rest of Charagan.  And we kind of like it that way.  But if you want to visit the big city, Yen Hae is only about 100 miles from here.”

Chennik takes a long pull at his tankard.  “Let me give you some advice.  You seem like nice people.  Don’t go down there, to the Spiral.  The peasants didn’t come back.  And your friend Sara didn’t come back.  Heck, even Heckern didn’t come back, and Moradin knows what possessed HIM to go down there.  Hell, I’ve seen him warn young kids away from the place.  But then one day, he just up and left for it himself.”

“Are there any belongings of his still around?” Dranko asks.

“Sure, in his smithy.  We’ve made sure the place stays untouched, in case he comes back.  Good dwarf, he was.  But that was about half a year ago.”  

After a few more minutes of finishing up drinks and small talk, the Company heads out into the rainy night to search Heckern’s smithy for clues.  Dellin goes with them, to explain to any passersby why mainland strangers are nosing about the place.   The dwarf says that no new smith has taken over Heckern’s work in the past six months; metal goods are purchased from inland peddlers.

“Pity Heckern never took any apprentices,” Dellin sighs.  

Morningstar goes in first; the door creaks conspicuously as she steps inside and immediately she blankets the place with _thought captures_.   Mostly she picks up ordinary smithing-type thoughts, and the only odd thought is one she picks up in the loft where Heckern slept.   The thought is of the smith thinking, with no preamble:  _Well, time to go._  She’s reminded a bit of the mind-controlled commoners of Seablade Point, some years back.

The rest of the party come in afterward to poke around.  Flicker and Dranko, the most observant and thorough  at this sort of work, conclude that Heckern did pack before he left, in what looks like a mild hurry.  There’s a discoloration on the wall where a sword must have been hanging, but there’s no sign of the sword.  And to Dranko’s disappointment, there’s no paperwork or other evidence of _why_ the smith decided to leave.

Aravis decides to bring out bigger, magical guns.  He casts _vision_, naming “Heckern the Smith” as his subject.   His sight clouds, and a simple scene enters his mind.   Heckern is there, in his smithy, pounding on a glowing horseshoe.   He’s thickly built, even for a dwarf, and a long braided beard is tucked into his belt.  Aravis hears the distinctive sound of the door creaking open, though Heckern doesn’t seem to notice it as he hammers away.   Then, suddenly, he stops, for several seconds, staring into space, hammer limp in his hand.  Then, as if nothing odd has occurred, he continues  with his work, regaining his exact rhythm on the anvil.

The _vision_ fades, and Aravis recounts it for the others.  There’s a collective groan; the entire party reaches the same conclusion within seconds.

“Farazil,” says Drano.

“Oh, Goddess,” says Ernie, cringing.  “Not again…”

But even if they’re right, and King Farazil possessed Heckern and marched his body to the Downward Spiral, there’s little they can do about it tonight.  They open up the Lucent Tower on a bare patch of grass nearby and pile inside for the night.   But before anyone goes to sleep, Morningstar decides to do a bit of scouting in Ava Dormo.  She drops into a trance and sends her dream-self racing inland, ten miles in as many minutes, to the strange fissure that is the Downward Spiral. 

It’s like nothing else she has seen, geologically-speaking.  It’s like a hole, or a very wide pit, with a path that snakes down into it.  The rock of the walls juts out and folds over upon itself in many places, so that if Morningstar were solid, she’d be winding her slow way down through a tight vertical labyrinth, one that is often walkable but sometimes not.   At the bottom, some three hundred feet below ground level, the Spiral ends in a large open cave.  Even were it noontime, this place would be completely dark.

In the center of the cave is a free-standing gartine arch.   There are words carved into the natural stone above the center of the arch, but these are in a language foreign to Morningstar.  She doesn’t even recognize the characters.  But that’s no real impediment to translation; with the ability to freely move her consciousness back and forth between the Ava Dormo and the waking world, she draws the carved glyphs for Grey Wolf, one character at a time.   Grey Wolf just happens to have cast _permanent comprehend languages_ on himself, and so reads the sign aloud to the others.

*Once eternal, sleeping fast.  
Rest for those whose die is cast. 
Mortals should not dare to tread, 
Where sleeping lie the mighty dead.*

Aravis makes the connection immediately.  

“Naslund,” he says.  For the benefit of the others, he retells one of his visions from the Crosser’s Maze from two months earlier.

*Your dream is a vision, clear and cold.  You have discovered a vast and lifeless city, and there are tombs here, underground crypts not meant for mortal remains.   Through the Maze you have arrived, but you are not meant to be here.   Gods fought, and Gods died, and here are Gods interred.

“They called it Naslund, the Great Necropolis,” says the voice of King Vhadish XXIII, who stands nearby.  “But who will tend it, with its Caretakers gone?”*

Then he adds:  “Hoo boy.  I guess we’re going in.”

Dranko gulps. “I feel so out of my depth.  I want thugs.  I feel good about smacking down thugs, but this…”

There’s a clear feeling of trepidation among the Company, but also one of inescapable destiny.   Not a one of them doubts that they will soon be paying a visit to the forbidden Necropolis of the Gods.

…to be continued…


----------



## carborundum

Hoo boy!
That was a sweet piece of buildup, Sagiro!

I'm so torn between saying "Take your time, it's your story, your free time..." and yelling  "More!" 

Fantastic. Thank you!


----------



## Joshua Randall

Re: Captain Lyle's Wild Ride, for future reference, you get less seasick abovedecks (and facing the bow) than below.

Of course, that does increase your risk of being flung overboard. Hmm. Maybe seasick is better.


----------



## Sagiro

Joshua Randall said:


> Re: Captain Lyle's Wild Ride, for future reference, you get less seasick abovedecks (and facing the bow) than below.
> 
> Of course, that does increase your risk of being flung overboard. Hmm. Maybe seasick is better.



Exactly.  Ernie and Kibi weren't worried so much about sickness.  Ernie wears full plate and Kibi, being a dwarf, is much less buoyant than a human.  Both would sink like rocks if they went over the side.


----------



## scrubkai

Ok time to de-lurk for a second...

Just wondering, Sagiro how do you play out your characters figuring out the clues you leave them.  For example that the arch leads to Naslund.  Do you just put out the clue and leave it to the players to figure out (if so they must have a huge amount of info written down talking about this game) or do you give them some sort of clues/roll to lead them in the right direction to make the connection?

I'm asking because in my game I've dropped lots of hints, but I'm clearly not being obvious enough because the players normally just hmmm that's odd and give up before they make the connection...

Anyway as always I'm amazed at the story you all are telling, and can't wait to read the next chapter...


----------



## Sagiro

scrubkai said:


> Ok time to de-lurk for a second...
> 
> Just wondering, Sagiro how do you play out your characters figuring out the clues you leave them.  For example that the arch leads to Naslund.  Do you just put out the clue and leave it to the players to figure out (if so they must have a huge amount of info written down talking about this game) or do you give them some sort of clues/roll to lead them in the right direction to make the connection?
> 
> I'm asking because in my game I've dropped lots of hints, but I'm clearly not being obvious enough because the players normally just hmmm that's odd and give up before they make the connection...
> 
> Anyway as always I'm amazed at the story you all are telling, and can't wait to read the next chapter...



In the case of the inscription above the arch, that's all I gave them.  My players figured it out in less than five seconds, but they've been wondering about the Necropolis off and on since Aravis first had his vision about it.

Generally, I don't need to give them extra nudges about plot clues, though occasionally, especially when we're talking about something that happened years and years ago in real time, I'll remind them about something that would certainly occur to the characters, but which may have slipped out of the players' heads. 

I don't have to do that very often, because my players are extremely sharp.  Also, every once in a while they spend an entire evening just reviewing all the extant plot threads and trying to piece things together.  ALSO, they keep a written "to do" list of every major goal they hope to achieve.  (Mostly, this is a list of bad guys they want to kill.)  So, despite the complexity of the plot and the long times involved, my players manage to keep most of it in their heads pretty well.


----------



## Waylander the Slayer

Does this mean that you are done GMing in the short term once this campaign is done?


----------



## Sagiro

Waylander the Slayer said:


> Does this mean that you are done GMing in the short term once this campaign is done?



In the short term, yes.  

Somehow I'll have to fill my time with work projects, board games, finishing up this story hour, reading books, composing music, participating in Piratecat
s campaign, and taking care of the house and kids.  Something tells me I won't be bored.  

Longer term, I'll probably start up a 4E campaign eventually, but I'd guess that's one to two years away.


----------



## wedgeski

That's one hell of a line-up you've got on Card Hunter. I look forward to trying it out.


----------



## DarkMage

And Now for Something Completely Different... Who is Dranko?

You know I've been reading StevenAC's PDF files of this story hour and reached where the party are in the Vree Monastery. That's when I read this comment posted by PC:



> Piratecat: ’Cause Kibi is prejudiced against half-orcs.  *sniff*  Poor Dranko – no parents, no one loves him, mocked at every turn, abused by dwarves,
> made to work his poor fingers to the bone…




Then add all the grief Dranko got when he gave surrendered his fame to his tentacle friend...

DRANKO IS RODNEY DANGERFIELD!!!

Who knew...


----------



## Siuis

SolitonMan said:


> Yep, gotta agree.  I'm on my 3rd reading of the thousand page (give or take) pdf of this story hour, and it's totally great!
> 
> However...
> 
> I realize it was like nine years ago, but I just finished re-reading the session in which the second Parthol Runecarver simulacrum was fought by the PCs in the street outside the Greenhouse.  The thing that's bugging me is that I couldn't understand why the PCs couldn't see the sim with See Invisibility.  Did I miss something?  Was he using something other than Improved Invisibility?
> 
> Anyway, just wanted to ask while it was fresh on my mind.  Back to reading!




I assumed, myself, that he stayed out of range. Of the top of my head (and I remember looking it up, but only just) see invisibility has a range of 60 feet. With flight going, Parthol could have easily evaded the company while casing them or strafing them.

I actually believe there is a point where Morningstar flies around, trying to catch P in her _see invisibility_ radius?



blargney the second said:


> _Nondetection_ or (depending on your table's interpretation) _mind blank_ could block _see invisible_, especially if the divination has a low caster level.




... Nondetection?
I'm using that at my next opportunity ;D

Sagiro, your game is awe inspiring, and also regular inspiring. I still mull over tidbits and snippets of your game when thinking through my own; I still think of Dranko, Ernie and Morningstar when I consider playing against type / playing for fun, rather than profit. You and PC have taught me a lot, through osmosis. Thanks for that.


----------



## Piratecat

Souks, that's incredibly flattering. Thank you from all of us. 

Next to last game is tomorrow. It all comes down to this.


----------



## Sagiro

Holy $#@!.

It's over.


----------



## The_Warlock

Sagiro said:


> Holy $#@!.
> 
> It's over.




Congratulations!


----------



## kuragara

It was an most excellent ending 

Thank you Sagiro


----------



## LightPhoenix

Congrats!


----------



## MorningstarofEll

Wow..yeah, I don't believe it is over.   A satisfying and bittersweet last run!


----------



## carborundum

Congratulations you guys! I'm glad it was a satisfying ending and look forward to finding out what the ending was.


----------



## StevenAC

Sagiro said:


> Holy $#@!.
> 
> It's over.



I'm afraid my brain is having trouble processing this concept right now.  Fortunately, I'm guessing I've got about another two years or so to come to terms with it... 

It's wonderful to hear that this great campaign came to a satisfying conclusion, and I look forward to putting the capstone on the collected Story Hour in due course -- _Sagiro's Story Hour: The Final Chapter_...


----------



## RedTonic

Wow, that's amazing. Great job, guys!

StevenAC, your collection of this SH is what got me into it; the thread itself was intimidating initially--so thanks for putting the meat of the story together so wonderfully for us casual readers.


----------



## Sagiro

It still has not fully hit home yet, that the game is done.   I'd estimate that I've spent about 1500 hours of my life creating and executing the Charagan campaign, not including time spent writing up the Story Hour.  It has been one of the most rewarding and enjoyable experiences of my life, and I'm happy to have the chance to share it with a few dozen EN Worlders.

I've probably said this before, but it's been hugely valuable to have written these up, and I'm not sure I'd have had the energy to do so without the feedback from you readers.  So, to anyone seeing these photons:  you've personally made a positive impact on the game.  Thanks!

Oh, and here's an update.  


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 334*_
*Nexus of Last Roads*

Morningstar delivers a _sending_ to Yale, so the Spire will know where they’ve gone:  _*Investigating where Cencerra went.  Think we’ve found Naslund, burial place of the Gods.  It’s missing caretakers now that Drosh gone.  Yikes.  Guess we’re going in?*_

Yale’s reply:  _*Sounds like business as usual.  Good luck!*_

Morningstar throws up her hands.  “Did she not hear me say ‘burial place of the Gods?’”

Flicker laughs.  “Yeah, but put it in context.  We’ve been inside a city in a bottle.  We’ve travelled through time.  We’ve defeated armies of the undead.   Are you surprised she’s jaded?”

Morningstar also _sends_ to Rhiavonne, whose reply is more sensible:  _*Resting place of WHAT Gods?  Take the usual care.  Will have Chroniclers investigate Naslund, if you want.*_.   

And finally she issues a third _sending_ to Lucas, on Dranko’s behalf.  Lucas’s answer:  _*Look, whatever happens, don’t let them erase your memories.  I don’t want to have to explain everything to you again.*_


/*/

Morningstar starts the following morning with a quick _commune_ in the Lucent Tower.  She casts her spell and feels the holy presence of Ell around her.  She asks her questions:

_Is Naslund through that archway?_

*I CANNOT SEE*

_Did something control the blacksmith when he went toward the Downward Spiral?_

*YES*

_Was it Farazil?_

*YES*

_Was Farazil inhabiting the blacksmith’s body when he went through the arch?_

*YES*

_Were the two peasants who arrived and went through the arch, people whom we would find important?_

*YES*

_Did Cencerra go through the arch?_

*YES*

_Was she mind-controlled?_

*NO*

_Were Farazil’s interests opposed to our own?_

*NO*

_In the past year, has anyone else been through the Arch, other than the two peasants, Cencerra and her party, and the blacksmith with Farazil?_

*NO*

_If Farazil is the same now as he was when he went through the arch, would it be safe for us to trust him?_

*IN THE SHORT TERM, PROBABLY.*

_Was Farazil working for the king or the Spire guard?_

*NO*

_Was he working for another party?_

*NO*

_Do we know the people who were disguised as peasants?_

*I DON’T KNOW*

_Has anyone come out of the Arch in the last two years?_

*I DON’T KNOW*

Morningstar sighs.  Those two peasants were almost certainly _mind blanked_, which would explain the lack of divinatory clarity.

_Do you know anything of Naslund?_

*NOT IN ANY MEANINGFUL WAY*

_We think that Naslund lies beyond that gate.  We think that Drosh fleeing has left it without a caretaker.  That’s where we’re heading…_

Before Morningstar can even form a question to go with this preamble, she receives as answer:

*NASLUND CANNOT BE MY CONCERN*

_Should I not go, then?_

*THAT IS YOUR CHOICE*

_Do you expect any more of the Gods to flee the oncoming Adversary?_

*YES. BUT NOT ELL.*


After that, Morningstar takes Aravis with her into _Ava Dormo_ and they journey again to the archway at the bottom of the Downward Spiral.  This is so that Aravis can judge the distance from the surface to the arch; armed with that knowledge, he then _dimension doors_ the whole Company down, so they don’t have to make the slow physical journey through the folded earth.  As Morningstar saw, no light from the surface makes it all the way down to this place.  Aravis casts _mass darkvision_.

The freestanding arch and its written warning stand silent, inert.

Dranko walks through it in both directions, but nothing untoward happens to him.   He narrows his eyes and thinks that he would like to go to Naslund.  Immediately the gateway responds to his desire; the arch’s interior space glows red, an opaque sheet filling the opening.

“That’s more like it.”

He lights his cigar, hoping for a prophetic exhalation, but the smoke is just smoke.

“Screw it,” he says, and he steps through.  The others quickly follow.


/*/

There is no feeling of translation or travel.  Their feet leave the ground of Karth, and touch down upon an old cobbled road… somewhere else.  The Company stands in a group, looking around at their new surroundings.

Behind them, a gartine arch twin to the one in Karth stands half-embedded in a huge foggy gray wall that marks the edge of the demiplane.  They have seen this sort of thing before; the boundaries of the Slices of Het Branoi looked like this.  But this is not Het Branoi.

The road beneath their feet emerges from the archway and the gray wall, and continues straight away from it for about fifty yards.  Its terminus is the base of an enormous pearlescent dome, easily a mile in diameter, that fills the sky in that direction (and indeed takes up most of the space in the demiplane).  All of the ground outside the dome is flat and bare dirt, save for the stone road.   It appears that there is a large arched doorway in the dome, where the road meets it.

Kibi takes a sharp breath, for he has noticed something else.   Some twenty feet from the road to their left, lying scattered on the featureless ground, are four sprawled bodies, human-sized.   Dranko notices a fifth body on the other side of the road:  a dwarf.  And he sees something else _beyond_ the dwarf.  It’s… another road, shimmering, somehow both there and not there, a shadowy dream of a cobbled path.   He stares at it, and though it doesn’t come into focus, he then thinks he sees yet _another_ road beyond that one.  Both of the new roads, like the true one under his feet, radiate from the great dome in the center of the demiplane.  It’s like he’s seeing, faintly, the next two neighboring spokes of a great wheel.   He turns and looks the other direction, and to his left are yet more roads, shifting, indistinct.  The longer he stares, the more roads he sees; there must be hundreds, all leading to the dome, but there do not appear to be any doorways save the one to which the solid road leads.

Morningstar grasps her holy symbol and feels Ell’s presence within her, but muted, indirect.

Kibi looks up.  The sky is a sunless, uniform gray, and everywhere is a sourceless light of an overcast afternoon.  The temperature is perfectly neutral.   He turns back to the archway through which they entered, and wills it to take him back to Karth.   Nothing happens.  He walks through anyway, and comes up against the unyielding boundary of the demiplane.  For the moment, at least, there’s no escape from this place.

The party’s collective attention turns to the bodies.   Did leaving the road somehow cause their deaths?   Grey Wolf uses _telekinesis_ to bring over the closest of the four human-sized bodies.   They all recognize it immediately:  it’s Cencerra.  Her corpse has been stripped of armor and items, and her clothes are torn.   More disturbing is the burned out hole in her chest, where her heart should be.  Instead of a heart, there is an ash residue in a charred cavity.   As Grey Wolf retrieves the remaining bodies, they see that all the corpses have had their hearts incinerated.   They’ve been dead for some time, though there are no insects or signs of putrefaction.   

Dranko is bestowed with _death ward_ and _fly_ spells, and flies over to examine the dwarf on the other side of the road.   This body is different; its heart is intact, and it still clutches a water-skin in a withered hand.   It appears that the dwarf  must have died of thirst or starvation.    Dranko drags the body back to the road with his whip.  

They are jarred from their focused attention on the corpses by a distant two-toned horn blast.  It comes from somewhere outside the dome, off to the right in the shifting sea of ghostly roads.  Dranko can make out movement in the distance; he is made _invisible_ and he flies over to get a closer look.  As he flies, he sees that the many roads are shifting over and under one another, and he adjusts upward his estimate of their number.  Thousands, tens of thousands, radiate outward like sunbeams from the huge pearly dome.   But not too far away, marching down one of these streets, is an ethereal procession of giants.  They appear to him as though through a smeared lens, blurred around the edges.  There are at least a hundred of these beings, and in the center of their host a dozen of them bear a large shoulder-mounted slab.  On this slab rests the body of a truly enormous giant, twice the size of the others, with a huge and ornate shield upon its chest.  Every twenty feet or so, the procession stops for a second while heralds at the front sound their trumpets.   When they reach the dome, their bodies seem to pass directly through it, and before five more minutes have passed, the entire company of giants has disappeared inside the dome.

/*/

Morningstar tries casting _speak with dead_ on Cencerra’s body, but the spell simply fails.  Whether this is due to the nature of the demiplane, or the mysterious absence of the target’s heart, no one can say.

Grey Wolf wonders aloud what became of Farazil when the dwarf died.

“Doesn’t he go back to the plane of shadow if his host body dies?” asks Ernie, trying to remember what they once learned of the Carch Din.

“If he’s still here, he’ll possess us if he wants to talk,” says Morningstar, only half-joking.

Dranko grins.  “Hey, Flicker…!”

“Are you volunteering me?” squawks Flicker.  “Because… no.  No way!”

“I’m asking if you’re still you,” says Dranko.

Flicker’s eyes go wide; the thought hadn’t occurred to him.

“Yes!” he exclaims, looking around.  “And I’d like to keep it that way!”

There is more movement out among the wheel-spoke roads.   Dranko flies again to investigate, and this time sees a single ghostly form, a perfectly-formed humanoid some twenty-five feet tall and radiating a divine light.  Tears are streaming down his face, each a perfect diamond droplet.  He holds a dead woman in his arms, a tall perfect being like himself, and slowly he walks toward the dome.  Dranko tries to speak to the being, but either it cannot hear him or chooses not to respond.  As Dranko watches the man  passes soundlessly through the dome, bearing his burden of grief.  

Upon hearing what Dranko has seen, Ernie whispers, “I think these are the dead from all the different onions!  That would explain why only one path is solid for us.  But for those others…”

“They’re all in different planes of existence,” says Aravis.  “But they overlap here.”

/*/

It doesn’t take long for the Company to walk the fifty yards to the dome, and its large, arched doorway.  But the doorway is only cosmetic – there’s no actual door, just the smooth glassy white surface of the dome.   There are words carved into the dome wall above the doorway, in the same language as that back in the Downward Spiral. 

*“Naslund, Nexus of Last Roads.”*

“I wish to enter,” says Ernie.  When nothing happens, he turns to Aravis.  “You’re a God…”

“But I think I’d have to be dead,” says Aravis.

Dranko tries pushing on the wall where the door should be.  He is rewarded with a painful flash and a feeling like electricity in his hands.  It feels as though the dome surface tried to suck out his life-force – and it probably would have had he not been protected by a _death ward_.  

“Guess I won’t be licking it,” he says, eyeing the dome with new respect.

Morningstar frowns.  “So we can’t go forward, and we can’t leave.”

“Guess we’ll starve to death,” says Dranko.

Aravis tries casting _knock_ from a distance.   Nothing opens, though he feels an unusual jolt of energy.  Ernie tries channeling his faith into the doorway.   The door remains unimpressed. 

And so they stand there, flummoxed, for a few minutes more.   Aravis casts a _vision_ naming “Naslund” as the subject, but divinations are stifled in this place.   At a loss for more esoteric solutions, Aravis decides that maybe he can succeed where Dranko failed.  Morningstar supplies him his own _death ward_, and he steps forward to touch the doorway.

The stone in the doorway vanishes, creating an open entrance to the Necropolis.  The party crowds around to peer inside.

/*/

Several weeks earlier, in the presence of the Feline Conclave, the cat Inkspot had spoken private words to Aravis: “_You_ are the only directly divine _human_ on Abernia.  I don't think that came about simply to help the feline race.  Perhaps there is a place you must go where only Gods are permitted, or a creature you must slay whom only a God can kill...destiny is not finished with you, Aravis.”

So it would seem.

Aravis utters a prayer to Pikon, and another one to Quarrol, and the Company steps across the threshold to Naslund, Necropolis of the Gods.

…to be continued…


----------



## thegreyman

Erp!


----------



## Tamlyn

Sagiro said:


> ...and I'm happy to have the chance to share it with a few dozen EN Worlders.




I think you're underestimating the number of your readers just a tad.



Sagiro said:


> So, to anyone seeing these photons:  you've personally made a positive impact on the game.  Thanks!




Yay, I've had an impact on something incredibly awesome!

In all seriousness, to Sagiro and everyone involved in this campaign, this story is amazing. The DM and players have worked together to create a truly amazing experience. I know it takes a ton of work to convert the game notes and tapes into Story Hour form and I truly appreciate it. We are humbled, flattered, and honored that you choose to share this with us. Thank you very much!


----------



## MorningstarofEll

Naslund... *shudder* well isn't that an appropriate place for Sagiro to be giving an update about now.   This place made quite an impression on me!   

We were feeling fairly powerful at this point in the campaign and this place 
made me feel like a very small cog in a big cold lonely machine.

Morningstar had never been nervous about her soul in the afterlife before this point in the campaign.   In fact before meeting the party,  life had kind of seemed like a set of tasks to be done to get to death and the 'good part'.  

After Naslund she gained two kinds of worry about her soul ... but maybe I should wait for another update or two to explain why.


----------



## carborundum

This IS creepy 

And if the outside is this creepy... Erp indeed! 


Thank you, Sagiro!


----------



## Innocent Bystander

I have to say, I'm constantly amazed at how seemingly small hints/clues and statements made in the past, and sometimes distant past, come to be so important later on in the campaign.

Absolutely incredible work Sagiro.


----------



## Piratecat

Innocent Bystander said:


> I have to say, I'm constantly amazed at how seemingly small hints/clues and statements made in the past, and sometimes distant past, come to be so important later on in the campaign.



Agreed. With the campaign having ended, I'm salving my weird faux-homesickness for Charagan by rereading the storyhour via PDF. I'm finding stuff in session 9, 24, and even earlier that turned out to have a major impact later in the game. Kind of astounding to me.

It's also really fun to see where and how we ended up with major magic items. Dranko's _bag of endless rope_, which saved his life against an epic monster in session 260 or so, was found somewhere around session 10. Nifty.


----------



## Sagiro

Innocent Bystander said:


> I have to say, I'm constantly amazed at how seemingly small hints/clues and statements made in the past, and sometimes distant past, come to be so important later on in the campaign.
> 
> Absolutely incredible work Sagiro.



Thanks!  It turned out to be one of the advantages of compulsive over-preparation and note-taking.   

[peek behind the curtain]
Now, understand:  on day 1, I did not decide that Aravis had been made a God of Cats in order to get into Naslund.  After Aravis joined the party, I decided that it would be fun to make him a sort of cat deity, with the idea that at _some point_ I'd find a reason to make that relevant to the larger story.  Some time after _that_ I decided he'd have to do something to save the rest of the cat demigods, but I wanted his divinity to be more central to the main story, so I kept my eyes open for other plots I could hook into. Then, when I thought up Naslund and its place in the story, I thought:  "A ha!  That's a perfect place for Aravis's divinity to matter!"
[/peek]


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 335*_
*The Tree that Guards the Way*

In some respects, Naslund looks and feels much like many other cities.  It has streets.  It has buildings.  But in most ways, Naslund looks and feels like a graveyard without gravestones.  The buildings are close-packed, lean precariously, and resemble drip-sand-castles that have hardened into granite.   Carvings on every building depict funeral processions and other death-related imagery.  The buildings themselves offer few hints of their function; their doors are locked, their windows clouded and opaque.   Names are inscribed above each door in an alien tongue.  Perhaps they are all mausoleums?  

No sun shines overhead, but the dome is filled with a thin gray light that brings on a great and heavy sadness.   Faintly, all around, there is a quiet susurration, as if hundreds of unseen beings are whispering.  But there is no doubt that, for the moment at least, they are alone.

For a minute or two they just stand inside the doorway.  The dome has re-sealed itself behind them.   They talk briefly about what happened to Cencerra, and how their attackers gained access to the interior.   They come to the conclusion that Cencerra and her group had been unable to enter, and so made camp outside, staying alive with magic and provisions.  Then the two peasants had shown up, killed them, burned out their hearts, stolen their stuff, and entered the dome themselves.   But how they did so is a mystery.

“Either they knew something we don’t,” says Aravis, “or one of them is a deity.”

“And if they left,” Grey Wolf adds, “they know a way out.  Which we also don’t.”

/*/

Dranko glances nervously at the mausoleums of Naslund.  “I’m screwed,” he gulps.  “This place is full of divine beings.  There’s a chance I’ll run into some servitor of Delioch here!”  

Ernie looks at him in surprise.  “This is where divine beings come to get their eternal rewards.  They’re not going to stop you and give you a quiz!”

Dranko looks guilty.  “But… but I used to insert dirty words into the morning prayers.”

“Do your healing spells work?” asks Aravis impatiently.  “Yes.  So you’re fine.  Delioch is happy enough with you.”  He listens for a second  to the sourceless whispers before adding, “You might want to tone down your irreverence while you’re inside, though.”

Just in case, Dranko fishes out his holy robes from the bottom of his pack and puts them on.

/*/

Rising up at the center of the city is an enormous amethyst tower, visible above the rooftops of the drip-castle buildings.  It stands like a spike, so tall that it looks as though its apex must be grazing the top of the pearly dome.

“I really wish we knew _why_ we were here,” says Aravis, as they start to walk down the street in the general direction of the amethyst tower.

Morningstar has a burst of insight.  “We’re following Tarsos and Meledien.  The peasants must have been them.  We know that Tarsos is short and Meledien is tall…”

Aravis recalls his vision of the two of them, with Tarsos handing Meledien a small drink.  “Now you’ll survive the trip,” Tarsos had said.  

“It’s the black goo that got them in here,” Aravis realizes.  “It’s the blood of the Adversary.  It’s divine essence.”

“What about your vision of Naslund?” asks Morningstar.  “Was there anything else important in it?”

Aravis nods.  “Vhadish asked who would tend it, with its caretakers gone.”

“I wonder what happened to them?” asks Ernie.

No one knows.  

“You know what kind of guy guards this place?” asks Dranko.  “A sarcophagi.”

/*/

The streets are not straight, and the party wends its way through them, heading ever closer to the amethyst spike in the center of the dome.   At one intersection, a ghostly horse and rider come into view.  As it approaches, they can see a body is draped across the horse’s back, and the tall, noble-looking rider has tears in her eyes.  It passes in front of them, and melts away into the graying gloom.

It’s about that time when the singing starts.   It’s an eerie, haunting sound, floating through the streets of Naslund like a ghost’s pipe.  The direction from which it comes is hard to discern, though most in the Company think it’s coming from the amethyst tower.   Dranko has an immediate desire to pray, and fervently, but he feels a disconnection, as though he’s trapped in a box and Delioch is not inside with him.

To Flicker, Kibi and Grey Wolf, the song melts into the fibers of their beings, filling them with a crushing sadness and despair, as if everything good and important in the world has just died.  And just as strongly, they feel that the only way to shed that despair is to find the source of the song.   Ernie cannot help but notice that the color of Kibi’s face has drained to a dead gray beneath his beard. 

“Kibi, are you okay?”

“No,” says Kibi plaintively.  “I’m so very sad.  But we’re going to find the source of the singing, right?”

Ernie nods.  “Well, yes, but we’re also exploring…”

“No!” barks Kibi.  “Toward the singing!”

Ernie casts a _circle of protection_, but it does not banish the song or quell its effects.  Flicker looks as though he’s about to burst into tears.   Morningstar casts _silence_, and this does block out the song as long as everyone stays close.  The sadness remains, though the compulsion to find the singer abates.  And _telepthaic bond_ – being a divination – doesn’t work here in Naslund.   They can only communicate with gestures while inside the sphere of silence.

Dranko casts _resurgence_ on the afflicted, allowing Grey Wolf and Kibi to shuck off the soul-crushing effect of the song.  Flicker remains in despair.  He’s weeping openly now.

“They’re all dead!” he wails.  “The Gods… they’re all dead…”

He sits down and refuses to take another step.  Morningstar sighs and casts _mind blank_ on him.

“Oh, that’s better!”  Flicker leaps to his feet.  “Things don’t seem so bad anymore.  I don’t even know why I was so worried!”

Dranko lights his cigar, and the smoke drifts in strange patterns, as if it’s trying to form into prophecy but failing.  Aravis, on a hunch, casts _rope trick_.  The spell fails.  Dranko is horrified, thinking that his _widemouth pouch_ has become inaccessible, but it turns out that extradimensional spaces still function if they’re small enough.

Around another corner they see a large ghostly procession, hundreds of shrouded humanoids, making their way down a wide avenue.  A coffin is raised up in the center of the mob, held aloft by many hands.  Ghostly petals are strewn ahead of the crowd, and they fade away after the last of the beings has moved past.   The group of them turns a distant corner and fades to nothing.

/*/

It’s only half a mile in total from the edge of the dome to the purple rock tower in the middle, so the entire journey is over quickly even though their progress is slow.  They round one final corner and see that the road ends in a wide, round plaza that surrounds the amethyst tower.   Large stone statues of noble visage stand in haphazard pattern throughout the plaza.  The thirty foot diameter base of the spire is filled with doorways, dim, insubstantial, sliding over and beneath one another.  The wake of shadowy humanoids is vanishing through of these portals.  

Only one door is really _there_, closed but solid, and planted directly in front of that door is an enormous Tree.  Its fifty-foot trunk rises directly from the cobblestones of the plaza, and its long limbs stretch far overhead.   It has no leaves, and appears dead, though its branches sway slightly in the complete absence of breeze.  A few of its branches seem to have been severed, and lie upon the ground near its base.  Flicker, protected by _mind blank_, steps outside Morningstar’s _silence_ and can hear the song quite clearly now, coming from the Tree.   He also notices that there is room for maybe one person at a time to squeeze through the doorway behind the Tree, assuming it was opened.

Aravis moves out of the _silence_ as well, and though he hears the song, he suffers no ill-effects.  While the others wonder if Tarsos and Meledien might have planted the Tree to slow them down, Aravis feels as though it _belongs_ here.  

The branches of the Tree quiver, and everyone in the party except for Aravis feels an assault upon their minds.   They also become aware that on the cobbles near the trunk, there are three small black stains, smelling very faintly of Essence.

“We should, uh, maybe back up?” Dranko suggests.   The others instead start to cast buffing spells, and then an enormous branch comes swinging down and clocks Aravis in the head.   He may be immune to its song, but the blow feels like an iron pipe.  

“Is there anything we can do to help you?” he asks it.

There is no response.  It is, after all, a Tree.

Kibi glances at Aravis and decides to risk casting _xorn movement_.  He sinks into the ground, and finds that the stone does not reject him.  It feels ancient, older than any place in Abernia, and is unnaturally solid.  There are no gaps or impurities; it is the rock of ages, and alien to him.  He quickens a _mirror image_ just to be safe.

“What do I do?” cries Flicker.  “Rush it?  Or are we fleeing?”

“Neither, for the moment,” says Aravis.  Flicker scoots out of range of the extended branches, while Dranko uses a healing wand on Aravis.

“Then what’s the plan?” asks Grey Wolf.

“We just have to get past it,” says Ernie.  “We want to follow Meledien and Tarsos, and _they_ didn’t kill the Tree.”   Though, as he says this, more than one in the Company realizes that the black stains of Essence are probably bloodstains, indicating that there was battle here before now.

Ernie feels his bones start to stiffen, but he fights off whatever new magic the Tree was attempting.  In response, Ernie casts a healing spell at range, hoping to change its behavior.

“We are not hear to harm you!” says Aravis.  “We want to deal with those who have _already_ harmed you.  Please, let us pass!”

Aravis walks forward again, thinking that between his message and his divine nature, something must be getting through to the Tree.   It slams him again with a stout branch, and this time it projects a sentiment into his head.

_MORTALS SHALL NOT PASS ME_.

Aravis sighs.  He may have a divine spark, but he is still mortal.   “What about the two who have _already_ passed you?” 

The Tree offers no response.

Kibi pops up from the ground.  Unwilling to directly harm the Tree, he instead strikes it with a maximized _ray of enfeeblement_.  Its branches dip and sag.  While Dranko heals up Aravis again, Flicker tries to run past the Tree to the door.  It strikes him hard with another branch; even _enfeebled_, it still packs quite a wallop.   Grey Wolf adds to the Tree’s weakened state with _enervation_, and this (combined with the _ray of enfeeblement_) probably saves Aravis’s life.   With Aravis now in range of most of its branches, the Tree clubs him five times, driving him to the ground.  Morningstar and Ernie rush in to heal him.

Aravis tries to turn the Tree into something smaller and less dangerous using _polymorph any object_, but plants, it turns out, are unaffected by such magics.   Having failed at that, he rushes for the door, squeezes behind the Tree’s trunk, and touches the doorway it guards.   The door is warm.  

It’s also locked, and while he thinks his divine nature will work upon it given time, it doesn’t open immediately.  “Ah, crap!”

Kibi casts a _wall of stone_ that creates a sort of long curved hangar, an open-sided tunnel of stone that shields about half the party from the Tree’s branches.  Dranko casts _shield other_ on Aravis.  Grey Wolf saps the Tree with another _enervation_.

The Tree remains undaunted, and seemingly determined to bludgeon Aravis to death.  It brings several branches thundering down upon his head, and both he and Dranko are staggered.  

As Ernie heals Aravis one more time, Morningstar sighs.  “Are you _sure_ we can’t just chop this thing down?”

Aravis shakes his head.  “We won’t need to.”  He casts _shapechange_ on himself, quickens a _shield_ just in case, and assumes the form of the most hard-to-hit creature he can think of:  a blood fox.  The whole time he keeps one hand/paw pressed up against the doorway, and at last he is rewarded.  The doorway vanishes, leaving an ingress to the amethyst tower.  Using Kibi’s semi-tunnel for cover, the whole Company scrambles for the doorway.   Once they are all inside, the tower wall reasserts itself, and the sounds of the Tree’s creaking branches and song of despair are abruptly cut off.

They now find themselves at the end of a long straight corridor, its walls, floor and ceiling made entirely of amethyst.   It slopes gently downward, and clearly extends past the far side of the tower, underground.  Everywhere is a diffuse purple light.  All along the walls, at head-height, are carvings in the stone:  battles scenes, Gods fighting, Gods dying.

In this place, there are no echoes.

…to be continued…


----------



## carborundum

Wow - nothing for a while and then .. two come all at once! It's like waiting for the best bus in the world!


----------



## RedTonic

Eeee! I'm so excited! I bet this latest entry was even more atmospheric at the table. That's pretty cool.

Totally gonna borrow some of that, I think. And find out what's in Sagiro's coffee, because that's what I should be drinking.


----------



## RangerWickett

Aww, I miss the blood fox.


----------



## steeldragons

RangerWickett said:


> Aww, I miss the blood fox.




I must agree. That was a bit of brilliant playing ("the hardest thing to hit he could think of...") on Aravis' player's part. We've come to expect nothign less from "Abernathy's Company."

And a belated kudos and CONGRATULATIONS to Sagiro and all of the players for the conclusion of what is one of the GREATEST, most elaborate and entertaining Story Hours/campaigns I've had the privilege of finding/reading.

I'm sure it was a bittersweet end. But with players and characters and a DM this fantastic, I'm sure we haven't heard the last of out of Charagan.

Well done and congrats all.
--Steel Dragons


----------



## Piratecat

I called Sagiro at 11pm last night and kept him on the phone for half an hour. I'm rereading the wonderful compiled PDF, and kept having questions pop up! So he indulged me and answered 5-6 queries of mine.

One thing that re-reading this has shown me is how consistent the campaign's plots and clues have been. There are a few idiosyncracies, but damned few. Sort of astounding.


----------



## Tamlyn

Piratecat said:


> I called Sagiro at 11pm last night and kept him on the phone for half an hour. I'm rereading the wonderful compiled PDF, and kept having questions pop up! So he indulged me and answered 5-6 queries of mine.
> 
> One thing that re-reading this has shown me is how consistent the campaign's plots and clues have been. There are a few idiosyncracies, but damned few. Sort of astounding.




So you bring up his brilliance yet refuse to share? Either these details are still spoilerific or you're being a jerk for teasing us. I really hope you're not being a jerk!


----------



## MorningstarofEll

I started reading  the pdf again too Pirate Cat!  And yeah, so many things we learned early were so important.  And we spent so much time traveling from one place to another!

I find that now that things are over I very much want to know about how the people we cared about and interacted with fared through the final chapters.  I keep reading and going oh!  HIM..is he ok?  Is that place still standing?  Oh..what about her?

*sigh* I could poke Sagiro for answers till I was like Morningstar asking in commune about Step's horse..times 100 or so.  In the great stories I've read I've been mostly content to learn how things ended for the heroes and make up any other bits of epilogue I wanted for myself..but it is harder with this story that I've been so much a part of.

While playing I never really MINDED this forum, but it always felt a little odd when I considered that we kind of had an unseen audience for our D&D game of all things.  But now, I realize that this campaign log is also a history..a very tangible thing that I have to go back to and enjoy.  I am very appreciative of the time Sagiro has spent writing it up, and the readers who keep him going, and StevenAC for putting it in such a convenient format.   When it is done I am going to get the whooole thing printed (in several volumes probably) and keep it on a shelf with my other favorite stories.

A kind of funny side story, the day of the final game I was really quite nervous.  I talked to my Mom in the morning she asked if that  that 'thing of mine' was ending today.   I explained yes and that I was actually kind of nervous and tried to explain why. The whole story had been building up to this.  Would we make an end equal to it?  What if I rolled really badly and it all came down to bad dice?   (At least we were in a place with no bushes) My mom paused for a while really trying to come up with something to say to me...and she fell back to "Well, honey, I am sure you will do just FINE".  In the voice she has used for encouragement the day before any test I have ever taken in my entire life.  I hung up and said to my real husband..Greywolf's human "my Mommy says we will do just fine" and it actually kind of helped.   

The last game was Greywolf and my 11th anniversary as a couple and we forgot to even say happy anniversary to each other because we were so preoccupied.   But, we probably wouldn't have ever started going out if it hasn't been for him giving me rides to and from the campaign so I guess it is appropriate.


----------



## Tamlyn

[MENTION=42542]MorningstarofEll[/MENTION], I can only speak for myself, but I was initially drawn to this Story Hour because of Sagiro's compelling world and his tight, _tight_ plotlines. Also because of how incredibly clever you guys are as players. It helped get me hooked on D&D early in my gaming career and I think made me a better player and GM.

It's easy (for me) to overlook the impact it had on everyone directly involved in the game. It gives me great joy to hear about the friendships, even marriages at the table. Hearing that your anniversary (11 years no less. Congrats!) was at the table and that even your mom knew how important this was to you is no less than awesome!!!


----------



## Piratecat

Tamlyn said:


> It's easy (for me) to overlook the impact it had on everyone directly involved in the game. It gives me great joy to hear about the friendships, even marriages at the table. Hearing that your anniversary (11 years no less. Congrats!) was at the table and that even your mom knew how important this was to you is no less than awesome!!!



That's spectacular. Congratulations, you two!

I think we can indirectly trace three marriages to our D&D groups: Morningstar and Greywolf's players, Sagiro and Kibi's player, and Fajitas and WisdomLikeSilence (from the wonderful Halmae storyhours by Spyscribe and Ellinor). Who says D&D isn't social?

Tamlyn, a few of my questions were spoilers, but the ones which weren't:

- When "something big got through," was that Meledien? It was Meledien, Octesian and Restimar, the first three red armored warriors who breached the planar boundaries to prepare the way for the emperor. Jerks.

- No one noticed giant invisible crates hanging over Kinnet Gorge near Verdshane? Nope. The masking and powerful enchantments prevented that, and no one ever went there.

- What monsters were the "forest demons" outside of God's Thorn? They were possibly never statted up, since we weren't interested in fighting them.

- Later in the game a monster turns out to be impersonating someone. I wondered if that was actually a chrik from the arch beneath Hae Charagan. Sagiro hadn't considered that, so no.

- And I had some yrimpa questions and some Farazil questions that contain spoilers.


----------



## wedgeski

I've read the PDF's twice now and will read the whole thing start to finish when they're finally complete. I can't wait. 

I'll probably have more to say at that point, but for now I'll simply join in the chorus of congratulations and thank-you's, to Sagiro and the crew and to StephenAC, and say what I possibly haven't said until now: that this campaign has without doubt influenced my own game more than anything else I've ever read.


----------



## Fajitas

Piratecat said:


> I think we can indirectly trace three marriages to our D&D groups: Morningstar and Greywolf's players, Sagiro and Kibi's player, and Fajitas and WisdomLikeSilence (from the wonderful Halmae storyhours by Spyscribe and Ellinor). Who says D&D isn't social?




Oh, I think you can pretty *directly* trace my marriage to your game... 

And let me also state that my desire to run a D&D game again came as a direct result of reading this Story Hour.  So thanks for that, too. 

Can't wait to see how it ends.


----------



## Piratecat

Rocks fall. Everybody dies.


----------



## Michael Silverbane

Piratecat said:


> Rocks fall. Everybody dies.




Spoilers!


----------



## blargney the second

Piratecat said:


> Rocks fall. Everybody dies.



Aaahhhh, the classics. (Warning: slightly salty language.)


----------



## Sagiro

It's always gratifying to know that my campaign has had a positive impact on people's lives, whether it be inspiring their own games, or inspiring them to get married.  

Morningstar, I can assure you that I was at least as nervous as you going into the final session.  Every night for a week I would lie in bed, unable to sleep, thinking about how things would wrap up.  Was I remembering all the plot threads I wanted to tie off?  All the characters whose arcs needed to find resolution?  Would the final confrontation be exciting enough?  Too deadly?  What about my highly experimental plans for a certain antagonist?  And, over all, would my players feel like I was providing adequate closure?

When you work on something for 15+ years, you _really_ don't want to screw up the ending!

Also, here's an update:


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 336*_
*Sand*

Aravis jumps up onto Dranko’s shoulders, thinking that the blood fox form is a safe way to travel.   But once perched upon his friend, he begins to be overcome with a terrible hunger.  Dranko smells so… so delicious!  He must eat!  A small part of his mind remembers that he’s also a wizard (…so… hungry!...)  and just before he starts to burrow into Dranko’s warm, succulent muscle tissue, he changes back into himself.

“Ugh,” he exclaims.  “They truly lead an awful life.”

The amethyst hallway takes them another hundred yards or more, always sloping gently downward but otherwise on a perfectly straight bearing. Every few yards is a small bloodstain, carrying the faint whiff of Essence.  Then ahead they can see that the hallway levels out, though it continues straight on as far as they can see. 

Something crunches beneath their feet – it’s sand.   The hallway has not only become flat, but is now covered with a film of sand – not solidly packed like a beach, but as if someone ahead of them had scattered large handfuls on the floor as they went.  There are no footprints in it, and no more bloodstains.   Dranko scoops up some of the sand and puts it in a pouch.  A vaulted ceiling now soars high above them, and the hallway is twenty-five feet wide, but there’s still an oppressive, almost claustrophobic aura about the place.

At last there is something to break the monotony: a side passage, fifteen feet wide, precisely perpendicular to the main hallway, branching to their right.  Morningstar instinctively drops a _thought capture_ before remembering that most divinations don’t work here.  The ceiling in this side passage is lower and flat, and they can see it ends in a chamber about fifty feet down.   Dranko moves to investigate.

The room is mostly empty.  Its only feature is a large sarcophagus, big enough to house a hill giant’s corpse, upon a pedestal in the center of the room.  A stone slab lid rests deliberately against the side of the pedestal, which itself is eight feet high – meaning Dranko can’t look inside it without climbing up.  This he does, and inside – nothing.  Aravis thinks this place is waiting – waiting for a divine being to die.  Unconvinced, Dranko dangles his arm inside the empty sarcophagus, and still feels nothing.  Finally, he ‘accidentally’ falls into it, and this truly convinces him that it’s empty.

“You fell in on purpose!” Ernie accuses.

“I wouldn’t have jumped in if I hadn’t known it was completely safe,” says Dranko, grinning.

Flicker, who has been checking the place for secret compartments while Dranko has investigated the sarcophagus, comes up empty.  “Not that I was going to loot anything, of course!” he says.

Dranko frowns.  “What kind of person builds an empty tomb with no secret doors!”   Not only are there no secret doors, but the walls and ceiling are perfectly smooth amethyst.  There are no carvings, symbols or adornments to be seen.

Reluctantly, the Company leaves this uneventful side-passage behind and continues down the long straight corridor.  The whitish-brown sand crunches beneath their feet.  Not much further along, they encounter a second branching hallway, to the left this time, but with the same dimensions as the previous one.  This second turn-off, however, is more interesting.  Two words are inscribed, one above the other, on the wall above the opening where the new hallway begins.   They are written in different languages, neither of them familiar.  Grey Wolf, possessed of permanent _comprehend languages_ that is unaffected by Naslund’s anti-divinatory nature, can read the top name:  _*Leantha*_.  The bottom word still defies his understanding.   Above the two words is carved the image of an open book.

Dranko wants to scout down the new hallway, but he cannot.   Even before he can take a single step that way, his mind balks, and he is filled with a great antipathy toward whatever waits in the chamber at the end of the hall.  Somewhere in his soul, he knows that to go there would be… _wrong_. He looks helplessly at the others.

“It’s to keep people from disturbing the resting places of the Gods,” says Ernie.

Kibi peers down the new branch.  He can faintly see that there are tapestries hanging in the chamber at the end.  “But what if Tarsos and Meledien are down there, or have been there already?”

Aravis feels a revulsion similar to Dranko’s, but for him it is milder.  He is able to walk down the side-passage about half way, though it feels like a psychic headwind is beating at him as he does so.  At last, like Dranko, he is able to progress no further.  And for him, it is worse:  he feels – senses, somehow – that there is a great source of knowledge in the chamber, but it is out of his reach.   Having a better look than the others, Aravis sees that the scenes on the tapestries are of people seated in a great library, all of them reading books.  He also sees that there is a sarcophagus there, as in the previous chamber, but that the lid is not leaning neatly against it.  Instead, it lies on the ground at an irregular angle, and is cracked in several places.  Immediately the Company suspects that Tarsos and Meledien have indeed visited this tomb.

Aravis utters a quick prayer to Leantha.  “We are here to destroy the looters of this place.”  But he can still get no closer to the chamber; something has allowed him to go this far, but no further.  He has a strong feeling of a divine presence in that room that prevents his approach.

That is, of course, troubling.  Was their enemies’ infusion with the Adversary’s blood enough to make them that much more divine than Aravis?  How did they get in there to loot the coffin of Leantha?

Aravis turns and walks back.  “Pardon me for my presumption,” he says quietly.

“I didn’t sign up for this,” Dranko mutters.  “Nobody told me that someday I’d be walking through a huge amethyst filled with dead Gods.”

They leave the tomb of Leantha behind and continue along the main corridor.  They pass another empty chamber on the right, and a few minutes later they spot a second one ahead on the left.  But before they can walk that far, the sand on the floor starts to move, sliding and shifting and making a sound like an army of asps.

In a matter of seconds it rises up and congeals into  six humanoid shapes, twelve-foot-high sand-warriors, three on either side of them.  Swords of sand form at the ends of their arms, and those these drip sand upon the ground, they are constantly replenished by more sand sliding up through the feet to maintain the creatures’ mass.

No one doubts that, like the Tree, these beings are guardians set to protect the tombs from interlopers like themselves.

Kibi reacts instantly, dropping a 50’ high _wall of force_ that extends from wall to wall, with half of the sand warriors on the far side.  One of these walks forward and when it meets the wall, it deforms and spreads.  Individual grains roll about against the invisible barrier, but find no crevices through which to pour.  A second of the creatures does the same, and when neither meet with any success, they reform themselves into humanoid shapes.  All around, the rasping sound fills the hallway, sand upon stone.

That leaves the three on the near side of the force wall.  One of them walks directly past Aravis, ignoring him, to swing its sand-sword at Flicker.  The halfling ducks, and the swords shatters against the wall, spraying sand out in all directions.  There is no core, no solid part of the creature’s blade;  it’s all sand.   But it quickly reforms into a sword-shape at the end of its arm.

Flicker reacts by slashing with his own blade.  One swing sends a spray of sand outward and upward from the creature’s body – and it nearly stops, oddly, hanging like a cloud of tiny gnats in the air.  The scattered volume of sand drifts slowly at about the height of Flicker’s head.

Dranko flicks out his whip several times at the creatures nearest to him.  Some of his attacks go through the thing’s body with no effect, but two of them have results similar to Flicker’s attack.  Blasts of sand are sent bursting from the creature’s torso, where they hover, clouds of granules, slowly rotating through the air as if unaffected by gravity.

Grey Wolf casts a _disintegrate_ at the same one, but it only makes a tiny hole through its shifting body.  Ernie has more luck dropping a _blade barrier that cuts through all three of the guardians; they move quickly out of its cutting field, but not before huge swathes of sand are send to float among them like misty tendrils.

One of the sand guardians on the far side of the wall of force disperses again, this time sending its sand upward.  Kibi was unable to have the wall extend to the ceiling, and so the creature reaches the top of it and starts to pour itself down the near side.  The sand-creature assaulted by Dranko raises its non-sword “hand” and unleashes a conical blast of sand that envelops Dranko, Grey Wolf, Kibi and Ernie.  Dranko whips his cloak around and avoids the blast entirely, but the others feel the scouring sting of the sand scraping away their skin.  It looks afterward like their faces had been drawn upon in thin lines of red ink, and they have trouble seeing with the sand in their eyes.

Yet another of the creatures swings its sand-sword at Ernie, but the shifting blade smashes harmlessly against his armor, scattering and reforming in an instant.

Aravis blasts the three present enemies with a maximized chain lightning.   All of them have shovelfuls of sand blasted from their bodies, and now the displaced grit is so thick in the air that it’s becoming difficult for anyone to see.  Anyone who moves can feel it brushing against their skin.  Morningstar quickens a mass curative before tossing a chill seed holly berry into the body of the closest assailant.  There is a tiny pause, and then it detonates, blowing the creature entirely apart.  The sand of its body fills the air, and now the party has to brush it aside in order to see anything.

Kibi uses Mordenkainen’s lucubration to get back his wall of force, and stacks a new one on top of the original, one that allows the combined wall to go floor to ceiling and wall to wall.  The remaining two sand-creatures are thus unable to find any seam, and drop back to the ground, waiting.  

The sand-creatures seem to be suffering no ill-effects from the increasingly-thick particulate floating everywhere; one blasts the party with another scouring cone.  Morningstar is nearly blinded by the grit in her eyes., and finds it easier simply to fight with them closed.  Flicker and Dranko launch minimally-effective weapon attacks, but Grey Wolf loads a maximized acid orb into Bostock and swings with a quickened true strike.  A large part of its shoulder erupts in a miasma of sand and acid, its granules joining the ever-thickening cloud.  Bostock rejoices.  We will smite these creatures together!  We can end this fight!

Ernie remembers he’s still carrying a wind fan.  He uses it to cast gust of wind, and manages to clear a wide line of space through the middle of the debris field.   The fourth sand-creature, the one that had made it over the original force wall, drops down upon him, scraping his armor but otherwise failing to cause harm.   The one nearest Grey Wolf, perhaps peeved at the acidic sword-swing, returns the favor with a brutal flurry of swings from its sword.  Grey Wolf’s face is lacerated, blood caking the sand in his eyes.  He wipes it away, wincing, but a second later his pain is eased, along with everyone else’s.  Morningstar has cast mass heal.

Aravis blasts two of the enemy with a lightning bolt.  Kibi follows up with a maximized earth bolt, and another one of the sand creatures bursts into pieces.  Two left, not counting the pair that prowls on the far side of the wall of force.  

Make that one left, after Dranko unleashes a hasted full assault with his whip, releasing the sand from another guardian to float with all the rest.  Now it’s getting hard to breath; each breath inadvertently sucks in sand particles.

That last attacking sand creature is able to get one more attack, blasting Grey Wolf, Kibi and Ernie with a shredding cone.  But the combined attacks from the rest of the party bring it down immediately after.

There are still two more, prowling on the far side of the wall of corce, splashing nearly continuous sprays of sand against it, waiting.

Everyone gets ready to attack, and Kibi drops the wall.  The sand-creatures are first to react, and  the Company endures two overlapping sand-blast cones.  But thanks to Morningstar’s recent palliative, they endure this fairly well, before returning fire.  Flame strike.  Maximized cone of cold.  Maximized lightning bolt channeled through Bostock.  Searing darkness.  Another maximized cone of cold.  The last of the sand-guardians is ripped apart by magical energies, and their collective bodies now float around the party in a single enormous cloud.

Their cheers of victory are short lived.  All of the hovering sand begins to slide past their faces, and in a matter of seconds has congealed into an enormous compact ball some 15’ in diameter.   The new sand-sphere sprouts tentacles, and something like an enormous eye opens in its center and regards the party balefully.  

Dranko returns its stare and gulps.  “Ah, crap.”

…to be continued…_


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Congratulations to all for the game - to Sagiro, for writing it but not forgetting the players who bring so much to the table, too!

I'm stuck in a horrible yet familiar feeling - desperate to know what happens at the end but not wanting to get there quite yet.


----------



## Piratecat

blargney the second said:


> Aaahhhh, the classics. (Warning: slightly salty language.)



Actually, here's the original reference! (Warning: even saltier language. Funny, though.)


----------



## Innocent Bystander

A beholder made of sand?  I can't wait to find out what it's eyes do.

Does the party ever learn if it was Tarsos and Meledien that disturbed the sarcophagus?


----------



## blargney the second

Piratecat said:


> Actually, here's the original reference! (Warning: even saltier language. Funny, though.)



Awesome.


----------



## Camris

And Bob was there.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 336*_
*Tombs of Dead Gods*

The enormous spherical sand creature hovers a few feet from the ground, holding its shape and solidity while occasionally exhibiting slight deformations.   Three of its extended pseudopodia lash out; Grey Wolf ducks beneath one, but Dranko and Flicker are sent flying backward to land prone and bruised.   Ernie watches his friends soar past him, then drops a _flame strike_ down on the sand-sphere.   It resists.  Ernie curses.  For good measure he follows up with a quickened _searing light_, and this penetrates the guardian’s resistance, burning a small hole through its mass.  The Company notes with relief that the sand knocked free of the creature’s body falls inertly to the floor.

Aravis looks back at Flicker and Dranko with some satisfaction.  “Nice of everyone to get out of my way,” he mutters, before casting a maximized _cone of cold_.  A significant chunk of the monster’s sandy bulk is flash-frozen, after which it drops with a _clunk_ to the amethyst floor.

As Dranko gets to his feet and advances, a huge spray of sand blasts from the creature’s eye.  Almost everyone is covered with a fine coating of silicate, which immediately starts to harden.  Those so affected find it much harder to move.  Only Dranko and Aravis (not quite in its range) and Morningstar (wearing a ring with _freedom of movement_) are unimpaired.  

Flicker gets to his feet, but only barely; the sandy coating is like a stiff suit of skin-tight armor.  And the creature attacks _again,_ this time kicking out a storm of flying grit that burns skin off of everyone in the hallway.  Morningstar casts a _mass cure critical wounds_ to undo the damage, and Kibi blasts the sphere with his own _cone of cold_.   In response, the creature flicks three of its tentacles again, and this time Morningstar and Grey Wolf are sent flying, to slam painfully into the walls.

Ernie, crusted with sand, is just able to move his arms enough to cast a _mass cure moderate wounds_.   Aravis casts _lightning ring_ and steps up right next to the sand-sphere, while Dranko lashes the thing several time with his whip.  He frowns as most of his whip-cracks go right through its sandy body without much damaging effect.

It again sprays the Company with silicate.  Aravis finds himself slowed like the others… and the coating on Kibi and Flicker hardens completely, effectively rendering them petrified!  Grey Wolf has barely stood back up again when it unleashes another sand-storm, flying around painfully in all directions.  Morningstar casts another _mass cure critical_, but she’s not sure she’s keeping up with the guardian’s damage output, and her spell has no effect at all on her petrified allies.  Even as she ponders this, it smacks Dranko and Grey Wolf with powerful sand-tendrils, and they are sent careening away.

Ernie pegs the sand-sphere with _holy star_, burning a small hole into it.   Aravis then strikes it with _two_ free _lightning bolts_ from his _lightning ring_, and it takes yet more electricity damage just from Aravis’s proximity.  Now there are huge piles of lifeless sand all over the floor, and pieces of glass are caught up in its roiling body.  Aravis then casts _haste_ on Ernie, which breaks apart the sand-coating that slows him.

Dranko reaches into his mind, the insane part, and stops time.   Every grain of sand freezes, perfectly distinct, and he watches them, fascinated.  It’s just lovely.  But then he remembers himself, and moves gingerly around to the far side of the sphere.  He heals himself with a wand, and readies an attack for when time resumes.  When it does, he flicks his whip and removes another sizable chunk of sand from its mass.  Grey Wolf immediately follows up with another channeled _acid orb_, but this one does little damage.

Again the sphere erupts in sand, and again Morningstar follows with a  mass curative.  Aravis delivers another round of electrical attacks, and now the sand-sphere is clearly having trouble maintaining its integrity.  It wobbles and dips, but it still has enough binding magic to unleash another slowing spray.   Aravis and Ernie, already coated, join Kibi and Flicker as sand-encrusted statues.   Only Morningstar, Grey Wolf and Dranko are still in the fight.

Fortunately, that’s enough.  Grey Wolf’s _rainbow beam_ is blocked by the thing’s resistance, but Morningstar drops a final _flame strike_ upon it, and that one it fails to resist.   It crashes to the ground, forming an inanimate sand-pile that eventually comes to rest.  


/*/


With the Sand Sphere’s dissolution, the hardened sand-shrouds on half the Company break apart.   As they heal up, Dranko peers down the hallway, wondering what else might be down here.

“If we die here, does that make us Gods?” he wonders aloud.

“Or maybe they’d toss our bodies out,” says Flicker, “and that’s how we’re going to ‘escape.’”

Ernie gives Dranko a stern look.  “There are cockroaches even in fine inns,” he says, “but that doesn’t make them patrons.”

After shaking the last of the sand from their hair and clothing, the Company continues their march down the long straight amethyst hallway.   In a minute they have come even to the left-facing branch they had spotted before the sand-creatures’ assault.   Like the previous one, they can see down into a square burial chamber, and again the lid seems to have been rudely levered from its sarcophagus.   Again, there are two words above the branching hall, one of them unreadable.  The second labels this as the resting place of Caba, and His symbol is a splash of red like a dancing flame.   Only Aravis can make any progress down the hallway, and as before it feels like he’s facing into a strong wind.  But where in Leantha's hall he gained a sense of great knowledge in the unreachable crypt, here he feels a rising heat.  Half way down he can will himself no further, and more, he feels that he would burn if were to get any closer.

“Leantha was a Goddess of Knowledge,” says Aravis, rejoining the others, “and Caba was a God of Fire, or perhaps a Sun God.”

They pass two more branches of a similar sort, alternating right and left.  The first is for a deity called Aranod, and Aravis senses his crypt is an infinite expanse.   The symbol above the  name is a star beside a crescent moon.    Aravis stares at the unreadable word beneath the name Aranod; the characters have an alien, elusive feel about them.  He almost thinks he could read it, but always his mind slides away from their meaning.

The next branch leads to the tomb of  the God Kazon, and beneath his name is carved the image of a spider.  With a gulp Aravis tests this branch like he did the others, and half-way down is stricken with horror, as if his skin is crawling with thousands of tiny arachnids.   At least in these last two tombs – for Aranod and Kazon – the sarcophagi are undisturbed, their huge stone lids intact.

For a few minutes more there are no more branches, and then the pattern is broken; up ahead there are two branches at the same junction, one to the left, the other to the right.  As the party draws near, Ernie cannot stifle a gasp; above one of the halls is the symbol of Yondalla, and above the other is the symbol of Ell.  For the briefest of moments, the thought goes through his mind:  _Have Yondalla and Ell died?_  But Grey Wolf allays his fears:  the name beneath the triangle symbol of Ell is Aurelia, and beneath the Yondallan shield is the name Nemmin.  Both names are accompanied by a second illegible word.   The names are unfamiliar, though Ernie has a vague recollection of seeing the name Nemmin on an ancient roll of church heroes.  

The sarcophagi in both of these chambers are undisturbed.  Morningstar tries to walk down the towards Aurelia’s tomb, but cannot take even a single step.  It’s maddening; she feels as though she _could_ go forward, even that she is _meant_ to, but she cannot will her feet to physically take her there.   Ernie experiences the same with Nemmin’s tomb.   Morningstar tries dropping into Ava Dormo, and there is the same hallway, this time with some bright thing glowing in the tomb that she can sense but not see.  Something very powerful is there, beckoning her, but even in dream she is barred from Aurelia’s resting place.  She sighs in frustration.  “I’m sorry,” she breathes.  “I’m not strong enough to make the journey.”  And she prays, achieving a remarkable serenity and happiness.  There is something good and proper about this place and whatever is in it.  But her prayer brings no tangible benefit.

She drops out of Ava Dormo.  “There’s something very Ellish down there.”

As before, Aravis is able to go about half-way down each hallway.  Towards Aurelia, he feels as though he’s falling asleep.  Towards Nemmin, he feels himself becoming strong and desirous of battle.

Aravis muses out loud.  “What is the significance of these being next to each other?”

Dranko shrugs.  “Maybe Aurelia and Nemmin died together in the same battle?”

After another hundred feet, the hallway again starts to slope gently downward, and soon after opens up into a large round room, off of which many narrow halls radiate like spokes of a wheel.  The floor is still sandy, though without footprints.   The Company stops, scratching their collective heads.  There is no indication of which way to go next.

From the shadows of the hallway opposite them, there is movement, and a robed person steps out.  He appears solid – no apparition, this – and his footsteps crunch in the sand.  He has a pale, handsome face, almost disturbing in its perfection, flawlessly symmetric and unblemished.  An idealized human face.  He wears a long black robe with a glowing rune of Drosh emblazoned on the front.

“Greetings,” says Ernie, trying to remain calm.

The being gives the Company a long stare.

“We beg your pardon for disturbing the peace,” says Aravis.  “We seek two who do not belong here.”

The Droshian turns to regard Aravis, and stares a moment longer before responding.  “Aravis, they have already gone.”

“Poo!” blurts Ernie.

The newcomer turns to him.  “Ernest, that language is not appropriate in this place.”

Ernie turns red.  “You’re quite right.  I apologize.”

“How do you know our names?” asks Dranko.

The being answers more quickly.  “Now that I am standing in your presence, I know you quite well, Dranko Brightmirror.”

He turns to regard Dranko, and his neutral expression suddenly contorts.  He leans backward.

“I’m sorry,” says Dranko, knowing immediately what the being senses.  “I’m carrying around a hitchhiker.”  _Madness… madness…_

“You should not be so glib,” says the Droshian.

“I’m not.”

The being recovers his equilibrium and peers again at Dranko.  “No.  You’re right.  Your glibness is a façade.”

He looks at each of the others in turn, naming them.  “Morningstar.  Grey Wolf.  Or would you prefer Ivellios?  Kibilhathur.  Flicker.  My name is Viersk. I welcome you all more than the previous two.  Meledien.  Tarsos.”

“What did they do?” Ernie asks.

Viersk frowns.  “They killed…all of us.  I am now the only remaining guardian.  This place cannot be left without a guardian.  As such, I have only recently been born.”

Dranko grimaces.  “What did they want?” 

“Wards,” says Viersk. “Wards of Drosh.  Wards that allow them to exist in the presence of strong divinity.  Which they took.”

Kibi glances back down the hallway.  “Are they the ones that plundered the first two tombs we found?”

“Yes,” says Viersk.  “Two they plundered.  They might have taken more, but the more dangerous guardians here were starting to reform.  Meledien and Tarsos fled.  But they have Leantha’s Shield, the Bulwark of Knowledge, and they have the Spear of Caba.”  

“How long ago did they leave?” Kibi asks.

“It was months ago now,” answers Viersk.

Dranko swears silently to himself. “So they took the wards from the old caretakers, and that let them raid the tombs?”

“That, or perhaps they were already able to go inside,” says Viersk.  “They were possessed of a remarkable evil power.  They had some mimicry of Godhood about them, different from yours, corrupt.  Be thankful that it no longer afflicts you.”

When none of the Company says anything, Viersk continues.  “But, it is… nice… to have you here.  I sense that I have been, and will be, very lonely.  I do not think that there will be more of my kind.”  

“Why not?” asks Dranko.  But he knows the answer.

“Because Drosh has left us,” says Viersk.  “This place is not as it should be.  No one should be able to plunder the tombs.  No mortals, however bolstered, should be able to defeat the Tree, or the Guardians of the Hall.  But Meledien and Tarsos did it.  And you must have done it.  That would not be possible if Drosh were still sponsoring this place.  It makes me very sad that he has abandoned me, and abandoned Naslund.”

“A new god has taken his place,” says Dranko.  “Perhaps he will cause more of you to appear.”

Viersk says nothing, but shakes his head.  He has no faith that Myr Madar will provide succor.  

...to be continued...


----------



## RedTonic

Totally awesome. I like the development of this god-afterlife. Were the sand guardians custom, re-skinned, or from a book?


----------



## Piratecat

We felt bad for Viersk. Crushing loneliness is no way to go through eternity.

Meanwhile, I've been reading through StevenAC's glorious collected PDFs in order to salve me missing the campaign. I'm on page 756 or so. It's interested how stark the difference is between the beginning (brief campaign summaries to remind Sagiro what happened), the middle (about where we encountered the Crosser's Maze around page 150). and the ending that is fully written as a story. Really superb writing. It's fun to recall bits that I'd totally forgotten, such as some of the details of Dranko's encounter with the demonic Lord Tapheon. Knowing how the campaign ends, it's also wonderful to watch all the pieces falling into place even though we didn't recognize it at the time. This bit right here in Naslynd, with Caba and Leantha, is one of those pieces.


----------



## wolff96

Sigh...  Always with the teasing of future events.

I really liked the psuedo-Beholder fight, with the gradual paralysis.  It's a nice touch and a very evocative re-skinning, with the sand hardening into place.  Creepy to think about, too, which adds to the scene.


----------



## Piratecat

We're using 3.5, but Sagiro had some really nice 4e monster tactics in this fight. For instance, the big solo monster got to act on (iirc) three different initiative counts. that way it stayed active and threatening throughout the round, and our tactical situation kept changing. I cryed foul at the time but in retrospect like it much better than traditional monster design where the big monster gets all its attacks at once.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

What was the party doing 'months ago' when Meledian and Tarsos where in here plundering and did the items they took make a battle or something more difficult later for the party?


----------



## Sagiro

Innocent Bystander said:


> What was the party doing 'months ago' when Meledian and Tarsos where in here plundering and did the items they took make a battle or something more difficult later for the party?




Answering each of these:

1.  Around the time Meledien and Tarsos were plundering Naslund, the Company was fending off an assassination attempt by Lord Dafron.

2. [spoiler redacted]


----------



## steeldragons

Sagiro, I have posted it before, but not in your (I hope) "direct presence" congratulations. I cannot tell you the anticipation I feel to hear the rest of the story. It is truly a pleasure to have to read.

Kudos also must be paid to the fabulous work of [MENTION=12319]StevenAC[/MENTION] for the pdf's.

I sincerely hope you will "novelize" this SH. The commitment of your players and yourself certainly warrant it. _(shameless plug warning)_ I'll be happy to illustrate any scenes you want. 

I can only hope my own SH will tell such a remarkable tale (and reach such readership!!!). You (and Abernathy's Company) inspire me, constantly.

Congrats and well done!
--SD


----------



## Piratecat

Innocent Bystander said:


> …and did the items they took make a battle or something more difficult later for the party?



*sob*

You. Have no. Idea.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

The party should have cloned themselves a few times over so they could be everywhere at once.  It worked for P 

Though technically those were simulacrums right?


----------



## Piratecat

They were. In other news, I've become aware that Dranko shows remarkable lambition. (Lambition: an obselete word meaning "the act of licking or lapping." Damn, I love language.)


----------



## Joshua Randall

Allow me to belatedly express my congratulations, as well, on the conclusion of a truly magnificent campaign.

(I'll save my long-winded gushing for after the final update is posted.)

= = =

In other news: Kazon, the spider god? Heh heh.
New drinking game: take a shot every time Sagiro uses a Star Control 2 reference.


----------



## Sagiro

First, to steeldragons, Joshua Randall and others for your kind words about the campaign.  And I'm especially pleased when someone gets my obscure Star Control II references.  

Here's a short update where little happens but much is revealed.

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 337*_
*History and Foreshadowing*

Realizing that Viersk is facing perhaps an eternity of solitude in Naslund, the Company makes him a gift of one of their oldest magic items:  the _Figurine of Wondrous Power_ that transforms into Thriss the snake.   Thriss seems content when he learns of this new arrangement, and Viersk is touched by the gesture.

“In return,” says Vierks, “I will teach you some history, if you desire it.  And I will give you a gift, and you will take others before you leave.  How much do you know of what you have seen?”

“Very little,” Aravis admits.  “We can’t even read half of the names above the entrances to the tombs.”

“Ah,” says Viersk, nodding.  “The second names, the ones you cannot read, are the Gods’ _true_ names.  Every God has a true name that comes into existence at the moment of its birth.  To know a God’s true name would be to have power over it.  But the names are not known, even to the Gods themselves, until the moment that they die.  Then those names are written, for the first and only time, above their tombs.”

“Who was Nemmin?” Ernie asks.

“Nemmin was one of Yondalla’s great semi-divine champions, who perished in the great wars.”

Aravis nods.  “And so it is Nemmin’s _true_ name that I cannot read.”

“Yes,” says Viersk.  “You yourself have a true name, Aravis, but it cannot be known, and will not, until the day of your own death.  Then, it will be written here.”

“I hope that will be a long time from now,” says Aravis.

“So much for stuffing you and storing you in the Greenhouse,” says Dranko.

“What did you mean by the ‘great wars?’” Kibi asks.

Viersk turns to the dwarf.  “Are you aware that the Traveling Gods fled to this world from the great Adversary?  When they arrived, they landed upon  a continent called Kivia.  And as is often the case in these matters, there was a… misunderstanding.   The Kivian Gods believed it an invasion, and there was war.  Many Gods, along with their champions and servants, were slain, before the Eldest God, Pikon, intervened.”

Many in the Company are startled by this.  Viersk continues.  “There were Gods of Charagan before the Travelers came, and Pikon is the only one of those to remain.  The rest of them, of those who made the Skysteel Archways, fled thousands of years before.  No one knows why, save the Gods themselves.  But Pikon remained, and Pikon agreed to take the Gods of Darvin – the world that the Adversary destroyed – as refugees, and shared Charagan with them.  When the original Goddess of Death, Pikon’s sister, fled, she placed Drosh in charge of Naslund.  Now that Drosh is gone, Naslund is without patronage.”  

Morningstar frowns.  “Having played something of a role in that, in Drosh’s flight, is there anything we can do to help?”

“As one of you said, perhaps you can petition Myr Madar to take a more active role.  I doubt he appreciates the importance of this place, in the great scheme of things.”

“And what _is_ the importance of this place?” asks Dranko.

Viersk looks surprised at the question.  “Is it not self-evident?  This is where Gods come when they are no longer.   If they could not come here, where would they be?  Left out in the world of mortals?  No good would come of that, I assure you.”

“I believe it,” says Ernie.  “We’ve seen what can happen when a God’s essence falls into the wrong hands.”

“Yes,” says Viersk.  “It would be a pity if that were to become commonplace.”

“So how long did the war go on, between the Gods?” Dranko asks.

“I don’t know that time had much meaning then.  From your point of view, perhaps a blink of an eye.  For them, maybe a decade or more, as you would see it.  They do not experience the world the way you and I do.”

Morningstar thinks she understands.  “And Aurelia, and Nemmin, they died in that war?”

“Yes, I’m afraid they did, along with countless others.”

“What about Yondalla?” asks Kibi.  “She wasn’t a Traveler.”

“The Gods of other races have always occupied their own niches in the cosmos, and they make their own choices.  Yondalla sent her champions to fight alongside the Kivian Gods.  It was her home, too, that was being invaded.  But since then, there has been a lasting peace.”

Dranko continues his questions.  “Which Gods were killed in the war?

“You have seen them,’ says Viersk.  “Leantha was the Kivian Goddess of Knowledge.  Caba was the Darvin God of Fire, slain by Nifi.  Aranod was the Darvin God of the Heavens.   Kazon, who both slew and was slain by Nemmin and Aurelia, was the Kivian God of Spiders.   They are the Gods who perished.” 

“And why are Aurelia and Nemmin buried across from one another?” asks Kibi.

Viersk turns to regard Ernie and Morningstar.  “Because of you.”

Ernie gapes.  “Because it would be convenient for Morningstar and I to find them together?”

“Yes.  And they are waiting for you.”  

Morningstar shakes her head.  “But we tried to go to them, and we couldn’t.”

“That it because you didn’t have this.”  Viersk produces from the folds of his robe a black disk on a chain, a disk with the symbol of Drosh upon it.  “It is the final Ward.  The one that Tarsos and Meledien did not take.  If you are to find them and stop them, you may find it necessary.”

“Should… should we return it when we’re done?” Ernie stammers.

“No,” says Viersk.  “I don’t know what is to become of it, or how exactly you will make use of it.  But I do know that with it, you will be able to visit the final resting places of  Nemmin and Aurelia. Take it. I believe it was meant to be yours.  With it, there is hope, and hope is always better than its absence. Take care of it, and do not lose it, or let it fall into the wrong hands.  And perhaps you should think upon why your enemies wanted them so much.  I don’t think it was only to plunder the tombs of  Caba and Leantha.   Those were targets of opportunity.”

Ernie peers back up the hallway toward where the Tomb of Nemmin now awaits.  “Maybe,  if Nemmin and Aurelia killed Kazon, they were buried with something capable of killing a God.”

“No,” says Viersk, and Ernie’s face falls.  “But you may find you need such a thing, before the end.”

“Any idea where we can find one?” Ernie asks.

“No.  I’m sorry.”

Dranko still thinks there’s something too pat about all of this.  “Were Nemmin and Aurelia moved here, just to make our lives easier?”

“No,” says Viersk with a smile.  “They have always been here.  The Gods have great foresight, Dranko Blackhope.”  He peers at Dranko closely, and his smile fades.  “No.  You are Dranko Brightmirror.  And also…  hm.  You have many names; they are all obscured.  Why is that?”

“Because he reinvents himself,” says Ernie.  “He decides his _own_ true name.”

“There’s a monstrosity from the Far Realms affecting what people remember about me,” adds Dranko with a grimace.  “But I’m told it may come to great use someday.”

“I hope so,” says Viersk.  “Though my guess is that it will destroy you.”

“Maybe,” says Dranko.  “Maybe.  But if I’m lucky, it’ll be later rather than sooner.”

Viersk now turns to Aravis.  “You have a great curiosity, Aravis.  Greater than most.   And a source of knowledge greater than most, don’t you?”

For a moment Aravis can’t think of what Viersk means, but the others remind him of his fragment of personality adrift in the Crosser’s Maze.  He laughs.  “I do sometimes forget things.  Like the time I forgot about _magic missile_ when we fought the Blood Fox.”

“But now,” says Viersk, “should you meet another such beast, you will be prepared.”

Ernie laughs.  “I, on the other hand, will be running and screaming like a girl.”

Viersk turns on Ernie and speaks with a chiding tone.  “No, you won’t.  You do not run away from anything, Ernest.  It is your great strength.  But are you prepared for great change, Ernest?  Personal change?”

“I am prepared for anything Yondalla wills for me.”

Viersk smiles.  “You will need to give something up, both physical and not.  And you will gain something, both physical and not.   Yondalla will guide you.

“It is your lot to see and experience things that no other mortals have, or will,” Viersk continues.  “You have traveled to the past.  You have traveled to worlds that few have encountered, and a world that never was.  You will see things that none alive on Abernia have seen.  And you will achieve great things, together, or you will perish.  You, Kibi, will benefit especially from the full complement of your Company.”  

“You can give me any compliments you’d like,” says Kibi.

Viersk looks puzzled.  “I am unused to humor,” he says.  “But whether or not you consider this a compliment, I will remind you that you are still the Opener.”  

“Oh,’ says Kibi.  “Do I have to do it again?”

“Yes.  I cannot see any details of your path, as I have not been to Abernia.  But I can see that you have a great destiny not yet fulfilled.”

“Am I still the Slayer?” asks Morningstar.

“Yes, but do not be sad.  And your moment may be upon you sooner than you think.”

“And does Grey Wolf have a destiny?” asks Morningstar.

Grey Wolf chuckles.  “I have a cranky sword.  Does that count?”

“You should listen to Bostock more often,” says Viersk.

“Can he kill a God?”

“No.  But that will not stop him from trying.  And listen… you all have a destiny, Morningstar of Ell, a destiny you may or may not meet.  I cannot see your success or failure, because the future is written on water.  Do not _rely_ upon your destiny; it will not save you.  But you have met it admirably thus far.  Alander chose well.”

“Is Alander here?” asks Ernie.  “Or Abernathy?”

“No, they are not."

“Abernathy’s kicking back on the Endless Shore,” Dranko adds.

“He is not of a kind that ends up here, great though he was.  But perhaps his part of the story is not finished, either.”

Viersk grows quiet for a moment, almost as if he’s listening to something.  “You are all unusually trustworthy,” he then says.  “Walk the Hall of Leantha, Aravis.  I cannot guarantee what will happen, but perhaps you will have a question answered in some fashion.   Aravis, go alone, for your thirst for knowledge is… unusual.   And you, Morningstar and Ernie, take what the heroes offer to you.  You’ll need all the help you can get.”

“We seldom turn down help,” says Ernie.

“I know,” says Viersk.  “I know everything about you.  And I am pleased.”

“Wait,” says Dranko.  “Meledien and Tarsos were here.  Could you see into their hearts, and , and know everything about them, like you do about us?”

“No.  I wasn’t here.  I was only born after their departure.”

Almost as an afterthought, Morningstar adds, “And what about Farazil?”

Viersk smiles.  “He’s right there.”

And Viersk points directly at Flicker.

…to be continued…


----------



## carborundum

OoooohOOooooOoooooohhhhh! :-D


----------



## Kaodi

Uh-oh, Spaghettio.


----------



## blargney the second

Woah.


----------



## Silvy

That is a damned evil place to stop updating


----------



## Neurotic

Twists and turns. Twists and turns. And then some turns and twists so it doesn't get repetitive


----------



## Innocent Bystander

KABOOM!

How many jaws dropped when that not so little bomb went off?


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Innocent Bystander said:


> KABOOM!
> 
> How many jaws dropped when that not so little bomb went off?




My guess? ALL of them.

Awesome and informative stuff, Sagiro. I suspect people will be coming back to this post in times to come to check up what you were talking about.


----------



## Piratecat

Ah, this was the session where I missed some pretty amazing foreshadowing. No, two or three bits of pretty amazing foreshadowing, none of which would be made manifest for years, one of which (upon reading the collected story hour) has already been hinted at at least three other times. One more reason why I love seeing how everything ties together. I also loved learning this history about the Gods, things that no one else knew, things that our religions would probably consider heresies. 

I'm so glad we left him Thriss.

And Farazil? NOT OUR FAVORITE PERSON RIGHT NOW.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

About Farazil, can he just ride along inside someone?  If not, looking back where there any indications not all was right with Flicker?  I guess that probably depends on how long he was in Flicker.


----------



## Piratecat

As a reminder, we were pretty sure that Farazil rode a local into this gate months and months ago. In fact, outside of this place we found a dead body that probably was this same person; not being able to leave or enter the outer demiplane trapped him. That means that Farazil was probably stuck, either bodiless or inside a starved corpse.

Apparently he solved this by entering Flicker as we passed by.

Yeah, not my favorite person.


----------



## StevenAC

Piratecat said:


> As a reminder, we were pretty sure that Farazil rode a local into this gate months and months ago. In fact, outside of this place we found a dead body that probably was this same person; not being able to leave or enter the outer demiplane trapped him. That means that Farazil was probably stuck, either bodiless or inside a starved corpse.
> 
> Apparently he solved this by entering Flicker as we passed by.
> 
> Yeah, not my favorite person.



Looking back at the description of the party's entrance into Naslund:



> Grey Wolf wonders aloud what became of Farazil when the dwarf died.
> 
> “Doesn’t he go back to the plane of shadow if his host body dies?” asks Ernie, trying to remember what they once learned of the Carch Din.
> 
> “If he’s still here, he’ll possess us if he wants to talk,” says Morningstar, only half-joking.
> 
> Dranko grins. “Hey, Flicker…!”
> 
> “Are you volunteering me?” squawks Flicker. “Because… no. No way!”
> 
> “I’m asking if you’re still you,” says Dranko.
> 
> Flicker’s eyes go wide; the thought hadn’t occurred to him.
> 
> “Yes!” he exclaims, looking around. “And I’d like to keep it that way!”



So either Farazil was already possessing Flicker, and was pretending not to be, or Dranko gave him the idea... 

On another topic...  With the campaign's conclusion, I too have been reading through the whole story again -- and have taken the opportunity to perform a thorough reorganization of all the Collected Story Hour files.  While the content of course hasn't changed, the presentation has been significantly upgraded, as follows:


Most importantly, I've taken on board a lesson learned while doing the _Halmae_ and _A Rose in the Wind_ Story Hours, and introduced inter-line spacing into the text.  This increases the page count by about ten percent, but (to me at least) makes for a more comfortable reading experience.


Many of the fonts used for letters, documents, dreams, thoughts etc. have been changed and/or increased in size, again for better readability.


Some of the chapter divisions have been moved slightly, so that they fall in more dramatically appropriate places.  Also, the Prologue is now properly integrated into Part One, and the irritating lack of symmetry (well, irritating to me, anyway ) which saw Part One end up with ten chapters but Part Two with only nine has been fixed.  The extra chapter title in Part Two also let me give a nod to Dranko, back in the part of the story where he was still allowed to be famous... 


Now that the campaign is over, the stats for the null shadows and the blood fox, which had to be kept separate so the players wouldn't see them, have been put back into the main text.


I'm no longer providing a version of the Story Hour with everything in one file. Not only did it require a different page-numbering to the individual chapter files (thereby screwing up various page references in the text), but at 1150 pages -- and counting -- it was becoming just too slow and unwieldy to work with.  Instead, I've created consolidated files for each of the three parts of the Story Hour, complete with front cover and Contents pages.
I've also added a new chapter to Part Three, bringing the story right up to date with the Company's adventures in Naslund...  Enjoy!


----------



## carborundum

StevenAC said:


> So either Farazil was already possessing Flicker, and was pretending not to be, or Dranko gave him the idea...




Oooh, I'd love to know if it was planned this way, or if something the players said gave Sagiro a fiendish idea 

StevenAC - thank you again for your efforts. The monsterPDF was stressing out my tablet but these new babies make it a happy chappie again! Can't give you any more xp for a while though ;-)


----------



## Sagiro

carborundum said:


> Oooh, I'd love to know if it was planned this way, or if something the players said gave Sagiro a fiendish idea
> 
> StevenAC - thank you again for your efforts. The monsterPDF was stressing out my tablet but these new babies make it a happy chappie again! Can't give you any more xp for a while though ;-)




I knew that Flicker had become Farazil's host from the moment the Company went through the Arch.  It was hard to keep a straight face when Dranko mentioned the possibility, and Flicker started vehemently denying it.  Understand:  Flicker wasn't lying.  _He_ didn't think he was Farazil's host, and really was horrified at the very thought.  

Also:  StevenAC, thanks again for all of your hard work!  I feel like I should be paying you royalties or something.


----------



## Piratecat

Sagiro said:


> I knew that Flicker had become Farazil's host from the moment the Company went through the Arch.  It was hard to keep a straight face when Dranko mentioned the possibility, and Flicker started vehemently denying it.



Ladies and gentlemen, Sagiro may be the best liar actor I know. Flicker's horrified denial was so convincing!


----------



## StevenAC

Sagiro said:


> I knew that Flicker had become Farazil's host from the moment the Company went through the Arch.  It was hard to keep a straight face when Dranko mentioned the possibility, and Flicker started vehemently denying it.  Understand:  Flicker wasn't lying.  _He_ didn't think he was Farazil's host, and really was horrified at the very thought.



Ah, yet another masterful RBDM moment... 



> Also:  StevenAC, thanks again for all of your hard work!  I feel like I should be paying you royalties or something.



Believe me, it's been a pure pleasure.  Pardon the Sally Field moment, but I'd just like to thank you and everyone else who's had kind words to say about the collected Story Hour. It began (nearly a decade ago, now! ) as an entirely private exercise, but my hope from the start was always to produce a document worthy of this campaign's incredible quality.  I remember it wasn't until more than a year later that I dared to show it to you (and subsequently made it public)...  It's always lovely to hear that others are enjoying it too.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 338*_
*Will, Honor and Knowledge*

No one looks more aghast than Flicker himself.  “What?  No! NO!”

Ernie wheels on him.  “Get out of my friend!”

Then Flicker’s expression changes, as does his body language.  “You’re spoiling all my fun,” says Farazil, addressing Viersk.

There is a collective sigh among the Company.  Flicker’s countenance changes again.  “What?  Why is everyone looking at me like that!  I’m not Farazil!  I’m not!  Oh… crap.”

Ernie regards him sadly.  “Flick, you got Faraziled.”

“Well,” says Farazil.  “He was the easiest one.  And it was so boring, waiting, I had to possess _someone_.”

Aravis peers at Flicker/Farazil.  “How did you get in here in the first place?”

“I was doing exactly what I said I was going to do,” says Farazil.  “I was trying to find Tarsos for you.   I tracked him to the Isle of Karth, so I jumped into the body of some dwarf, and found my way down to the arch at the bottom of the Downward Spiral.  Then I found I couldn’t get back out, and couldn’t get inside the walls. The dwarf eventually starved to death.  I didn’t have enough food!”

Dranko nods.  “And then when we came in, you jumped into Flicker.”

“Yep.”

“And you didn’t bother to say, ‘Hey, it’s Farazil.’”

“I wanted to assess the situation first.”

Morningstar glowers.  “You mean, you wanted to wait to see if we were in horrible danger, and then maybe leave us trapped somewhere again?”

Farazil looks hurt.  “Hey!  No, no, no.  Remember, I was under contract for that, and I hardly knew you guys.  God’s Thorn is water under the bridge.”

Aravis shakes his head.  “Now is not the time.  We can nail him to a tree later.”

“Look,” says Dranko.  “We’ve been looking for you, and we’re glad you’re okay.”

“And I’m glad to be rescued!”

“Can you ride around in someone without taking full control?” Dranko asks.

“You mean like I have been the entire time, since I jumped into Flicker’s body?  Yes, I can do that.”

“Then let Flicker slide forward and take control, and we’ll chat with you later.”

“Fine.”

Flicker comes back to himself.  “He was talking, wasn’t he?  He’s really taken me over?”

He gets nods and sympathetic looks.

“Dammit!  Get out!

“Flick,” says Dranko, “is it okay if he rides around in you for a while?”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

“It’s the only way he can get out of here,” Aravis notes.

“Oh, that’s terrible!” Flicker exclaims.  “Sure wouldn’t want to leave him here forever, to suffer the same fate that… ow!  Ow, stop it!  My tongue!  Leave my tongue alone!”

Morningstar stares daggers.  “Farazil, you’re not helping.”

“As much as I would enjoy it,” says Aravis,  “I don’t think he should be left behind in this place.”

Flicker throws up his hands.  “Fine.  I guess, at least if he’s inside me, you all know where he is.”

Ernie is nearly as incredulous as Flicker.  “Yeah, inside the one of us who can sneak up behind people and inflict copious amounts of bodily harm!”

“You know,” says Farazil, “I still wish to be a citizen of your fine Kingdom above all else, and I doubt King Crunard will look favorably on my petition _if I’ve murdered one of you!_”

“We can work something out,” says Dranko.  “It’s all good.”

Ernie wheels on Dranko.  “When did you get all reasonable?”

“We need all the resources we can at our disposal,” says Aravis.

“Also,” says Farazil, “please keep in mind that I followed your quarry just as I promised, and was rewarded with months of being stuck in this dismal place.   I’m grateful for the rescue, and intend to be no trouble for you.”

Dranko claps his hands.  “Great.  Now give Flicker back.  And don’t flee to someone else without talking to us first.”

Kibi, seeing that there’s little more to be done about King Farazil the Soul Eater, turns to Viersk.  “So, how exactly do we get out of here?”

“It is a simple ritual.  Here.”  

He raises his hands, and knowledge comes to them.  They are trapped in Naslund no longer.

“One last question,” says Aravis.  “Was the blood spilled by Tarsos and Meledien, that’s partly Adversary blood – does it taint this place?”

“It is not causing any harm,” says Viersk.  “And it is now part of Naslund’s history.  If the blood is somewhat from a God, however malign, it is not out of place.”

“We’re sorry about the Tree,” says Morningstar. 

“Do not be.  It will grow back its lost limbs, just as the Sand Guardians are ready to reform and attack.   On the way out, stay close to whoever is holding the Ward.   You are fortunate indeed that you came here _after_ Drosh fled… or we would not be having this discussion.”

“And Tarsos and Meledien would be dead,” says Kibi.  “Speaking of those two, what can you tell us about the artifacts they stole?”

Viersk looks aggrieved at the topic.  “The Bulwark of Leantha is a very powerful shield, with strong divinatory powers.   And the Spear of Caba – do not let it touch you.  If it burns out your heart, it annihilates your soul.”

There is a collective groan from the Company.  There will be no coming back from the dead for Cencerra and her group.


/*/


As the Company prepares to head back down the long corridor of Naslund, Viersk bids them a final farewell.  “I have enjoyed this visit.  Perhaps destiny will elevate you, such that I will see some of you again.”

“In the meantime,” asks Dranko, “should we keep your existence a secret?”

“Use discretion,” Viersk advises.  “If you spread the word, it could spark pilgrimages, and the pilgrims would all starve outside the walls.”

Right.

Soon enough, the party arrives back where the tombs of Aurelia and Nemmin wait across from one another.  

“Ladies first,” says Ernie, and so Morningstar dons the Ward of Drosh and walks slowly down the short hallway to Aurelia’s resting place.  It still feels right for her to be here, and now there is no resistance at all to her approach.   She clutches her holy symbol as she enters, and the moment she crosses the threshold, the room’s aspect changes.  Above her, instead of a stone ceiling, a night sky blazes with stars.

Beyond the sealed sarcophagus of Aurelia, on a short stone pedestal, rests a black steel hunting knife.  

Morningstar can feel a presence in the room with her, a presence that brings the comfort of a deep and fruitful sleep; of Dreamwalking; of rendering aid to those in great need.

“It feels like home here,” she murmurs. 

The answering voice sounds in her mind, soft and serene and full of power. *I have made it so.  Welcome, Morningstar.*

“Thank you,” Morningstar whispers.  “You are Aurelia?”

*I was.  Now I rest eternally.*

Morningstar kneels before the pedestal.

*That is for you.  Ell foresaw this need, long ago.*

“It’s a knife…” says Morningstar doubtfully.

*Not for you.*

While Morningstar wonders what that means, Aurelia continues.  *I am honored to be in your presence, Morningstar of Ell.  Your journey has been greater than mine.  If you keep on this path, you will one day rest beside me.*

“That would be an incredible honor,” says Morningstar, awestruck.

*For both of us.*

“I feel that I’ve made many mistakes…”

*Of course!  You are mortal, after all.  But you learn from your mistakes.   You’ll make more mistakes before the end, I am sure.*

“Is there anything I can do to serve?”

*I want for nothing.  And you are serving Ell most capably.  Stay the course, Morningstar.  Now, take your gift.  It is Ell’s Will.*

Instinctively, Morningstar begins to utter the standard litany of evening prayers.  Even as she does so, she hears a second voice echoing her own, praying along with her.  When she touches the knife, it warms in her hand, bends, extends, and becomes a gleaming black morningstar with ivory spikes.   And she knows:  the name of this weapon is _Ell’s Will_, and its powers are great.

*This is the weapon that the Goddess gave to me.  In part, it brought down the Spider God Kazon.  It could not kill Him, but it caused Him great pain.*

Morningstar stares with reverence at the weapon in her hand.  “I hope to put it to good use.”

*I’m certain that you will.  Dream of it tonight.  It has even more to offer you.*

Morningstar finishes her prayers and departs with thanks.   Walking as though in a dream, she returns to her Company.

“What was she like?” asks Ernie.

“Wonderful!” is all Morningstar can say.

“Nice weapon!” says Dranko, looking at the glowing weapon in his wife’s hand.

“Don’t lick it,” Ernie advises.  

“It’s called Ell’s Will,” says Morningstar.  And then, thinking of one of her earliest battles when her weapon got tangled in a shrub, she adds with a laugh, “Bushes beware!”  

/*/


Ernie’s experience is quite similar in some ways, and altogether different in others.  Like Morningstar, he finds that with the Ward of Drosh around his neck he can walk the full length of his hallway without hindrance.  As he approaches Nemmin’s tomb, he feels himself filled with strength, power and confidence.   Once in the chamber itself he sees what could not be seen from without; the walls are festooned with weaponry.   Beautiful pieces are everywhere: swords, axes, pikes, maces, more swords.  But there is one spot, directly opposite the sarcophagus, where instead of an instrument of war, a holy symbol of Yondalla hangs from a silver peg.  

“She is our blade and our bowl,” Ernie says in a quiet but fervent voice.  “She is our source and our shield.  And… there’s a lot of weaponry here, but only one of Her.”  He walks steadily to where the holy symbol waits.

*Ernest!*  The voice sounds all around him.  *About frikkin’ time!*

“Sorry?”

*It’s all right. You showed up. That’s something.*  The voice is boisterous, gently mocking but not at all cruel.  It conveys vigor and a distinct lack of decorum.

“Well,” says Ernie, taking a deep breath, “I lost track of time while I was out saving the world three or four times.”

*Yeah, yeah.  You’re really busy out there, I’m sure.*

“And how have you been in here, Nemmin?” asks Ernie, warming to the tenor of the conversation.  “Keeping everything polished, I see.”

*I don’t do that*, says Nemmin.  *Think I have to lift a finger in here?  It’s eternal rest for me!*

Ernie smirks. “I suppose that’s nice.  What about food?”

*I don’t need to eat.*

“Don’t need to eat?” Ernie gasps.  “What kind of eternal rest is that?”

*You get used to it.  I’m happy.  But this little visit isn’t about me.  Ernie, you are going to become something.  I don’t know what; it’ll be whatever your nature dictates.*

“Will there be tentacles?” asks Ernie nervously?

*I don’t know.  What have you been up to out there?*

“It’s not what _I’ve_ been up to,” Ernie grumbles.  “But how do I start this ‘becoming.’  Do I pray?”

*If you want.  I’m sure Yondalla wouldn’t mind.  But if you just want to get on with it, take the thing on the wall.  The Holy Symbol.  The weapons aren’t for you.*

“I know,” says Ernie.  “I have one.”

*Yes.  You have Tava’s Righteous Fury.  But you should say good bye to it.*

“Oh,” says Ernie, unable to hide his disappointment.  “Er… bye?”

Tava’s Righteous Fury speaks.  *Nemmin is right.  My time with you is finished.  You have done well, and ended your own goblin menace, but now I must go where I am needed more, to a place where goblins are still a threat.*

“That’s the problem with goblins,” says Ernie.  “Always menacing.”

*They are a difficulty on many worlds.  I have enjoyed our time together, Ernest.*

Ernie smiles.  “I have too.  I hope the next wielder has as good luck with you as I have had.”

*As for you, I am being replaced with something greater.  You will not keenly feel my absence.*

Nemmin, disembodied voice though he is, makes a sound of clearing his throat.  *This is very touching, I’m sure, but can you let Ernie get on with it?  I’ve been waiting a long time for this.  I want to see what happens!*

Ernie reaches for the holy symbol, but somehow he finds his hand instead grasping the hilt of a sword.  Its blade flares with golden light as he tightens his grip, and he feels himself changing, not a mere physical transformation, but a true metamorphosis of being.  Inwardly he gains in perspective and piety, and the feeling grows stronger as the seconds pass.  After a moment of this the fire in his veins dies down, leaving him an empty vessel waiting to be filled.   In his soul, he knows:  he is a true cleric of Yondalla.  He drops to his knees.

*Interesting.*

“I didn’t know I wanted this gift,” Ernie whispers.  “But now that I have it, I realize that I’ve needed it.”

*The sword is named Honor of Nemmin*

Ernie grins.  “You had a sword named after you?  Nice!  And I’d say you deserve it, since you killed a God with it.”

*Almost. I wounded a God with it.   I and that Ellish warrior woman, Aurelia, we were on the same line, facing down Kazon.*

“She’s across the hall, you know.”

*I know.  We don’t talk, but we feel each other’s presence, and understand something of one another. She’s… well, let’s just say she probably wasn’t the life of the party back when she was alive, but she was one fantastic warrior.  As true a paladin of Ell as ever lived. So, yeah, take the sword.  Go smite things with it. Its power will make you smite things.  Prime you to smite things.  It will take something out of you to use – you’re still a mortal after all.  You’ll figure it out.*

“Will it hurt?” Ernie asks.

*Maybe.  Not that it’s ever stopped you before.  It takes an anvil to do that!*  Nemmin laughs as he adds, *Oh, sorry, should I not have brought that up?*

“I have a list,” says Ernie.  “’Don’t fight against anvils’ is one of the first things on it.”

Nemmin’s voice becomes stern.  *Here’s something else for your list.  Take the Honor of Nemmin, and carve a bloody swath through your enemies.  That’s what I’d do if I were still alive!  Just don’t die the way I did.*

“In battle?”

*Spider bite.*

“Ew.”

*I think your friends might be getting bored out there.  Go kill stuff.*

“It was an honor to meet you,” says Ernie, bowing to the sarcophagus.

*We could meet again you know.  You’re most of the way there.*

Ernie stammers.  “No, I’m not…”

*False modesty is a crock.*

“It’s not false!” Ernie protests.

*Look.  Ernest.  Consider what you have done in this life, and what are you likely to do in the future.  How does it compare with every other halfling on Abernia?  Do you think everyone saves the world on a regular basis?*

“They could have,” says Ernie, “in the right circumstances…”

*No. No they couldn’t.  Yondalla chose you for a reason, Ernie.  Your modesty is touching, but come on, cut the crap.*

“Yes sir.”

*It was good meeting you.  I’ve had a long time wondering what you’d be like, and all joking aside, I’m impressed.  Fight the good fight, Ernest Roundhill.*

“Bloody swath coming up.”


/*/


Back in the main hall, the others press him for details about his meeting.  Ernie shares his encounter and shows off his new sword.  “I don’t know what it does yet.”  

There is one more stop to make before departing the Necropolis of the Gods.  As Viersk bid him, Aravis takes the Ward of Drosh and walks the hall to the tomb of Leantha, Kivian Goddess of Knowledge.   In the burial chamber the walls are lined with shelves and the shelves are crammed with books.   The lid of the sarcophagus likes askew on the floor, but to Aravis the thought of peeking inside is discomforting.   There is an overwhelming sense of knowledge and understanding in this room, so much that if Aravis were to open his mind to it, he would surely be consumed.

*Aravis!*

The voice sounds loud and imperious.

“Yes, my Lady?”

*Once, I was knowledge. * Her voice sounds twice – once when she speaks, and a following whisper like an echo. She pauses between each sentence.  

*Your trials will be great (will be great).  You may ask a question of me (question of me).   You may not understand the answer (understand the answer).  I don’t know how you will receive it, for you are a mortal.  But you may ask (you may ask).*

Aravis hardly has to think.  One question overwhelms all others.  “How do we stop the Adversary?”

For a moment there is no answer.   Aravis asks, “Would you like me to restore the lid to your sarcophagus?”

*That is not your task (not your task).*

There is another moment of silence before Leantha speaks again.  

*Your question is difficult (is difficult).  Your Travelers, even in their collective might, could not stop him (could not stop him).  But I was Knowledge, and you may receive an answer (receive an answer).*

“Thank you, my Lady.”

*Go!*


…to be continued…


----------



## Siuis

Few dozen?

Uh, Sagiro, I've linked several dozen people myself. Who knows how many these other folks have?

Sagiro, your story hour here has directly impacted how I not only play, but view gaming in general. I am still somewhat agog at it being over. But... Wow, man. Wow.


EDIT: ahaha. Took me a bit to realize I'd dropped the quote I was responding to.
Regardless... I need to share with a couple new folks.


Wow.


----------



## Piratecat

Oh Farazil, you complete and utter jerk. The fact that you aren't lying just annoys me more.

KidCthulhu was really pleased about getting to change Ernie to 100% cleric; she wasn't able to keep up with damage output as a fighter/cleric, and I know that she regretted how those fighter levels were keeping Ernie away from top-tier spells. I loved how Sagiro tied the change into in-game plot.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Were there a lot of fighter levels to swap out?

And what about Dranko, he's got a few cleric levels doesn't he?  No dead gods/avatars for him to snatch some cool toys from?


----------



## Piratecat

Dranko actually has 5 cleric levels, but even stretching it you couldn't exactly call him devout. Well, that's not true. He serves Delioch 100% faithfully in his own way. He's just not a big fan of church hierarchy, pomp, circumstance or rigamarole. He doesn't even think much of the church's high priest. That gets him spells but we've never had the sort of close relationship to Delioch that we've had with Yondalla or Ell. 

And you know what? I haven't really missed it other than a few bittersweet moments - like this one, here in the necropolis. A close relationship with their Gods is Ernie's and Morningstar's thing. Dranko is defined by self-reliance, and it would be cutting in on their territory to pretend otherwise.

I've occasionally thought about somehow removing the cleric levels, or making them more useful, but I've never wanted to. They give him very minor offensive ability, but they're great for defense and utility, and more importantly they're a core part of who Dranko is. I'd have a lot of trouble playing the character without that religious grounding. (And also, I'm an inveterate optimizer who shouldn't be trusted to completely rebuild Dranko for more offense. Havng a few cleric levels is useful for toning down his combat effectiveness.)


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Once again I find myself blown away by this story, and filled with admiration for the players.

Plus, "Bloody swath, coming right up!" is going on the list of Favourite Quotes.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> Dranko actually has 5 cleric levels, but even stretching it you couldn't exactly call him devout. Well, that's not true. He serves Delioch 100% faithfully in his own way. He's just not a big fan of church hierarchy, pomp, circumstance or rigamarole. He doesn't even think much of the church's high priest. That gets him spells but we've never had the sort of close relationship to Delioch that we've had with Yondalla or Ell.
> 
> And you know what? I haven't really missed it other than a few bittersweet moments - like this one, here in the necropolis. A close relationship with their Gods is Ernie's and Morningstar's thing. Dranko is defined by self-reliance, and it would be cutting in on their territory to pretend otherwise.
> 
> I've occasionally thought about somehow removing the cleric levels, or making them more useful, but I've never wanted to. They give him very minor offensive ability, but they're great for defense and utility, and more importantly they're a core part of who Dranko is. I'd have a lot of trouble playing the character without that religious grounding. (And also, I'm an inveterate optimizer who shouldn't be trusted to completely rebuild Dranko for more offense. Havng a few cleric levels is useful for toning down his combat effectiveness.)




You say that all in present tense, like you're still playing him...

So can we see the stats on Ernie's replacement for _Tava's Righteous Fury_?


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 339*_
*Another One Comes Home to Roost*

Of course, the Company presses Aravis about what he learned in the Tomb of Leantha.

“I could only learn what she chose to tell me.  If I had tried to learn everything I could, it would have killed me.”

“So what _did_ you learn?” Morningstar asks impatiently.

“Nothing.  Yet.”

“Everything in due course,” Grey Wolf mutters.

“What I _asked_ was,  how do we defeat the Adversary?   She told me I _may_ receive an answer.”

/*/

Leaving Naslund is actually a simple matter; the ritual is short and uncomplicated, though it requires a handful of sand from inside the amethyst tower.  The Company gathers the bodies of Cencerra’s group, along with the Dwarven smith, and Aravis performs the ritual. (As he does so, Dranko scrawls a quick note to leave behind:  ‘Hi!  You’re kind of stuck here, maybe forever, because there’s no good way for a non-God to leave.  Sorry?  Good luck!  -Dranko.’)

When Aravis tosses the handful of sand through the gartine arch, it flashes to an opaque red.  The party steps through, and they find themselves at the bottom of the Downward Spiral.   They have escaped Naslund intact, and are now in possession not only of two legendary weapons, but also of a powerful Ward of Drosh, which will allow them to survive in the presence of even a powerful Divine Being.  The mood is generally celebratory, but Morningstar is not smiling.

She’s staring down at her hand as if she’s never seen it before.  Specifically, she’s staring at the blood-mark left there years ago by the winged ogre calling himself the Great One.   Her hand itches furiously; it seems that her long-awaited destiny as  “The Slayer” may be upon her!

But before she can say anything about it to the others, Ernie turns angrily to Flicker.  “All right.  You.  Out!”

Farazil chuckles.  “Then which other of you would you like me to inhabit?”

Ernie splutters.  “Why… I… you…”

“It’s my nature!” says Farazil, raising Flicker’s arms.  “Excuuuuse me!”

“Your nature stinks,” Ernie gripes.

Kibi clears his throat.  “He did track Meledien and Tarsos for us…”

“I’m glad _somebody_ noticed!” exclaims Farazil.

“You possessed my mother,” says Ernie.  “And now my friend.  Forgive me for not appreciating you properly.”

“Like we’ve asked you before,” says Morningstar, “announce when you’re leaving, and announce when you’ve come back.  If you want to gain our trust, that’s how.”

“It’s like entering someone’s house,” says Ernie.  “You knock first, and wait to be invited in.”

“I _couldn’t_ ask for permission,” says Farazil.  “That’s not how it works!  And Morningstar, I wasn’t sure if _I_ could trust _you_.  I’m still not _entirely_ sure that I can.”

“Trust breeds trust,” says Aravis.  “We’re going to have to start trusting one another.  Because the world will end if we don’t.  Again.”

Then Morningstar changes the subject.  “I should probably mention that I’m getting the call to be the Slayer.”


/*/


As one might imagine, that little announcement causes quite the commotion.  Right there, still in the Spiral, they sit and review everything they remember about their long-ago encounter with the ogres.    The ogres had driven out the dwarves, the party recalls, but were still nervous about a possible dwarvish incursion back into their subterranean empire.   After the ogres had captured the Company, they agreed to free their captives if they would de-petrify their “Great One,” a blue-skinned bat-winged ogre.  After Morningstar had broken the enchantment and returned the Great One to the land of the living, the monster had “rewarded” her by declaring her ‘The Slayer,” and prophesying that 'When the time comes for the Throggun’s ascension, you will be summoned, and you will slay again.  Return here at once.'

No one knows what the “Throggun” is, but they’ve all had a sinking feeling for years that it won’t be good news for the benighted dwarves who still live nearby.   They speculate that perhaps the war between the two races resumed with the return of the Great One, and now Morningstar will be asked to throw in her lot with the ogres.

The general feeling among the party is that they should at least go there and speak to the Great One.  Aravis admits that while tracking Meledien, Tarsos and Seven Dark Words is their highest priority, the three of them are certainly _mind blanked_ and the trail is months cold.  With no good way to track them, they might as well deal with the Throggun.

Somewhere up above them, where the sun is presumably shining, it is late afternoon.  They’re weary and beat-up from their excursion into Naslund; perhaps the Throggun can wait until tomorrow.   Morningstar casts a short _commune_ to find out for certain.

_Dark Lady, thank you for your gift.  I will do my best to be worthy of it.  I received a summons about the Throggun’s ascension.  If we wait one day to answer, will it cause more harm to us or to the dwarves?_

*ALMOST CERTAINLY NOT*

_What if we wait two days?_

*PROBABLY NOT*

Clearly a trend…

_Farazil’s stated intention is that he wants citizenship.  Can we trust his word on that?_

*HIS CLAIM IS TECHNICALLY TRUE*

Her questions answered, she and the rest _dimension door_ back to the surface, and hike back to Elkin’s bay.   They find the carpenter Chennik having a drink in the Sleeping Fish, and return to him the remains of Heckern the smith.  Aravis explains briefly that the hapless dwarf had starved to death.

“I would maintain your taboos against going to the bottom of the Downward Spiral,” he says.

Chennik shakes his head.  “How did you get out, then?”

Aravis smiles. “We have many skills that ordinary people do not have.”

“Can you teach us?”

“No,” says Ernie curtly.

Chennik looks offended.  “Well excuse me for asking!”

“You don’t understand,” says Ernie.  “You can only get in or out if you have a particular characteristic that cannot be trained or acquired.  Aravis here is the only person who has it.”

“Fine,” says Chennik.  “I’ve been telling folk to stay away from that place for years, anyhow.   We’ll give Heckern a proper burial.”

Flicker speaks… no, it’s Farazil.  “I think Heckern will be happy in the afterlife.  From what I know of the guy, I mean.  I feel badly; he was a good dwarf, and didn’t deserve to die that way.”  He sees Ernie staring daggers at him despite his comforting words, and adds, “But if you think I deserve some comeuppance, understand that I felt part of his suffering as he slowly died.”

Ernie fills his words with menace.  “I don’t think you deserve _some_ of the comeuppance…”

“Yeah, I know, you think I deserve all of it.  I get it.”

“You were a hired assassin sent by Darkeye to kill us,” says Ernie.  “You’re only trustworthy when someone’s paying you.   Hey, maybe we should pay _you_ to infiltrate Darkeye’s fortress for us!”

“I can’t,” says Farazil.

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.  Ask me anything else, but not that.”

Morningstar looks up sharply at Farazil.  “It’s because you’re still working for her, aren’t you.”

“No.  I promise you that I am not.”

“Then what’s the problem?” asks Dranko.  “Could Darkeye recognize you, and blind you?”

Farazil doesn’t answer.

“Right,” says Dranko.  “You got your butt whipped.”

“Technically it wasn’t _my_ butt,” says Farazil.  “It was someone else’s, whomever I was in at the time.”

“Did you see her?” asks Ernie.  “See Darkeye?  What does she look like?”

“No one sees her,” says Farazil with a sigh.  “It wasn’t allowed.”

“But you could show us where she is, on a map,” Dranko prods.

“It’s in the middle of a big forest...”

Aravis curiosity has been peaked.  “Was Darkeye able to prevent you moving from body to body?”

“Yes,” Farazil admits.  “Not physically, but by a… forced agreement.  Look, I was bound to the service of the Sharshun.  I convinced them that I had fulfilled my end of our contract when I locked you in God’s Thorn.  But because it was a technicality, I made other agreements in order to be fully free of them altogether.  Those agreements prevent me from going back there.  If I do, bad things will happen.  So, I’d both be going back on my word, _and_ I’d get somebody else’s butt kicked.  Probably Flicker’s.  So, let me be clear:  I’m not going.  But I’ll tell you this much:  they’re Sharshun.  They have a castle, but it’s not… there.  I was never clear how it worked.  When they let me out to come after you, it wasn’t there when I left it.  And when I came back, they had to bring me back in, and I don’t remember the details.”

“Were they in another dimension?” asks Dranko.  “Cause we understand that stuff, you know.”

“Maybe it’s like a glorified _Mordenkainen’s Mansion_, Aravis muses.

“I don’t know,” says Farazil.  “I can tell you more or less where in the forest it is, but I’m not going close to it.  I’ll point out where I _think_ it is on a map.  It’s heavily warded, in pretty much every way there is. Or at least it was.  Good luck getting in.”

But finding Darkeye is a task for another day.   They _teleport_ back to the Greenhouse, where Eddings greets them with arms full of cats.

“Nice to see you again,” he says with a bow of his head.

“We were just at the graveyard of the Gods,” says Dranko with his usual grin.

Eddings blinks his magical eyes, the only sign of surprise.  “Of course you were.  Where exactly _is_ the Graveyard of the Gods, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Right next to the Garden Shop of the Gods,” says Ernie.

“Droll as always, Master Roundhill.”

Aravis heads upstairs to the secret room and contacts Ozilinsh on the crystal ball.   He delivers a full report, including the tidbit about the discovery of Farazil, and the unrecoverable deaths of Cencerra and company.   When Ozilinsh asks what’s next on their agenda, Morningstar answers:  “The Throggun’s ascension.”

“Oh, that!” says Ozilinsh.  “Tell me what a ‘Throggun’ is when you get back!”

/*/

While the rest of the Company prepares for sleep, and Aravis tries a fruitless _vision_ of “Throggun,” Morningstar drops into Ava Dormo and dreams herself to the holy city of Kallor, there to make a full report to the High Priestess Rhiavonne.   It is testament to Morningstar’s importance that the leader of her church drops all other business to make time for her.

“Thank you for meeting me so early,” Morningstar says with a bow.

“It is no difficulty,” says Rhiavonne.  “Now, what is this all about?”

“You’ll have to excuse me,” says Morningstar.  “It’s been a long, strange day.  We went to a place called Naslund, which is the burial place of the Gods.”

Rhiavonne’s eyebrows shoot up.  “You did, did you?  And where is Naslund?”

“The gateway is on the Isle of Karth.  The only reason we could get both in and out, is because of Aravis, who has a partially divine nature.”

“Ah, yes, the little cat godling you have with you.”

Morningstar successfully stifles a laugh.  “Some of what we learned, the Gods have intentionally obscured, and do not want generally known.  But I feel like I need to talk about it.”

Rhiavonne smiles.  “I imagine you do.  You can count on my discretion.”

“We went in looking for Cencerra, a member of the Spire.”

“I’m familiar with her.  Did you find her?”

Morningstar’s eyes tear up.  “She’d dead.  And her soul has been destroyed.”

“Is that an effect of dying in Naslund?”

“No.  It’s an effect of…  Meledien and Tarsos entered Naslund.  They infected themselves with the Black Evil Goo, which we now know is the blood of the Adversary…”

Rhiavonne interrupts.  “The Adversary?  The great malign God from whom Ell and the others fled?”

“Yes,” Morningstar confirms.  “There is a place in Kivia which is a great crater, filled with the Adversary’s blood.  Tarsos and Meledien infected themselves so that they could raid the burial places of the Gods.  They destroyed the beings who were protecting it; the place was weakened by Drosh’s abdication.  They were able to steal a weapon that destroys souls.”

“And they used it on Cencerra on their way out?”

“They used it on all of them.”

Rhiavonne is silent for a moment, her head bowed.   After allowing the High Priestess a moment of silence, Morningstar continues.  “The part the Gods do not want known, is that when the Gods fled here from the Adversary, there was a terrible… misunderstanding between the Kivian Gods and the Travelers.  Some Gods were killed.  Those are buried in Naslund.  It was Pikon who finally stepped in and called an end to it.  He invited the Travelers to Charagan.”

Rhiavonne lets out a long breath.  “Amazing,” she whispers.  “I wonder why they don’t want us to know.”

“Shame, I think,” says Morningstar.  “And that they wanted there to be a peaceful accord among all the mortal children on Abernia.”

“Best that such conflicts be forgotten, then,” says Rhiavonne with a nod.

“Have you heard the name Aurelia?” Morningstar asks.

“Yes.  Aurelia was a divine servant of Ell, if I recall my history.  I thought she never made it to Abernia, that when the Gods fled the Adversary, she died defending them on their way here.”

“No,” says Morningstar.  “She fought beside a paladin of Yondalla, against a Spider God of Kivia.  I met Aurelia in Naslund.  This weapon was hers.”

Morningstar lift’s Ell’s Will and hands it to her High Priestess.

“Ell’s Will!” exclaims Rhiavonne.  “You have Ell’s Will.  You… are greatly in Ell’s favor.  This was a weapon crafted at Ell’s express instruction, only to be used by her most direct servants.  Which you are, without a doubt, as we have seen several times over throughout the years.  Wield it well!”

“I will do my best.”

Rhiavonne runs her hands along the haft of the holy weapon, and only after a full minute does she remember to give it back.  As she does so, she asks, “So, how’s that chapter of holy scripture coming along?”

“That is part of why I’m here,” says Morningstar.  “I should write about what I learned in Naslund, but what would it gain anyone, if the Gods’ war was widely known?  It would only polarize the peoples of Abernia.” 

“Perhaps you can couch it in obscure verse or prophecy.   Many of the oldest books and scrolls are written that way.”

Morningstar sighs.  “I was trained very well with a weapon and shield, but not with a pen.  I’ve started the chapter several times.  I’m… really rather better at fighting things.”

Rhiavonne pats her hand.  “Given recent events, perhaps your career as an auteur can wait until your retirement.”

“I have a hard time imagine myself being retired,” says Morningstar with a grimace.  “If I’m going to write, I should do it.  I’m in a very dangerous line of work.”

“I’m certain I can have no true conception of the risks you face on a daily basis,” says Rhiavonne.  “Do as you think best, but I am putting no pressure on you.  I was only curious.”

“Right.  Anyway, I thought I should tell you all of this before I go deal with the Throggun.”

“Ah, that.  I know that’s been bothering you for some time.  I am speechless as always when you give these kinds of reports.  I envy you, and pity you at once.”  

“Why do you envy me?”

“Because you are extraordinarily high in Ell’s favor, and your actions are powering the turning of the world.  You are involved in events that millions of folk on  Abernia will feel keenly.  I, for instance, have never been to the City of Dead Gods.”  

Morningstar laughs.  “It’s a great responsibility,” she points out.

“Yes. And that is why I pity you also.  But you should feel neither pity nor pride; only gratitude.”

“What I’ve gained that I most value is the comradeship of my Company.   I am uncomfortable with the glory, I don’t know what to do with it.”

“It is yours to do with as you well.  Let it blow from your back like dust; or shed it like a skin; or wrap yourself up in it.  You can reflect it back on those you love the most.”

Inwardly, Morningstar feels a great sadness.  _Except for Dranko_, she thinks.  _Glory will never be his._

Rhiavonne continues.  “Ultimately, glory is of no conseuqnece.  Would you do any different, if I told you you would live and die in obscurity, or if you would be the most renowned hero in history?”

“No,” Morningstar admits. 

“Well then.  You should not dwell o’er much on it, I think.”

…

Before Morningstar goes to sleep that night, Dranko asks her if she’ll be able to sleep with the Great One’s mark itching on her hand.  

“Don’t worry about me,” she says.  “I’m a professional sleeper.  What’s more likely to keep me up is knowing I’ll learn more about Ell’s Will tonight.”

But in truth she falls asleep almost at once, and she dreams.  She dreams that she is in Ava Dormo, or maybe’s she’s actually there.  It’s hard to say.  There is a tall woman there, with long white hair.   She greets Morningstar with a salute.

“I am Aurelia.  Or rather, I am your dream of her.  May I?”

She holds out her hand, and Morningstar hands her Ell’s Will.  For a moment Aurelia holds it, and remembers its past.  It glows with a soft light.

“Now it is finished.  Ell’s Will will be dominant against those resistant to magic.  Woe be to those that stand against you.  And I also give you this.”

Aurelia touches Morningstar’s forehead, and Morningstar feels her mind expand, in ways that relate to her understanding of Ava Dormo.  She feels unbound in dream, that nothing can hinder her. 

“Your needs will be great,” says Aurelia.  “Your strength will be great.  Do your best.  Save us all.”

Abruptly Morningstar wakes up.  It is morning, and though she feels as if little time has passed,  she is wholly refreshed.

“Good morning!” she says to Dranko, giving her groggy husband a joyful kick.  “Time to go!  Time to find the Throggun!”

…to be continued…


----------



## Everett

So how about some stats on Morningstar's and Ernie's new weapons?  I mean, I could wait two weeks and ask as a thread bump, but...


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> So how about some stats on Morningstar's and Ernie's new weapons?  I mean, I could wait two weeks and ask as a thread bump, but...



According to my notes:

_*Honor of Nemmin*_ is a +6 keen, good-aligned shortsword, which grants the wielder +10' to movement.   Also, 1/day Ernie can invoke Nemmin's Glory, which lasts for the remainder of the encounter:

- +5 to BAB
- +10 Sacred Bonus to STR
- + 4 Sacred Bonus to AC
- Anyone you damage in this form gets a -4 to hit penalty if they make a melee attack against anyone else.

Invoking Nemmin's Glory uses up an uncast 9th-level cleric spell, and while under its effects, Ernie cannot cast spells or use spell-completion items.


*Ell's Will* is a +6 morningstar with the ghost touch ability.  It allows Morningstar to quicken one healing spell per day of up to 8th level.   In addition, against creatures with spell resistance, it has a +5 unnamed bonus to hit, and does bonus damage per hit equal to the spell resistance of the target.  (No, that's not a typo.  That's some serious bonus damage!)


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> *Ell's Will* is a +6 morningstar with the ghost touch ability.  It allows Morningstar to quicken one healing spell per day of up to 8th level.   In addition, against creatures with spell resistance, it has a +5 unnamed bonus to hit, and does bonus damage per hit equal to the spell resistance of the target.  (No, that's not a typo.  That's some serious bonus damage!)





Without looking through the story archives, I can't recall if Morningstar has ever used a melee weapon.  Was this the first time she'd used the weapon she's named for?


----------



## Piratecat

Everett said:


> Without looking through the story archives, I can't recall if Morningstar has ever used a melee weapon.  Was this the first time she'd used the weapon she's named for?



Nope, although it's become less common as we've risen in levels. For instance, on the very first adventure where we met Sagiro, she fumbled and took out a bush.

To her credit, it was one seriously badass bush.

Ell's Will gives her an option to use against monsters with untenably high spell resistance.


----------



## Everett

*bump*


----------



## Piratecat

I hear that Sagiro has a bad case of Skyrim.


----------



## weiknarf

Sagiro was going to post an update but he took an arrow in the knee.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> I hear that Sagiro has a bad case of Skyrim.




Totally look forward to developing that malady.  And a similar one called Old Republic.

Anyway...


----------



## Sagiro

Actually, to my frustration, I haven't even had time for Skyrim in the past week or two.  Christmas plans/preparation/shopping, plus two time-consuming work projects, and there's precious little time left for anything else.  But the wheels of progress turn, even they creak and buckle a bit.  Here's some more Story Hour, though not too much.  It's all I have written right now!

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 340*_
*Rimk*


Knowing that he’ll again be out of town for a while, Dranko pens a letter to Lucas:  “Survived latest hideous deathtrap that you won’t believe if I tell you.  Now off to fight demonic ogres on another continent.  –Dranko.”  While he’s writing, Morningstar _sends_ to the winged ogre.

_*I’m being summoned?  You have twenty-five words to respond.*_

She gets this response: *Yes.  It is time for you to slay.  Sooner is better.  Meet me at the dragon’s remains.*

So, it’s a date!  They prepare to _teleport_ to eastern Kivia, and the ogrish territory east of Gurund in the Stoneguard Mountains.   As Aravis casts his spell, Dranko remarks, “You know what?  It’s now easier for me to go across the ‘Uncrossable Sea’ to another continent, than it is for me to walk to the next room to take a crap.”

True enough.  In an eyeblink the party is standing in what can best be called a roofless cavern, a gap in the mountains with steep slopes rising around them on all sides.  As they remember, there is an enormous bleaching dragon’s skeleton here in this grassy enclosure.  To the southeast are two enormous double doors set into the rock face, doors which lead to the ogres’ domain.  Ernie notes with annoyance that the journey has moved them seven hours later in the day; it is already late afternoon.  “It’s not right,” he complains.  “A meal just disappeared.”

The winged Great One is not there, so Morningstar issues another _sending_.  *We’re here right now.  Would you care to join us?*

_*I will be there momentarily*_ 

Soon the huge double doors open, and the Great One emerges into the enclosure.  It’s been years since the Company last saw him, but he has not changed.   He is massive, tall, with deep indigo skin and enormous reptilian wings jutting from his back.

“You’re looking well,” says Dranko.

“Thank you,” rumbles the Great One.  Then the purple ogre realizes that Kibi is staring holes through him.

“Mister dwarf,” says the Great One with a small bow.

“Mister demonic ogre,” says Kibi in sullen tones.

“I am not demonic,” says the Great One.  “I am draconic.  My name is Rimk.”  Then, to Morningstar, he says, “I am glad you brought your friends.  You will need them.  It is good that you are here, as promised.”

“Say,” says Dranko.  “We were wondering.  What’s a Throggun?”

“Throggun,” says Rimk, “is an old ogrish word that means “winged terror.”

Ah.  “So the Throggun is your dad?” Dranko asks.

“Exactly.  His name is Azhant the Ancient.”

“What color are his wings?” Dranko presses.

“The same color as the rest of him:  indigo.”  To Morningstar he then says, “I wish you to slay my father; I cannot lift a hand against him.”

Morningstar regards the Great One with a neutral expression.  “And why would we do that?”

“Because he has returned, and has ordered my people to prepare for war, against the dwarves and what remains of Gurund.”  

Well, that puts things in a somewhat different light!  

“And you don’t wish to do that?” asks Morningstar, puzzled.

Rimk sighs.  “It would be a great tragedy for all of us.  The main reason I do not wish him to destroy the dwarves, is that that would call the unwanted attention of the humans.  The ogres have lived long, separated from mankind, and it is well that it is so, for though we are mighty, you are… numerous.  Should there ever be war, should the humans decide that they want to exterminate us, and bend all of their will to that end, they would succeed.   There are champions among you that would cause us great trouble.

“The ogres will not listen to me on this matter.  I hold great sway over them,  but Azhant, indeed the mere memory of him, holds greater sway.  My deep suspicion is that Azhant knows well the endgame of this, that it will his serve his purpose for us to wipe the dwarves out, and for the humans then to wipe _us_ out -- and all to be weakened in the process, to serve his own goals, to solidify his power in the region.  He cares nothing for ogres; there is nothing of ogre in him.  He is powerful, cunning, and deadly.  Honestly, if it weren’t for the prophecy, I wouldn’t give you much chance against him.”

“Are we prophesied to win?” asks Ernie.  Rimk just chuckles.

“Can you tell us anything about his abilities?” asks Morningstar.

“Little,” says Rimk.  “His breath is variable.  He can change it on a daily basis, and sometimes more frequently than that.  His resistances, likewise.  He is also a powerful sorcerer in his own right.  I don’t know what you expect to do about him.”

“Does he have any weaknesses?” 

Rimk laughs.  “No. He is Azhant.  He has never been challenged, never been defeated.”

Morningstar rubs her temples.  “Where can we find him?” 

“His home is known to the ogres as Gad Meng… Cloud Mountain in your tongue. It used to be called the Floating Stronghold by the dwarves; it was one of their great architectural achievements.  They inhabited the entire mountain, ages ago.  Azhant’s abode therein is a series of caverns near the top, above the clouds.   His lair is shielded from divinations, as he has had centuries to build up his defenses.”

“Does he have minions?” Dranko asks.

“We believe so, but are not certain.  He has not been seen active in this region in quite some time.”

“Is his lair trapped?”

“It would not surprise me.”

Dranko laughs.  “Maybe Farazil could just possess him!”

Flicker/Farazil turns to him.:  “I can’t possess a dragon.  Are you crazy?”

Ernie, annoyed at Farazil saying anything at all, musters up some unexpected sarcasm.  “I thought you were good at this.”

Flicker becomes a bit glassy eyed, and then Ernie himself, in an odd tone of voice, says “Don’t mock me.”  Then Flicker says the exact same thing a second later.

Morningstar is furious.  “Farazil, you have just broken faith with us _again_.”

Once again occupying Flicker, Farazil spits a sullen retort.  “Then maybe you should treat me with some respect.”

Morningstar glowers.  “The moment your word becomes worth anything, you’ll earn our respect.  Until then, what you are is a liar and a cheat.”

Ernie, realizing what has happened, loses his temper.  He slams Flicker up against the nearby wall of the mountain, and his voice is a blade of cold anger.  “If you ever do that again, I will kill you, even in Flicker’s body.  Him, I can _resurrect._”

“Ernie!” shouts Flicker in alarm  “Let go of me!”

Ernie does not let go.  “I do not _ever_ want you inside my mind again.  Do you understand me?”

Farazil is defiant.  “Yes,  And I do not _ever_ want to be insulted again.  Do _you_ understand _me_?  You know, I could jump into one of these ogres any time I wanted, and you’d never see me again.  I could make your lives very uncomfortable.  But I’d rather not.  I’d _like_ for our relationship to be more agreeable.  But if you’re just going to constantly mock me, while I’m standing right in your midst, then that will make things extremely difficult.”

“We’re not mocking you,” says Dranko.  “We fear you.  We fear what you can do, and we still have a lot of pent up frustration over the trouble you’ve caused us in the past.”

“You’ve had years,” says Farazil.  “Get over it.”

“ENOUGH!” thunders Aravis, and that buys everyone a few seconds of silence.  Then Kibi mutters, “Maybe if we don’t want to Farazil to take over Flicker, we shouldn’t keep talking to him.”

Flicker agrees.  “Seriously!  Do you know what?  It’s really creepy when you’re suddenly talking to me as if you’ve just been talking to someone else and I have no memory of it.”

“He’s just going to bide his time until he can find a way to betray us again,” says Morningstar.

Rimk has watched all of this with a great fascination.  “Have you all gone mad?” he asks, looking from one to another of the Company.  “What was that?”

No one answers him.

“I must say, my confidence in your ability to kill Azhant has not been bolstered -- though I have gathered that you are all extremely belligerent…” He points at Flicker.  “…toward that one.”  

Dranko is quick to change the subject.  “So, how do we get to Cloud Mountain?”

Rimk points to the south-east.  “It’s about twenty miles that way, and up.  The mountain itself rises up to the clouds.  I believe his lair is at the top.”  Perceiving a certain nonchalance among the party, he adds, “Do not underestimate him.   He is not just another monster in your long list of conquests.”

“Right,” says Dranko.  “So the whole ‘Throggun’s ascension’ thing…”

“It was a metaphor for Azhant’s return from seclusion and likely rise to power,” says Rimk.  “He has not been seen in decades, until just a few days ago.”

Morningstar asks, “Do you know what’s motivating him to do this now?”

“I don’t know,” Rimk admits.  “Whatever he was doing before, I suppose he has grown bored with it.  It is in his nature to seek power.  But understand this, Morningstar: the prophecy does not guarantee success,  but you _must_ make the attempt.  I think you were chosen because you have the greatest chance of defeating the dragon.  And make no mistake; killing Azhant will save many dwarvish lives.  I tell you this truthfully: my personal long-term objective is to see peace between the ogres and the dwarves.”


/*/



Rimk leaves them to plan and scheme.  The Company spends some time discussing dragon-fighting tactics.

“When you fight a dragon,” says Dranko, “don’t do it somewhere it can fly.  Better to fight it somewhere indoors, and restricted.  And I always have our secret weapon:  let it swallow me, and activate my immovable rod.  Problem with that is, it turns out that you can’t cut your way out of a dragon’s gullet with a whip.”

“We should have as many different kinds of damage ready as possible,” says Morningstar, considering Rimk’s warning.

“I bet he’s not immune to ass-kicking damage,” says Dranko.

Before the discussion goes too much further, Morningstar makes the sensible decision to scout out Cloud Mountain in Ava Dormo.  It won’t tell her exactly where the dragon is, or if it has any allies or minions, but knowing the topology of Cloud Mountain’s interior could be invaluable.   All she has to go on is Rimk’s vague ‘about twenty miles that way,” so she drops into the Dreamscape and heads in that direction at top speed.   It doesn’t take her long to cover the distance, but what she finds is simply more mountains, stretching in their dozens for miles in every direction, with many of them rising upward to vanish into the cloud layer.

Knowing that the dragon’s lair is near one of the high peaks, she spends fifteen more minutes flying directly upward, until she herself is looking down upon a puffy white floor of clouds.  It is extremely bright, a cobalt vastness into which protrude a scattering of snowy mountaintops, like islands in a cotton sea.  She spends another hour hopping from peak to peak, each giving her a new perspective on the others, and her thoroughness is rewarded.  One of the highest mountains has a tunnel bored into its side, just above the cloud layer.  If one could walk upon the clouds, one could step off of one and directly into the tunnel.  Back outside Rimk’s domain, she lets the others know of her discovery.   After a quick conversation, she casts _dream anchor_ on Aravis and Kibi, and takes them into Ava Dormo with her.  This way they’ll have seen landing spots for _teleports_ when it’s time to launch their actual assault.

But in the meantime: more scouting!

…to be continued…


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Whoa, a dragon.  Is this the first (live) dragon the company will face?

What was everyone's reaction to learning who/what their target was?  I'm guessing everyone was thinking they'd have to go slaughtering some great dwarven hero/leader or something.


----------



## carborundum

Amazing how whatever Sagiro finds time to write ends in a cliffhanger - or just leaves you craving more in general!


----------



## Piratecat

Innocent Bystander said:


> Whoa, a dragon.  Is this the first (live) dragon the company will face?
> 
> What was everyone's reaction to learning who/what their target was?  I'm guessing everyone was thinking they'd have to go slaughtering some great dwarven hero/leader or something.




We've fought two other (smaller) dragons; one at Verdshane, one ridden by the emperor's raksasha servant back in the past. None this old or puissant. 

As for the target; it was a surprise. I'm going to speculate for a moment. I suspect that Sagiro had many possibilities and, in order to forestall Morningstar's moral concerns about working for the ogre, gave us a task that was in no way reprehensible! It actually felt (to me) a little simplistic and too neat, in that there was no gray area or moral quandary at all. I kept expecting a double cross that never came. I'll be curious to hear his opinion on this. 

Also, dragons SUCK.


----------



## Sagiro

Piratecat said:


> We've fought two other (smaller) dragons; one at Verdshane, one ridden by the emperor's raksasha servant back in the past. None this old or puissant.
> 
> As for the target… it was a surprise. I'm going to speculate for a moment. I suspect that Sagiro had many possibilities and, in order to forestall Morningstar's moral concerns about working for the ogre, gave us a task that was in no way reprehensible! It actually felt (to me) a little simplistic and too neat, in that there was no gray area or moral quandary at all. I kept expecting a double cross that never came. I'll be curious to hear his opinion on this.
> 
> Also, dragons SUCK.



I'd always known that Morningstar (and by extension the rest of the party) was going to be summoned back to kill a Big Bad Dragon.  Now, at the very moment that I first mentioned "The Slayer" and "The Throggun's ascension," I didn't know _exactly_ what was going to be involved.   (I remember having the idea at the time that the big dragon skeleton was going to turn out to be the one they'd fight, but I dropped that idea once the party fought the dracolich in the ravines of Il-Drosh.)

To address Piratecat's question more directly:  it was very early on that I decided that it would be a straight, no-moral-quandary battle royale with a dragon.  And what led me to that decision was the party's collective certainty that there _would_ be a moral quandary; as I'm sure you surmised, I enjoyed subverting player expectations from time to time. 

I figured I'd let you all spend a few years worrying that you'd be called on to kill a bunch of dwarves, and then give you the (pleasant) surprise of a guilt-free draconic ass-kicking.  Simplistic and neat?  Yeah, maybe.  But I figured the game hadn't lacked for moral conundrums over the years.

As for the specific timing; I always knew I'd spring this one fairly late in the campaign, since I wanted it to be an extremely tough dragon, and so needed the PC's to be high level in order to stand a chance.  I was waiting for a good secondary plot hook to come along, and the party's actions in Naslund gave me a very specific role the dragon could play.

Edited to add:  Oh, and you missed three other dragons:  the skeletal dragon AND the dracolich from the ravines in Il-Drosh; and your very first dragon, the baby white from the Black Circle bestiary.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Boy do I need to go through the pdfs for a refresher.  Good thing I've got two weeks of holidays coming up.

I (now) recall the dragon at Verdeshane, and the one in the past.  The dracolich is hard to forget, and I also remember the skeletal dragon, they were the reason I wrote '(live) dragon'  I have no recollection of the baby white though.  Wow, was that a long time ago.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Sagiro said:


> “I bet he’s not immune to ass-kicking damage,” says Dranko.



*snicker*

Our group calls it 'sword to the face damage', but the point remains. (Heh, 'point'... *groan*)



Piratecat said:


> We've fought two other (smaller) dragons; one at Verdshane, one ridden by the emperor's raksasha servant back in the past. None this old or *puissant*.



Puissant is a great, Gygaxian word.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> I'd always known that Morningstar (and by extension the rest of the party) was going to be summoned back to kill a Big Bad Dragon.  Now, at the very moment that I first mentioned "The Slayer" and "The Throggun's ascension," I didn't know _exactly_ what was going to be involved.   (I remember having the idea at the time that the big dragon skeleton was going to turn out to be the one they'd fight, but I dropped that idea once the party fought the dracolich in the ravines of Il-Drosh.)
> 
> To address Piratecat's question more directly:  it was very early on that I decided that it would be a straight, no-moral-quandary battle royale with a dragon.  And what led me to that decision was the party's collective certainty that there _would_ be a moral quandary; as I'm sure you surmised, I enjoyed subverting player expectations from time to time.




The battle that marks Morningstar as "The Slayer" would be unsatisfying somehow if they had to slog through moral quandaries to get to it, given that Morningstar almost never shares the party's moral uncertainties.


----------



## Siuis

Sagiro said:


> According to my notes:
> 
> _*Honor of Nemmin*_ is a +6 keen, good-aligned shortsword, which grants the wielder +10' to movement.   Also, 1/day Ernie can invoke Nemmin's Glory, which lasts for the remainder of the encounter:
> 
> - +5 to BAB
> - +10 Sacred Bonus to STR
> - + 4 Sacred Bonus to AC
> - Anyone you damage in this form gets a -4 to hit penalty if they make a melee attack against anyone else.
> 
> Invoking Nemmin's Glory uses up an uncast 9th-level cleric spell, and while under its effects, Ernie cannot cast spells or use spell-completion items.




Forgive my inherent munchkinism, but my first thought is "in what situation is +10 attack, +5 (7?) damage and marking an enemy worth losing spellcasting for the test of a battle?"

And then I thought about it. As epic games go, yours is definitely epic in scope, but as far as epic mechanics go, your game seems downright _manageable_.

Which sounds like an insult because of the way I wrote that, but it's definitely not.

That's a fascinating level of trust, that I think I will actively work to engender that. A character need only meet about 75% of their optimized potential, because for 99% of the game that will be more than sufficient. I think that's a sign of great DMing, that your players are willing not to twink out, but rust in your discretion.



> *Ell's Will* is a +6 morningstar with the ghost touch ability.  It allows Morningstar to quicken one healing spell per day of up to 8th level.   In addition, against creatures with spell resistance, it has a +5 unnamed bonus to hit, and does bonus damage per hit equal to the spell resistance of the target.  (No, that's not a typo.  That's some serious bonus damage!)




This is a fabulous weapon and I am going to have to give it to an NPC sometime soon, to deal with all the rampant SR 60+ we've got going.



carborundum said:


> Amazing how whatever Sagiro finds time to write ends in a cliffhanger - or just leaves you craving more in general!




I find that all good writing tends to do this.

Also, there's an RBDM quota. He's got to keep it up, you know


----------



## oliverhenshaw

+5 BAB means an extra iterative attack too, doesn't it?


----------



## Enkhidu

oliverhenshaw said:


> +5 BAB means an extra iterative attack too, doesn't it?




I was thinking more along the lines of power attack being the silver lining, but yeah - extra iterative.


----------



## Everett

Siuis said:


> Forgive my inherent munchkinism, but my first thought is "in what situation is +10 attack, +5 (7?) damage and marking an enemy worth losing spellcasting for the test of a battle?"
> 
> And then I thought about it. As epic games go, yours is definitely epic in scope, but as far as epic mechanics go, your game seems downright _manageable_.
> 
> Which sounds like an insult because of the way I wrote that, but it's definitely not.
> 
> That's a fascinating level of trust, that I think I will actively work to engender that. A character need only meet about 75% of their optimized potential, because for 99% of the game that will be more than sufficient. I think that's a sign of great DMing, that your players are willing not to twink out, but rust in your discretion.





Seems pretty clear that Ernie would invoke the weapon's _Glory_ only in a situation that calls for him to meet an enemy head to head, with the rest of the party providing backup while Ernie essentially fights as a Paladin would.


----------



## StevenAC

Sagiro said:


> Well, that puts things in a somewhat different light!



Ah, that awkward moment when you realise the big ominous half-dragon ogre is actually _on your side_...  Loved this unexpected switch.

For those who've downloaded the Collected Story Hour, I've tidied up the ending of the latest chapter (27) now that the Company's adventure in Naslund is over.  Also, as a byproduct of my re-reading the entire story over the last few months, I've found and fixed a few dozen minor typos which had previously gone unnoticed.

Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year to you and all your players, Sagiro.  I hope the veterans of the Company are enjoying their first Christmas in retirement -- and I'm looking forward to seeing the conclusion of this epic campaign unfold.  Happy 2012!


----------



## Everett

StevenAC said:
			
		

> For those who've downloaded the Collected Story Hour, I've tidied up the ending of the latest chapter (27) now that the Company's adventure in Naslund is over.  Also, as a byproduct of my re-reading the entire story over the last few months, I've found and fixed a few dozen minor typos which had previously gone unnoticed.




Your Collected Story Hour is always an excellent read, and it's kind of fascinating to look back at years upon years of interspersed comments from myself and the others who follow Sagiro's story and be able to see it all as one long-running conversation, which I've been part of for over 6 years.  Thanks, Steven.


----------



## Everett

*bump*


----------



## Siuis

Everett said:


> Seems pretty clear that Ernie would invoke the weapon's _Glory_ only in a situation that calls for him to meet an enemy head to head, with the rest of the party providing backup while Ernie essentially fights as a Paladin would.




This is true. And didn't Ernie just drop some deadweight fighter levels? So this is a nice replacement to allow him to keep up the momentum.

My comment was more on my perceptions. Ernie has never been that kind of a character, never (as I recall) used a destruction or a disintegrate. Ernie is a darn awesome halfling who just so happens to occasionally be called upon to do his righteous duty. I can respect that. I just know that any effect that says "no more casting" freaks _me_ out, but I am eternally a wizard.

Come to think of it, wasn't Ernie being a Wilburforce sort of a big thing? I got the impression that would be addressed at one point, at least like exposition. But I do not recall anything else about it. Am I misremembering? I'd reread the story hour but I've got some work paperwork to do and I know I won't If I start up again.

Love this story though. So much.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Ernie being a Wilburforce is a major plot point, starting all the way back in Chapter 1 of the collected story hour.

http://stevenac.net/sagiro/SH_Chapter_01.pdf (page 29)

It gets resolved in Chapter 20:
http://stevenac.net/sagiro/SH_Chapter_20.pdf (page 420)


----------



## Siuis

Hm. I want to say I expected a bigger resolution, but now I have vague memories of saying this all before... Alas, my memory. She is not so good as ice I had hoped her to be.

I must say though, I am continually impressed by the group's ability to be reverent towards the divine. That is something I have unfortunately been hard pressed to find in any gaming group I've met in person...


----------



## Sagiro

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to pop in to explain why there hasn't been an update in a while, and why they will be sparse at best for the next few months.

As some of you may know, I'm working (as a contractor) on a way-cool game called Card Hunter, which I hope all of you will try out once it's done.  (It's a free-to-play game where you can pay real money for convenience if you want to, but you can play/compete just fine without paying.  Check out the website!  Plug plug plug!)  This takes up a decent number of hours each week.

As probably very few of you know, I'm also writing a story/game for an outfit called Choice of Games  It's a humorous (I hope!) space adventure, and the projected size of the thing has more than doubled since I took on the project.  Writing this also takes up a decent number of hours.  

Also, I have these two small humans running about my house, constantly demanding stuff like "dinner" and "rides to school" and such.  As my incredible, brilliant, dazzling wife is off doing most of the living-earning around here, the general care and feeding of the small humans takes up a particularly large number of hours each week.

After I add in some time for a couple of indispensable hobbies (playing in Piratecat's D&D game, and playing basketball so as not to turn into a complete ball of pudding), I'm down to about 4.5 hours of sleep per night.

So, for the nonce, I find myself with no time leftover for story hour writing.  I am certainly not abandoning it, and I keep waiting for a day when it's earlier than 2:00 AM when I'm finished with my other commitments, but it's looking more and more like such a day may not come until April or May or June.  Every so often I chip away a little bit at the story hour, but I encourage you not to hold your breath waiting.  I apologize for the lull, and still hold myself to my promise that the Story Hour will be finished at the fastest rate that life allows.

Thanks much as always,

-Sagiro


----------



## steeldragons

Sagiro said:


> Hey everyone,
> 
> I just wanted to pop in to explain why there hasn't been an update in a while, and why they will be sparse at best for the next few months.
> 
> As some of you may know, I'm working (as a contractor) on a way-cool game called Card Hunter, which I hope all of you will try out once it's done.  (It's a free-to-play game where you can pay real money for convenience if you want to, but you can play/compete just fine without paying.  Check out the website!  Plug plug plug!)  This takes up a decent number of hours each week.
> 
> As probably very few of you know, I'm also writing a story/game for an outfit called Choice of Games  It's a humorous (I hope!) space adventure, and the projected size of the thing has more than doubled since I took on the project.  Writing this also takes up a decent number of hours.
> 
> Also, I have these two small humans running about my house, constantly demanding stuff like "dinner" and "rides to school" and such.  As my incredible, brilliant, dazzling wife is off doing most of the living-earning around here, the general care and feeding of the small humans takes up a particularly large number of hours each week.
> 
> After I add in some time for a couple of indispensable hobbies (playing in Piratecat's D&D game, and playing basketball so as not to turn into a complete ball of pudding), I'm down to about 4.5 hours of sleep per night.
> 
> So, for the nonce, I find myself with no time leftover for story hour writing.  I am certainly not abandoning it, and I keep waiting for a day when it's earlier than 2:00 AM when I'm finished with my other commitments, but it's looking more and more like such a day may not come until April or May or June.  Every so often I chip away a little bit at the story hour, but I encourage you not to hold your breath waiting.  I apologize for the lull, and still hold myself to my promise that the Story Hour will be finished at the fastest rate that life allows.
> 
> Thanks much as always,
> 
> -Sagiro




So what's with the pudding-phobic comment, huh?

j/k.

Do wutcha gotta do, Sagiro. We'll still be here.

RL always takes precedence and best of luck with your endeavors...yeah, ok, and with the small humans 

--SD


----------



## carborundum

Oops - put my comment in the xp-line 

Do your thing(s) and enjoy them, Sagiro. I'll enjoy rereading the whole glorious Story Hour, and when an update arrives I'll be overjoyed as usual. Must dash now - small human demands warm white fluids again ;-)


----------



## Cervante

Good luck with everything Sagiro! 


I also have a question for anyone within the group. What domains do all the deities have? Did you go with standard domains or just pick which ones seemed appropriate at the time?


----------



## Kaodi

I always love it when you update your Storyhour, Sagiro. But man, the way it sounds like you are going... if you get a couple of hours extra, sleep ought to come first. As long as you really want to finish the story I think we can all be happy knowing that it will happen eventually. I mean, Hell, some of us have been following your campaign for at least half as long as it was actually played. Even if you do not get back for a year, I do not think we should have cause to worry too much. Look after yourself, and we will see you when we do.


----------



## Everett

*bump*


----------



## RedTonic

Happy Friday 13th, fellow readers. . .


----------



## Piratecat

Sagiro told me last night that he's written 90,000 words for an upcoming "Choice of..." game. That's, oh, about double what he had intended! So he's been busy. It'll go into playtesting some time next month, I'm guessing, freeing his docket for other writing. We'll keep you posted.


----------



## LightPhoenix

Piratecat said:


> It'll go into playtesting some time next month, I'm guessing, freeing his docket for other writing. We'll keep you posted.




No, because then he will be forced at whip... point... er... to help finish Card Hunter.  Not that I'm excited about it or anything.


----------



## jmucchiello

<ignorance>What's a "Choice of..." game?</ignorance>
edit: And apologies for responding to chatter in a story thread.


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

"Choice of ..." games are text-based, multiple-choice computer games.  They are sort of like computerized versions of the idea behind old gamebooks.  You can check them out at www.choiceofgames.com; they're also available as apps for iPhones, iPads, Android phones, Kindle Fire, and Kindle e-ink readers.  Our current games are Choice of the Dragon, in which you play a fire-breathing dragon rising to dominance over its territory; Choice of the Vampire, a strongly historically based nineteenth century vampire game; our newest release, Choice of Zombies, a zombie survival horror game with a sense of humor; Choice of Broadsides, a Hornblower or Aubrey-esque naval adventure in the days of wooden ships and iron men, with a dash of Jane Austen for good measure; and Choice of Romance and its sequel Choice of Intrigues (sold on Kindle together as "Affairs of the Court"), a Renaissance court romance and political game in a world with magic.

At the risk of being braggy, our games have won awards and gotten strong critical responses from both video game websites and traditional media like the Guardian.  (I'm one of the founders of Choice of Games.)  We're really looking forward to releasing Sagiro's game--it's not done yet, but so far it looks great!


----------



## Orichalcum

I'm really looking forward to playing Sagiro's Choice of Game because it's probably the closest I'll get to having Sagiro as a GM, at least outside of rare visits and gatherings. Also, it will enable me to give him monetary gratitude for both the new work and all the many years of enjoyment from reading the Story Hour.


----------



## jmucchiello

Ah, IF in the choose your own adventure paradigm. Thanks.


----------



## Sagiro

Tap, tap.

Hello?

I suppose there's some small chance that someone is still reading this, even after I've vanished for several months.  On that chance, a couple of announcements:

1. I've mostly finished my Choice of Games game (currently titled "Choice of the Alien") and right now it's in Beta testing.  I'm quite pleased with how it's turning out, and if all goes well, you'll be able to buy it around the end of July or beginning of August.  It ended up being in the neighborhood of 125,000 words, so I hope you can forgive me for neglecting my Story Hour for so long. 

2. For those half-dozen members of my audience who haven't abandoned the story, here's a new update.  With any luck, these will start to come more frequently than once every four months!



_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 341*_
*Making Their Pitch*

The tunnel near the peak of Cloud Mountain is a straight bore into its west-facing side, some fifty feet in diameter.  Just inside its mouth, and then spaced evenly at the edges, are the remnants of smashed pillars. Kibi believes they were of dwarven craftsmanship. The walls are cracked and scarred and haphazardly blackened.  Recently-created objects are not reflected in Ava Dormo, but Morningstar imagines that in the real world this place is likely filled with the rubble of a once-grand promenade, reduced to wreckage in later years.    

Morningstar, Kibi and Aravis move quickly down the tunnel. Small, dark chambers are connected to this main hallway; each shows similar signs of ruin. After 150’ a pit opens wide in the floor, itself 40’ in diameter, heading straight down into the mountain’s heart. It’s wide enough that even a large dragon could fly up and down easily.

Floating through the Dreamscape, the three scouts descend into the pit, which continues downward for over three hundred feet before emptying out into an enormous empty cavern.  (Of course, it could be filled with anything number of things –   piles of treasure, ancient statues of dwarves, an angry and powerful dragon – but there’s no way for them to find out in their dreamwalking state.)

At the bottom of the vast cavern, a (relatively) small tunnel, no more than 15’ wide, snakes away into the north-facing wall.  It’s well hidden by rocky outcroppings around the entrance, but Kibi can sniff out that sort of thing in his sleep. This new tunnel twists and corkscrews down deeper into the mountain, descending well over five hundred feet before opening onto the floor of a second, equally large cavern.  Like the previous one above, this one could also be home to Azhant, but there’s no way to tell without coming back corporeally.  There is one unusual feature of the lower cavern; near its top is an odd stone latticework that extends horizontally across the entire volume, like a very poorly-concealed false ceiling, or a huge stone grating. Above this rocky lattice by about 50’  are a number of niches, themselves about 20’ in diameter, set into the _actual_ ceiling. The gaps in the latticework are typically about 10’ x 10’ – large enough for most things, but not for something the supposed size of Azhant the Ancient.

Kibi is certain that there are no other ways out of the lower cavern, so both he and Aravis take some time to memorize various _teleport_ locations around both of the huge caves, before Morningstar returns them all to their physical bodies.

After a brief bit of talk about anti-dragon tactics, and some magic-item swapping for maximum fightin’ efficiency, they are ready to take on Azhant the Ancient!  Buff spells are liberally applied, and Aravis _teleports_ the party just above the stone “Swiss cheese” drop-ceiling of the lower cavern.

Their noses are assaulted immediately by a musty, lizard smell, which is a sign they’ve come to the right place. Even with their _darkvision_ there is little to see, as the walls are all more than 60’ away.  But all around them are sounds – rasping, scaly sounds and occasional high-pitched cries. Grey Wolf, with _enhanced senses_ cast, sees faint shadows flitting on the walls of the niches above their heads.  He flies up to investigate.

A scaly head on a sinewy neck pokes out from the nearest alcove as Grey Wolf arrives.  The niches are nests!  At least this one is, filled with bones, refuse, and a few rotting tree limbs.  It also contains a small black dragon, about the size of a large cow, which Grey Wolf immediately pegs with a _lightning bolt_ before flying down and away.  

In the bright flash of electric light, the Company can see numerous black dragons – at least a half-dozen – starting to snake out of their ceiling caves.  They have large, sharp teeth, and the air suddenly reeks of heat and tar.   One of them flaps its way down toward them, opens its toothy maw, and spits a glob of steaming black glop into the midst of the party.   Everyone but Grey Wolf and Flicker are coated with steaming black tar which burns their skin and immediately sets their clothes on fire.

Four more of the dragons do the same!  _Energy buffer_ spells are discharged, and several _protection from energy_ spells are entirely burned off, as the party is thoroughly sludged with burning pitch.  No one drops, but no one is exactly happy, either.  Kibi is quite badly burned, having failed to evade any of the dragons’ attacks.

Dranko realizes that he’d need to waste valuable combat time to put himself out, so he lets himself burn while lashing out at the nearest dragon with his whip.  It’s body is narrow, serpentine, with four sharp claws and two leathery wings.  It hisses back at Dranko. 

“You don’t date much, do you?” the half-orc quips.

Ernie casts _mass cure serious wounds_, easing the pain of his many burning allies. Kibi then puts himself out (and out of harm’s reach) by moving into the stone of the latticework.

Three of the remaining four dragons breathe, each horking up steaming balls of boiling tar onto Morningstar and Aravis.   The last of Aravis’s elemental protections are gone, and he starts popping charges of his _ring of evasion_ to stay (relatively) unburned.  

The final dragon, finding itself next to Dranko, tries raking the half-orc with its teeth and claws, to only modest effect.

Aravis allows himself to continue burning; he has better things to do with his time.  To wit: he _shapechanges_ into a large yellow dragon, flies to a good tactical location, quickens a _shield_ spell just because, and then unleashes a _prismatic spray_ upon three close-clustered black dragons.   One of the three is unaffected, and a second is only mildly singed by fire, but the third vanishes entirely, involuntarily plane-hopping.

Morningstar also chooses not to extinguish herself.  Instead she casts a massive _firestorm_, engulfing all of the enemy dragons in cold black flames.  Some dodge, some don’t, and all scream in pain.  Then she grips _Ells’ Will_ and concentrates on the nearest dragon.  She learns exactly how spell resistant they are (SR 26), and knows just how much stronger her weapon will be against them.

Grey Wolf quickens a _true strike_ and charges the nearest dragon, striking it with Bostock loaded with a maximized _acid orb[/i.]  Sploop!  There’s a huge gout of acid, Bostock flares with blue light, and a dissolving mass of dragonish remains falls through a gap in the latticework and out of sight.

A number of the dragons launch a counter-attack.  Instead of breathing tar, they set to their victims with teeth and talons .  Two savage Flicker, while another two chomp down on Ernie and Morningstar.   While painful, the traditional claw-n-bite attacks of the dragons are much less troublesome than the fiery pitch.  Dranko and Ernie strike back, and Kibi unleashes a maximized cone of cold.  Ice is certainly the right tool for this job; two of the dragons are badly wounded, one badly enough that it is forced to land on the stone lattice.  A third dragon is flash-frozen  -- a few seconds later everyone hears, somewhere in the darkness below, what sounds like a huge glass chandelier smashing onto a stone floor.

The Company slowly whittles down the number of enemies in a fast-moving aerial battle.   As the dragons succumb to the might of the heroes, the barrage of burning-tar breath grows more and more manageable.   Kibi dazzles one with a rainbow pattern (“Here, dragon dragon!  Follow the sparkles!”) and while it snaps at the motes like a puppy chasing soap bubbles, Grey Wolf and Flicker carve it up like a turkey.  Aravis invokes lightning ring and blasts holes in several more.  Morningstar has perhaps the finest moment of the combat, as she strikes a dragon several times with Ell’s Will. Bolstered by her enemies’ spell resistance, she shears through the dragon in four successive swipes with the weapon, as if she’s in combat with a lizard made of cottage cheese.  Her last swing takes off her foe’s right wing like she’s plucking a petal from a dying flower.  As the pulped remains of the dragon fall into the darkness, she watches, stunned.  Dranko just grins at her.

The final dragon, already struck by a maximized ray of enfeeblement, tries to flee, but Aravis gives chase and grapples it.  Both of them start to plummet, but after a hundred feet of falling, Aravis dimension doors away at the last minute, leaving the tar dragon to splat into the stones.

“Don’t f**k with an archmage,” says Dranko.


/*/


The Company gathers at the bottom of the cavern to heal and regroup. Dranko may or may not engage in a “we just killed nine dragons” dance.  But while Azhant may not be lurking in this lower of the two large underground chambers, there’s still the one above.  Once again they prep for battle, and teleport as a group, but the upper cavern is devoid of dragons, small or large. Quickly they sweep the space with a battery of divination spells: see invisibility, darkvision, greater arcane sight.  Nothing shows up immediately, but after several minutes of searching they do discover a huge illusory heap of treasure “heaped” in one corner. Ernie examines this with true seeing and finds that the phantom loot pile conceals dozens of tiny tripwires crisscrossing at ankle height. Grey Wolf sniffs the air; it smells distinctly draconic, and he thinks a dragon has been here recently, but not too recently. 

Where is Azhant?

Kibi has his own ways of getting answers.  He touches the wall of cavern and casts stone tell.  He senses the stone’s ancient and lugubrious cognizance.

“Kibilhahur,” says the stone.

“You know my name,” says Kibi.  He’s been told before that all the stones know his name, but it’s startling all the same.

“Of course,” says the stone.

“We’re trying to find a dragon,” says Kibi. “We were wondering of there were any other rooms he has nearby, besides this one, and the one below.”  

“I have heard rumblings from far down.” The wall speaks in the slow voice of aeons. “Rooms made by your kind – dwarven kind – but they were destroyed long ago, by your reckoning  One other large cavern, far from here, made by dwarves also.  A great hall, a town, below, far from me.”

There is a pause, as the stone wall collects its slow, massive thoughts.  “A large creature comes here sometimes.  Small creatures live here, too.  New creatures, small, near to you.”

Kibi frowns. “Do you know, does the big creature go to the dwarven halls?”

“I don’t know,” answers the stone. “That is far from me.”

“Where are the dwarven halls?”

“Down,” says the stone.  Thinking in more earthy terms, it adds: “toward a very large concentration of silver.”

“Are there gaps between here and there?”

“Not near to me.”

“Is there anything else you can tell us?” asks Kibi.

“I am in pain,” says the stone. “All of the stones are in pain.  You should help us.”

Kibi grimaces. “What can I do?”

“I do not know,” the stone laments. “The source of the pain is far, far, far below me.”

“In this mountain?”

“In all mountains.”

Kibi thinks, The Thorn in the side of Abernia.

“I’ll try my best to help you,” he says. “I don’t wish you to be in pain.”

There is silence, and Kibi thinks the stone is done with him, but then the wall speaks one more time. 

“Kibilhathur?  Your ancestor says hello.  He is always watching.”

/*/

Kibi relays his conversation to the others.  Upon hearing that Cranchus had conveyed his greetings, Ernie asks Kibi if the ancient dwarf can help them out.

While Kibi shakes his head, Dranko lights his cigar.  Dwarves above all.  Ah well.

“Hm,” says Dranko.  “So this isn’t his home.  All the little dragons lived here, but the big one took up residence somewhere else in the mountain.”

There’s nothing else to see in this upper cavern, so they return to the lower one and do a more thorough search.  They find another pile of treasure, bigger than the one above, and this one is more promising. It radiates magical auras, but is not disguised by illusions. Gems and coins glitter among a collection of valuable-looking items.  Flicker reaches down to pick up a shimmering dagger, but something catches his eye at the last minute and he yanks his hand away.

Dranko casts detect poison and discovers that every coin and gem and object in the hoard is coated with venom. Flicker dons gloves and gingerly fishes out a gem. It’s glass. Then he picks up a gold crown, one which Dranko indicates is magical, and finds that’s actually cheap tin, painted gold. It’s not even of enchantable quality, though someone has cast a low-level magical aura upon it.

“Crap,” says Flicker. “We’re zero for two on actual dragon hoards.”

Morningstar takes Kibi on a short excursion into Ava Dormo, so that they can scout the lower halls of the mountain.  They find the enormous entrance, now collapsed and clogged with debris.  Staircases and tunnels once led upward into dozens of smaller chambers and halls, but all of these are now in ruins, choked with rubble, bones and decay.  

After they return, the party ponders their next move.  With no better leads, they cast find the path to find the “place mentioned by the wall that contains a large quantity of silver.” The spell indicates that the best way to get there would be to first exit these two huge caverns via the shaft and tunnel Morningstar discovered on her first dream-scouting trip.  That indicates they’ll have to leave the mountain altogether and reach a new entrance farther down.

The Company is made to wind walk, and they waft up the long vertical shaft, and thence to the long tunnel that leads out the side of the mountain, just above the cloud layer outside.  They can see the exit, a bright spot of blue some fifty feet away, when they hear the sound of heavy, flapping wings. There is a flash of glittering purple outside the tunnel mouth, as something huge and draconic rises up from below, breathes a torrent of lightning into their tunnel, and then vanishes upward and out of sight.

There is no longer a need to find Azhant.  He has found them first.

…to be continued…_


----------



## weiknarf

yay


----------



## Graywolf-ELM

Sweet, I just this evening finished the last .pdf and came back to enworld and re-registered and finished up the thread.  This was the best icing.  Thank you Sagiro


----------



## coyote6

My players were always flustered when they got attached while wind walking,  torn between dismissing the spell to quickly fight back (while losing the spell) vs maintaining the spell for further use, but sucking up the long change time. It was always a little amusing, in an evil GM kind of way.

Also, new update!  Woo-hoo!

Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk 2


----------



## Neurotic

What do you mean half-a-dozen.

You'll get bakers dozen at the very least


----------



## carborundum

Argh! Typical Sagiro - 

Interesting, tense fight - check!
Quarry not where expected - check!
Surprise extras - check!
End on a cliffhanger - check! 

Now I'm just as hungry for an update as I was last week


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Right now I have Unexpected Story Hour Update Glee.

Thanks, Sagiro! And best wishes for the game release, too.


----------



## Kaodi

. o O ( Hey looks like somebody bumped Sagiro's Story Hour aga - OH MY GOD! IT'S AN UPDATE! )


----------



## KainG

Sagiro said:


> Tap, tap.
> “Don’t f**k with an archmage,” says Dranko.




Wise words. 

Thanks for the new update, Sagiro!


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 342*_
*All the Stops*


The dragon’s sudden assault triggers a flurry of activity among the Company.  Morningstar dismisses their _wind walk_ and quickens _divine favor_. Kibi then casts a _wall of force_ across most of the tunnel mouth, leaving only a gap large enough to allow him to summon something on the far side of it – which he begins to do. Various other buffs are hastily cast: _fly_ spells, protections spells and _invisibility purge_ among others. Flicker slathers himself in _oil of slipperiness_, just in case. 

Aravis shapechanges into a xorn and moves through the wall so that he can poke an eyeball out the side of the mountain, to see what Azhant is up to.  The mighty purple dragon is wheeling around up near the mountain’s peak.  A bright sun has burned off the cloud layer, allowing for nearly unlimited visibility in all directions.

A celestial roc appears and goes flapping up toward the dragon.  

Reaching an unspoken agreement, the party decides that they’re going to bet everything on a quick and decisive battle, _right now_. They pull out the big magic guns. “I _wish_,” says Kibi, “that the dragon who just attacked us has its spell resistance suppressed to the greatest extent this spell allows, for as long as is possible.”  A massive ripple of magic blasts outward down the tunnel and into the air, rocking everyone a bit on their feet.  Azhant flinches, feeling his innate protections lessen. He stops, hovering, and glares down at the little humanoids below. 

Emboldened, Dranko sticks a hand through the gap between Kibi’s _wall of force_ and the wall, and casts an _ice storm_ on the hovering dragon.  Chunks of ice bounce harmlessly from its plated hide. 

“You can surrender now!” calls Dranko.

“Okay, sure,” growls Azhant.  “I’ll be right down.”

“Yeah, you will be,” laughs Dranko.

Ernie unleashes the next mega-salvo, casting a _miracle_ “Yondalla, you’ve recently given me much greater power, and I hope I’m about to use it wisely. I’d like the dragon out there to lose its ability to fly for the next hour.”  

Another wave of magical power bursts outward and into the air outside the mountain.  Aravis sees the dragon lurch downward, and flap its wings futilely for a few seconds before going into a controlled downward glide. Knowing now that Azhant cannot fly, and should be much less resistant to his magic, Aravis leaps from the side of the mountain, changing form from xorn to yellow dragon in midair.  He pursues Azhant downward.  When he gets close enough, he pegs the fleeing dragon with _energy drain_. Thanks to Kibi’s _wish_ the spell bypasses Azhant’s spell resistance. Luck is with him, too; the spell has its maximum possible effect, stripping away spells, life force and fighting capacity from Azhant.

Azhant casts a spell – Aravis is not sure what – and then goes into a steep dive down the mountain’s nearly-sheer slope. The celestial roc, suffused with holy golden light, shrieks and pursues.  It is nearly as large as Azhant, but being much lighter, it fails to grapple the descending dragon and flaps away, frustrated.  Aravis also catches up with Azhant, getting close enough to catch his prey in a maximized _cone of cold_.  The magic of his spell peels away as it reaches Azhant, leaving the purple dragon entirely untouched.  

“Anti-magic field,” mutters Aravis.  He’s pleased that the field is not negating the ongoing effects of the _wish_ and _miracle_, but he understands that the party’s options will be quite limited for a while. He could try a _disjunction_, but while that _might_ strip away the anti-magic, it would be much more likely to eliminate the effects of Kibi’s and Ernie’s magics.  Still, he knows that the party has some tricks up its collective sleeve.  

Azhant swoops away, banking sharply around a spur of the mountain and disappearing behind tree-covered rocks.

At the behest of his friends, and entirely against his better judgment, Kibi activates his Ioun Stone of _tongues_.

“Hey roc,” he shouts.  “Will you please carry us and pursue the dragon?”

“Whatever you say!” answers the roc.  It starts to wheel upward toward them, and when it’s close enough Kibi orders it to hover, at which point he _dimension doors_ himself and everyone else except for Aravis and Ernie _onto the roc’s back_.  The roc tips slightly at the sudden weight, and has some trouble flying with so many passengers, but soon it steadies itself and begins to give chase to Azhant.  (Ernie, meanwhile, has boarded his flying carpet.  It’s not as fast as a roc, but seems much safer, and reduces the extent to which they’re all in dragon-breath formation.)

Dranko sinks into the soft golden feathers of the celestial roc’s back, and lights a cigar.  The smoke streams away behind them, but Kibi is pretty sure it would have spelled “Kibi is insane,” or something similar. He clutches for dear life and laments his decision more and more with each passing airborne second.

Farazil takes possession of Flicker just long enough to comment, “I know I told you I wouldn’t take over Flicker without permission, but I have to say, this is fantastic!”

Dranko nods.  “We really have the best job in the world.  We’re fighting an ancient evil dragon while riding on a celestial roc, and I have 180,000 gold pieces worth of gems in my pouch.  Does life get any better than this?”

“Yes!” squeaks Kibi, his eyes shut tight. “I hope so!”

Aravis swoops around the rocky out-jutting, and there’s no sign of Azhant.  The Company carefully scans the mountain side, while Aravis wheels and flies to the last place they saw their quarry, but Azhant the Ancient has vanished.  He has almost certainly dropped his _anti-magic field_ and _teleported_ or _dimension doored_ away.  

With no better lead on the dragon, the party continues to _find the path_ towards the large concentration of silver mentioned by the stones.  This leads them down the mountain, and around it clockwise. 

Twenty seconds later there is a massive wave of powerful magic that coruscates through the air and makes all the party’s skin crawl.  It’s just like what they experienced when Kibi cast his _wish_ and Ernie his _miracle_. Azhant has effected similar magic, most likely to rid itself of its negative levels, to reestablish its ability to fly, or to restore its spell resistance. 

A minute later the _find the path_ has led them to a well-concealed tunnel into the mountain, cleverly concealed beneath a large overhang, but otherwise similar to the one a thousand feet above them.  It bores its way into the mountain, and is easily wide enough for Azhant.

Kibi’s celestial roc drops them off in the tunnel mouth, and after thanking it for its service, they fly down the tunnel.  Aravis changes form to a housefly and rides on Dranko’s shoulder.  The _find the path_ spell indicates a _greater dispelling screen_ across the tunnel a couple of hundred feet in, masked by an illusion. Aravis changes form to a Digger and tunnels around the trap.

After that, the passage takes a series of downward banked hairpins, and the smell of dragon grows increasingly strong. They can see up ahead that this latest stretch of tunnel empties out into some wide, dark space…and from somewhere below the level of the tunnel mouth, Azhant flies upward, breathes a blast of sonic force upon them, and continues to rise until he’s out of sight again.  Well, that answers the question of which debilitating effect Azhant chose to dismiss.  It also hurts!

(In fact, Azhant, horrified at losing his greatest tactical advantage, _teleported_ back to his lair.  It was his last _teleport_, as the _energy drain_ has stripped him of the ability to cast more. Among his hoard’s many magic items was an ancient crystalline idol that would grant a _wish_, and from among the likely options, he wished that his ability to fly be restored.)

_In for a penny_ thinks Morningstar.  “Dark Lady, please remove the dragon’s ability to fly for the next hour… again!”  The power of her _miracle_ floods the cavern.  Kibi, with _tongues_ still active, hears some draconic profanity roared out in the darkness.  Grey Wolf rushes to the tunnel mouth and looks down, but the dragon is already too far away to spot.  Looking up, he finds that the roof isn’t much higher than they are, no more than fifty feet away.  There is a gorgeous mural carved into the ceiling of this vast cave, depicting dwarves in their multitudes, smithing and crafting weapons.  Hundreds of dwarves must have worked for years on the mural, but it has already been smashed and defaced in dozens of places, probably by Azhant in his younger days.

Dranko sprints to the end of the tunnel and leaps out into space, flying downward, hoping to discover specifically where the dragon is.  Even before he spies Azhant he hears the futile flapping of wings, steadily moving ground-ward. He smiles.

Ernie _heals_ Morningstar and then quickens another _heal_ (on Kibi) using his _quickscroll tube. _  Somewhat restored from the blast of dragon breath, the whole party flies downward, descending nearly five hundred feet before discovering Azhant, who has landed on the floor of his cavern.  Azhant is deeply troubled that these pesky humanoids have now twice stripped him of his ability to fly, but he’s still has hope that he can turn this around.  After all, he has a trump card that has never failed him in these sorts of encounters. 

Aravis manifests a _bigby’s clenched fist_ above the dragon, but it winks out as it comes into contact with the dragon.  Azhant has remanifested his _anit-magic field_.

“Oh, please,” growls Azhant.  “Now, who among you is going to come down and fight me honestly?”

“Oh, please,” mocks Ernie, “You think we’re going to fall for that old trick?”  His mockery is somewhat undercut by Dranko simultaneously volunteering. “I will!” says the half-orc.

“Okay then,” says Azhant, glaring upward. 

But Dranko doesn’t come down, and neither does anyone else. It’s an impasse. Azhant won’t lower his anti-magic field, but unless he does, he cannot breath on the party or cast the spells he has remaining.  The heroes know that the dragon can’t fly (and so they’re safe in the air), but if they descend to ground level to attack, their magic items will be useless, and the dragon can savage them with physical attacks.

Seemingly bereft of better options, Dranko starts to pee on Azhant’s head.  Azhant lumbers out of the way, but Dranko follows.

“Whatever you’re trying to do, it’s not working,” growls Azhant, disgusted.

“It’s working pretty well, actually,” says Dranko.  “I’ve had to go for a while.”

But Dranko is soon finished his business, and the détente continues.  Azhant squats on the floor of the cavern, his tail lashing to and fro like a cat’s.   His hide is crusted layers of jagged amethyst scales. All he wants is for one of those morsels to come within reach.

“So,” calls down Morningstar.  “How do you feel about prophecy?”

“Are you suggesting that you are prophesied to defeat me here?” scoffs Azhant.  In a more thoughtful voice he adds,  “I must say that your collected magics are impressive. Too bad, then, that they will have no further effect on this encounter.  Now, I ask again, who is going to come and fight me?”

“Are you going to stop running like a coward?” asks Morningstar.

Azhant laughs.  “You think you are going to goad me into some unwise action with your silly little insults?”

“I was hoping that was what peeing on you would do,” Dranko admits.

“No, I simply found that was disgusting.”  

“You’re not the only one,” says Ernie.

“But I would expect no less from a half-orc,” sneers Azhant.

Dranko sighs, makes eye-contact with Ernie, and nods.  Time to end this impasse. The most important thing is that Ernie and Morningstar not be grappled, so Dranko takes that upon himself.  He swoops down, and Azhant, cat-quick, grabs him out of the air in an enormous claw.

 “At least I’ll bite off _one_ of your heads today.  Any more piss you want to get out before the end?”

Dranko smiles confidently, which makes Azhant suspicious.

Ernie moves in and transforms into the warrior aspect granted by the _Honor of Nemmin._  “For Yondalla!” he yells, and ripples of golden light play over his armored body.   He feels something akin to rage, but more controlled – a righteous aggression.

“Very impressive,” says Azhant, “but I don’t….AAAAAARRRR!”

Ernie swings his blade, and it bites into Azhant’s hide, shearing away a swath of purple scales.  Azhant looks down aghast; his _anti-magic_ field is still active, but the little sword seemed not to care.

“Excuse me,” says Azhant to Dranko. “I think you may no longer be relevant.”  The dragon flings Dranko away.  “Don’t go anywhere,” he admonishes the half-orc, and then he unleashes his full physical fury upon Ernie.

Ernie would be dead, well and truly, if Azhant had not been _energy drained_ earlier by Aravis.  Even weakened, Azhant nearly tears Ernie to pieces with his massive jaws, razor claws and smashing tail.  But Azhant fails to connect with one of his wing barbs (unthinkable!) and so Ernie is left a bloody mess, but (barely) conscious.  

“You got anymore?” Ernie manages, spitting out blood.

“Oh, I have plenty more,” says Azhant, leering.  “Why don’t we keep trading blows for a while and see how it turns out?”

“You really are underestimating us,” says Morningstar.  She moves in, winds up, and lets fly with _Ell’s Will_. As with Ernie’s blade, the sovereign magic in the Morningstar is unaffected by the anti-magic, and gouges a bloody furrow into Azhant’s flank.

“You’re next,” glowers Azhant. “I just need to finish off the midget first.”

Flicker tries a flurry of short-sword attacks, but even while flanking the dragon he is unable to land a single strike.  “My sword gets heavier right before it hits him,” he grumbles.  

Dranko has more luck.  Even bereft of its enchantment, his whip does impressive to the dragon, ripping away purple scales and scoring deep gashes.  

Kibi seethes for a moment, frustrated that all of his magical arsenal is useless, and settles for summoning a huge earth elemental.  “You can’t touch the dragon,” Kibi warns it.  “Try hitting it with something else.”  The elemental lumbers off to find a piece of masonry it can swing.

Having finished lashing with his whip, Dranko holds it up so Azhant can get a good look.  “See this? Magic or not, I’m going to use it to take out one of your eyes.”

Azhant looks meaningfully at Ernie, still clutched in one of his mighty claws. “So, no negotiation, then?  No ‘I agree not to kill some of you before you kill me, and you let me go instead?’”  

Dranko shakes his head.

Ernie has been counting on using his _quickscroll tube_ to _heal_ himself, but too late remembers that invoking the Glory of Nemmin has removed his ability to use spell-completion items.  His sword arm is still free, so he carves some gashes into Azhant’s wrist.

“Any last words, little man?” growls Azhant.  Ernie can’t think of anything, and besides, Azhant means it only rhetorically. He opens his jaws wide and bites off a quarter of Ernie’s head, along with a good chunk of shoulder and torso.  

“Mmmmm,” he says, chewing.  “Moist.”  He drops the remains of Ernie’s corpse and turns to Morningstar.  “You’re next.”

He savages Morningstar with the remainder of his attacks, though Morningstar is protected by a _stoneskin_, and much of the damage is blunted.  “You’re a little tougher than the little guy,” remarks Azhant, flexing his jaw a bit.  “But now you’ve got the classic dilemma on your hand.  You can damage me, but you also will need to start healing yourself.” 

He laughs a deep, unkind laugh.  “But while I’m grinding you down, human, what exactly brought you here in the first place?  Was is just the loot?”  

Dranko answers.  “We have been sent by the rulers of Mirj, who want to see you destroyed.”

“Mirj?” Azhant sounds  skeptical. “The House of Law doesn’t have the balls.  You’re lying.  But you know what?  I don’t blame you a bit for trying to trick me into attacking that cesspool.  What a rotten pile of human depravity _that_ place is.”

Morningstar lands another hit with _Ell’s Will_ and quickens a cure spell on herself.

“You know, that’s starting to hurt,” says Azhant.  “I’m getting seriously annoyed.  Though I’m also impressed.  9th-level spells. Epic weapons.  Why have I never heard of you before?  Are you from what’s-it-called… Charagan?”

All of this time, Aravis has been digging, in the form of a Digger, beneath the dragon.  He’s been preparing a pit, leaving a surface crust thick enough that the dragon won’t fall through until Aravis weakens it.  He’s starting to realize that his progress just isn’t fast enough, but with little else to do, he continues to dig.

Flicker finally lands a sword-hit on Azhant.  The sneak-attack damage he does while flanking with Dranko is not diminished at all by Azhant’s anti-magic, and takes a huge bloody chunk out of the dragon’s tail.

“Hey!  Watch it!” growls Azhant.  In his mind he’s starting to wonder if he’s going to win this war of attrition.  _Anti-magic field_ is typically a trump card against adventuring sorts, but these guys have all sorts of tricks up their puny humanoid sleeves.  He can’t _teleport_, and he can’t fly, and there’s no ground-level exit from this cavern he can fit through.  For the first time in centuries, honest-to-evil fear creeps into his draconic heart.

Dranko savages him with more whip strikes, the last of which nearly does take out his left eye.  

“I told you,” says the half-orc.  “I’m going to rip that eye out of your head.”

Kibi’s elemental has found a long broken pillar, but the creature isn’t much used to attacking with anything but its fists, and its swings bounce harmlessly from the dragon’s scales.  Azhant glances briefly at the elemental before returning its focus to Morningstar.  He savages her with all of his attacks, but the _stoneskin_ absorbs nearly half the damage, and he chips a fang.  

“Don’t think I don’t feel what you’re doing down there, by the way,” he calls down to Aravis.  He sidesteps away from the pit being dug beneath his feet.

Morningstar quickens a _revenance_ on Ernie’s body.  The dead halfling coughs and gets to his feet.  He’s a ghastly sight, with large parts of his upper body missing.  “Man, that hurt!” he exclaims.  “Oh. I see. Still dead. Well, I’ll do what I can.”  

“Neat trick,” grumbles Azhant.  “Now I can kill him again!”

Grey Wolf casts _lucubration_ to restore an _indomitability_, which he immediately casts upon Morningstar.  Kibi uses _limited wish_ to cast _stoneskin_ on the newly-animated Ernie.  Flicker attacks but fails to land any damaging blows.  Dranko has more luck.  He lashes with his whip and does massive damage to Azhant.

“One! Piece! At! A! Time!” he calls, while systematically gouging out pieces of the dragon.

“Fine,” says Azhant. “Forget the stone girl.  You’re the primary target now.”  He grabs Dranko, claws the half-orc's body, lashes his face with his wings and tail, and then stuffs Dranko into his massive jaws.  In a voice made mushy by the adventurer in his mouth, he asks, “So, are you ready to bargain, or should I keep chewing?”

“Don’t bargain!” calls Dranko, even though he’s a bloody mess and won’t survive another attack.  “Just kill him!”

“You’re not really in a good position to threaten me,” says Azhant.  He chews a bit.  “Mmmm, was that your ankle?”

Morningstar would like to cast _mass heal_, but it won’t affect Dranko who’s inside the mouth of the anti-magicked dragon.  

“Just get ready to cast it,” says Kibi.  “I’m going to try something.”  He flies up toward the cavern ceiling and casts _earthquake_, wincing at the thought of wreaking more destruction upon the ancient mural.  Huge chunks of rock fall from the darkness, cascading around Azhant.  Normally this wouldn’t bother him any more than a mild hailstorm would bother a rhino, but because of his negative levels, an unlucky crack on the head from a large boulder causes him to cough Dranko about half out of his mouth.  This leaves the half-orc’s leg dangling outside of the _anti-magic field_!  Morningstar casts her _mass heal_, and Aravis (who has given up his pit and returned to dragon-form himself) casts _dimension door_ on Dranko, evacuating him from the dragon-maw grapple.

That’s enough for Azhant.  Despite his bluster, he is nearly dead from all the attacks that have landed upon him.  His only hope, he decides, is to flee, drop the anti-magic, and breathe on his enemies.  With luck, these pesky adventurers will then try spells instead of physical attacks, and his spell resistance might save him.  If only he could fly!

His plan never gets past the first stage.  He starts to flee, and endures a battery of parting shots. Flicker and Dranko land devastating sneak attacks, but Azhant is still barely alive.

Morningstar brings down Ell’s Will and crushes Azhant’s spine.  The dragon drops.  “You’ll… see me… again…” gasps Azhant dramatically, before flopping dead onto the hard stones of the cavern floor.

Soon after, the _revenance_ expires, and Ernie likewise drops dead.

…to be continued…


----------



## carborundum

wow. just wow.


----------



## steeldragons

AHHHH! NOT ERNIE!!!!

<breathe. breathe> Ok. Morningstar'll fix him all up...right? RIGHT?!?!


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 343*_
*Knowledge*


“Will you be staying, Ernest, or do you feel like you still have more to do?”

Dolly bustles about the Inn Between, and talks to Ernie over her shoulder.  She seems more businesslike than Ernie remembers her, a trifle less warm.

“I like staying here,” admits Ernie, reaching down to pet one of the resident cats, “but there’s so much more left on our plate.  There’s still that world-saving thing.”

“Well, stay as long as you’d like,” Dolly shrugs.  

“Ah, don’t be so hard on the kid,” calls Barnabas from his customary table at the back.  “Ernie, come and sit with me until your friends call you back.  I want to see that fancy sword of yours…”


/*/


In the land of the living, Aravis removes Azhant’s head by _disintegrating_ the neck; the party figures it will serve as proof that they’ve finished the job.  But more importantly, the Company discovers Azhant’s true hoard hidden behind an illusionary wall at the far side of the cavern.  Unsurprisingly, a majority of the loot seems to have once been the property of the dwarven Empire of Gurund -- non-magical weapons and armor of dwarvish design and size, coins and bars stamped with dwarven likenesses and symbols, and many pieces of jewelry obviously of dwarf-make.  Mixed in with the dwarven plunder is plenty of stuff from other parts of Kivia -- Azhant the Ancient has been building his hoard for centuries. 

Morningstar casts a _sending_ to High Priestess Rhiavonne in Kallor, requesting that the temple there be readied for a _true resurrection_. Then the rest of the day and evening are spent shoveling as much of the dragon’s treasure as possible into the Lucent Tower, which seems like the fastest way to transport such vast quantities.  There are a number of highly-magical objects mixed in, the identification of which will be first on the agenda after Ernie’s resurrection, though one in particular inspires particular reverent interest.  It is a closed and sealed book that they discover resting at the very apex of the largest hill of treasure.  The book is thin but weighty, made of dark grey leather and embossed with a fancy “L” on the front cover, overlaying the symbol of Leantha, one-time Kivian Goddess of Knowledge. 


/*/


This time around, with souls moving properly between this world and the next, Morningstar’s _true resurrection_ runs properly from midnight to dawn.  

The ceremony has been fast-tracked, and the chapel is only half-full.  The Priestess Anhaya Sunblossom, leader of the church of Yondalla on Charagan, is in attendance with two under-priests; they watch attentively as their faith’s greatest living hero is brought back to life.  If Morningstar hears some murmurs from the crowd wondering why Rhiavonne herself isn’t performing the ritual, and that perhaps Morningstar is likely to be Rhiavonne’s successor, she pretends to take no notice.  As the muted sun crests the horizon beyond the eternal twilight of Kallor, Ernie’s eyes flutter open.  His last memory of the Inn Between is of Dolly, hands on her hips, telling him that as much as she enjoys his company, she’d rather not see him quite so often.


/*/


Having taken care of that order of business, the Company moves on to the more enjoyable fallout from the battle with Azhant – combing through the loot.  They open the Lucent Tower in the yard behind the Greenhouse and coins spill out onto the grass.  

Given many hours to sift through the monetary and artistic pieces, Flicker estimates that the coinage, bars, gems, jewelry and objects d'art are worth in total about 200,000 GP.   There are also dozens of minor magical items (rings of protection, weapons, armor, shields and ability-boosters of the +1 and +2 varieties, and misc. stuff of minimal use to near-epic adventurers like the Company), worth an additional 70,000 GP.  

After dinner, they set about divvying up the best of the magic items.  Two are set aside immediately – a war-hammer and suit of plate-mail both heavily enchanted for dwarven fighters. None in the party can make good use of them, but surely they can find a dwarven hero who can.  The remainder of the most potent items are distributed among the Company. 

Kibi gets the _Pulse of Abernia_, a deep purple gem infused with Earth Magic. Kibi has seen similar gems in the work-shops of his grandfather Cranchus.  This one, according to their divinations, was made by an earth mage named Golquan, who long ago served the First Dwarf of Gurund as his court wizard.  He was killed by Azhant’s sire in the midst of the ogre war. When held by an Earth Mage, the _Pulse of Abernia_ has a chance of augmenting every spell he casts, in a variety of possible ways.  It also increases Kibi’s natural armor bonus.

Dranko claims _Alazar's Tongue_, a black leather weighted whip.  It is a +5 weapon once used by the infamous mercenary Alazar, killed by Azhant about 150 years ago.  It can cast _dimensional anchor_ or _dismissal_ on a creature struck, each once per day.  Also once per day, it can inflict a -4 penalty to saving throws to a creature struck, with the effect lasting until the end of the encounter.  Finally, on a critical hit, the victim moves at half speed on its next turn.  Dranko also takes the _Unshakable Boots_, the wearer of which cannot be knocked down, gains a bonus to grapple checks, and will never run in fear from compulsory magic.

In addition to taking a +5 _ring of protection_, Grey Wolf is the natural claimant to the _Sheath of Blessed Honor_, a sword sheath inscribed with prayers to Palamir, Kivian God of loyalty, duty and honor.   When identified, the result is that it "bestows blessings upon blades of Palamir."  Its effect upon Bostock, one-time paladin of that God and current longsword in Grey Wolf's possession, is that it allows it to _lay on hands_.  Once per round, as a move-equivalent action by its wielder, it can heal someone within 5', up to 80 points per day.

Ernie doesn’t feel as entitled to the best loot as some of the others, having recently acquired an epic blade, but he is still pleased to don _Laramon’s Favored Shirt_.  (Laramon is the Kivian Demigod of Luck.)  It’s a silver and green silk shirt, emblazoned on the front with Laramon's coin-and-bolt symbol. When the wearer is at half of his maximum hit points (or lower), it grants a +4 luck bonus to AC.

Flicker takes a matching pair of straight silver daggers; they are _returning daggers, +5_, and there is no penalty for throwing them up to 100’ distant.  They also return to the thrower after each attack.

Morningstar gets _Tokma’s Radiant Barrier_, an iridescent breastplate that reflects subtle rainbow hues in any light. It had been worn for years by Tokma, a female paladin of the Kivian goddess Heros, until she was slain by Azhant's breath weapon.  It is a _breastplate +6_, and grants the wearer Resistance 10 vs. all five energy types.  She also pockets _Laramon’s Jade Clover_, a small four-leaf clover carved from jade, with each leaf etched with the coin-and-bolt symbol of Laramon.  While the Clover is in her possession, once per day, Morningstar can decide to roll 3 times on a d20 and then take the most desired result.  Lastly, Morningstar takes a +6 _belt of strength_, more appropriate for her now that she wields _Ell’s Will_.

Aravis takes the _Gloves of the Displaced Source_, which allows any spell shaped as a line, cone, or burst, and that normally originates at the caster, to instead originate from any square within 10’ of the caster, and to which the caster has line of effect.  He also claims the _Battlestone of St. Jenniver_, a smooth, flat gray oval stone.  Once per day the user can trade away damage dice on any area-of-effect spell and heal all allies in the area by the number of dice removed.  Any allies so healed do not take any damage from the spell.  When used, at least one and no more than half the spell's damage dice can be traded off. 

But all of those things, while useful and powerful, are sidelights to the main attraction of the dragon hoard.  While in Naslund, Aravis asked Leantha for the answer to his most pressing question:  “How do we defeat the Adversary?”  Now he holds the gray leather book, which only he can open, and hopes to find his answer.

Inside are a series of beautiful child's drawings – as if an artistic genius had been tasked to create the works in the style of a toddler. Slowly Aravis turns each page, committing each drawing to memory.

The first page shows a map of the known world, with Charagan at the western edge, Kivia at the eastern edge, and the Uncrossable Sea between them. Not far from the center, but somewhat to the north, is a small island.

On the second page there is a great castle.  In the doorway of the castle, a huge, dark male figure is being stabbed in the back by a smaller female figure with a long golden sword. The sword is shattering from the blow. Outside the castle seven others are fleeing, as are hundreds of tiny figures at their feet.

The third page pictures a fissure in the side of an immense cliff. Two stones with embedded Divination Sinks, like the ones the party found at Het Branoi, sit on the ground outside of the fissure.

Across the next two pages is a drawing of a Sharshun woman, her face a hidden shadow, holding aloft a long, serrated golden dagger.  It is clear from the coloring and artistic style that this golden dagger and the shattering golden sword are, at very least, made from the same metal.

The sixth page shows a dwarf with a well-groomed beard, and a pile of rocks at his feet. The dwarf holds aloft that same golden dagger. He is smiling.

On the seventh page is drawn an ambiguous humanoid figure, wearing the distinctive uniform of the Spire Guard, lying dead, the golden dagger clutched in one hand.

Drawn large on the eighth page is an image of a Ward of Drosh, hanging from its necklace.

The ninth page shows a scarred man with protruding tusks and white priestly robes. He is shouting as if in great pain, while blood runs from his eyes.

And on the tenth and final page is shown a silver coin emblazoned with a lightning bolt – Laramon’s holy symbol.


/*/

The party talks at great length about the pictures in Leantha’s book.   They all agree that the dark figure being stabbed with the golden sword is the Adversary, and that the stabber is Uthol Inga.  The other seven figures must be the remaining Travelers:  Brechen, Delioch, Ell, Werthis and Corilayna, as well as the deceased Caba and Aranod.

The fissure with the divination sinks is a mystery, though the most popular theory is that it’s the entrance to the Sharshun headquarters hidden in the Greatwood.  They’re more certain that the Sharshun woman holding the golden dagger is Darkeye, and Farazil confirms that Darkeye is rumored to possess a powerful dagger known as the _Watcher’s Kiss_.

The exultant dwarf holding the dagger is obviously Kibi, and the half-orc bleeding from the eyes is clearly Dranko. (“Ugh,” Dranko grumbles. “Kibi gets to smile, and I get to scream while my head explodes.  Great.”)

As for the dead figure wearing the raiment of the Spire Guard – who knows?  It could be one of the Company, though Dranko is inclined (with no real evidence, admittedly) to think it’s Rosetta.

The picture of the Ward of Drosh is a dead-on match for the one given to the party by Viersk in Naslund.  As for the silver coin, it’s the symbol of Laramon, Kivian Demigod of Luck.  With Corilayna having fled with the coming of the Adversary, it makes sense that Laramon may be extending his influence throughout the world. As for its meaning, the Company agrees that Leantha is telling them that to defeat the Adversary, they’re going to need good luck, and lots of it.

…to be continued…


----------



## Duncan Haldane

*I'm lost!*

Hi all,

Hoping someone might be able to help me.

I lost the permalink of where I was up to in the story, and now I've no idea how far back I am.

When I was reading last the party were in the burial chamber of the gods.  If someone could message me with a permalink or page number for those posts, I'd be greatful.  At over 90 pages long, and really slow load, it's very hard to work out where I was.

Thanks.  Been reading this since it was first up on Enworld.


----------



## Sagiro

Duncan Haldane said:


> Hi all,
> 
> Hoping someone might be able to help me.




Hey there!  The Company stepped through the door into Naslund, Necropolis of the Gods, at the top of page 83 of this thread.  

Here's a link to the post:  http://www.enworld.org/forum/5681673-post821.html

Hope that helps!


----------



## carborundum

That's some sweet loot!

Love the way Ernie's death this time was so... routine. Two interns, a piece of tinfoil and a plaster death mask from the souvenir-shop later... 

If he dies again he may just get kicked straight back and resurrected on the spot so he doesn't clutter up the Inn!

(or was Dolly annoyed more by the revenance than the deaths in quick succession?)


----------



## Cervante

This story hour never fails to impress, thanks Sagiro!


----------



## Duncan Haldane

thanks Sagiro, it sure does.


----------



## Quartz

So, the heroes are going to see Azhant again. I wonder what form he'll take? Ghost, dracolich, or clone?


----------



## Everett

Glad I didn't check in until today, so I could read the search for Azhant, the battle and the aftermath all in one fell swoop.  (It's been at least 3 months since I last checked in with Sagiro's SH.)

And because it's been so long, I can't say I have a single clue as to who the Travellers or Leantha are.  Can someone fill me in? (Where they first showed up in the SH, plot function, etc.)


----------



## Piratecat

Aha! We were trying to remember what Ernie's third death was. For the life of me I couldn't recall. This one was a lot more perfunctory. I think it's because although the battle was deadly, it was really frustrating. We spent a lot of time discussing strategies that were quickly shut down by "it's immune to magic." That's why Dranko went to the extreme measure of whizzing on him... I was eager to goad him into a mistake. No such luck. 

The loot was glorious, though.

The Travellers is the name for the "new" Gods who most of us follow: Ell, for instance. Here's an old web page with details. They travelled here while fleeing the Adversary.

Leantha was the Kivian goddess of Knowledge, now apparently killed (in a war against the other Gods after the Travellers arrived.)


----------



## KainG

That was a great fight! And reading about the loot was surprisingly enjoyable. I'm also just a bit sad that Azhant bit it. From his brief appearance, he seemed like he would have been a fun long-term adversary against the party.


----------



## Richards

It's funny - I've been aware of this Story Hour for literally years, through having read Piratecat's "Defenders of Daybreak" Story Hour, but I had never read it.  I tried to start it on several occasions, but in each case I was intimidated by its enormous size.  







			
				Michael Scott said:
			
		

> That's what *she* said!



  But one day I found myself stuck on a computer with nothing much to do, and recalled this Story Hour, and told myself I was just being silly.  After all, I already _knew_ I would enjoy it, having previously become a big fan of Sagiro's (not only of his parody songs, but also of his portrayal of Velendo, my favorite "Defenders of Daybreak" PC).  So I hunted it up, found the handy PDF downloads, downloaded the first one, and had at it.

That was a little over a month ago.  I don't have the luxury of being able to access the Story Hour at work (no doubt a good thing for my productivity!), but great swaths of my free time at night and on the weekends have been taken up with this fantastic campaign.  Not only that, but I couldn't help passing on tidbits from the campaign world to my son, and about when I was halfway through the second PDF he asked me for the first one, which I still had stored on my jump drive.  I just finished the third PDF last night and caught up to the most recent update here on this thread; he's about halfway through the second PDF and going strong.  (And now that I've read all there is to read thus far, I envy him!  Also, I can't wait for him to find out the original homeworld of the Travelers, as in our AD&D 2nd Edition campaign he ran a druid PC named Darvin the Wanderer.)

Sagiro, it's been said by many before me, but this is one of the most exciting D&D campaigns it's ever been my pleasure to experience.  I stand in awe of your ability to mentally juggle and weave various plot threads together.  (And you are truly a master of the cliffhanger as well!)  And before I forget, StevenAC - excellent job on the PDFs!  They have made an exciting read even more pleasurable.

You guys are a very lucky gaming group, and thanks to everyone for passing that luck on to those of us who stand in awe at the sidelines, looking on in wonder.

Finally, I have one piece of advice for Piratecat: now that Dranko has not only taunted a demon lord in his own throne room but also flipped off the Emperor to his face, I'd drop the pseudonym "One Slippery Squid" - if you really want to use a Djawish name, I'd recommend "Two Gigantic Balls."  

Johnathan


----------



## Everett

Quartz said:


> So, the heroes are going to see Azhant again. I wonder what form he'll take? Ghost, dracolich, or clone?




Yeah, what was that about?  Just one last stab at ominousness, or the real deal... a dracolich?


----------



## Duncan Haldane

*I've caught up, again*

Thanks to Sagiro pointing me in the right direction when I lost my place, I've now managed to catch up, again.

I've been reading this story  since Sagiro first started posting it, and I'm glad to see it still going strong after all this time.

Sagiro, you are an amazing DM with a fantastic group of player.  I certainly envy you all.


----------



## EroGaki

And now I'm all caught up. 

I've been enjoying the story hour for years now; I'm both thrilled and saddened that it has finally reached its conclusion. At least I can look forward to the next couple of years as you catch up.

Congratz, Sagiro and crew! And thanks for an epic read.


----------



## Piratecat

Richards said:


> You guys are a very lucky gaming group, and thanks to everyone for passing that luck on to those of us who stand in awe at the sidelines, looking on in wonder.
> 
> Finally, I have one piece of advice for Piratecat: now that Dranko has not only taunted a demon lord in his own throne room but also flipped off the Emperor to his face, I'd drop the pseudonym "One Slippery Squid" - if you really want to use a Djawish name, I'd recommend "Two Gigantic Balls."
> 
> Johnathan




Johnathan, considering how much joy you brought to us with your classic "Ecology of..." Dragon articles, it's a delight to get to return the favor in some regard.

I think Dranko ended up settling on "One Slippery Slope." Fortune favors the bold, at least briefly! You will be delighted when Dranko, in some small measure, gets what's coming to him in exchange for his bravado (courtesy of the aforementioned demon lord?)... and it triggers a fascinating real-life discussion. Not for a while, though.


----------



## Sagiro

Richards said:


> ...
> Sagiro, it's been said by many before me, but this is one of the most exciting D&D campaigns it's ever been my pleasure to experience.  I stand in awe of your ability to mentally juggle and weave various plot threads together.  (And you are truly a master of the cliffhanger as well!)  And before I forget, StevenAC - excellent job on the PDFs!  They have made an exciting read even more pleasurable.
> 
> You guys are a very lucky gaming group, and thanks to everyone for passing that luck on to those of us who stand in awe at the sidelines, looking on in wonder.
> 
> Finally, I have one piece of advice for Piratecat: now that Dranko has not only taunted a demon lord in his own throne room but also flipped off the Emperor to his face, I'd drop the pseudonym "One Slippery Squid" - if you really want to use a Djawish name, I'd recommend "Two Gigantic Balls."
> 
> Johnathan




Jonathan, that's extremely kind of you to post; I'm glad both you and your son have enjoyed the retelling of our long years of adventure.  But reading Piratecat's post above... you're the guy who wrote those Ecology articles for Dragon all those years ago?  Excuse me for a minute while I go into another room and squeal like a wonder-struck fanboy.

...

...

Okay.  Back now.  I hope I didn't wake the kids!

I'm finishing up a couple of work projects in the next month or so, after which I should have more time to devote to the remainder of the story.  Though I'm getting (relatively) close to the end, some of my favorite (and I think most exciting) bits are still to come.

To Everett:  Here's a teaser:  the party _will_ see Azhant again.  Sort of.  In a very unusual context.

To EroGaki, Duncan, and others who have enjoyed the Story Hour -- thank you both for reading it, and taking the time to post!  I always appreciate knowing I'm entertaining a few people out there in cyberspace.


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

More than a few! Count me in the list of people that's been reading this for years. When it's done I'm certainly going to get the PDFs and read through the whole thing again. It's wonderful story-telling, and even more wonderful to know that it was done as a collaboration.


----------



## Tamlyn

Sagiro said:


> To Everett:  Here's a teaser:  the party _will_ see Azhant again.  Sort of.  In a very unusual context.




Let me guess - Azhant is going to grow and groom a luxurious mustache and start calling himself the Lord of Roses?


----------



## Everett

Tamlyn said:


> Let me guess - Azhant is going to grow and groom a luxurious mustache and start calling himself the Lord of Roses?




It would have to be nine years later.

P will show up with his head as a trophy, perhaps.  Or Dranko will get new cigar tobacco.

As always and above all: I just hope it's not another nine years until I find out...

(For the record; I've been following this Story Hour for about seven.)


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 344*_
*Loose Ends*

While all of the pictures in Leantha’s book are intriguing to say the least, investigating the island depicted on the first page seems like a good place to start.  But before that happens, the Company chooses to attend to a few loose ends and side projects.

The red-armored dream-warrior Octesian, apparently driven mad by his attempt to free the Adversary from his Far Realms prison, has long been prominent on Morningstar’s list of concerns.  Deciding it’s time to start preparing for his arrival in earnest, she visits with Evenstar, and the two of them set out to recruit a 13-woman dream-warrior strike force. Sadly, some of the most promising students – most notably June, but also Maltha, Opaline, Eleanor, Onyx of Minok and some of Evenstar's best – were slain by Octesian in the Battle of Verdshane. Still, though, combat-training has proceeded well at many temples, and Morningstar is able to identify many promising candidates.

The most capable fighter is one of Evenstar's students, a tall, wiry woman named Scola. She is pure fighter – not overly pious, and utterly disdainful of church politics. She was present at the Battle of Verdshane, and that proved a catalyst to an almost fanatical desire to improve herself. In the waking world she'd be a formidable fighter, and she has a great facility to make subtle adjustments in Ava Dormo itself to give her tactical advantage.

Evenstar herself is a powerful cleric (though not in Morningstar’s league), and while old and feeble, she does not flinch or grow flustered in battle. 

Evenstar also recommends a pair of paladin-sisters, Starbrook and Fautish. Fautish was present at Verdshane, and her sister Starbrook has been training hard since hearing the stories from that battle. She was very close to some of Octesian's victims.

Obsidia and Previa have been with Morningstar from the beginning – the former a cleric/warrior, and the latter a straight cleric (and excellent Chronicler, of course). 

Talking to various priestesses from around the kingdom, Morningstar finds several competent Dreamwalker Shields to round out the force– Sable of Kallor, Leona and Raven from Minok, Belle from Hae Charagan and a young, feisty paladin from Kynder Hold named Gyre. 

The 12th  member of the team is Swan.

For the 13th, there are two likely choices. One is a Shield from Kallor named Corinne. She has always been suspicious of Morningstar, and against the whole notion of Daywalkers despite the various proclamations that have come down regarding them. She will join the team if asked, and is an excellent dream-fighter, but makes no secret of her hostility toward Morningstar. The other choice is a perfectly competent and loyal priestess from Tal Hae named Molly. She is clearly not the fighter that Corinne is, but is also guaranteed not to be a morale problem. 

Morningstar chooses Corinne with almost no reservations.  


/*/


Dranko checks in with Lucas Blackwell, the man who runs the day-to-day operations of the Undermen. Lucas delivers a thorough report. On the economic front, the news is mixed as usual. One the one hand, pressure from the White Sun Cartel is eroding some of the profit margins on the gem trade. On the other hand, the Undermen have landed an unexpected and lucrative contract with the Weavers' Guild in Trev Lyndyn. That group carefully guards a secret loom design that produces tough, luxuriant fabrics, and the Undermen are now the sole conduit of their goods into Charagan. Lucas speaks highly of the diplomat who arranged that contract, a savvy woman named Vanya Ashdown. She used some residual bad blood between the Weavers and the Cartel to win the deal on excellent terms, and the Undermen are already seeing some small profits from resale. According to Lucas, Vanya has traveled tirelessly through western Kivia since the Boundary came down, learning local politics and becoming an expert in Kivian relations. 

In other news, Octavius Hightower, leader of the Starshine Players, came to Lucas four days ago with a strange report. Octavius and his bards have noticed some odd trends and occurrences in the past several weeks, and only recently has Hightower begun to wonder if any of them are related. Specifically:


	The weird fluctuations of luck have not gone unnoticed by the general population, though the phenomenon has been lessening of late. There is a strong rumor in some circles that the Goddess Corilayna has either died or abdicated her position.
	There have been a number of small earthquakes in various unrelated locations around the kingdom, none large enough to cause any serious damage.
	In the past two weeks, nine different people in nine different towns have been found dead in their beds, faces contorted in similar expressions of horror. Octavius doesn't see any connections among the victims, beyond their manner of death.
	The people of Sand's Edge have noticed a terrible smell blowing in from the Mouth of Nahalm, which has ignited renewed fears of Turtle Sickness.
	Twice in the same week, two different workers in the deep copper mines near Sentinel stabbed their wives to death, and went back to work the next day as if nothing had happened. They recall the slayings, but don't seem to understand the fuss. Both men had exhibited no previous criminal behaviors, but nonetheless are in custody and awaiting execution.

Finally, Lucas reports no success in finding King Farazil.

/*/

Dranko then accompanies Grey Wolf and Aravis on a journey to Djaw.  Aravis is gravely concerned that Naslund has been left relatively undefended following the abdication of Drosh and the deadly incursion of Tarsos and Meledien.  In Djaw the three hope to gain an audience with clerics of Myr Madar, Kivian God of Judgment, who has subsumed the portfolio of the God of Death.  After an hour of fruitless wandering in the streets, with nary a sign of a temple to Myr Madar, they visit a shrine to Palamir, God of Loyalty, Duty and Honor.  (The folk there are amazed to find one of their most famed paladins, Bostock the Blue, contentedly occupying Grey Wolf’s sword.  Bostock gently declines their offers to house him in their temple.)  When asked about the location of any temples to Myr Madar, the clerics of Palamir inform Aravis that there _aren’t_ any.  By Myr Madar’s own divine mandate, there are no churches, shrines, priests or worshippers of that deity.  Otherwise, goes the common wisdom, Myr Madar might be seen as showing favoritism.  

“Great,” grumbles Dranko.  “The new God of Death has an epic level rod up his…”

“Excuse me,” interrupts Grey Wolf, “but where is your donation box?”

Aravis proposes a plan B.  Given his personal divine ties to Quarrol, Kivian God of nature and animals, he thinks perhaps he can get a message to Myr Madar that way.  A sage in Djaw tells them that the largest shrine to Quarrol is a wooden fortress some thirty miles outside the town of Trev-Lyndyn.  A couple of _teleports_ later and Aravis finds himself speaking to the High Priest of Quarrol, a bent and aged man leaning on a maple staff.  The High Priest bows low before Aravis. 

“What may we do for you, Holy One?”

“I need to get a message to Quarrol,” Aravis explains.

The old man looks puzzled. “You cannot simply talk with him yourself?”

“I don’t know,” Aravis admits.  “I’ve never tried.”  At his request, the High Priest takes him to an enormous tree with a small woodsy shrine built up around it.  He sits and meditates, but though he does achieve a pleasing inner peace, he fails to manifest a direct line of communication to Quarrol.  In the end he settles for explaining his dilemma to the High Priest, who casts _commune_.

_Is Myr Madar aware that Naslund is unprotected?_

*YES*

_Can He do something to help protect it?_

*HE CANNOT.  ONLY DROSH CAN*

So, that’s the end of that.  For the meantime, at least, Viersk in on his own.


/*/


While Morningstar is recruiting dream-warriors, and Aravis, Dranko and Grey Wolf are trying to contact Myr Madar, Kibi and Ernie _teleport_ to the dwarven lands of Gurund.  With Azhant slain, the ancient halls of Cloud Mountain now lie fallow and unguarded, waiting for new tenants who don’t mind a fixer-upper. It’s obvious to Kibi that the place once housed tens of thousands of dwarves, and together with the surrounding hills and woodlands, could probably serve as the home to entire dwarven population of Gurund.  

The capital city of Gurund is still under the yoke of the Guild of Chains, with large and numerous Guild guardhouses and offices rising over the shorter buildings of the dwarves.  Guild soldiers patrol the streets and their camps are everywhere.  They are a constant physical presence, and the dwarves go quietly about their business, heads down, avoiding the humans entirely.  

Years ago, after their first unpleasant encounter with the Guild of Chains, the Company had quietly left a large sum of gold with a dwarven elder named Athulf, someone they deemed a possible spark of rebellion. Kibi casts _veil_ upon himself and Ernie, making them look more like the locals in dress and features, before making discreet inquiries regarding Athulf’s whereabouts.  It doesn’t take long before they are hustled off the streets by the locals, and then passed on through a chain of hands to a small nondescript building in a crowded residential neighborhood.  Athulf sits at a low stone table, drinking a beer.  Ernie thinks he looks even older and more careworn than at their last meeting.  Kibi introduces himself, and briefly explains the nature of their errand.  Athulf listens with frank skepticism.

“That’s an interesting story you have there, Kibilhathur Bimson,” he says when the tale is done.  “But I’ve told you people before, I’m just a dwarf.  I don’t want any trouble with anyone.  Honestly.”  He nods meaningfully toward the door.

Kibi has donned the party’s _cloak of diplomacy_ for the occasion.  It whispers in his mind:  _The Guild may suspect that Athulf is up to something.  They may have tried this sort of trickery before to get Athulf to admit to fomenting rebellion._

“My story is true,” Kibi insists.  “What must I do to convince you?”

Athulf rubs his chin.  “Can you wait outside for about half an hour?  I need to think this over.  But let me clear about something, first.  Whether or not your with the Guild of Chains, I _don’t want trouble_.   Understand me?”

Kibi nods.  He and Ernie depart and wait on a stone bench outside the house.  Dwarves bustle past on errands, seldom taking any note of the two of them.  Ernie takes a short walk and notes that this particular house is unusually far from any particular Guild edifice or patrol route.

By and by the door opens, though Athulf doesn’t come out.  They walk back inside and close the door.  Athulf has been joined by a trio of burly dwarves, conspicuously armed with axes.

“So, Ernie,” says Athulf.  “Describe who was with you the last time you were here?”

Ernie smiles. “You probably remember my friend the half-orc, with the foul body odor and no manners.  And, the tall white-haired pale woman – who’s now the half-orc’s wife, by the way.  There was a half-elven woman with dark fly-away hair.  A dour looking guy with a sword who grumbled a lot.  And me, of course.”

Athulf glances at one of his companions.  “Ok, yeah,” he says.  “And somebody in your group gave me something.  Who was it, and what did they give me?”

“It was me,” says Ernie. “I gave you a big pile of money.”

Athulf turns to the dwarf next to him, who nods curtly.  The other two exit the room.  

“Okay, Ernie.  Kibi.  You told me  that you had just defeated a dragon named Azhant who was residing in Cloud Mountain, which used to be a dwarven city, but now lies in ruins.”

“And we’re thinking maybe you could make it not so ruined, now that there’s a vacancy,” Ernie says.

“Is it big enough for the entire population of Gurund?”

Kibi nods.  “If you include the surrounding areas, I think so.”

Athulf strokes his beard.  “And what stops the Guild of Chains from enlisting the armies of the White Sun to get us back after we relocate?”

“Well, mountains, for one thing,” says Kibi.  “There’s no good way for an army to approach.  A small number of dwarves could easily defend the mountain passes from a much larger force.”

“Also,” says Ernie with a grin, “there would be ogres between them and you.”

“And how would we gather up a hundred thousand dwarves from all around Gurund without the Guild of Chains figuring out what we’re up to?”

“I admit, there are some transportation difficulties,” says Kibi.  “But we can set up teleportation circles.”

Athulf’s head bobs up and down.  He’s obviously intrigued, despite the logistical hurdles.  “Ok, ok, but then we have the problem of the current population of dwarven slaves.  Every slave is someone’s brother, or father, or cousin.   Even if we could move everyone else to Cloud Mountain, the current slaveholders would start shipping us ears and fingers until we cracked and came back.”

“We could solve that,” says Ernie.  “A _wish_ or _miracle_ could get every current dwarven slave to a teleportation circle, all at once.”

Athulf’s eyes go a bit wide at these assumptions of power, but they also fuel his enthusiasm.  “With your help, I think this is workable.  I didn’t waste your seed money, you know.  We’ve been stockpiling weapons and armor.  We also pay a decent chunk to diviners, so we know who to trust, and who might be a Guild stooge.  We even ran some divinations on you while you were waiting outside.  If you’re willing to help us again…”

Athulf asks for a few hours to assemble a team of engineers and stone-wrights, and for transportation to Cloud Mountain.  He wants to check out the location himself, to make sure it’s a suitable new home for the dwarves of Gurund.  When the group of dwarves is set to go, Kibi _teleports_ them to the base of Cloud Mountain, after which Ernie casts _wind walk_ upon them to allow easier scouting of the ruins.  After a couple of hours wafting through the cracks and landslides of the shattered halls, the scout team is quite optimistic.  They request more time to scout the surrounding regions; Kibi agrees to return in a week to ferry them back to Gurund.

Two days later, the Company has again gathered in the Greenhouse to discuss their plans.  Dranko puts his feet up on the table, lights up a blacktallow, and breathes out smoke that curls into the words _Kibi is a genius_.  The dwarf smirks.

In light of Octavius Hightower’s report, and still considering the Book of Leantha, there are now several possibilities for the Company’s next move.  They could:


	investigate the various persons found dead in their beds (though the party is unanimous in their opinion that Octesian is to blame).  
	travel to Sand’s Edge and look into the bad smell blowing in off the sand.  (Dranko is certain that one of the Ventifact Colossi has died.)
	look into the baffling murders at the Sentinel copper mines
	seek out the Sharshun’s hidden fortress in the Greatwood, to wrest the _Watcher’s Kiss_ away from Darkeye.  
	visit the mysterious island, long protected by dint of being in the Uncrossable Sea, shown on the first page of Leantha’s tome.

They decide to decide after breakfast.

…to be continued…


----------



## Richards

Awesome!  I'm glad to see that events are being put into motion to free the dwarves from the Guild of Chains.

Johnathan


----------



## Piratecat

For me, this is the turning point: everything gathers momentum from here. The noise you hear, at least in my memory, is the roller coaster cresting the rise.

Heh.

Looking forward to this.


----------



## Solarious

Piratecat said:


> For me, this is the turning point: everything gathers momentum from here. The noise you hear, at least in my memory, is the roller coaster cresting the rise.



I'd say.

Remember back when the world changed, the Emperor's goal was to continually _dig down into the earth beneath Tal Hae_? And now people digging deep into the earth have suffered a complete morality degradation to complete psychopath... why, its almost as if they were exposed to the Evil Black Goo of the Adversary. I'm sure this is a complete coincidence and it will in no way get worse and even more horrible to learn more about.

By the way, how's Flicker doing with King Farazil hanging out in his head?


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 345*_
*Uncharted Territory*

A curious guardsman fishes out his keys and spins them in his hand until he finds the right one.  “You sure you’re okay being left along with him, sir?” 

Dranko shows a tusky grin.  “Yeah, I’m sure.  You can wait outside in the hall.”

The guard unlocks the cell door and then hustles away, leaving Dranko to open it.  The cell is dark, cramped, and smells of rat droppings.  A man in the back, dressed in gray prison rags, saunters forward and looks Dranko up and down.  Perhaps impressed with the half-orc’s Spire Guard uniform, along with his armor and weapons, the prisoner chooses to be cooperative.

“So,” says Dranko.  “What are you in here for?”

The prisoner answers in a thick, dull voice. “Killed some guy.”

“Yeah?  Do you do that a lot?”

“No.”

Dranko takes a deep breath.  “So, if you had a choice, between being hanged tomorrow, and not being hanged, and allowing someone else’s personality to steer you for a while, what would your choice be?”

The prisoner looks confused, but does show he absorbed the first part of Dranko’s question.  “Depends,” he says.  “Do I still get hanged the day _after_ tomorrow?”

Dranko tries another approach.  “Well, see, I have a guy, he’s pretty cool, but he doesn’t have a body.  It’s magic stuff.”

“Are you offering me a pardon?”  The prisoner looks both perplexed and hopeful.

“Your body would be moving around, and your mind would be in there,” says Dranko.  “You just wouldn’t be driving.  Do you understand what I mean?”

“No.”

“Right,” says Dranko.

“Is this a pardon?” the prisoner presses.

“No.”

“Too bad.”

Dranko tries again.  “If you _could_ get a pardon, but never be the one in charge of your body again, would you do that?”

“Wait… what?”

Dranko sighs.  “Look, have you ever been dominated?”

The rest of the Company has been following this exchange over the mind-link.  Someone giggles. The prisoner doesn’t answer; he shifts nervously from one foot to the other, then picks his nose and wipes his finger on his shirt.

“We’d give your body a pardon,” blurts Dranko.

“My body.  All right. That sounds good, I guess.”

“And for your mind, you’d be sleeping.”

The prisoner shakes his head.  “I don’t get it.  Don’t I have to be awake to accept my pardon?”

“No you’d… hmm.  Do you ever sleepwalk?”

“How should I know?  I’m asleep!”

“But you’re okay with this?  Better than dying?”

The prisoner scratches face.  “Yeah, but what’s this about sleepwalking?”

“Imagine you were walking around doing stuff, but didn’t remember it.”

“Wait,” says the prisoner.  “Do I not remember it while I’m doing it, or not remember it later?”

“Neither.”

“But I’m doing it.  No, wait, someone else is doing it?  You know, I still don’t get it. You’re talking crazy.”

At this point the others urge Dranko over the mind-link to just get the poor condemned back to the Greenhouse, so Dranko calls for the guard to lock the door again, and then goes to find the local magistrate.  

“My name is Dranko Brightshield, Knight of the Spire Guard,” he says, once he’s standing in the magistrate’s office.  “You’ve got a prisoner due to be hanged tomorrow.”

“Yes,” nods the magistrate.  “Anton Fish, his name is.  Real piece of work, isn’t he?  He committed murder in the course of a robbery.”

“How do you feel about remanding him into my custody?”

The magistrate gestures to Dranko’s uniform.  “You have the authority, sir.  Also, you’re a known associate of the Spire Guard – that group that lives on Baker Street, if I recall rightly?  I didn’t realize you had been promoted.  Congratulations.”

Dranko bites his tongue, and fills out the paperwork.  A few minutes later two guards bring the prisoner into the magistrate’s office, hands and feet bound in chains.

“Anton Fish,” the magistrate intones.  “You are now officially in the custody of the Spire Guard and Dranko Brightshield.  The conditions of your release are that you do whatever this man says, and make no attempt to escape his custody.  If you should violate the terms of your release, you will be returned here and your execution will be expedited and carried out at once.  Do you understand all that?

“Expedited?  What does…”

“Do what he says, or we’ll kill you after all,” the magistrate clarifies.


/*/


In the backyard of the Greenhouse, Farazil appraises his new body through Flicker’s eyes.

“If you’re going to use him as your pony,” Dranko explains, “then if you need to abandon him somewhere, do it where he can’t hurt anyone else.”

“Oh, I’ll bring him back,” Farazil promises.  “Unless he gets killed, that is.”  He looks expectantly at Dranko and asks, “Will I be a citizen of Charagan, once I’m legally and officially in the body of this man?”

Dranko shakes his head.  “I don’t have the authority to make you a citizen.”

“You don’t?”  Farazil sounds skeptical.  “Big wigs like you?  You’re just about the biggest wigs there are!”

“No, we’re not,” says Aravis.  “There’s the King.  There are dukes…”

Farazil interrupts.  “Well, can you get the Duke to make me a citizen then?”

“I promise we’ll work on it,” says Aravis.

“Because that’s what I’m really after,” says Farazil.  “Citizenship, and the… the acceptance that comes with it.  I  promise to be a good boy, but you promise to keep working on getting that for me, right?

“Yes,” says Aravis, “like I said, we promise.”

Farazil reaches out with Flicker’s arm and puts his hand on Anton’s shoulder.  Flicker shudders and blinks his eyes.

“What happened?” he asks. 

“That’s Farazil,” says Grey Wolf, pointing to Anton Fish.

“Can I punch him in the nuts?” asks Flicker.

“Now, that’s not very nice,” says Farazil with a chuckle.  “I think I treated your body quite well. Consider, I could have jumped you off a bridge or in front of a moving cart any time I wanted!  But it’s better if I stay on your relative good side.”

“You’ll never be on my relative good side,” hisses Ernie, “because you dominated my relative!”

Farazil ignores the belligerent halflings, and addresses Aravis.  “So, the plan is, I take this body, and go see what I can find out about those inexplicable murders in Sentinel.  I’ll be back when I know something.”

“We’ll keep in touch with _sendings_ if anything comes up on our end,” says Dranko.  “Say, do you have any money?”

“Gosh, Dranko, I don’t know!” exclaims Farazil.  “Let me check the pockets of this condemned prisoner you found for me.”  He makes a show of turning the pockets of his rags inside out.  “Nope, no money!  What a surprise!”

Dranko glowers and hands over a pouch with a hundred gold coins.  “If you come back and we’re not here, find a room in an inn somewhere nearby.”

“You mean I can’t stay in the Greenhouse?  It’s nice in there.”

“No,” says Ernie flatly.

“Just asking!  Well, I’d best get started.  Thank you all… I mean it.  And I won’t let you down, I promise.”

And just like that, Farazil takes his leave of the Company.


/*/


Now… the island.  The primary logistical hurdle is an inability to _teleport _ to a location never visited.  All they know is an approximate location, somewhere in the once-uncrossable sea, as shown in Leantha’s book.

“This should be no problem,” says Dranko.

“Oh?”  Aravis raises an eyebrow.  “And how are you proposing we find our mysterious island?”

“Easy,” says Dranko.  “I ask the smartest person I know.”  He gives Aravis a meaningful stare.

Aravis sighs.

They discuss various plans, and discard most of them.  Sailing a ship around in the ocean would take too long.  Ditto preparing thousands of scrolls of _dimension door_.  Morningstar casts _find the path_, but it fails.  (Could that mean the fissure with its Divination Sinks is on the island?)  Then someone remembers that _greater plane shift_ promises a precise landing location, unlike the 5-500 mile perturbation of the lesser version. That sets Aravis to making himself a larger version of Leantha’s drawing. He spends an hour drawing lines and doing math, and figuring a location that’s going to be extremely close to the island, assuming Leantha’s map is to a proper relative scale.  

“Got it,” he says at last.  “1600 miles due east from the eastern tip of Charagan, and then 550 miles north from there.  We’ll need a _plane shift_ to get off Abernia, and a _greater plane shift_ to come back.”

“And a boat,” adds Kibi.

Since no one has _greater plane shift_ prepared, the Company has to wait until the next morning to enact their plan.  Bright and early they _plane shift_ to Yoba’s home plane.  There’s some small chance they’ll end up close enough to Yoba’s actual location for Ernie to pay his love a visit.  

“I hope I get lucky,” he says, his wistful tone undermined by the leering snickers of Flicker and Dranko.

They land in a forest.  It takes a few minutes for them to find a clearing large enough to unfold _Burning Sail_; they create the boat in its smaller aspect, propped up against a tree to keep it upright.  They board the vessel, and Ernie casts _greater plane shift_, aiming for the spot Aravis indicated on their map of Abernia.

They appear in the middle of the ocean, as they expected.  Before anyone can glance around to see if an island is visible from the deck, a huge wave sloshes over the side.  _Burning Sail_ is lifted high on a huge swell and rocked to a precarious pitch.  They immediately transform the _folding boat_ to its larger aspect, and drop the anchor to give them some drag, but even the heavier vessel is tossed around casually by the storm in which they’ve appeared.  A powerful wind whips up spray, and combined with a cold, stinging rain, lowers visibility to near zero.  The _unseen servants_ do their best to prevent their ship from capsizing, though it’s not at all clear how long they’ll be able to succeed.

As the ship reaches the bottom of a swell, Aravis casts _Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion,_ and the Company hurriedly piles into it, even while Dranko is folding the boat back into a small box.  Sopping and panting from the effort, the party is soon sprawled just inside the doorway; the smell of the magical feast wafts over to them.  Outside the door, the storm still rages, but for the moment that is forgotten.  Only Dranko doesn’t immediately tuck into the gourmet repast; instead, he ties one end of a long rope to a stone column in the foyer and the other around his waist.  After using a magic ring to effect _water walking_, he leaps out the door.

Over the mind-link the others can hear his glee.  “I’m surfing the ocean in the middle of a storm, tied to a rope that’s dangling out of a mansion that’s hovering in mid-air.  Do we have the greatest job in the world, or what?”

Aravis shakes his head.  “Are we going to scout, or are we going to sit around abusing magic in various ways?”

“That second one,” answers Dranko.


/*/


After the meal, Morningstar gets down to the business of finding the island. She drops into _Ava Dormo_ and exits the mansion; outside, the sea is like glass.  The Dreamscape has no weather.  

She has fully mastered the ability to divide her consciousness between her conscious and her dreaming minds.  “I can see for miles in every direction.  There’s no sign of the island,” she tells the others.  At Aravis’s suggestion she flies upward, as high as possible before her vision of the ocean floor grows hazy.  From there she starts an out-spiraling search pattern.

It takes about ninety minutes for her to spot the island, a tiny speck of land to the north-west.  She flies towards it, and as she draws near she is better able to judge its size.  The little land-mass is quite small, a rough oval two miles along its long axis, half a mile on the short.  Most of the island is occupied by a single, towering mountain.

She flies around the island's perimeter, getting the lay of the land.  There’s not much space for any buildings or habitation; the sandy shore runs right up to the foot of the mountain, buffered only by a sparse fringe of scraggly green-brown scrub.  The mountain itself is a steep cone of unforested rock, lacking any trails or pathways.  

But there is one relevant detail.  Near the far side of the island, the base of the mountain is a sheer cliff rising up out of the sand.  And in one place, that cliff side is gashed by a fissure at ground level, a ten foot wide crack that opens into either a cave or a tunnel. It looks conspicuously like the picture in Leantha’s book – the one showing a fissure flanked by Divination Sinks.

“I think we’re here.”

…to be continued…


----------



## Zelc

I'm rereading the story, and was wondering what would have happened if the group decided to stop the Stormknights from killing the Ventifact Colossus.  I seem to remember from past comments that maybe the Sharshun's attempt to rewrite history would have been stopped, and instead Naradawk would have gotten through at Verdshane.  Sagiro, how would you have handled the story if the party chose to go this along this route?


----------



## Sagiro

Zelc said:


> I'm rereading the story, and was wondering what would have happened if the group decided to stop the Stormknights from killing the Ventifact Colossus.  I seem to remember from past comments that maybe the Sharshun's attempt to rewrite history would have been stopped, and instead Naradawk would have gotten through at Verdshane.  Sagiro, how would you have handled the story if the party chose to go this along this route?




Oh, goodness, I have no idea.  I probably had some ideas back when it was happening, but remember, that was about 15 years ago, and I have a very spotty long term memory.  

I do remember thinking at the time that the party was _highly_ likely to choose to prevent the turtle's rampage.  I had a pretty good grasp on how my players thought, and they weren't likely going to choose the "let's let thousands of people get crushed by turtles with no real proof things will be better that way" option.  As a result, I spent much more time thinking about the consequences of them stopping the Colossus.


----------



## Kaodi

Just having one update was great: two is amazing! Thanks, Sagiro.


----------



## KainG

Sagiro said:


> _*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 345*_
> 
> Over the mind-link the others can hear his glee.  “I’m surfing the ocean in the middle of a storm, tied to a rope that’s dangling out of a mansion that’s hovering in mid-air.  Do we have the greatest job in the world, or what?”
> 
> Aravis shakes his head.  “Are we going to scout, or are we going to sit around abusing magic in various ways?”
> 
> “That second one,” answers Dranko.




Haha! I love this! High-leveling adventuring really is the greatest job in the world.

Thanks for the update, Sagiro!


----------



## Joshua Randall

The prisoner('s body) given to Farazil was named Anton *Fish*.

When the party was in the alternate world in which the Emperor had won, they found a guy who took shelter in a furnace (!). Wasn't his name also Fish?

I'm too lazy to check the PDFs now

Coincidence... or conspiracy?!


----------



## Zelc

Sagiro said:


> Oh, goodness, I have no idea.  I probably had some ideas back when it was happening, but remember, that was about 15 years ago, and I have a very spotty long term memory.
> 
> I do remember thinking at the time that the party was _highly_ likely to choose to prevent the turtle's rampage.  I had a pretty good grasp on how my players thought, and they weren't likely going to choose the "let's let thousands of people get crushed by turtles with no real proof things will be better that way" option.  As a result, I spent much more time thinking about the consequences of them stopping the Colossus.



Hah, I thought that might have been the case .  It was worth a try.  Maybe the story of that alternate "reality" would have to be written by the fan fiction groups .

Thanks for the updates!  It's an amazing story.


----------



## Sagiro

Kaodi said:


> Just having one update was great: two is amazing! Thanks, Sagiro.



What about three?  

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 346*_
*The Girl Who Has Been Waiting*

“I think we’re here,” Morningstar says to the others.  

Dranko gestures to the banquet table.  “But we still have a hundred courses left to eat!”

Morningstar casts _dream anchor_ and brings the three wizards into _Ava Dormo_ with her, taking them directly to the beach nearest the cleft in the cliff.  They study the location for a few minutes, return to their bodies in the mansion, and the party prepares to _teleport_.  Flicker stuffs one last cinnamon roll into his mouth before the party dangles themselves outside the mansion for a group translation.

One drawback of using _Ava Dormo_ for scouting is that transient objects are not reflected in the Dreamscape.  So it is that the party is unpleasantly surprised to find the beach strewn with bodies poking out of the sand.  A small population of gulls is pecking at the briny flesh rotting upon their skeletons.  They were humanoid but not human – tall, four-armed, muscular and with thick skin.  They’ve likely been dead about six months.  None in the party recognize their race, but it hardly matters now.  There are fourteen bodies here, and every one of them has a charred hole burned into the center of its chest.  

“I hate playing catch-up,” Dranko grumbles.

Beyond the smell of ordinary decay, the Company can detect the faintest whiff of Essence permeating the scene of carnage.  Grey Wolf casts _enhanced senses_ and finds that among the unpleasant odors, he detects the scent of dead _human_.  Flicker notices a skeletonized human hand sticking poking its fingers up through the sand, and when he pulls, an entire human arm comes out, ripped from the socket of its absent owner.  They’re not sure, but they think it’s a woman’s arm.

Dranko smiles.  “Looks like Meledien’s been disarmed.”  He takes the arm and drops it into a _bag of holding_.

There are two other objects that catch the party’s collective eye:  at the base of the fissure, one on either side of its opening, are two enormous Divination Sinks, huge stone barrels glowing blue from within.  


/*/


With _mass darkvision_ applied, the Company enters the cracked opening in the side of the cliff.  It leads to a long, narrow tunnel, straight as an arrow, boring through the mountainside.  The floor is flat and polished, though the walls are rough-hewn, and the ceiling starts to descend as they progress.  The minutes pass, marked only by the muffled echoes of their footsteps.  

After a mile of this monotony, long after the pinpoint of light marking the entrance has disappeared behind them, the tunnel abruptly ends.  The ceiling has come down to only eight feet, and the passage has narrowed to little more than five feet wide. In the floor, just short of the wall that marks the end of the tunnel, is a perfectly round hole.  It starts a cylindrical shaft that plummets straight down into the darkness, past the range of their _darkvision_.  

They tie a sunrod to the end of a long length of rope and slowly lower it into the shaft.  The illuminated curved walls are a smooth, glistening stone.  Down goes the sunrod into that perfect well, until the light is so dim it seems no more than the glimmer of a distant candle.  Only after they have paid out some two hundred feet of rope does Dranko feel it touch the ground, the rope going slightly slack.

Something tugs on the rope, gently, three times.  Dranko is so startled he nearly lets go.

“Who’s there?” he calls, but no answer rises up to meet his question.

He starts to pull the rope back up, and just for a second it resists, as if someone has grabbed the far end, but then it pulls free.  

“Don’t pull it all the way back,” says Kibi.  “Leave it most of the way down.  I’m going to scout.”

The dwarf casts _xorn movement_ and sinks into the floor.  With Scree at his side, the two descend straight down parallel to the round shaft, offset by a few feet.  He realizes that the Divination Sinks have cut off the _telepathic bond_ he usually enjoys with his comrades, though he can still communicate mentally with Scree.

Still twenty feet short of the depth where the sunrod touched bottom, Kibi finds he can go no further.  He has come against an impervious “floor” of blue marble, though ordinarily such stone would prove no barrier to him.  Perhaps he has reached some sort of underground prison?

“Scree, I’m going to stick my head into the shaft and see what’s below us.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” asks Scree nervously.  “If I volunteered to do that, you’d probably tell me not to.”

“Maybe,” admits Kibi.  “But I need to learn what we’re dealing with.”

Kibi slowly sticks his head out of the solid rock and into the shaft, while effectively lying on his stomach atop the marble layer.  He cranes his neck out and downward, and finds himself looking into a large round chamber.  No, not entirely round – it’s a ten-sided room, and on each wall is a large symbol inlaid in gems.  But before Kibi can focus on these symbols, he notices that directly below him, staring up and watching him intently, is a human girl, maybe nine years old.  She’s wearing a simple blue dress, and her long brown hair hangs straight to her scrawny shoulders.

“Hi,” says Kibi, taken aback.  “Are you… are you friendly?”

“Hey mister, that’s a neat trick!” says the girl.

“Thanks,” says Kibi.  “So, uh, what are you doing down here?”

The girl smiles.  “Waiting.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know!  Maybe you?”  Then she frowns.  “You’re not with those other three people, are you?”

“No,” says Kibi quickly.  “Are you?”  

The girl makes a face, like she’s eaten something rotten.  “Me?  Of course not!”

“What did you think of them?” asks Kibi.

“Not very nice,” says the girl.  “Oh, and I like your beard.  It’s so fuzzy!”

“Thank you,” says Kibi again.  “Have you always lived here?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you?”

The girl shrugs, lifting and lowering her dress a few inches.  “I don’t know.  I was asleep for a long time.”

“What woke you up then?”

The girl’s voice sounds a little unsure as she answers.  “The people on the ships.  And Posada.  And the other one.”

“Did the people on the ships come here, then?” asks Kibi.

“No.”

“But you woke up once Posada’s Boundary came down?”

She scrunches up her face like she’s trying hard to remember something.  “Yes.  That sounds right.”

When Kibi doesn’t immediately offer another question, the girl poses the dwarf one of her own.  

“Are you ready?”

“For what?” asks Kibi.

“To go into the Depths.  That’s why you’re here, right?”

Kibi gulps.  “You mean… underwater?”

The girl giggles. “Part of it probably is.  I don’t know.  I’ve never been there.  I’m not allowed.  I can only let people in.”

Kibi frowns.  “Those people who came before us… did you let them in?”

The girl makes her sour-milk face again.  “Them?  No.  I hid from them.  But you know what’s weird?  They let _themselves_ in.  And they’re not allowed to _do_ that!”

“Can only Divine beings let others through, then?” asks Kibi.

“No, only me.  That’s why Yulan put me here.”

Kibi recalls that Yulan is the Kivian God of Time and Reality, and Father of all the Kivian Gods.  

“So, mister beardy, is it just you?”

“No, I have friends up there.  We lowered the light down on a rope, and wondered who was down here when you tugged on it.”

“Oh, it’s just me.  My name’s Ula.”

“My name is Kibilhathur Bimson,” says Kibi.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Bimson.  Why are you in the rock like that?

“I don’t like climbing down ropes,” says Kibi.  “It makes me nervous.”

“Oh,” says Ula.  She peers upward into the well.  “It looks like fun!”

“So,” says Kibi, “Those people who came before and let themselves in even though they weren’t supposed to.  Did they take anything out when they left?”

Ula seems surprised at the question.  “Oh, they didn’t come out.  They _can’t_ come out.  It’s one-way.”

“So once you’re in the… the Depths… you’re in there forever?”

“As far I as I know.  That’s the whole point of the Iron Barrier.  No one goes in, no one goes out.”  She gives Kibi a look of surprise that he didn’t know something so obvious.

“So what’s in the Depths?” asks Kibi.

“I don’t know exactly.  A whole world.  Like you have up there.  Cities, civilizations, creatures…  stuff like that. I’ve never actually been there.”

“Is there someone down in the Depths that can let people back up?”

“I doubt it. It would be against the rules!”

Kibi decides it’s time for the others to join the conversation.  “Do you mind if my friends come down too?”

“Sure.  I think you won’t hurt me.  Not like those other people would have.  There was something very wrong with them, you know.   And they killed all the guardians!  Can you imagine?  I didn’t think they could do that, either.  There’s something not right, here.  But you’re right.  Right?”

Kibi nods, smiles, and swims back up through the rock to join the rest of the Company.  He relays everything about his encounter with Ula.  


/*/


Soon enough, all seven of them are down in the ten-sided room.  It’s spacious, some fifty feet across, with blue marble walls, floor and ceiling.  Two metal rings, like handles, protrude from the center of the floor, directly beneath where the tunnel opens into the ceiling.

On each wall of the room is a symbol, set in silver gemstones:  a loom; a tear-drop; a man on fire; a sword blade; a sun; a wave; a shield; a bloody crescent; a tree; and the Rune of Drosh.  They are the symbols of each of the ten primary Deities of Kivia: in order, Manisette, Goddess of Creation; Heros, Goddess of Mercy; Nifi, God of Fire; Tiria, Goddess of Chaos; Kemma, God of the Sun; Posada, God of the Ocean; Palamir, God of Soliders; Dralla, Goddess of the Night; Quarrol, God of Nature; and Drosh, God of Death.  Yulan himself is indicated with an hourglass symbol on Ula’s forehead. 

“What about the ones who died?” asks Ernie.

“I think the room had more walls while I was sleeping,” says Ula. “I’m not sure, though.”

Ernie looks at the thin girl, slightly taller than himself.  “Are you hungry?” he asks.  “You’ve been here a long time…”

Ula smiles at him.  “No, but thanks.  Say, what’s your name?”

All of Kibi’s companions introduce themselves one at a time, and Ula nods politely at each until Dranko’s turn.

“Dranko?  That’s a funny sounding name.  Can you say it again?”

Dranko looks at Ula warily.  “Dranko.”

“Dranko!” says Ula.  “Dranko Dranko Dranko Dranko Dranko…”

“Do you get bored?” Dranko interrupts.  

“No.” 

“How did you hide from the others?” asks Grey Wolf, looking around the room.  He doesn’t see any cover or other exits.

“Oh.  Like this!”

Ula vanishes.  A few seconds later she appears on the far side of the room.

“Where did you just go?” asks Ernie.

Ula shrugs.  “I don’t know.”

“And you only appeared here when the sea became crossable?” asks Aravis.

“I think I was here all the time,” says Ula uncertainly. “I was just asleep.  I think Yulan put me here not long after he first arrived.”

“And where did he come from?” presses Aravis.

“I don’t know.”

Dranko describes the persons of Tarsos, Meledien and Seven Dark Words.  Ula nods.  “Yeah, that was them.  The greasy hair man was the worst.  He’s the one who actually opened the door, and that doesn’t make sense, since I’m the only one who can open it.  That’s the whole reason I’m here!  Those three went in, but at least I know they can’t come back out.  It’s only one way.”

“And how did they open it?” asks Grey Wolf.

“I don’t know.  I didn’t see.  I was hiding.  If they can kill the guardians, they could kill me too!”

“Where is the door they opened?” asks Aravis.

Ula points to the handles set in the middle of the floor.

Aravis considers that if Adversary blood let his enemies pass,  his own divine nature might let him succeed as well.  “May I try opening them?"

“Sure, but it won’t work.”

She’s right.  Aravis grips the rings and pulls, but they don’t budge.

“So,” says Dranko, “tell me about the place beyond this.  The Depths.”

“Like I told your beardy friend, I’ve never been there. I think it’s like your world up on the surface,  but underground.”

“You mentioned something called the Iron Barrier…?”

“Oh, yes! It’s what Yulan put around the world, to make sure all the people in the Depths wouldn’t come up and wipe out all the people on the surface.  Because they could have done that, I think.  It’s very big, it goes around the whole world, and it’s very thick.”

Kibi looks alarmed.  “Do the people in the Depths _want_ to destroy the surface?”

“I don’t know,” Ula shrugs. “I’ve never met them.  Maybe.  No one’s ever come up, so I think it doesn’t matter.”

“And your job is to let people through who want to go?” asks Kibi.

“No, my job is to figure out who _should_ go through, and then open the door for them if I think they ought to.”

Kibi takes a deep breath.  “Do you think _we_ should go through?”

Ula’s young face breaks into a grin.  “Yes, of course!  Assuming that you’re ready, and have everything you need.”

“And what do we need?”

“I have no idea,” answers Ula.  “But understand, once you go through, you can’t come back.  So if you _don’t_ have everything you need, then once you go, you won’t be able to do whatever it is you need to do.  What _do_ you want to do down there, anyway?”

“Stop those other three people from doing whatever awful thing they’re planning on,” says Kibi.

Dranko eyes the two metal handles in the floor.  “I think we have everything we need,” he says.

“What if we need the Watcher’s Kiss?” asks Grey Wolf.

“We could cast a _commune_, just to be sure,” says Ernie.

“But what about the Divination Sinks?” asks Kibi.

That’s a problem easily mended.  Aravis casts a _rope trick_, and Morningstar goes inside to ask questions of her Goddess.  Dranko keeps Ula occupied by teaching her how to play cards.

Morningstar sits down in the little extra-dimensional pocket and casts her spell.  Ell is with her.

_Hi, Ell,_ Morningstar says with a weary wryness. “Guess where I am now?”

*ASK YOUR QUESTIONS, CHILD*

_Do we need the Watcher’s Kiss before we descend into the Depths?_

*YES*

_Is there anything else we need, that we don’t have, before we descend into the Depths?_

*NO*

_Is there anything else we might_ want?

*YES*

_Do you have any sense that Meledien, Tarsos and Seven Dark Words are present on the surface world?_

*I DON’T THINK THEY ARE*

_We suspect they’ve already been in the Depths for six months.  Are we already too late?_

*NO*

_Should we seek the Watcher’s Kiss immediately?_

*SOONER IS BETTER*

_The people who were killed in their sleep.  Did Octesian kill them?_

*YES*

_Should we seek Octesian before seeking the Watcher’s Kiss?_

*USE YOUR JUDGMENT*

_The murderers in Sentinel; is it imperative that we deal with that before going into the depths?_

*THE QUESTION IS TOO VAGUE*

_Are those murderers connected with a known enemy?_

*YES*

_Are they connected with Octesian?_

*NOT MEANINGFULLY*

_Are they connected with Meledien or Tarsos or Seven Dark Words?_

*YES*

_The task we need to do in the Depths -- does it have anything to do with the Thorn in Abernia’s side?_

*YES*

_Will Farazil substantively abuse the trust we’ve placed in him?_

*PROBABLY NOT, SHORT TERM*

_Is there a way to send Farazil back to where he came from?_

*YES, BUT HE WOULD RETURN*

_Is there a way to confine him to one body?_

*YES, WITH GREAT EFFORT*

_Will the dwarves be safer if we move them to Cloud Mountain?_

*SOME WILL*

_Will Azhant return?_

*I DON’T KNOW*

_Thank you, Dark Goddess_

When Morningstar emerges and relays Ell’s answers, a nervous twitter passes through the group, given how close they were to pursuing their Black Circle quarry without first acquiring the Watcher’s Kiss. Having learned everything they’re likely to from Ula, and with a renewed sense of urgency, they bid her a fond farewell.

“Nice meeting you all,” she says with a smile and a wave.  “I guess I’ll see you again pretty soon, huh?”

…to be continued…


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

Ula is interesting.  I wondered what Ula's nature is--is she a god?  Some form of avatar of Yulan?  A construct of some sort?  An empowered mortal?  Did the Company spend time talking about that?

(It seems notable that her name is a subset of Yulan's, but...)


----------



## Kaodi

Sagiro said:


> What about three?




_Bliss._


----------



## StevenAC

Piratecat said:


> For me, this is the turning point: everything gathers momentum from here. The noise you hear, at least in my memory, is the roller coaster cresting the rise.
> 
> Heh.
> 
> Looking forward to this.



This made me laugh a lot, when I remembered the following comment, posted by Kidcthulhu _over a decade ago_:



> _We've just finished playing.  The group agrees.  We are so amazingly f#$*-ed.  There are not words for how much trouble we're in.
> 
> Several runs ago, Sagiro told us that much of the story until now has been the big, long upward climb of the rollercoaster.  Well, children, it's time to put your hands in the air and scream, because we've just crested the top, and seen the long, long down._



You'll find that moment near the end of chapter 6 of the collected Story Hour -- in the run-up to the Company's confrontation with Mokad and the Black Circle's attempted planar conjunction in Kallor.  I well remember how amazingly epic that fight seemed at the time -- it's still one of my favourite parts of the story.  Today, as chapter 28 nears completion, it's obvious that Sagiro's rollercoaster was a lot bigger than anyone ever imagined... 

I'd also like to note that it's exactly a year ago today since Sagiro made the following historic post...







Sagiro said:


> Holy $#@!.
> 
> It's over.



It just seems very fitting that on the anniversary of the campaign's conclusion, we've just got our first glimpse in the latest update of the one-way door leading to the endgame.  Sagiro, how hard did you have to work to hint to the party that they weren't actually ready for that yet? 

(And, by the way, are you still 33 runs behind, or does that status need updating? )


----------



## Sagiro

StevenAC said:


> ...I'd also like to note that it's exactly a year ago today since Sagiro made the following historic post...It just seems very fitting that on the anniversary of the campaign's conclusion, we've just got our first glimpse in the latest update of the one-way door leading to the endgame.  Sagiro, how hard did you have to work to hint to the party that they weren't actually ready for that yet?




Listening to the tape, I didn't have to work all that hard.  Beyond the actual words of Ula herself, I only had to give them one small DM-nudge.  There was a very brief discussion about whether the pictures in the Book of Leantha were chronological (in terms of when the party should deal with each), and since the fissure pic came before the Watcher's Kiss pic, a pro-chronological argument might have lead them to assume the golden sword was down in the Depths somewhere.  I dropped one comment that the Book wasn't necessarily chronological, and that's all it took to make them _commune_, just to be sure.




> (And, by the way, are you still 33 runs behind, or does that status need updating? )




Strangely, no.  It has needed updating constantly since I last set it, but as of this very moment, it's exactly correct.  The run where the party met Ula was #233  of the campaign, and according to my notes, the final run was #266 .  

I'll start updating my status now as I finish up each run, so readers will be able to use it as a countdown clock.


----------



## Zelc

> Listening to the tape, I didn't have to work all that hard. Beyond the actual words of Ula herself, I only had to give them one small DM-nudge. There was a very brief discussion about whether the pictures in the Book of Leantha were chronological (in terms of when the party should deal with each), and since the fissure pic came before the Watcher's Kiss pic, a pro-chronological argument might have lead them to assume the golden sword was down in the Depths somewhere. I dropped one comment that the Book wasn't necessarily chronological, and that's all it took to make them commune, just to be sure.



That would have been... amusing.  The party decides to jump into the one-way portal too hastily.  Sagiro's brain turns to overdrive to figure out how to salvage the situation so a ~14-year campaign doesn't end with an inevitable TPK .


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

I don't assume that the portal is totally one way.  We're told that it's one way by Ula, but she also tells us that no-one is allowed in without her approving them and yet three other people did anyway.  I suspect that the rules are that it's one way, but that there are ways to circumvent the rules.  Still, far better for our heroes to not have to.


----------



## Everett

Cerebral Paladin said:


> Ula is interesting.  I wondered what Ula's nature is--is she a god?  Some form of avatar of Yulan?  A construct of some sort?  An empowered mortal?  Did the Company spend time talking about that?




Your second guess seems most likely.  An avatar of a _part _of Yulan... imbued with His or Her powers but not with the omniscience of a God, so she appears as a playful child.

And for another refresher, if someone would -- I recall Meledien as one of Morningstar's Ava Dormo adversaries (who had her own red armor, like Octesian?) because she's mentioned often, although I think it's been years real-time since she figured in the story -- but I don't recall Tarsos or Seven Dark Words.  Were they another part of the Black Circle cell that the Company killed when performing the rite to free Praska from the other Black Circle-ite inhabiting her?


----------



## Everett

I recall Drosh and Dralla only because the being that Aravis handed over custodianship of the Maze to was a servant of Drosh, and I re-read that subplot recently.  ("I'll tell you this, Morningstar of Ell... Dralla is Drosh's child, and He loves Her dearly..."")


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> Your second guess seems most likely.  An avatar of a _part _of Yulan... imbued with His or Her powers but not with the omniscience of a God, so she appears as a playful child.
> 
> And for another refresher, if someone would -- I recall Meledien as one of Morningstar's Ava Dormo adversaries (who had her own red armor, like Octesian?) because she's mentioned often, although I think it's been years real-time since she figured in the story -- but I don't recall Tarsos or Seven Dark Words.  Were they another part of the Black Circle cell that the Company killed when performing the rite to free Praska from the other Black Circle-ite inhabiting her?




Brief refresher for you and anyone who's losing track of things:

Way back when, Emperor Naradawk managed to slip three elite red-armored agents through the planar boundary:  Restimar, Octesian and Meledien.  Restimar's job was to impersonate humanoid Gods/leaders and whip the orcs, gnolls, etc. of the world into attacking the more civilized peoples.  Meledien was tasked with breaking open boxes full of hidden monsters that Naradawk's father, Naloric, had left behind.  Both of these tasks were geared toward the greater goal of distracting the Archmagi, who were the ones keeping Naradawk locked out of Abernia.  Octesian had a similar goal; scout out the Dreamscape, and prepare for a dream-assault on Semek's tower that would be timed with Naradawk's battering down of the planar portal at Verdshane.  (Semek's tower, and Semek himself, were critical to keeping the portal sealed.)

Restimar was killed by the Company, while he was impersonating a legendary orcish warlord known as the Chun Aggrat.  Meledien was driven away from Verdshane by Cencerra and her adventuring group, but escaped.  Octesian was driven out of the Dreamscape by Morningstar and her Ellish sisters during the Battle of Verdshane, but he also escaped.  Eventually Octesian decided to try traveling through Ava Dormo to the Far Realms prison where the Adversary was imprisoned.  He planned on trying a rescue, but failed, and his brush with the Far Realms drove him mad.  Now he's come back to seek revenge on Morningstar for her past transgressions, and is apparently killing people in their sleep.  That's something the party will have to deal with, and soon.

Tarsos is another one of Naradawk's red-armored cadre.  He was one of the soldiers who made it through the planar portal at Verdshane before Aravis closed it again.  He eventually joined up with the missing Meledien and infected/"blessed" her with Essence (Adversary blood). The two of them then went to Naslund to steal Wards of Drosh, which allow mortals to survive in the immediate presence of Gods. While they were there, they killed Cencerra and her party, and also stole two powerful artifacts from the tombs of dead Gods.  (One of these is the Spear of Caba, which destroys the souls of victims whose hearts are burned out with it.)

Finally there is Seven Dark Words.  He was an immensely powerful Black Circle wizard and the architect of Het Branoi, an experiment originally intended to be a beacon to the imprisoned Adversary.  Seven Dark Words and his Black Circle team made two critical errors: they thought the Adversary was trapped in the Abyss (and not the Far Realms), and they tried powering Het Branoi with an Eye of Moirel.  As you may recall, the Eye went haywire, ripping away numerous pockets of other planes and stringing them together in an enormous web.  Seven Dark Words was driven mad, and wandered through Het Branoi, carving little statues of Kibi, who, a part of 7DW's brain prophesied, would be the one to "fix" his experiment.

When Het Branoi was shut down, all the bits of planes -- and the people trapped inside them -- were returned to their original worlds.  Seven Dark Words eventually recovered his sanity and _plane shifted_ back to Abernia, where he joined up with Meledien and Tarsos.  The three of them, infused with Adversary Blood, have apparently broken through Yulan's Iron Barrier that separates the surface world from the underground world of the Depths.  

That was about six months ago. They're probably not up to any good.


----------



## Everett

Thanks.  I had no idea the Adversary was imprisoned in the Far Realms.  And here's another thing I should probably know after 7 years of your story, but don't: who or what exactly is the Adversary in relation to Naradawk and Naloric?  An ancestor or just a primordial evil that the Emperor represents?


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> Thanks.  I had no idea the Adversary was imprisoned in the Far Realms.  And here's another thing I should probably know after 7 years of your story, but don't: who or what exactly is the Adversary in relation to Naradawk and Naloric?  An ancestor or just a primordial evil that the Emperor represents?




To answer your questions, I will refer you to a pair of Aravis's visions from the Crosser's Maze.  They both occurred around the time the Company was dealing with Lord Dafron's assassins.

---
You are back in the tavern again, sitting across from yourself.  You have the distinct feeling that, in the Maze, much subjective time has passed since the last time you were here.  Also your double’s face seems to shimmer and shift slightly, as if someone – you? – is struggling to see what he really looks like.  You get the distinct impression that it’s not you.  It’s someone you’ve never met, but you did meet them, once, in a strange place that’s much like where you are now.  It’s very confusing. “…found something for you,” says your double.  “It’s disturbing.  I won’t go back there again – too dangerous.  And I don’t know what it means.  Here, I’ll share it with you.”  Your shifting double reaches forward and grasps your hand, and you are wrenched into another vision – a vision within a vision.

In the inner vision, there is a place of black madness, and something is trapped there.  There is an exit from that place, but it is closing rapidly, a hole that is sealing itself, and the being trapped there won’t escape in time.  In its anger it reaches a hand through the hole, and the hole closes, and the hand is severed, and so detached it flies through a great void, falling, falling through the ages…

---

You are once again in the tavern, its time and place unknown.  You sit across from yourself, though it is not yourself, but rather that elusive someone whom you both have and have not met.  He has been speaking to you. 

“…history.  I find it rather tragic.”  Your double grasps your hand, and again you are plunged into a vision within the vision. A tall man dressed in kingly garb stands in a dead and lonely field.  He glances to the sides, as if fearing he was followed here.  The full moon illuminates his handsome face. The field is not simply dead.  It is corrupted, its grass black and reeking, and this man of royal countenance wrinkles his nose even as he takes slow steps inward.  He stops when he reaches the center of the field, his feet at the edge of a still black pool hardly bigger than a puddle.  He looks down at the pool intently, as if it is whispering and he strains to hear what it’s saying. The man’s lips quirk.  “What do you want?” he asks in a trembling voice.  “Why have you called me here?”  He listens again to the silent field, and then reaches down to touch the surface of the pool…

---

The first of those visions is about the Adversary being trapped in the Far Realms, and his hand being severed by the closing prison.  (His hand pursued the fleeing Travelers (The Gods of Darvin) to Abernia, where it impacted the surface and splattered Black Goo, a.k.a. Essence, a.k.a Adversary Blood, in various places around the world.)

In the second vision, an ancient King of Charagan (Hagdan Skewn) is drawn to one of those pools of Essence.  (He touched it and became corrupted, twisted and physically powerful.  Hagdan's son was Naloric, and his grandson is Naradawk.)


----------



## Everett

Indeed.  My only other question would be: when was the Adversary first trapped in the Far Realms? (and would "when" have real meaning, the Far Realms being outside of conventional concepts of spacetime?)  

Or is the Adversary's own story far back that you never detailed it in your world-mythos as the campaign unfolded?


----------



## Joshua Randall

You know, it has taken me until today to realize / remember that Restimar and Octesian are names from 



Spoiler



The Chronicles of Narnia


. I _knew_ they sounded familiar.


----------



## Everett

Joshua Randall said:


> You know, it has taken me until today to realize / remember that Restimar and Octesian are names from
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> The Chronicles of Narnia
> 
> 
> . I _knew_ they sounded familiar.




Hmm.  Wiki'd it.  Like the parallels.  That would certainly have never occurred to me unprompted, unless I re-read the book for some reason in the future.


----------



## Piratecat

Zelc said:


> That would have been... amusing.  The party decides to jump into the one-way portal too hastily.  Sagiro's brain turns to overdrive to figure out how to salvage the situation so a ~14-year campaign doesn't end with an inevitable TPK .



Really, how do you know it didn't?


----------



## coyote6

Piratecat said:


> Really, how do you know it didn't?




Spies.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> Really, how do you know it didn't?




Because Morningstar's player posted months ago about the final run and her tone was far too peppy and upbeat for an epoch-ending TPK.

Nice try, PC...


----------



## Enkhidu

Everett said:


> Because Morningstar's player posted months ago about the final run and her tone was far too peppy and upbeat for an epoch-ending TPK.
> 
> Nice try, PC...




I don't know about you, but I would be upbeat and peppy as a player if a long running campaign ended in a TPK. Of course, for that to be true, we would have to be TPKed in a battle with the Big Evil of the campaign and take that bastard with us.


----------



## Everett

Enkhidu said:


> I don't know about you, but I would be upbeat and peppy as a player if a long running campaign ended in a TPK. Of course, for that to be true, we would have to be TPKed in a battle with the Big Evil of the campaign and take that bastard with us.




Well, we'll just ask Sagiro _how_ the TPK went down, shall we?


----------



## Piratecat

Anything I say might reveal too much. I'll keep my mouth closed. Let's just say it was a heck of a game session.


----------



## Joshua Randall

The most epic campaign I ever DM'd technically ended in a TPK... but the players still loved it. 



Spoiler



The PCs sacrificed themselves to re-create the universe after it had been destroyed by the Big Bad.



"A stage full of dead bodies" was a cliche for Shakespeare, and some of the Greek tragedies end that way too. Yet those plays are immsensely satisfying nonetheless.


----------



## Waylander the Slayer

I believe the ending hints more towards sacrifice and redemption than tpk.


----------



## LightPhoenix

Piratecat said:


> Anything I say might reveal too much. I'll keep my mouth closed. Let's just say it was a heck of a game session.




Don't worry, it's not like anyone will remember Dranko's part anyway.


----------



## Piratecat

LightPhoenix said:


> Don't worry, it's not like anyone will remember Dranko's part anyway.



Et tu?

*sob*


----------



## Everett

Waylander the Slayer said:


> I believe the ending hints more towards sacrifice and redemption than tpk.




Care to elaborate?  Who needs redemption?  Who'll give their life?


----------



## Sagiro

Hey everyone!

No Story Hour update today, but I do have an announcement of another sort.  I mentioned some time back that I was working on a "choose your own adventure" story for Choice of Games.  I'm happy to announce that my story -- Choice of the Star Captain -- will be available for downloadable purchase in only five days!

If enough people buy it in its first few days, it could attain a position of glory and prominence on various App stores, so I'd obviously be delighted if some of you decided to buy it when it comes out.  It'll be available for Kindle via Amazon, iPads and iPhones via the App store, Android devices via Google play, and on-line via the Chrome store.

It's only $3.00, and you'll be supporting a good cause!    (And you can try before you buy -- on the 25th, you'll be able to play the first couple of chapters for free on the Choice of Games website:  Choice of Games

Thanks, and I'll be back again to remind you about it on the 25th.  

-Sagiro


----------



## Duncan Haldane

Bought!


----------



## Sagiro

Duncan Haldane said:


> Bought!



Thanks, Duncan!  You're probably the very first person to buy Choice of the Star Captain; I hope you enjoy it.

To everyone else:  you, also, are welcome to purchase my story, but if you're not sure about whether you'll like it, you can try it out for free!  Just go here:

Interactive Science Fiction Novel | Choice of the Star Captain

I'd love to know what you think of it, and if you find any problems, you can use this thread to let me know, or just send me a PM.

If you decide to shell out the $2.99, you can currently do so at the iOS App Store, the Android market, or the Chrome store.  It should be available on Amazon for the Kindle later today.  If you buy the finished product and enjoy it, I encourage you to leave a rating and/or review somewhere.  If you don't enjoy it, then I... what's that?  You have to fold your laundry?  So sorry to hear it!

If you're reading this, you actually played a significant part in Star Captain coming to fruition, since (I'm reasonably sure) my writing here is what brought me the attention of my publisher.  So... thank you!

edited to add:  there seems to be a compatibility issue with some Android devices, so perhaps hold off on that one until the problem gets sorted out.  Sorry!

edited again to add: They've fixed the Android bug.  Yay!


----------



## Shieldhaven

I've played the Free Trial of Choice of the Star Captain so far. It's very entertaining, and there's enough content in the free part that I feel like I got to see some neat stuff. Thanks, and it's definitely on my list of things to buy!

Haven

ETA: My fiancee enjoyed the game quite a lot too!


----------



## Sagiro

Shieldhaven said:


> I've played the Free Trial of Choice of the Star Captain so far. It's very entertaining, and there's enough content in the free part that I feel like I got to see some neat stuff. Thanks, and it's definitely on my list of things to buy!
> 
> Haven
> 
> ETA: My fiancee enjoyed the game quite a lot too!




Thanks for the good words!

I'd like to mention, while I'm here, that if I get enough sales in the first few days, I can end up in the "featured apps" section of various app stores, which in turn drives _more_ sales, which eventually could elevate Sagiro's Star Captain Empire to the heights of... well, of something or other.  Great heights, let's just say.


----------



## Gulla

Well, I bought it. It said they fixed the Android 4 load problem, and it works very nicely. Now to find lots of time to read more


----------



## carborundum

Bought, on general principles. A chance to thank you for the many, MANY hours and ideas you've given me.
Currently on page 74 of my SH re-read (998 pages I believe?) so it will be a while before I play!

Thanks Sagiro, hope you get Featured!


----------



## Jhereth Jax

Ditto! Thank you so much for the hours of entertainment you, your players, and this story hour have given me!


----------



## Shieldhaven

Aaand my actual review. Harbinger of Doom: Game Review: Choice of the Star Captain

For the tl;dr crowd: Loved it!

(If this should be somewhere else instead, I'm good with moving it.)

Haven


----------



## Everett

I'll check it out once I finish playing through my $2.99 Shining Force II download...

So hey, story Q: what is King Farazil the Soul Eater the "king" of?  I've been wondering that for, like, years.


----------



## Sagiro

First -- Shieldhaven, thanks for your thoughtful (and positive!) review.  I appreciate you taking the time to write it, and I'm glad you enjoyed playing.

To any other Story Hour readers who have played Choice of the Star Captain, please remember to leave a star-rating on whatever website or app store you acquired it from.  Ratings (and better yet, short reviews) help get games noticed, and mine is a bit sparse in that department at the moment.  (The ratings are good; there just aren't that many.)

To Everett:  at this point in the story, no one knows over what lands or people King Farazil reigns.  Does he just call himself that?  Is he really King of something?  Who knows?  

To everyone: here's an update!


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 347*_
*Many As One*

“Hi, Eddings.”

The Company files into the Greenhouse, freshly _teleported_ home from Ula’s island.

Dranko drops into a chair and lights a cigar.  “We have to go someplace that we’re never coming back from,” he tells the butler.

Eddings smiles indulgently.  “Ah.  And is this one substantially different from the many other places you warned me you might not be coming back from?  Given your descriptions of previous adventures, I have developed an unshakable faith that you will return from just about any excursion, no matter how perilous.”

“This one might be different,” says Ernie.

“Well, I suppose we’ll see,” says Eddings.

/*/

For some time the party talks about how they might find and assault the Sharshun base of operations in the Greatwood.  Various ideas are discussed and discarded.  Morningstar finally sighs and gives up. 

“So,” she says, “as usual, the plan is ‘get ‘em?’”

“We need Abernathy to give us advice,” says Ernie plaintively.

Into the seconds of silence that follow Ernie’s comment, Dranko speaks. “I miss Abernathy.”

“I don’t,” says Aravis.

Everyone turns to stare at him.  “I never met him!” he explains.

“But you would have missed him,” says Flicker, “if you had…”

He’s interrupted by an earthquake.   No, not the magical kind; this is an honest to goodness temblor, albeit a mild one.  The windows rattle for about fifteen seconds, and the trophy case swings open.  Eddings deftly catches a flatworm tooth before it can drop to the floor.  Then, as suddenly as the tremor began, it’s over.  The Company can hear some shouting in the streets, but it’s unlikely that the city suffered any serious structural damage.  

Dranko casts _omen of peril_ to find out if he’ll be in danger during the next hour.  The answer is LOW.  But still, it’s an alarming occurrence, for the reason that there has never been an earthquake, even a mild one, recorded in the history of Tal Hae.

The excitement of the quake soon passes, and the Company is left once again with the daunting task of recovering the Watcher’s Kiss from the Sharshun.  To delay the decision-making further, they decide to quickly investigate the bad smell blowing off the Mouth of Nahalm into the city of Sand’s Edge.  (They’re pretty certain that one of the Ventifact Colossi has died, but it can’t hurt to be certain!)  They _teleport_ together to Sand’s Edge and immediately their nostrils are filled with the reek of dead turtle.  For completeness sake they fly out over the desert, figuring they can located the morbidund creature by smell, but what they discover is worse than any of them had imagined.  The smell grows strong whenever they approach _any_ of the hardened-sand mountains that accrete on the great turtles’ shells. 

It’s not just one of the Colossi that has died.  It’s all of them.

Morningstar wants answers.  Still on the back of one of the turtle-islands, and ignoring the reek, she casts _commune_.

_Ell, did we kill the turtles?_

*NO*

_Did they die of natural causes?_

*NO*

_Did Octesian kill them?_

*NO*

_Are all the Ventifact Colossi dead?_

*YES*

_Were the Sharshun behind the turtles’ death?_

*NO*

_Was the Black Circle responsible for the death of the turtles?_

*YES, INDIRECTLY*

_Is the fact that the return of the Adversary is drawing closer, responsible for the death of the turtles?_

*PROBABLY*

_Is the departure of the Gods responsible for the death of the turtles?_

*NO*

_Is the death of the turtled related to the recent earthquakes?_

*YES*

_Have we met the person responsible for the death of the turtles?_

*IN AN INDIRECT WAY.*

_Were the turtles intentionally killed?_

*NO*

_Was their death a symptom of the ‘thorn in Abernia’s side?’_

*PROBABLY*

_Does their death pose a threat to the people of Sand’s Edge?_

*SOME, FROM DISEASE*

_Is continuing on our quest to get the Watcher’s Kiss, and then dealing with the thorn in Abernia’s side, the best way to deal with this threat?_

*PROBABLE, BUT UNCERTAIN*

_When last I asked about going into the Greatwood and confronting Darkeye, I was told we weren’t ready to face her.  Is now the time?_

*YOUR READINESS NO LONGER MATTERS*

_Is Darkeye related to Grey Wolf?_

*I CANNOT SEE CLEARLY*

_Do you sense an Eye of Moirel in the Greatwood?_

*NO*

_Is there Earth Magic in the Greatwood?_

*YES*

_Is seeking the cause of the earthquakes more important than finding the Watcher’s Kiss?_

*BOTH ARE NECESSARY*

Before departing from Sand’s Edge, Dranko has Morningstar cast a _sending_ to Tomnic, requesting priests be sent that can cast _cure disease_.  Morningstar sends another one to Ozilinsh:  _All Ventifact Colossi dead.  Related to earthquakes and Thorn in Abernia’s side somehow. Headed to Sharshun HQ to get Watcher’s Kiss. Morningstar_.


/*/


The first stop on the mission to find Darkeye and obtain the Watcher’s Kiss is the Shadow Chaser, finest inn in Verdshane.  It was one of the first places the Company visited in the employ of Abernathy, and later was the command center in the Battle of Verdshane, where Naradawk was prevented from making ingress to Abernia.

They _teleport_ directly into the common room, and the sudden appearance of their heavily–armed group causes a great commotion of chairs sliding back and weapons being drawn.

“It’s okay!” calls a woman’s voice from the back.  “Everyone, they’re friends!” 

“Hello, Minya!” Ernie greets their friend, the owner of the Shadow Chaser, with a wave and a grin.  

“We haven’t seen you since the war,” says Minya with an affected frown.  “You might have stopped by now and then to say hello.”

“We’ve been busy,” says Ernie.

The Company sits at a table, orders a great quantity of food and drink, and starts discussing how they might go about finding the Sharshun’s long-hidden fortress in a forest spanning ten thousand square miles. Many have combed those woods over the years, and none have found any sign of the place.  Divinations have been tried, and all have come up empty; it has been long assumed that the Sharshun’s dwelling is shielded from such magics.

Hours pass.  Ideas are conjured and discarded and new ones take their place, only to be discarded as well.  Finally Ernie cracks the problem’s shell.

“Darkeye’s fortress is hidden _now_,” he muses.  “But what about back when the Emperor was in charge?”

Running with that idea, Grey Wolf casts _limited wish_. “I wish I had a map of all major settlements in the Greatwood at the time of Emperor Naloric’s reign.”

There, in front of him, appears such a map.  He only has time for the briefest of glances before the anti-divinatory magic of the present day erases it, leaving him with a blank white page – but that one glance was enough.  Being a wizard of mighty intellect, Grey Wolf can recall with near perfect clarity the locations of four clearly marked dots on the map, and he quickly draws them in the locations he remembers, on their own current map of Harkran.  (The largest of these dots was placed on Verdshane itself, presumably marking the Emperor’s one-time capital of Kinnet Vulthani.)  

Aravis chooses one of the smaller dots arbitrarily, the one close to the little town of Dunheth.  He casts _vision_ on that dot, hoping for some clue about the settlement that once occupied that location.   Even better than a clue, he gets nothing at all – as if some outside force is preventing his spell from functioning!

“Found it,” he says with a smile.

And that is all well and good, but now the question on all of their minds is: have these magical end-arounds somehow  alerted the Sharshun that the Company is zeroing in on them?


/*/


Soon they are _wind-walking_ above the trees toward Dunheth.  In a little over an hour Grey Wolf stops, figuring they’re close to the spot indicated by their short-lived map’s incriminating dot.  Nothing about the tree canopy seems suspect, so they spend an hour flying in a random pattern centered on that spot, frequently dropping through the leaves to ground level as part of the search.  They find no unusual features of the forest, no dwellings, no people.  Their _telepathic bond_ stays active throughout, an indication that they have not wandered into the volume of a Divination Sink.

Kibi does make one discovery.  This patch of forest is thrumming with a strong undercurrent of Earth Magic.  He feels it each time his boots touch the ground.  The Company feels this is a strong signal that they’re on the right track, given the historic connection between Darkeye, the Sharshun, and the Eyes of Moirel.

They enact the second part of their search plan.  Kibi uses _wish_ to spoof _commune with nature_, imploring Abernia to give up its secrets concerning buildings, people, and powerful unnatural creatures within the spell’s 19-mile range.

There are no people, that is certain.

There is one building, 5 miles to the north-west.

There are several powerful unnatural creatures, either insect or arachnid,  just over 12 miles to the south.

They first inspect the building, but find that it’s merely an empty hunter’s cabin, abandoned for years and fast succumbing to nature’s encroachment.  Kibi thinks the hum of Earth Magic is weaker here than where he cast his _commune with nature_.  That leaves the insects as their only lead.  

As the Company _wind walks_ above the treetops, Kibi can feel his sense of Earth Magic growing stronger and fainter at the same time: stronger, because he feels he’s getting closer to its source, but weaker because he’s flying and gaseous.  Before long he loses its sense altogether and is forced to land and solidify, and once his feet touch the ground the vibrations of Earth Magic course through him.  He confirms again that both the location of the insects and the source of the Earth Magic are in the same direction, and they launch back into the air.  

Ten minutes later they stop, having reached the approximate location indicated by Kibi’s _commune with nature_.  They descend through the thick leafy ceiling, and find that the forest here is quite sparse on the ground, with occasional clearings and trunks spaced far apart.  The spreading branches are thick with spider webs, which gives the heroes a good sense of what to expect, but there is no sign of any spiders, or of a fortress or other dwelling.

Kibi and the others land in a clearing and become solid.  Kibi feels the source of the Earth Magic is quite close now, and he’s more or less on top of where he detected the spiders.  Dranko peers through the trees in the direction Kibi thinks the Earth Magic is coming from.

An enormous man-sized spider appears in the air above him.  He blinks. Dranko can _see invisible_ at will, and the spider was not invisible.  One moment it wasn’t there, and the next moment it was.  Then he hears his friends crying out in alarm, as seven more huge arachnids pop into existence and drop from  the trees around them, filling the air with a sudden cacophony of hissing and chittering.  

Hardly even thinking about it, Dranko lashes out at the nearest spider with his whip.  The creature is larger than a sheep, red-skinned, with glowing red eyes and knife-sharp mandibles.  Its front two legs are tipped with deadly claws.  Three whip-snaps later and the creature is a pulped mass of ex-arachnid.

Grey Wolf quickens a _true strike_, channels a maximized _acid orb_ into _Bostock_, and steps into a swing at a second spider.  Acid gushes from the point of impact and the spider is nearly dissolved.  It staggers back, its mandibles melting in its mouth.  It tries to strike back, but its mushy pincers squish against Grey Wolf’s armor to no effect. 

Morningstar chants and saves and casts _darkbeam_, sending out beams of black energy that strike six of the seven spiders (missing only the badly wounded one, now cringing behind a tree).  Three of these are dazed by the beams, chittering madly.

One of the spiders still with control over its faculties manages to land a bite and claw on Morningstar, but its damage is minimal.   A second attacks Ernie but all of its pointy bits are foiled by the halfling’s plate.  Assuming there are only the eight of these things, there doesn’t seem to be much to worry about.

Flicker hefts one of his new magically-returning daggers and flips it nonchalantly at the mostly-melted spider.  It thunks into the creature’s last functioning eye, then quivers and returns whistling to Flicker’s waiting hand.  

“This is a piece of…” he begins.  But he is interrupted; the surviving spiders – even the dazed ones – all stand up on their hind legs, and from deep in their throats their frenzied clicking becomes eerily synchronous.  Their color changes, turning a deeper crimson; their hairy hides bulge grotesquely as their bodies enlarge to the size of donkeys; the wounds from Morningstar’s beams knit and heal; and their mandibles sprout extra barbs.

They understand immediately, and Ernie yells what they’re all thinking.

“It’s a spider Seki!”

…to be continued…


----------



## Joshua Randall

Curious, Sagiro, what would you have done if the PCs hadn't used powerful magic (_limited wish_) to locate the Sharshun base? Was there any particular solution you had in mind, or were you just going to let whatever they tried, work?

Not criticizing, but trying to understand your mode of DMing.

P.S. Still hoping Mrs. Horn fits into the endgame somehow.


----------



## Sagiro

Joshua Randall said:


> Curious, Sagiro, what would you have done if the PCs hadn't used powerful magic (_limited wish_) to locate the Sharshun base? Was there any particular solution you had in mind, or were you just going to let whatever they tried, work?



I knew going in how the Sharshun HQ was hidden, and what sorts of protections it had.  I could think of a couple of ways the party might find it, most notably Kibi's innate ability to sense Earth Magic, but it was largely one of those "it's not my job to solve your problems" type scenarios.   

When they tried the "create a map of how things were in the past" ploy, I considered on the fly that the Sharshun's protections probably wouldn't prevent such a map from being conjured, but _would_ destroy such a map if it existed.  Thus, Grey Wolf had to make an INT check to remember what the map looked like from a split-second glimpse.  I could imagine all sorts of creative solutions that _wouldn't_ have worked, so no, it was not a matter of "whatever they try, it'll work."



> P.S. Still hoping Mrs. Horn fits into the endgame somehow.



[whistles innocently]


----------



## thegreyman

If Mrs Horn is Darkeye, or has a Eye of Moriel stuck in her head, I love this more.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 348*_
*Out of Time*

Ernie lashes out with his sword and hacks a gash in the nearest of the chittering spiders.  The creature drools out strings of goopy saliva and clacks its mandibles. Ernie makes a face of disgust.  “Ewwwww!”

Aravis activates two of his new magic items:  his _gloves of the displaced source_ which allow a spell to be cast from a spot nearby, and his _battlestone of St. Jenniver_ which will cause an area spell to heal allies caught in the blast.  He casts a maximized _cone of cold_ which flashes over all half-dozen of the arachnids, while providing a bit of healing to his friends.  

Kibi follows up with a scroll of _horrid wilting_, which sucks moisture out of most of the spiders. Two of them are utterly desiccated, their corpses shriveling even as they collapse to the grass.  But the remaining four let out another synchronized screech; their wounds heal as their skins swell and ripple like the surface of a bubbling stew.  Their skin changes from a dark red to a deep black, and when they’re done stretching and writhing, they stand as tall as giants.  Kibi swears and quickens an _earthbolt_ at the nearest two, blasting them with shards of rock thrown up from the ground.

Grey Wolf confidently casts the reliable combination of a quickened _ironstorm_ followed by _chain lightning_. The raging electrical storm crackles as powerfully as ever, but though many trees are left smoking, none of the spiders are affected in the slightest. They have acquired spell resistance in their latest incarnations! Dranko tumbles to the side and launches a whip attack on the closest monster, but all of his strikes thump harmlessly against its leathery hide. It seems the spiker-seki has become physically tougher as well.

Morningstar steps back and casts a _flame strike_ that sears the spiders with cold holy flames; her spell penetrates their resistance, and they have no immunity to cold damage. They squeal obscenely in their pain.

Two of the spiders heave their bodies over to Dranko and savage him with their mandibles and barbed claws.  Dranko winces as one of the mandibles sinks into his shoulder, just missing his jugular.  He sees from the corner of his eye that the remaining two spiders have scuttled over to Kibi and are doing similarly to the dwarf.

Flicker cringes at the sight of his friends being ripped open by spiders, but retains his focus enough to tumble beneath the legs of the closest beast, spring up on the opposite side from Dranko, and plunge his dagger deep into its convulsing bulk.  He is rewarded with a gout of ichor to the face, and grins as he splutters. Ernie casts _flame strike_ on the two spiders attacking Kibi, but while they suffer the holy wrath of Yondalla, the creatures have become immune to fire.

Aravis casts a _chain lightning_ of his own into the _ironstorm_. Flicker quickly ducks behind a tree and flinches as its trunk is blasted, and  then looks on dismayed as again the spiders are unharmed.   Aravis is sure he imbued his spell with the focus to pierce the creatures’ resistance; they must be immune to electricity as well as fire!  He curses, takes a step, and quickens a _mass haste_.  

Kibi casts defensively and blasts the spiders in front of him with a maximized _cone of cold_, which gets through their spell resistance.  One of them falls backward, frozen, and the remaining ones chitter and froth in unison. Not wanting to stick around for another attack, he sinks into the ground via _xorn movement_.  

Grey Wolf casts _reverse gravity_ on the closest of the remaining three spiders. It soars upward until it crashes into the thick mass of overarching branches some thirty feet above, but there it stays, waving its enormous legs madly.   Grey Wolf gives it a sardonic wave. 

Dranko tries again with the whip, and this time, with Flicker’s dagger distracting his target, his attacks have more success.  Two strikes rip out huge chunks of arachnid flesh, and the third tears the monster’s mandibles right from its head, killing it from shock.  That leaves two remaining, and these thrash and chitter, their skins stretching and undulating and taking on a chitinous sheen.  A conspicuous bulge forms right behind the head of the spider facing Dranko, as if it has developed a hunched back.  The whole of its body has grown again, and it looms over Dranko, casting him in its misshapen shadow.

“For the record,” says Dranko, “I do not want one of these for a pet.”

Morningstar quickens a _flame strike_ upon the spider towering over Dranko; since her fire spells deal cold damage, she’s more optimistic about its effects. But it seems that with their latest transformation the enormous spiders have become immune to cold attacks as well. Despite its size, the spider nimbly dodges part way out of the column of black flames, and is only minimally damaged by its holy power. Morningstar frowns, but still finds the wherewithal to cast _heal_ on Dranko, bringing him back to robust health.  And just in time!  No sooner has she healed his wounds, does the towering spider pierce his shoulder with a razor claw and sink fangs the size of tennis rackets into his thigh.  High above, the spider caught in the inverted gravity column flips itself over and scuttles along the underside of the tree canopy until it clears the spell area, at which point it drops thirty feet to the ground.  It heaves itself to his feet, looks around for a victim… and vanishes.  

Aravis smiles. “Enjoy the _maze_, he says.

The remaining spider still proves problematic.  It shrugs off a _searing light_ from Ernie, endures whip-strikes from Dranko, and evades both Flicker’s stabs and Morningstar’s attacks with _Ell’s Will_. Kibi pops up from the ground and blasts it with a maximized and empowered _earthbolt_ but it resists the magic of that as well. Grey Wolf has the most success, melting a section of its body with an _acid orb_, but having withstood the party’s attacks, the spider again savages Dranko.  If not for Morningstar’s recent healing, it’s not at all clear that Dranko would still be alive.  

Ernie’s had enough.  He casts _withering palm_, steps beneath the spider’s great bulk, and slaps it with his open hand.   Strength and life force drain rapidly from the huge arachnid, and in seconds it collapses backward in a jittering heap.

So, for the moment, there are no more enemies, as the last remaining unit of the Seki is trapped in Aravis’s _maze_.  They crowd around the spot where it vanished, ready to deliver a group _coup de grace_.  Two minutes later, it arrives, and immediately transforms one final time.  It grows again, shoving the Company backward, and its skin hardens into rock-solid chitin.  The hump on its back bulges outward,  and a deformed human torso bursts forth.  The creature almost resembles an arachnid centaur except with two heads, or a riding beast with a stubby malformed rider atop it.  It’s as if the thing was trying to grow a person out of its back, but failed.  The misshapen head of the humanoid figure opens its mouth and lets out a piteous howl.  

Kibi casts _Otto’s Irresistible Dance_, thinking that if the creature is rendered helpless, it will be easier for his friends to finish it off.  Alas, this is how they discover the final form of the Seki is imbued with _spell turning_.  Kibi feels the spell discharge back into his own body, and he immediately starts executing a capable dwarven wedding dance.  His face goes red, and he bellows with anger.  The mouth on the human head twists into a smile.

It stops smiling as it fails to dodge a _disintegrate_ from Aravis.  Chunks of its body are blown outward and sheared away by the force of the blast, and the main ray leaves a clear hole directly through its middle. Ernie waves at Grey Wolf through the gap before it starts to fill up with gore. Kibi is so pleased that he dances with joy.

Grey Wolf quickens a _true strike_ and channels _acid storm_ through _Bostock._  The sword itself shears through two of its legs, and the weakened body of the Seki dissolves into a huge puddle of sickening goo.

Again, the forest is silent.

“Yuck,” says Morningstar.  The others quite agree.


/*/


“We’ve learned one thing,” says Ernie, as he and Morningstar attend to the post-battle healing.  “We’ve come to the right place. Those things must have been put here to guard the Sharshun.”

That may be, but there’s still no sign of any habitation, Sharshun or otherwise. Kibi concentrates and focuses his mind again on the Earth Magic permeating the forest, and thinks he can discern the direction of it source.  They head off into the quiet woods, all of them keeping a constant lookout for anyone watching, or more spiders, or simply anything out of the ordinary.  (Grey Wolf regrets his application of _enhanced senses_, since the reek of dead spider fills his nostrils long after the others have ceased to notice it.)

The strength of the Earth Magic grows, until Kibi reaches the edge of a small clearing. He takes a few steps into the clearing itself, finding that the sensation maintains its peak intensity.

“We’re here,” he tells the others.

They look around.  The trees around the clearing are sparse, and pleasant light slips through the leaves high above their heads.  The meadow itself looks no different than a dozen others they’ve passed while traversing the Greatwood.  There’s no sign of any man-made structure or other habitation.  Their _telepathic bond_ is still functional, which means the Sharshun aren’t employing Divination Sinks in the area.

Given that it’s Earth Magic they’ve been following, Kibi sends Scree on an underground scouting trip.  The elemental sinks into the earth and makes constant reports.  “It’s very strong down here, all over the area.  It’s uneven; there are stronger and weaker pockets.  I don’t think the Earth Magic is coming from the rock, which makes no sense to me.  Where else _could_ it be coming from?  I can’t tell!  Oh… wait.  I think I’ve found the edge of it.  Now the Earth Magic is growing weaker.”

“Can you trace the perimeter of where the Earth Magic is strongest?” asks Kibi.

“Sure!  It’ll take a few minutes, though.  I’m well over a hundred feet from you.  It’s nice down here, you know.  Some interesting minerals, though nothing exotic.  I always enjoy finding a bit of quartz, don’t you?  Not there’s anything wrong with a nice slab of granite, mind…”

When Kibi tries to convey the details of Scree’s geological survey to the others, Dranko snorts.  “This is the most boring part of adventuring,” he says.  Kibi just smiles.

“Remember,” Morningstar reminds the others, “Moirel was an Earth Mage, and she created the Eyes.  If she’s Darkeye, it stands to reason there’d be strong Earth Magic around here.”

“One more thing,” says Scree.  “When I go downward more than about thirty feet, the Earth Magic starts to get weaker again.  One second… okay, done.  The area is hundreds of feet long and just about as wide.  Or maybe it’s hundreds of feet wide and just about as long.  It depends on how you look at things!  But there’s no sign of anything else unusual, besides the fact that I can’t figure out the source of the power.”

“I’ll bet they’re in an extra-dimensional space,” says Dranko, when he hears Scree’s report.  “We should use every magical detection method we have.  I’ll go first.”  

One of the “gifts” granted to Dranko by the creature from the Far Realms was the permanent ability to detect magic.  He walks around the area described by Scree, but detects no magic beyond what his friends are carrying.  Morningstar goes next; she casts _true seeing_ and scans the woods.  For just a second she thinks she spots something out in the trees, but it’s gone before she can focus on it. She stares in that direction for an extra minute; no, it must have been nothing.

“Damn,” she says.  “I almost thought there was something out there.”

“Let me try,” says Dranko.  “I’m better at spotting things than you.”  Over the protests of Morningstar and Ernie, he reaches into the lurking madness buried in his brain, and calls upon his own _true seeing_.  His eyes un-focus, and an unsettling light gleams in his eyes.  “I can see them all around,” he giggles.  “Tips of worms, squiggling into our world, squirming, probing.  Maybe they’re looking for me?”

He retains enough of his sanity to remember what he’s doing.  He gazes outward into the zone of Earth Magic, and with his heightened senses he grasps for clarity.  He almost sees… almost sees… yes!  There’s something, large and blurry, an enormous object or building or creature, in and around the trees here, sliding always away from his direct vision.  

For a panicked second he thinks he’s looking directly into the Far Realms; there is a flash of stars, a space, a charged emptiness.  But no, it’s something else, some_where_ else.  There is no madness there, only… nothing.  It’s a confusing distortion of space.  He forces himself to concentrate harder, pushing back the madness, and… there, right over there, part of the edge of the blurriness is brighter than the rest.  It reminds him of an arch, but it’s not an arch.  It’s nothing.  It’s gone.

“It’s here,” he whispers.  “It’s here, but it’s not, but it is, and it’s filled with stars. There’s a gateway, that there isn’t, and it’s here.”

Dranko strides to a spot at the edge of the clearing about a hundred feet away, and mutters to himself.  Kibi moves to join him, and standing on that very spot he puts his hand on the ground. To the dwarf’s mind comes a clearer, sharper sense of Earth Magic – not just in its intensity, but in its specific application.  He’s felt this aspect of the magic only once before now… when the Company stood within the Mirrors of Semek and traveled impossibly into the past.  He tells this to the others, and everyone is quiet for a second.

“Ooooh,” says Ernie.  “They’re out of synch with time.”

…to be continued…


----------



## Zelc

Hmm, when dealing with the Seki, did anyone try to get all of them low and then finish them off all at once with an AOE spell?  Would that have worked?

Thanks for the update!


----------



## Tamlyn

Sagiro said:


> Kibi is so pleased that he dances with joy.




Awesome!


----------



## Joshua Randall

D&D and time travel go together like... like... things that go together _even better _than chocolate and peanut butter.


----------



## Piratecat

...like squirming tentacles and wisdom loss?


----------



## carborundum

Oh, you guys are wicked 

Just popped in to say I've been commuting by train recently and finally took the opportunity to read the entire thing. I've been following it for quite a while but never read Books 1 and 2 before. 

Wow.

So now I'm even MORE desperately waiting for every little water torture dripfeed that appears here. It's so darn good!

Thank you Sagiro, and Sagiro's players, for creating such a wonderful story.


----------



## Everett

Happened on a series of posts from over three years ago:



			
				Sagiro said:
			
		

> Hey, while I'm here: another smallish update. For the record, the Story Hour has now fallen about 30 runs and 2.5 years behind the actual game, which is still going but kind of entering the home stretch.
> 
> By which I mean we may only have 2-3 years left before it all ends.







			
				Everett said:
			
		

> It's quite amazing to think of how long I've been following this continually evolving campaign on Enworld (almost five years), created and played by people I've never met.  I don't play Dungeons and Dragons anymore, but I'm sure I'll always be flipping back to Enworld every week or two for the sojurns of Abernathy's Company through to... what... 2012?




My thinking then was that "2012" sounded like sci-fi.  Surely the Story Hour would have wrapped up by then...


----------



## Everett

Anything happening here?  No?

Know what I say to that?

*bump*

That's what *I *say.  It's been said, yo.


----------



## DustinGebhardt

Everett said:


> Anything happening here? No?
> 
> Know what I say to that?
> 
> *bump*
> 
> That's what *I *say. It's been said, yo.




palabra a tu madre, amigo


----------



## Chronikoce

I stumbled across this story hour 2, maybe 3 weeks ago and after reading through all of the posted .pdf files (huge thanks to steve!) I could not stay silent! 

I cannot express enough my thanks to players and DM alike. You are all excellent and a great source of inspiration. I cannot wait to get back to playing again (hopefully will get to join a game in January!).

Special thanks to PC, and the players of Kibi, Aravis, and Morningstar for giving me great ideas for future character ideas! I will admit that when I last played I was an optimizer but this story hour and your characters especially made me realize how amazing roleplaying can be. My first thought during character creation is no longer how to be amazingly strong but rather what would make an interesting character and story!

I have a character in the works that is loosely based on Dranko with plans to be a whip wielding Swashbuckler/Rogue and another that is a Dwarven Wizard. It is going to be a hard time deciding which one to pick when I get to start playing again!

Thank you all again!

-Quick Edit: Does anyone know offhand what page this thread picks up where .pdfs left off? I don't want to accidently read any spoilers!


----------



## Everett

Chronikoce said:


> -Quick Edit: Does anyone know offhand what page this thread picks up where .pdfs left off? I don't want to accidently read any spoilers!




This thread picks up with "No Obvious Compromise", in which the Company goes to the Shrine of Dralla to return the Crosser's Maze (or rather, to explain that they can't.) It's page 30 of Chapter 21, the first chapter of Part Three in StevenAC's PDFs.


----------



## Chronikoce

[MENTION=21712]Everett[/MENTION], Oh thank you but I meant the other way around. I finished the pdf's and was curious if the thread itself gets further (the pdf's haven't been updated since last December so I figured the thread was further along). 

Just finished 'Another One Comes Home To Roost' in the pdf's and was wondering where that occurs in the thread.


----------



## Everett

It's always further along, yes.  StevenAC updates his site when the story reaches a natural chapter close.


----------



## LightPhoenix

Chronikoce said:


> Just finished 'Another One Comes Home To Roost' in the pdf's and was wondering where that occurs in the thread.




Another One Comes Home to Roost (part 339) starts on page 88, not sure offhand where it ends in relation to the PDF.


----------



## Chronikoce

LightPhoenix said:


> Another One Comes Home to Roost (part 339) starts on page 88, not sure offhand where it ends in relation to the PDF.




Thanks a bunch! Now I can read some more, hooray!


----------



## LightPhoenix

Chronikoce said:


> Thanks a bunch! Now I can read some more, hooray!




Now if only the rest of us could, _hint hint_ Sagiro.

...

...

Or keep working on Card Hunter.


----------



## Piratecat

I enthusiastically encouraged Sagiro when I saw him this weekend. He's hip-deep in Card Hunter right now, but is hopefully planning an update. Good stuff coming.


----------



## Everett

Enthusiastic encouragement is the best kind... much better than palsied encouragement or curdled encouragement...

...that was actually meant as irony, but then I realized that to gamers it probably makes perfect sense.  Hmmm.


----------



## Sagiro

Only a short update, but I wanted to give you guys _something_.  Sorry for the delay, but as Piratecat said, I've been devoting extra hours to Card Hunter recently as we approach our first round of public Beta testing.  (And if you'd like to sign up for that Beta, go to www.cardhunter.com and add your name to the list!)


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 349*_
*Triple Play*

Given the strong ambient Earth Magic, Kibi thinks perhaps the solution is as simple as him merely _willing_ local time back into alignment.  He tries this, but with no success; such an endeavor would require far more power than he possesses. But the attempt does give him a clear sense of a massive object, only minutes removed from normal time.  He has no idea how to bring it any closer.

“Can’t we just wait a few minutes?” asks Dranko.  Kibi sighs.

Time for another approach.  Morningstar drops into _Ava Dormo_ and observes the local dreamscape.  She definitely senses the same large object as Kibi, though it’s out of focus and she can’t conclude anything about it.  

Morningstar closes her eyes.  She filters out all distractions from her mind and concentrates with single-minded purpose.  _I want to see_…

She opens her eyes, and is looking at the hulking outline of a stone castle.  The only parts she can see are the walls and exterior towers – the parts adjacent to normal space-time.   She estimates it to be over four hundred feet long, and at least half that in width, and the spot where Kibi and Dranko are concentrating is the main arched entrance into the castle.  Morningstar walks her waking body to that spot, and hears a faint sound, like many overlapping whispers.  

Next up: _thought captures_.  Morningstar exits _Ava Dormo_, stands at the invisible entrance to the time-shifted castle and casts four consecutive spells to discern what’s been thought there.

The first thought is Dranko’s – alien, tentacle-ish thoughts that make her shudder.  She quickly forgets them.

The second though it Kibi’s, as he concentrates furiously on channeling Earth Magic.

The third thought is Dranko again.  “Ah, that’s better.”

The fourth thought – ah, that’s the one.  Someone is concentrating very, very hard on thinking the words “My life for Naloric.”

Is it a pass phrase that gains entrance to the castle?  Perhaps.  But no one is keen to speak it right then, because for one thing, they’re all quite resource-depleted after the battle with the arachnid Seki, and for another, there might be some sort of binding power or compulsion in speaking such an inauspicious phrase.

“I have one more thing to try,” says Aravis.  “I’m going to cast _time stop_ and see what this so-called castle looks like.”

His friends freeze in mid-motion, the sound of the breeze is quieted… and there’s a huge castle.  Right there, right in front of him, clear as day.  Its wooden front doors are right where they expected, thick and iron-banded, and set into a large stone archway.  Fortunately there are no people up on the thirty-foot walls waiting to repel invaders.  

There is one particularly strange feature, though.  Rising up from behind the wall, at least a hundred feet distant, is what looks like a detached chunk of outer space.  Aravis guesses that it’s a volume of the Astral Plane, hovering inside the castle, and large enough that the top of it is higher than the walls.  He can’t see most of it, but Aravis figures it’s a vaguely spherical blob of Astral-stuff, some forty feet in diameter.  But what is its purpose…?

Time kicks in, and the castle, with its orphaned splotch of Astral Plane, vanishes.

Just to be safe, Aravis casts a _mind blank_ on himself, and then he and the other wizards _teleport_ the entire group back to the Greenhouse.  They’ve learned enough for one day.


/*/

Around the living room table, Aravis shares with the others what he saw.  Ernie wonders aloud if they should tell Ozilinsh, but that only brings about an awkward silence, a silence broken when Kibi suddenly grins and says, “It’s too dangerous for him to know!”  Soon enough the whole Company is laughing, thinking back to the way Abernathy was so reticent with information, at the start of their adventuring careers.

“That may have been petty,” Ernie admits, “but it felt good to hear.”

Soon, though, they get down to the business of figuring out how they can gain access to a time-shifted castle.  As is typical when they try to crack this sort of nut, they start throwing out ideas, most of which are quickly ascertained to be untenable.   These include finding a way to stabilize the mysterious chunk of the Astral Plane and _plane shifting_ into it; inking enough _time stop_ scrolls to allow everyone to gain egress; casting _time stop_ on just a few people, who will be carrying the others on their backs; and even just having Aravis cast _dimension door_ while frozen in time, with the hope that once inside they’ll get caught up in the castle’s local time-stream.

In the end, though, they work out a solution to their problem.  It’s a solution that makes most of the party quite nervous, but it _should_ work. 

The next morning Morningstar makes a quick _teleport_ journey to Kallor, to make a report to the High Priestess Rhiavonne.  Rhiavonne has independently learned that it is Octesian who is murdering citizens in their sleep, but is happy to have corroborating evidence through Morningstar’s _commune_.  When Morningstar tells her what their plans are for the day, Rhiavonne looks aghast, and then shakes her head.

“This is why _you_ are the field agent, and I, thank the Goddess, am merely the High Priestess. If things go wrong, and you need… recovery… how will anyone recognize you?”

Morningstar laughs.  “I’ll be the black one.”


/*/


Back in the Greatwood, they find that the Seki bodies have not been cleared away.  The corpses stink and swarm with flies.
At the patch of grass where the castle entrance lurks several shifted minutes away, Morningstar applies _mind blank_ to Dranko, Aravis and Kibi as a precautionary measure.  Grey Wolf makes them invisible. Kibi casts _see invisibility_ on himself, lacking the permanent divinatory enchantments of the other two. There’s not much point in buffing up anyone else, as they soon will no longer technically be among the living.

“Are you ready?” asks Aravis.

Everyone nods.

“Cheer up!” says Kibi, to Grey Wolf, Flicker, Morningstar and Ernie.  “Most people never get such a wonderful opportunity.”

Before they can answer, Aravis begins to cast his prepared battery of _polymorph any object_ spells, and one by one, he turns four of his friends into small pebbles.  He clenches these securely in his fist.  To Kibi and Dranko, he says, “I’ll go first.”

He casts _time stop_. 

There’s the castle, same as before, its walls still undefended.  Before him is the large wooden door; he peremptorily casts _knock_, and is satisfied to hear the clanking sound of a large metal bar falling on the door’s far side. Then he frowns; so much for secrecy.  Aravis puts his shoulder into the door and heaves it open far enough to squeeze inside.  

He’s looking into what, for the most part, is an ordinary castle interior.  A long wall runs through a scraggly yard, partitioning the grounds.  Numerous buildings crowd against the walls, including a squat stone keep in the center, and some 150’ away to the left is a smaller wooden door leading to some other parts of the castle.  No, the only odd thing is that hovering mass of Astral Plane peeking over the partitioning wall.  He quickly scoots into the shadows of one of the nearby outbuildings, just before normal time resumes for him.  He holds his breath, hoping that he has merged with the local flow of time.  Morningstar, Flicker, Ernie and Grey Wolf are still tightly gripped in his left hand.

From Kibi and Dranko’s point of view, Aravis has just vanished.

“I hope it worked,” says Kibi, worriedly.

“Let’s find out,” says Dranko.  The half-orc reaches into that spot of black madness deep within his psyche, calling upon the tentacular powers to stop time.  They assent, and Kibi is standing motionless, while all around Dranko sees so many things, so many… 

He shakes his head and tries to focus.  What he mostly sees is a large castle with its door slightly ajar.   He slips inside, takes stock of his surroundings, and notes Aravis, also motionless, lurking in a corner.  He moves to join his friend, and time returns, though not his full sanity.

Kibi is now alone in the empty wood.  

“I wish _I_ got to be a pebble,” he mutters, and then he casts his own _time stop_.  The castle leaps out from nowhere to loom over him, its door swung open.  He hurries inside, pushes the door closed, and replaces the bar.  He has enough time to join the others, currently still as statues, before time returns.

It’s quiet. Aravis, Dranko and Kibi look around the yard, each of them feeling an odd chill of transformation as the local time-stream accepts them.  Kibi finds it particularly thrilling; Earth Magic is its source.  

He grins at the other two. “Looks like we’re in!”

…to be continued…


----------



## blargney the second

Thanks for the update, Sagiro!  I like seeing the way you present significant obstacles to your players with no apparent solution.


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

That's a real example (in two different ways) of how the party has come on.

Firstly, not telling Ozilinsh something because it's "too dangerous for him to know". Brilliant and I can see why the whole group collapsed in giggles.

And the other thing - having them cast multiple _time stops_ to overcome the protection. Wow. That's some high level stuff right there!


----------



## carborundum

Don't have a fixed solution, just a fixed problem. Brilliant! I've had great fun doing this  in my own campaign - thanks for the idea, Sagiro 

/subscribes to enWorld to help read more Sagiro's Story Hour


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 350*_
*Darkeye*

With some time to look at their surroundings, the three time-travelers see that most of the inward-facing walls are damaged.  Chunks of stone have been gouged out of them in many places, and the edges of the yard are littered with debris that has fallen from higher up.  One building not far from Kibi, a small rectangular structure made of wood and stone, is riddled with holes, as if it had been a giant’s sparring dummy.  Kibi puts his eye to one of the holes and sees an ordinary store-room, with barrels, crates, and small heaps of detritus. 

Dranko giggles. I enjoy this place.  It makes me tingle!”

Aravis notices that his hand is cramping.  “Oh, right.”  He carefully places the pebbles a few yards away and casts _dispel magic._  His friends appear in a sprawling pile of bodies.

“Oops. Guess I should have spaced you out a little.”

Morningstar, Ernie, Grey Wolf and Flicker get to their feet and look about, confused.

“You cannot see us!” Dranko cackles.  “But we are here!  Invisible!  We cannot be seen!”

Now that Kibi can target all of his friends, he casts _veil_, making the entire party look like termites.  Grey Wolf casts _enhanced senses_ and sniffs the air.  Castles typically reek of manure, smoke, and sweat, but this one carries only the faintest whiff of such typical odors.  Morningstar reestablishes the mind link and then, ever suspicious, casts _true seeing_.  She finds that the spell makes it _harder_ to see.  To her divinatory sight, the air above the castle is now quite blurry, and she cannot see any of the trees outside the castle’s perimeter.  

Something rises up from behind one of the walls. 

It’s a head.  With tentacles.  At first the party thinks it’s a beholder, but it’s not quite the same.  This one is a bit smaller, and they certainly are tentacles and not eyestalks.  Dranko panics, but realizes that the tentacles don’t remind him of Cleaners.  The creature’s face is surrounded by short tentacles like a wriggling beard, and two long tentacles sprout from its “back” and hang down like obscene pigtails. The tentacled head bobs for a few seconds at the top of the wall, turning slowly to and fro, and then descends back behind the wall and out of sight.

Did it see them?  Or were they successfully hidden, _veiled_ as bugs?  The floating head didn’t show any signs of having seen them; it was probably investigating the sounds of spell-casting.  A moment later two new heads float into view (or maybe it’s the same one, with a friend).  The two heads sweep back and forth along the top of the wall, clearly looking for something, but after a minute they again descend and retreat behind the wall.

Confident that he won’t be seen, Dranko flies upward, a tiny flying termite, and peeks over into the space beyond the near wall. It’s the floating chunk of star-field that dominates the scene, a twinkling patch of Astral miasma that confounds his visual perspective.  Swooping to and fro in looping arcs are a dozen more tentacled heads; they don’t appear to be guarding anything in particular, unless it’s the Astral field itself.

The buildings here are even more heavily damaged.  One tower has fallen completely onto a building below it, caving in its roof, and the ground here is even more strewn with shattered rubble.  There’s no sign that anyone has tried effecting repairs, and the rubble itself is not overgrown, suggesting that whatever happened was a recent event.  Dranko thinks that the Astral splotch is at the center of the destruction, and opines that something must have emerged from it and assaulted the castle.

Just as Grey Wolf starts using a wand to cast _fly_ on everyone not already so enchanted, a human figure comes flying out of one of the distant towers.  Her skin is as ebony as her long robe, and no hair grows on her head, hardly surprising in a Sharshun stronghold.  Dranko is far enough away that he cannot make her out more clearly, though his natural ability to detect magic is nearly overwhelmed by the strength of her auras.  There are two distinct sources of magic on her person.  One, unspeakably strong, casts her whole self (to his magic-sight) in a deep black shadow.  The second, somehow even stronger, originates at her right hand, and emits a bright golden glow which gilds the edges of her darker aura.  

Dranko blinks furiously as the dark shadow magic starts to draw him in, like it’s attempting to pull out his soul.  He starts to move toward her in defiance of his own will, and barely manages to save himself by wrenching his gaze away from her.  He frantically informs the others of all of this over the mind link.

The woman speaks, and even from a distance her voice sounds clear to all present, bolstered by a faint telepathic presence.

“I’m very impressed,” she says, “that you were able to get in here.  Remarkable!  Would you like to talk?”

The floating heads have perked up a bit, and are looking in the same direction as the woman, though they still don’t seem to notice them.

“You have a certain… radiance… about you,” Dranko says.

“That’s true,” she admits.

“Should I ask?”

“Certainly,” says the woman.  “Would you like to ask in a more comfortable setting, or would you prefer to stay flying around up here while your friends are down below?”

_Are we attacking her or not?_, Kibi thinks over the mind-link.

_Yes!_ thinks Dranko.

_We’re almost ready_ thinks Aravis.  _Keep her talking_

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” says Dranko, “but aren’t you anathema to everything we love and believe in?”

The woman smiles.  “No.”

“No?  Really?  Who are you, exactly?”

She chuckles.  “I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now.”

“Are you Darkeye?”

“Yes, Dranko.”

“Are you also Moirel?”

“Very good!”

“All right! We met your dad, you know.”  _And killed him_, he thinks, though he refrains (barely) from saying this out loud.

Kibi rises up, shielding his eyes from Darkeye as best he can, and drops a _greater dispel magic_ on her.  He feels that his abjuration is strong, and so is very disappointed that she doesn’t stop flying. 

“Two possibilities,” he thinks to the others.  “Either she’s a ridiculously powerful caster, or her magic is being generated by an artifact.”

Morningstar casts _blindsight_ on Aravis, and quickens a second one on herself.  Now, at reasonably close range, the two of them will be able to engage Darkeye without looking at her.  Aravis changes into a beholder, flies upward until he crests the wall, and shines his _anti-magic_ cone over his target.  She’s remains airborne.  While the dark magic around her seems somewhat suppressed, the golden glow doesn’t diminish in the slightest.  Moirel turns to regard him, and sighs.

Aravis vanishes.  His thoughts do likewise from their mind-link.  The dark magic around her reasserts itself.  

Dranko tries not to let his worry color his voice.  “I don’t suppose you want to give us your dagger and let us go?”

“No, I don’t want to do that,” says Darkeye.  “I’d rather just talk.”

“And what do you want to tell us?”

Darkeye sighs again.  “I don’t know!  _You_ came to visit _me_.  When I woke up this morning, I assure you I hadn’t planned on telling you anything.”

“Say,” says Dranko.  “Who did all the damage to this place, anyway?”

“I did,” says Darkeye. “It was an accident.”

Grey Wolf joins Kibi and Dranko flying above the wall.  Like the others, he shields his eyes as best he can while keeping her in his peripheral vision.

“Ah, Ivellios,” says Darkeye.

“Yes,” says Grey Wolf.  “You don’t mind if I don’t look at you, right?  What exactly did you do to Aravis?”

“I have him,” says Darkeye flatly.

“Where?”

“Away.  Now, are we going to come to blows, or shall we talk?”

“You seem to know a lot about us,” says Dranko.

“I’ve been following your… exploits… for quite some time,” she says with a smile.

Ernie casts _divine power_ on himself.  Grey Wolf sniffs the air again with his _enhanced senses_, and discovers Darkeye carries an unusual but familiar scent.  She smells like Sagiro did, when he was the Lord of the Roses.  Kibi confirms that powerful Earth Magic is rolling off of her in pulsing waves.

“I thought this place would be a busy hive, swarming with Sharshun,” says Dranko.  “What happened?  Did you kill them all?”

Darkeye’s countenance darkens.  “I sent them away,” she says.

Without warning, Darkeye launches herself high into the air, so that she can easily look down upon the assembled Company.  She fixes her gaze upon Flicker, and like Aravis did a few seconds ago, the little halfling vanishes.  He finds himself in a translucent, dark-gray room, like a small prison cell made of smoky quartz.  It has a window, and out of that window he can see Dranko and the others hovering below him.  With a start he realizes that he’s looking out from right about where he just saw Darkeye…

“We’re inside an Eye of Moirel,” says Aravis, who shivers as he paces the small cell.  Flicker can feel a deadly cold seeping into him, sapping him of life and strength.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he complains.

“I’m not,” says Aravis.  “She has us trapped inside her eye, I’m guessing.  I think if we concentrate hard enough, we might be able to escape.”

“So I’m doomed, then,” says Flicker.  He looks like he’s about to say more, but the little room shudders and shakes, sending both occupants reeling into the walls.  Kibi has closed his eyes, and used his keen sense of Darkeye’s emanating Earth Magic to peg her with a volley of _magic missiles_.  The spell has gotten past her innate resistance, scorching her and causing her to flinch.  She clucks her tongue.

Morningstar also shuts her eyes, not needing to be precise in her targeting as she lets loose with a _firestorm_.  All of the floating heads are incinerated with cold flames, and Darkeye herself has clearly been burned as well.  As she hovers above them, smoke rising from her robes, golden light from the object in her right hand flashes around her, bathing her momentarily in its light.  But her wounds don’t heal, and there’s no other obvious effect. Nodding with satisfaction, Morningstar quickens _divine power_. 

Aravis sets his mind to escape, and in an eyeblink finds himself returned to the spot at which he was hovering before Darkeye captured him.  While the prison’s interior had returned him to human form, he reappears as a beholder, and his central eye’s anti-magic ray is pointed right at Kibi.  The dwarf plummets about fifteen feet before Aravis closes his eye.

“Sorry!”

Ernie (shielding his eyes like the rest) casts _energy drain_ on Darkeye.  “You are a bad, bad woman!” he scolds as he casts.  “You have done many horrible things!”  His spell is drawn entirely into the golden light surrounding his target, where it harmlessly dissipates.  Ernie grunts, flies toward Darkeye, and releases _Beryn Sur_.

“Ernest,” says Darkeye.  “That was rude.”

Ernie is incredulous.  “You’re trying to bring back the horrible, evil Emperor, and _my_ hitting _you_ is rude?”

“Yes,” says Darkeye.  “This is my home.  You are an intruder.  I would have expected a cleric of Yondalla to understand that.”

“This is more like exterminating a nest of fire ants,” Ernie retorts.

Darkeye calls out to Grey Wolf.  “Ivellios! I’m sure you will understand, that everything I have done, has been to restore our good family name.”

Grey Wolf lifts an eyebrow.  “Family name?  It’s in pretty good order right now, thanks.  You’re not really improving it.”

Shaking her head, Darkeye frowns at his descendant.  “I am disappointed, though.  It appears that our Earth Magic did not travel down the family line. You’re not even a true wizard, are you?  Of course, neither am I, any more.”

“What are you now then?” asks Dranko.

“I am Darkeye.  I am a Sharshun.”

“Great!” Dranko exclaims.  “Let’s both jam our tongues into the top of our mouths and see which one of us survives!”

Grey Wolf quickens a _true strike_, channels a maximized _acid orb_ into _Bostock_, charges, and swings.  He’s keeping his eyes mostly shut, but uses his keen senses to sniff her out.  Grey Wolf does catch a quick glimpse of his foe and ancestor; one of her eye sockets  is filled with dark crystal, and in fact many parts of her body are covered with patches of smoky gemstone.  She wields a golden sword – certainly the _Watcher’s Kiss_ – and the weapon, as Sagiro’s was in Het Branoi, is grafted to her arm by the crystal that grows upon her skin.  

Grey Wolf swings, and Darkeye is deluged in a flood of hot acid.  Her skin, both true and crystalline, smokes and runs.  She winces in obvious  pain, before whispering, “I suppose we do have to do this the hard way, then.   It’s a shame. I was looking forward to talking to you.”

“And what would we talk about?” asks Grey Wolf, mockingly.

“How about this,” says Darkeye.  “The Emperor is my enemy also.”

Grey Wolf cannot hide his surprise.

“Now are you listening?” Darkeye asks.  “But, if you wish to continue with fisticuffs…”

She glances downward as Dranko streaks towards her, ready to strike while she’s distracted by Grey Wolf.  She narrows her eyes… and Dranko vanishes.  He reappears in the little crystal prison, where Flicker is looking decidedly pale and weak.  He himself feels a shiver as the room sucks the life out of him.

“We have to get out of here,” Flicker stammers, teeth chattering.  “It’s… it’s cold…”

Dranko attempts to heal Flicker with a wand, but the magic fails. He curses under his breath, as he looks out the window at Grey Wolf, Ernie and the rest.

Even as the Darkeye’s crystal coating starts to fill in the worst of her wounds, she swings the Watcher’s Kiss for the first time.  She lands three blows with upon Grey Wolf – damaging, but by no means what he had been expecting from a weapon of that power.  But he hears Ernie also cry out in pain.  All of the same wounds the sword made upon Grey Wolf, are opened in the same places upon the nearby halfling.  She then tries to draw Ernie into her crystal prison, but he resists.

“If the Emperor is your enemy,” asks Kibi, “why do you keep trying to bring him back?”

“It’s not that complicated,” says Darkeye.  “We can talk about if your comrades stop hitting me with swords and splashing me with acid.”

Kibi has no such intention.  He flies directly at Darkeye, casting _Otto’s Irresistible Dance_, and touches his quarry.  The spell is absorbed into the golden light and has no effect on the Sharshun.  Kibi curses, but is secretly relieved that she didn’t have _spell turning_ active.

“I attempted to restore time, to rehabilitate my father’s name,” says Darkeye.  “No doubt he was killed for his failure. For _my_ failure.  My divinations tell me that he died long ago.  When I failed to return, I’m sure his experiment was deemed a waste of time, and that the Emperor had him killed. Had my attempt been successful, to rewrite time, my father’s work would have been vindicated.”

So, whatever else she might know, she _doesn’t_ know that she’s currently facing down her father’s killers.

“What’s your opinion of the Adversary?” asks Kibi.

“A fool’s errand.”

“The Adversary is coming,” says Morningstar, flying towards her and drawing _Ell’s Will_. “We need the _Watcher’s Kiss_ to stop him.”

Darkeye shakes her head.  “You may _think_ that is true, but it is not.”

“No, we’re pretty sure it is,” says Kibi.

“Fine. But I’m not giving it up.”

Morningstar arrives at her target and smashes _Ell’s Will_ into Darkeye’s stomach.  A spray of crystal shards flies from the point of impact, and Darkeye grimaces in obvious agony.  

“This…” she wheezes.  “This is why I sent everyone else away.”

Aravis flies close enough that he can target Darkeye with his blindsight.  He closes his eyes and pegs her with a _disintegrate_, which she largely shrugs off.  Ernie and his dancing blade each make a flurry of slashes, nearly all of which are deflected by the patches of black crystal.  Up close, Ernie can also see that even where her skin isn’t covered in crystal, it’s still somewhat gnarled and rocky-looking – something he and the others have seen on both Cranchus and Condor.

Grey Wolf locks another _acid orb_ into his sword, and lands another strike.  Again a gout of acid splashes outward, but this time Darkeye is utterly unaffected by it.  Hm.

Inside the dusky prison, Dranko has chalked “we killed your father” on the walls.  He tries to will himself free, but has no more luck than Flicker.  He too feels the deathly chill starting to seep into his bones, but as there’s little he can do about it, he does the only sensible thing he can think of.  He licks the wall.  It’s cold and glassy.

Darkeye’s wounds continue to heal at a rapid pace.  She turns to Kibi, who has moved into melee range, and lands four painful strikes.  As each blow lands, an identical wound is opened up on Grey Wolf and Ernie.  (For whatever reason, Morningstar is not affected.)  

Kibi responds with _power word: stun_, to no effect.  Morningstar takes a full round of attacks with _Ell’s Will_, and while she inflicts some real damage on Darkeye, the Sharshun woman flicks the _Watcher’s Kiss_ deftly, and Morningstar’s holy weapon falls from her hand, to go spiraling some eighty feet down to the yard below.

As they often do in these grand encounters, things look grim indeed.  Darkeye is healing her wounds at an astounding rate.  The _Watcher’s Kiss_ seems to absorb most magic, and its attacks damage not only its target but its target’s allies.  Dranko and Flicker are both entrapped in Darkeye’s prison and rapidly losing life energy.  It’s not at all clear that they will survive this crucial encounter.

Aravis decides to take several appalling risks, all at once, by casting _Mordenkainen's Disjunction_.  He knows there’s a chance he could destroy the _Watcher’s Kiss_.  He knows there’s a chance he’ll permanently lose his spell-casting abilities.  And he knows there’s a chance he’ll inadvertently catch one of his friends in the spell’s radius, given that they’re flying around Darkeye in attack formation.  But he casts it anyway, and luck must be with him, because none of the awful possibilities come to pass.

A terrible cracking sound comes from Darkeye, and huge chunks of crystal start to fall from her body.  Kibi feels a surge of Earth Magic bend reality around him, feels the very stones of the castle warp and flex.  Flicker and Dranko appear where they had last been flying.

Aravis stares defiantly at Darkeye.  _”Now_ are you ready to give us the _Watcher’s Kiss?_  Or would you like to die?

It looks like she might die anyway.  Blood is pouring from her eye-socket that is no longer caked with crystal.  Her arms are limp at her sides, though the golden glow of her weapon still keeps her aloft.

“Yes…” she croaks.  “You may have it.  Just… please, don’t let me die.”

Dranko casts a healing spell at range, and Darkeye regains a little bit of strength.  “It’s gone,” she whispers.  “It’s gone.  It’s no longer controlling me!”

Hovering above her castle, still bathed in the light of the _Watcher’s Kiss_, Moirel begins to cry.

…to be continued…


----------



## jmucchiello

From a writing point of view in the next to last paragraph while Dranko is healing her, wouldn't it make sense to refer to her as Moriel rather than Darkeye since once blood is running from the lost crystals, Darkeye is less descriptive.


----------



## Piratecat

Typo! "Morningstar casts blindsight on herself, and quickens a second one on herself." I suspect she cast the second one on another PC, but don't remember whom. 

It will come as no surprise to anyone here that in order to show his disdain Dranko considered peeing in his tiny crystal prison. "Ha ha, I peed inside your magic artifact!" He thankfully refrained.


----------



## Joshua Randall

So apparently the information about Moirel being driven mad (after losing the Eyes) were false -- she doesn't appear particularly insane, here. Although the party got that info from one of the eyes (the cyclops one I think?). So maybe she used to be insane but got better? Or we just haven't witnessed her insanity yet? Hmm.

Also, I've been wondering this for years: it is MOY-rell or MWAH-rell? (or something else)


----------



## SolitonMan

Joshua Randall said:


> Also, I've been wondering this for years: it is MOY-rell or MWAH-rell? (or something else)




I always thought it was moy-RELL; at least that's how it's always sounded in my head while reading the SH.  

Thanks for the update Sagiro!


----------



## Sagiro

It's Mwah-Rell, with a smidge more emphasis on the second syllable.


----------



## Piratecat

I'm pretty sure Moirel went whack-a-doodle insane and got better, where "better" means "being possessed by a sentient eye for an absurdly long time." And the sword she's carrying. That thing was used to stab The Adversary, for goodness sake. It's not exactly good for sanity. 

I was really surprised by this encounter. I'd expected Moirel to be surrounded by her sharshun, safe in her enclave and protected by suicidally loyal servants. Dranko considered her a fool for dismissing them. If there's one thing the anti-social half-orc has learned, it's that you hang on tight to the people who have your back.


----------



## LightPhoenix

Piratecat said:


> I was really surprised by this encounter. I'd expected Moirel to be surrounded by her sharshun, safe in her enclave and protected by suicidally loyal servants. Dranko considered her a fool for dismissing them. If there's one thing the anti-social half-orc has learned, it's that you hang on tight to the people who have your back.




Even if no one else remembers you were there.


----------



## Piratecat

Quiet, you!

I'm still trying to figure out how to use this to my advantage. Steal a ton of money and have no one remember who I am? Nope... I'd just get blamed as "that guy who's the real thief's lackey." Man, Sagiro's a JERK.


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Piratecat said:


> Quiet, you!
> 
> I'm still trying to figure out how to use this to my advantage. Steal a ton of money and have no one remember who I am? Nope... I'd just get blamed as "that guy who's the real thief's lackey." Man, Sagiro's a JERK.




*mumblemumblenoonetoblamebutyourselfmumble*

On a more serious note, the the story of "How Dranko ended up with tentacles in his head" is a great one to show what a good 'Insitgator' player can look like.

You took a moment to do something completely random at a moment of great panic (which, as a fellow player would probably have had me gnashing my teeth and wailing at you at the time, but appreciative of later). Sagiro, as a good GM, picked up on it and decided to run with it, and you then in return made a great character choice that's caused all kinds of amazing in-game moments.

This is an example of both great work as a player and as a GM. Kudos to both that even all this time later you're still mock-agonising about it!


----------



## Kaodi

Piratecat said:


> I'm still trying to figure out how to use this to my advantage. Steal a ton of money and have no one remember who I am? Nope... I'd just get blamed as "that guy who's the real thief's lackey."




Might be low impact, but erhaps you could try trivia and gambling. Bet folks that they cannot quess which member of the team accomplished certain deeds with Dranko did. Since no one remembers who Dranko is, there should be no way for them to guess correctly. You could ever add lie detection magic to the trick to make it look legit. Unless maybe that sort of thing has already been ruled out by Sagiro...

Were Dranko not the monogamous sort of half-orc, he might have been able to one-up Kay's (?) amorous father with this ability to not be remembered. Except... errr... I guess that could get "messy" because none of the children would know who their father was, which would be bad if they ever met...

If Dranko was really good at art, he could do paintings and sculptures and perhaps build up a mystery around the artist who nobody knew about and inflate the price of his works. Which, of course, he could always miraculously "find" more of. 

Actually, that might not be a bad line of thought in general: Exploit the allure of an unassailable mystery to your advantage.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

My question would be does the magic pertain only to past events or would it effect future events as well.  Think of all the crimes Dranko could commit and not worry about getting caught because if he did, his captors/accusers wouldn't be able to truly remember it was him at the trial.


----------



## Kaodi

I do not think it would prevent him from being caught, or even a trial or anything of that sort. It just prevents people from thinking he is particularly notable; they dismiss and forget him. Perhaps one way it would help is that it might protect him from being recognized as a serial thief. Since no one has ever heard of "Dranko Blackhope" his lawyers could perhaps successfully plead every case as if it were his first crime.


----------



## thatdarncat

Kaodi said:


> Perhaps one way it would help is that it might protect him from being recognized as a serial thief.




I'm pretty sure the wording was pretty specific, about his fame being what was lost? If so, would infamy be different? Dranko gave up being a famous, respected hero.


----------



## Kaodi

thatdarncat said:


> I'm pretty sure the wording was pretty specific, about his fame being what was lost? If so, would infamy be different? Dranko gave up being a famous, respected hero.




I guess we will have to ask if anyone has ever heard of Dranko Blackhope, Licker of Everything. That can only be the sort of thing one is infamous for, hehehe...


----------



## Everett

Two things:

1)  Why didn't Aravis, Kibi and Dranko all cast Time Stop together to enter the castle?  Kibi thought he'd maybe just lie down and nap while the others went on in?

2) Darkeye's desire to talk, like other honorable villains the company has encountered, was apparently sincere.  Why didn't they listen?  An encounter with a mysterious, supremely powerful adversary claiming good intentions is not particularly inspiring when the good guys all act like mistrustful 8-year olds.  Dranko's allowed to act that way: everyone else should have a little more sense.


----------



## jmucchiello

Innocent Bystander said:


> My question would be does the magic pertain only to past events or would it effect future events as well.  Think of all the crimes Dranko could commit and not worry about getting caught because if he did, his captors/accusers wouldn't be able to truly remember it was him at the trial.




Yeah, but if he ever gets caught and thrown in jail, he's never getting parole. 

A: "Should we release Dranko Blackhope?"
B: "Who?"
A: "I don't know. It's a name on the list."
C: "I don't remember any prisoner with that name. What did he do?"
B: <shrugs>
A: "Don't know."
B: "Must be a paperwork error. Let's move on."


----------



## StevenAC

I've now updated the Collected Story Hour with another chapter (28), which takes the story up to the Company's discovery of the Sharshun castle.

I can't wait to find out what's going on with Darkeye and her unexpected reasonableness...  In the meantime, a merry Christmas to Sagiro and all the members of the Company, and best wishes for a happy (and hopefully Story Hour-filled  ) 2013!


----------



## Piratecat

Yeah, for Dranko's bargain it's the spirit of the thing, not the letter. (This is true both in character and out of it. Sagiro is one of my best friends and I trust him, and his judgment, completely. Dranko traded fame for something horrible that sits encased in his mind. What is it? He has no idea, and any time he pokes at it it drives him insane. That's a trade-off for some power, and I think it'd be a pretty poor bargain on behalf of the unmentionable abominations if Dranko's gift actually benefited him. 

I suspect that every time he wishes he was famous and remembered, that hollow frustration tastes _so sweet_ to the entities who inhabit him.



Everett said:


> Two things:
> 
> 1)  Why didn't Aravis, Kibi and Dranko all cast Time Stop together to enter the castle?  Kibi thought he'd maybe just lie down and nap while the others went on in?
> 
> 2) Darkeye's desire to talk, like other honorable villains the company has encountered, was apparently sincere.  Why didn't they listen?  An encounter with a mysterious, supremely powerful adversary claiming good intentions is not particularly inspiring when the good guys all act like mistrustful 8-year olds.  Dranko's allowed to act that way: everyone else should have a little more sense.




I forget. I think it's that even simultaneously time stopped people aren't actually simultaneously time stopped. There may also have been the question of whether one person could bring in everyone else (the answer of which was no.)

As for talking to Darkeye? Screw that. No good could come of it. It didn't matter what she wanted, or whether we were technically allied on a minor point. What we need to do is fundamentally opposed to the reason for her existence. And she set the sharshun on us. And set Sagiro, AND the Karch-Din on us. And we killed her dad. And she had an eye of Moirel possessing her, and she was carrying a shard of the blade that actually hurt the Adversary. And we felt the time pressure; Seven Dark Words and the other red-armored warriors were far too far ahead of us. Nope, some times you just need to kick someone's butt. 

But hey, we spared (and saved) her life. That's something. 

This was a fight that was very different from what I had expected. I anticipated negotiation, politics, infiltration, lackeys. The truth was so much simpler than that.


----------



## LightPhoenix

So despite my teasing of Piratecat, I think people _do_ know and remember Dranko, it's just that he'll never be famous.  The way that I've pictured it is that Dranko has been hit with the same effect that kept the Sharshun a secret.  Dranko still exists as an entity that can be interacted with, but he's basically been removed from the history books.  This also means that if someone _really_ wanted to know, they would discover Dranko was a Hero of Charagan.  However, for all intents and purposes people don't/won't know Dranko's part of the story.


----------



## RangerWickett

Ha. The campaign needs to end with Aravis bringing a new group of adventurers into his wizard tower and asking them to remember the word "Dranko."


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> As for talking to Darkeye? Screw that. No good could come of it. It didn't matter what she wanted, or whether we were technically allied on a minor point. What we need to do is fundamentally opposed to the reason for her existence. And she set the sharshun on us. And set Sagiro, AND the Karch-Din on us. And we killed her dad. And she had an eye of Moirel possessing her, and she was carrying a shard of the blade that actually hurt the Adversary.




Then her behavior doesn't make a lot of sense.  Someone as nigh-indomitable as her doesn't need to keep asking for parley if she knows enough about the Company to know why you're there and that you won't want to talk.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> Aravis decides to take several appalling risks, all at once, by casting _Mordenkainen's Disjunction_.  He knows there’s a chance he could destroy the _Watcher’s Kiss_.  He knows there’s a chance he’ll permanently lose his spell-casting abilities.  And he knows there’s a chance he’ll inadvertently catch one of his friends in the spell’s radius, given that they’re flying around Darkeye in attack formation.  But he casts it anyway, and luck must be with him, because none of the awful possibilities come to pass.




I'm curious what the chances of any of these things happening actually were?  And what the hell Sagiro would've done if Aravis had lost all his spell-casting abilities at this point?  There are no other adventurers in the known world as powerful as the Company is at this point, correct?


----------



## LightPhoenix

Everett said:


> I'm curious what the chances of any of these things happening actually were?  And what the hell Sagiro would've done if Aravis had lost all his spell-casting abilities at this point?  There are no other adventurers in the known world as powerful as the Company is at this point, correct?




The first thing that comes to mind is that, IIRC, a piece of Aravis is still in the Crosser's Maze.  Now, I obviously can't speak for Sagiro, but I probably would have utilized that in some way, probably in combination with some sort of level loss.  I think that Aravis was also allowed into the tombs of the gods due to his deific nature; he could have gone and visited that dead god of knowledge.


----------



## Everett

LightPhoenix said:


> The first thing that comes to mind is that, IIRC, a piece of Aravis is still in the Crosser's Maze.  Now, I obviously can't speak for Sagiro, but I probably would have utilized that in some way, probably in combination with some sort of level loss.  I think that Aravis was also allowed into the tombs of the gods due to his deific nature; he could have gone and visited that dead god of knowledge.




From the spell definition: "Even artifacts are subject to disjunction, though there is only a 1% chance per caster level of actually affecting such powerful items. Additionally, if an artifact is destroyed, you must make a DC 25 Will save or permanently lose all spellcasting abilities. (These abilities cannot be recovered by mortal magic, not even miracle or wish.)"

So IF the Watcher's Kiss had been destroyed, which would have brought the story to a halt by itself (they're all level 20 or 21, right?  So a 1 in 5 chance) and IF Aravis had then lost his spellcasting abilities -- the God of magic/knowledge in the tombs could've restored them I suppose, as the God's magic is obviously beyond mortal magic, but a simple "there you go, don't play with that spell again" seems a little insufficient.  Some kind of quest for Aravis could be involved but that, again, would've derailed the campaign.


----------



## carborundum

I guess Sagiro is busy with Card Hunter at the moment. I promise not to complain should he pop in here and throw some beta keys around  
A belated happy new year to all you Abernathy fans!


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

I am really hoping for a Card Hunter beta key.  I'm also wondering if we're going to see any sneaky Starcraft / Freedom Force / Abernathy links in that game?


----------



## Piratecat

Cardhunter is now in closed beta and is FREAKIN' AWESOME. Sagiro has done a great job. I'm now working hard on narrative design, building the world and tying together the fantasy campaign. Also, I'll be remiss if I don't sneak in some Abernathy references in.

No clue what would have happened if Aravis had blown out his spellcasting, but I suspect Sagiro would have asked the player to retire the character. He knew the risks, he gauged the reward. You have to respect that sort of gambling. Giving the player an out would invalidate it.


----------



## Sagiro

Gah. If Aravis had lost of all his abilities, I'm not sure what I would have done, given how important [spoilers redacted.]  Thank goodness I didn't have to decide, is all I'll say about that!

I have been spending a great deal of my time on Card Hunter, which is partly to blame for my lack of updates. I must admit that I've also been indulging in a personal writing project -- a 40,000 word humor book about my kids, which I've largely done tinkering with at this point.  Not sure what I'll do with it, since it's unlikely to interest an agent (let alone a publisher), but we'll see.  I can only say that it was itching to get written, and I needed to scratch the itch. I'll try to devote more time to the Company now that I'm finished with that particular extra-curricular activity.

Speaking of which...

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 351*_
*Damned Lies*

Ernie immediately casts a _mass heal_, including Moirel in the effect.  But while their enemy’s wounds are healed, Moirel shudders and starts to fly erratically down to the ground.  As the Company watches, fascinated, she touches down, falls prone, twitches several times, and goes unconscious.  Ernie drops to her side and examines her.  His healing spell has covered her eyeless socket in smooth skin.

“She’s alive,” he announces.  “And that’s impressive, because she’s suffered some sort of internal trauma that’s hard to imagine.”  

*[In game terms, she has suffered massive ability score damage to every ability score]*

A few inches from her limp hand lies a long glowing dagger.  It is the only thing within several feet of itself that appears to have color.  Its surroundings – Moirel, Ernie and the ground on which they rest – are cast in black and white, as if the blade has drawn all the world’s vitality and hue into itself to power a strange golden fusion.

Morningstar casts _greater restoration_ on Moirel, but to her consternation it has no effect at all.  None of the ability damage is restored.

“Huh,” she says.  “Guess she’ll have to wake up on her own.”

Dranko perks up.  “Then let’s pillage!” he exclaims.

He and Flicker start with Moirel herself, easy to loot while unconscious.  Unsurprisingly, she is possessed of several items of enchantable quality, none of which are still magical.

“Stupid disjunction,” Flicker mutters.   Grey Wolf looks down while the rogues rifle through Moirel’s pockets.  It’s hard to tell with Sharhsun, but he thinks she’s in her late 40’s or early 50’s, in human terms.

Dranko snickers.  “She looks pretty good for your great great great great great great great great great grandmother.”

Still disguised as termites courtesy of Kibi’s _veil_, the Company sets out explore the grounds.  Dranko expresses surprise that the castle appears to be empty, now that Moirel and her weird floating-head monsters have been dispatched.

“I was kind of expecting to find Rosetta here,” he adds.

Aravis flies over to hover near the blob of Astral Plane that still hangs suspended in the courtyard.  With more time to examine the surrounding area, he is certain that in the fairly recent past there was a massive explosion centered on that extra-planar mass.

“I’m very disappointed at how careless they were with our castle,” he chuckles.

“Not much use,” says Flicker,” if you have to turn us all into pebbles  and cast _time stop_ every time we want to go in or out.”

“I don’t think that’s a problem anymore,” says Kibi.  “Listen.”

Everyone grows quiet, and wonders for a moment what the dwarf is talking about.  Then they realize.  They can hear the sounds of birdsong, and wind in the trees – from somewhere _outside _the castle perimeter.  

Kibi nods.  “I think when Aravis _disjoined_ the Eye, this place snapped back into real time.”  And, indeed, he no longer feels the pleasant tingle of Earth Magic.

There’s little else above ground to interest the Company.  The buildings are entirely mundane, containing food stores, blankets, building materials, bunkrooms and a small smithy.  Grey Wolf does discover a small hastily-built graveyard with thirty-odd mounds, still fairly fresh.  Before too long the party has made a modest exploration of the above-ground portions of the castle, though there is a staircase leading down to a basement level.  As the Company knows from experience, when you’re dealing with Black Circle types, the bad stuff is in the basement.

Before tackling that, Kibi walks back to where the Watcher’s Kiss still rests on the ground a foot from Moirel’s limp hand.

He picks it up.  Immediately his hand and lower arm are drained of their color, though he feels no discomfort.  Kibi can tell right away that the dagger is not an Earth Magic weapon, though it is quite light.  He feels that it is slowly binding itself into his life-force, but not in a way that would put him in danger.  He feels rather that the blade is prepared to call upon his vital essence should the need arise.

He also feels, quite clearly, that the Watcher’s Kiss would like to kill Aravis.  It’s not a compulsion – Kibi is sure that the weapon has no inherent impetus to action – but all the same he can keenly feel its desire to end Aravis’s life.

Begrudgingly, Kibi hands the dagger to Grey Wolf, whose experience is much the same.  Morningstar casts _detect evil_ on the blade and gets nothing, though with an item of this potency, divination spells are no sure thing.

“It’s a God-killer,” says Aravis, pride and worry overlapping in his voice.  “It wanted to kill the Adversary, and now it wants to kill me too.”

“I wonder why I’m fated to used it,” wonders Kibi, thinking aloud about Leantha’s book.  He takes the dagger and strikes the same pose as in the crayon drawing, but nothing happens.

Dranko takes it next, and is relieved that blood does not immediately run from his eyes, though his face is bathed in grayscale as the weapon takes all surrounding color into itself.

Aravis rubs his chin.  “I think now that we have the Watcher’s Kiss, the next step is to go back to the island, and go after Meledien and Tarsos.”

Kibi makes a mild protest, as he doesn’t want to make any irrevocable journeys until the repatriation of the Gurundian dwarves is taken care of, though the rest think that saving the world should perhaps be made a higher priority. Ernie raises the point that enemies might find out they now possess a God-killing blade and come after them, and so they should not dawdle. On the other hand, none of them are particularly eager to give chase to someone with a spear that annihilates souls.

Morningstar is also quick to remind her friends that Octesian is still at large, killing people in their sleep. 


/*/


Though the castle is no longer time-shifted, the Astral Blob still hovers above the courtyard.  Aravis spends a few more minutes examining the phenomenon, and decides that it’s probably _not_ connected to the rest of the Astral Plane, but is rather more like a Slice from Het Branoi.

It starts to drizzle, so Grey Wolf gently lifts Moirel and carries her into a building before she becomes soaked.  He thinks her breathing might be growing a bit less ragged, though she’s still unconscious and pale.  And he keeps carrying her, as the Company decides it’s time explore the subterranean portion of the castle, and are unwilling to leave Moirel by herself.

It doesn’t take long for the party to find something worthwhile. Beyond a small warren of cold rooms and wine cellars, the Company discovers the secret heart of Moirel’s fortress.  There are two main rooms here, and the first of these is a small study.  The wide desk there is crammed with notes, the shelves crowded with books, and the walls adorned with planar maps, all of which depict the Astral Plane in various contexts.  Aravis glances through the notes on the desk, and realizes that the entire project here is dedicated to understanding the nature and properties of the Astral Plane.  Some of the books and little more than introductory primer material, but the book opened in the center of the desk contains some extremely advanced planar theory. 

The second room is closed, and from behind the door comes a faint whiff of Essence; not as strong as the Black Book from Kallor, but still worthy of a _circle of protection_ from Ernie before they open it.  Dranko carries the Watcher’s Kiss at the moment, though it’s wrapped in cloth and tied to his belt. The Company has no torches or lanterns lit; they are relying on the daily _mass darkvision_.  Though the spell usually restricts vision to greyscale. Dranko glances down and sees the bright gold of the Watcher’s Kiss peeking through the cloth.

Flicker pops the lock on the door and pushes it open.  Beyond is a square stone room, twenty feet on a side, and squatting in the middle is a large black-iron cauldron.  The wizards flinch, but there is no taint of null shadows here.  There _is_ a foul reek coming from it, a smell that none of them can identify, though all agree is unpleasant.   From the doorway no one can see what, if anything, is _inside_ the cauldron.  The only other object in the room is a large wooden stick, intricately carved, with an obsidian cap on its upper end.  It leans against the back wall of the room.

Dranko stares at the cauldron for a moment, using his innate ability to _detect magic_.  He doesn’t have the knowledge to fully understand what he’s looking at, though he does ascertain that the cauldron’s magic is both extremely complex and monstrously strong.  As for what it _does_ – well, the answer to that question is made clear by a page of notes the Company came across while researching the Necromantic Forge and Califax’s Soul Shard:

*“Gurthin’s greatest claim to fame was his forging of the Three Cauldrons:  Shadow, Smoke and Lies.  In the Great War he used the first two to produce fell soldiers to counter the Spire’s greatest heroes.  Their wizards quailed before the Null Shadows, and their priests uttered oaths at the sight of Smoldering Ghosts. But it was the Cauldron of Lies that was his greatest achievement, for knowing lies, one discerns truth. Of course, while lies are treacherous, the truth can be even more so. The story is told that when Naloric stirred the Cauldron of Lies, it told him that he would be trapped forever in the Prison of Volpos. Perhaps it would have been better for him had that been true, since he was slain by Alander soon after his escape.  Let us hope Darkeye makes better use of it.”*

Ah.  So this is the Cauldron of Lies.


/*/

“That’s awesome!”

Everyone turns to stare at Dranko.  They do not immediately share his optimism.

He blows an exasperated breath.  “If we stir the cauldron, then it tells us a lie.  Whatever it tells us, we know it won’t come true.”

Aravis, whose inhibitions are scarce when there’s something new to experience, wants to stir the cauldron straight away.  Grey Wolf and Kibi take a step back, wanting nothing to do with it.  

“It’s evil!” Kibi protests. “It’s more evil than the Null Shadow cauldron was!  Why are we even _thinking_ about messing around with it?”

But the dwarf’s concerns do not dissuade Aravis and Dranko.   The others are mildly curious, but not enough to stir them to action.  Ernie reluctantly agrees to accompany the two would-be cauldron users into the room, so that they can stay within the penumbra of his _protection from evil_.  

Dranko peers into the Cauldron of Lies.  At first he thinks it’s empty, but then he sees that the bottom third of its volume is swirling with thick black vapors.  Aravis picks up the obsidian-capped stick, dips it into the cauldron, and begins to stir. He feels a tingle in his hands, and experiences a tactile illusion of the stick becoming slimy and befouled.  As the seconds tick by, a deep malaise comes over him, a despairing lethargy that threatens to overwhelm his senses.  But he stays focused, girds his will, and continues to swirl the vapors.

After a minute or two of this, the vapors leap vigorously from the iron vessel, filling the air above it and forming into words as if pressed onto an invisible tablet.   The others cannot make out the forms of the letters, but Aravis can read their message clearly.

*Corilayna has indeed joined Drosh in the Crosser’s Maze.*

Then the vapors break apart, and Aravis is left feeling drained and fragile, as though he has just had an unpleasant emotional encounter with someone he loves.

Dranko displays his usual sympathy.  “So?  How’d it go?” 

Aravis staggers to the nearest wall, sits, and puts his head in his hands.  “I feel… awful.  But I learned something, I think.”

He tells the others the message from the cauldron, but there is some disagreement about which part is the lie.  Did Corilayna go in, but Drosh had left?  Or is Drosh still in it, but Corilayna is not?  Or are _neither_ of them there?  None of them can say; it’s a bit out of their ken.

“Well, you didn’t die, and that’s good enough for me.”  Dranko picks up the stick himself, and finds it heavier than he expects.  With an effort he lifts the end of it into the cauldron, though it’s difficult to muster the will to even hold it.  Gritting his teeth, he begins to stir, and like Aravis is overcome with sadness and depressing thoughts.  He’s reminded of his argument with Kibi about talking back to Lord Tapehon, and of his worst days suffering the cutting discipline of Califax.  His arms continue to stir, but soon he has personally lost interest, and has nearly become lost in his own misery when he realizes that words have formed above the squatting black pot.

*Tapheon has forgotten all about his encounter with Dranko.*

The stick drops from his hand with a clatter.

“Are you okay?” Ernie asks.

“I’m fine.  It’s alright.  Any time now Tapheon will seize my soul, and there’ll be eternal torment, and blah blah blah.”

“My turn next!” says Flicker.

“Let’s wait,” says Morningstar.  “Let’s wait to see if this…” she motions to Dranko and Aravis, both of whom have grown quiet and morose,  “… wears off, before anyone else tries it.”

Ernie gives Dranko and Aravis some food, and this cheers them up slightly.  Flicker lights a cigar and puts it in Dranko’s mouth, and that improves the half-orc’s spirits further.

“Group hug!” says Ernie, and before too long Aravis and Dranko are feeling more like their old selves.

“I think,” says Aravis slowly, “that this cauldron _distracts_ you with lies. It’s telling us things that are true, but which in the grand scheme of things aren’t important.  I mean, we _knew_ Tapheon hadn’t forgotten you, Dranko.  Now we’ll just worry about it needlessly.”

“This is like, if everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?” says Ernie.

Dranko laughs.  “Have you ever jumped off a bridge.  It’s actually kind of fun!”

Ernie still has no desire to try his hand with the stirring stick.  “Is it really worth our time trying to outthink a pot?”

“If we can’t, that’s embarrassing,” says Flicker.  “I still think I should stir it.”

Dranko turns to him and grins.  “You know how we always say, ‘at least you’re not as unwise as Flicker?’”

“You say that?”

“Not in front of you we don’t.”

“Fine.  I’ll go scout out more of this basement.”

Flicker heads out into the hallway to check for secret doors.

“You know,” says Kibi. “I think I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to try it. I don’t really _want_ to, but it’s a possible source of information, which is something we never seem to have enough of.”  He picks up the stick, and adds, “And even if I became mopey and depressed, you guys probably wouldn’t notice any difference.”

Kibi stirs the cauldron, and fights his way through the unnatural depression it brings. The smoke rises before him, and brings this message:

*The Cranchus you remember is alive and well.*

Aravis frowns.  “See? Kibi, it’s a distraction.  Remember, people change. We don’t know what it means.”

Kibi sits heavily, tears coming into his eyes.

“Kibi,” says Ernie gently, “He could have lived a long and good life, and still have died of old age by now.”

“It’s not like I could have visited him anyway,” says Kibi sullenly. 

“Kibi needs a hug,” says Dranko.  “Ernie!  Hug the dwarf.”


…to be continued…


----------



## Joshua Randall

All three of those statements are sufficiently ambiguous that even _knowing they are lies _doesn't tell us anything useful.

Well payed, Sagiro.


----------



## Piratecat

Oh, foreshadowing, you sure are foreshadowy. Re-reading this now and knowing what I learned in the final game session, I can not believe that Sagiro told us this. Yeah, what he DIDN'T say was the really, really important bit. I hadn't realized that he'd dangled such major spoilers in front of us with impunity.

Well done, you big jerk!


----------



## Tamlyn

Piratecat said:


> Oh, foreshadowing, you sure are foreshadowy. Re-reading this now and knowing what I learned in the final game session, I can not believe that Sagiro told us this. Yeah, what he DIDN'T say was the really, really important bit. I hadn't realized that he'd dangled such major spoilers in front of us with impunity.
> 
> Well done, you big jerk!




"Hello, Kettle. This is Pot. You're black!"


----------



## katcitrus

Is there a pdf of this story hour? I just started reading and I'd like to get caught up, but it seems about the length of a novel at this point.


----------



## Sagiro

katcitrus said:


> Is there a pdf of this story hour? I just started reading and I'd like to get caught up, but it seems about the length of a novel at this point.



*StevenAC* has been compiling my Story Hour into a beautiful set of .pdfs -- go here and enjoy:

http://stevenac.net/sagiro/StoryHour.htm


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 352*_
*Moirel*

From the hall outside the cauldron room comes a loud and alarming noise of grinding stone, followed immediately by Flicker crying out, “Jackpot! Secret room!”

“What’s in it?” calls Dranko.

After a brief pause, Flicker answers, “Animal statues.”

“What kind?”

“The kind with gems in their eyes!  Wait… don’t come in yet.”

The sound of small objects plinking to the stone floor can be heard.

“Well, gems in _some_ of their eyes.”

“Guess what?” answers Dranko.  “I stirred the pot again.  It said “Flicker isn’t a d*ck.”

It’s a treasure trove, literally. The statuettes – probably Moirel’s private collection – are exquisitely carved from obsidian, jade and crystal.  The gems in their eyes are flawless, and Flicker sets the value of the set easily in the six-figures.

Aravis ignores the gleeful exclamations of his more monetarily-minded comrades and returns to the study, where he spends the remaining hours before bed examining the reams of papers therein.  His conclusion: the person who compiled them was brilliant, but knew nothing about planar theory when they started their researches.  Assuming it was Moirel, she learned a great deal in a short time and was a quick study.  By noting the handwriting on many of the papers, Aravis realizes that Moirel built her own set of basic planar theory books with very little to go on.  From the dates on the papers, it seems she went further in her understanding of the Astral plane in less than a year than most scholars would have done in twenty.


/*/



In the morning, Moirel's condition has markedly improved.  Ernie casts _greater restoration_ on her, and color comes instantly back to her face. 

“We should wake her up,” says Morningstar. 

“She might still be evil,” Dranko cautions.  “What do we do with her, if she’s not Little Miss Sunshine even without her Black Eye?”

They defer to Grey Wolf, since Moirel is his great-great-etc. grandmother.  

“I agree that we should question her,” he says.  “Thoroughly.  Let’s get a read on her before we decided whether or not to let her live.”

Ernie mixes some herbs and holds a pungent wad under Moirel’s nostrils until she wakes.  As she flutters back to consciousness, Morningstar tries twice to cast _detect thoughts_ upon her, but both times her target’s natural mental defenses repel the attempt.  With a sigh, she busts out the big mental gun and casts _brain spider_.  It works, and Morningstar begins to concentrate on monitoring the thoughts of their prisoner.

Moirel’s eyes open, and flick back and forth among the Company standing around her.

“Are you hungry?” Ernie asks.

“Who… who are you?”

“I’m Ernest Roundhill at your service, but only if you don’t do anything hideously evil.  Who are you?”

Moirel blinks confusedly.  “I’m… Moirel?  Yes, that’s it.  Moirel.”

Grey Wolf leans forward. “Do you know where you are?”

“I’m… in my castle.”

Morningstar gets a clear indication of wonderment, puzzlement, and outright disbelief that the Black Eye is no longer overshadowing her mind.  Having  recast _telepathic bond_, she shares her observations with the rest.

“That Eye was not good for you,” says Ernie.

Moirel blinks again, then tries to stand but cannot.  She is still too weak.  “How did you get in here?”

“We’re very clever,” says Grey Wolf with a smile.

She’s thinking:  _They must have learned the real password.  ‘Refuge Asynchronous.’_

Aravis cannot help but ask, “Are you the one who was studying planar theory and taking the notes that we found?”

“Yes.  Yes, but… what do you want here?  Aravis.  Your name is Aravis.  I remember… dreading meeting you all.  Was that me?”

“No,” says Aravis.  “It was probably the Eye.”

Ernie hands her a cup of water, and she sips while he asks,  “What is the last thing you remember from when you were really you?”

Moirel looks as though she doesn’t quite understand the question.  “I’ve always been me.”

“But you haven’t always been alone,” says Ernie.

“No, I… it… the Eye changed me. For the worse. But it empowered me for the better.  It’s all gone now, isn’t it?  My magic is gone.  I did it to myself.”

Kibi glances at the ceiling.  “Was that the big accident that happened upstairs?”

While Moirel pauses to ponder the question, Morningstar shares more observations about her subject’s mental state.  _She has trouble remembering things that happened recently.  Her mind is muddy, confused.  She’s telling the truth that she’s always been herself, because something was letting her, but undermining her nature at the same time, bringing out her worst tendencies.  Adding malice to her, and its own high-level agenda._

“There was an accident, yes,” says Moirel.  “It was my last thought… to get my revenge.  On his son, because he is dead.  But I failed.  The most important thing in the world to me… and I failed at it.”

When no one answers, she continues, “The Eyes are destroyed, aren't they?  Not just mine, but all of them.  Inivane failed.  And that was my great hope for my father.  I’m sorry you never knew him.  He was a great man.”

Seven great heroes keep seven very straight faces.

“The funny thing about hope,” says Ernie, “is that it’s very difficult to kill.  If you still wanted to beat him…”

“I’m out of options,” Moirel interrupts.  “I have no magic left. I was one of the greatest wizards of my age, and now…”

“How did you lose your magic?” asks Dranko.

Moirel takes a deep breath, and spends half a minute gathering her muddled thoughts.  Morningstar senses that she is rapidly regaining focus.

“You know about Volpos,” Moirel begins.  “You know that is where Naloric was, and where Naradawk now is.  It can’t be reached.  It is a Prison Prime. But I wanted him.  He killed my father, and I swore to kill his son. And I thought I could do it.  Through the Astral Plane.  It’s coterminous in a way that other planes aren't.  Before the… before, I had temporal powers.  I tried to bore a hole through time and space, using the Astral Plane as a conduit.  But… I was out of my league.  I knew there was risk, but now how much risk.  There was a great deal of energy released when I finished my ritual.  I…”

She pauses, and Morningstar senses a great sadness well up in her.

“I killed almost everyone here.  The Watcher’s Kiss kept me alive, shielded me, kept me safe.”

Morningstar feels Moirel’s mind become instantly frantic.

“Where is it, by the way?” asks Moirel in a sudden panic.  “I need it.  I need it!” 

“Why?” asks Aravis calmly.

“Because I… because it… I…"  Her mind calms.  “I don’t know why.  It is very powerful.  Very.  It gave me authority, protection… no, I don’t need it, do I?  What would be the point?  I don’t want to kill anyone else.  Just him.  And I can’t do that now.  There’s no way to get to Volpos, it was a fool’s errand… but it was my last hope.  After I failed, after Inivane failed me…”

Ernie pats her hand.  “You are an intelligent and focused woman.  Take some time, rest.”

She becomes confused again.  “You’re not going to kill me?”

“No,” says Ernie, smiling.

“You should,” says Moirel, closing her eyes.  “If you knew the things I’ve done…  I remember doing them, and remember _wanting_ to do them.”

“Are you sure it was _you_ who wanted to do those things?” asks Aravis.

“Oh, yes.  Some of them. Even now, if you gave me the choice, I would rewrite history, so that my father’s name would not be disgraced and he not killed. I would do anything for him.  Naloric sent me through the plinths because he didn’t trust my father.  He felt my father was trying to trick him, which was not the case.  My father, Condor, he valued his work above all else.  If I had a way to avenge him, I would, in a heartbeat.”

Aravis nods in sympathy.  “I can understand your desire to bring your father back at any cost.  If I were given that option, I don’t know what I would do for my own father.  But you should consider: Naradawk is trapped in his prison, and that may very well be worse for him than death.”

“He has tried to get out before,” says Moirel.  “He may yet succeed.”

Dranko snorts.  “And so you thought making a tunnel between here and Volpos was a good idea?”

Moirel looks peeved.  “It would not have been permanent.  I would have gone through, and the tunnel would have closed behind me. I would have found him, and killed him. That’s why I needed the Watcher’s Kiss. To kill Naradawk.  And I would have, and he may have killed me, but that wouldn’t have mattered.”

Moirel says nothing after that, and so there is silence around her cot.  According to Morningstar she is losing focus again, and dreaming of plunging the Watcher’s Kiss into Naradawk’s heart.

“Say!” says Dranko, wanting to keep the conversation going.  “Do you remember how to banish King Farazil from this plane?”

As he hoped, this snaps Moirel back to the here and now.  “Ah, yes.  Farazil.  But I have released him from service. He fulfilled the technical terms of a contract I had made with him… to kill you, if I recall correctly. In light of your continued existence, I shouldn’t have been so ready to declare the contract upheld.  Oh, yes, he can be killed. Banish him to the Plane of Shadow, follow him, and kill him there.”

“And how do you banish him?” Dranko presses.

“How do any banish any extra-planar creature? And if he is resistant to such measures, you may have to work at it.  He’s a crafty thing, isn’t he. Slippery.  He…”  She pauses, trying to remember.  “He wanted something.  I don’t remember what it was.  Beyond merely his freedom from my service, I mean.”

“If you could remember, that would be great.”

When Moirel seems to have nothing more to say on that subject, Aravis asks, “Were your temporal powers magic you already possessed, or were they related to the Eye?” 

“They were my own!” says Moirel, though Morningstar senses some lingering uncertainty.  “I am… was… the second greatest Earth Mage of my day.  Only my father was more powerful.”

Morningstar confirms that the name of Cranchus is nowhere in her thoughts.

Moirel continues.  “The Eyes were my father’s greatest creation, and the controlling Eye – the Black – the most powerful of all of them.  I remember holding it, while the others circled around my head.  Father assured me it was safe, that everything would be fine.  He had worked out the details.  I trusted him, but…  there was something odd about the Black one.  Condor was forced to use some of that… that stuff that Naloric had – just a little – to make it function properly.  It was the year 200 when I left.  Condor said I should arrive sometime between 500 and 100 years in the future.  That I should verify that fact, and then use a second the ritual to return to my own time.

“And so I went. To travel through time, was a thing of such exquisite beauty and power.  I was so proud of my father.  Naloric was a fool; he didn’t understand the true extent of my father’s knowledge. He knew more – thought deeper – than Naloric could ever know.  For all his power, the Emperor was a monster. He was also my Lord, and I served him without question, but he was a monster, and we both knew it.”

The Company is transfixed by Moirel’s narrative, hardly daring to breathe as they listen.

“So, I traveled,” says Moirel.  “It worked!  I came forward in time some 800-odd years.  And when I arrived, the controlling Eye… took me over. I was... gone for a while, I don’t know where. When I came to, the other Eyes had abandoned me.  Scattered themselves.  And the Obsidian Eye was there, with me.  It became me.  It was greater than I was.  But it left me my personality. It didn't dominate me in a conventional sense, but in most ways this was worse. 

“I set out to discover what had happened.  I learned that a hundred years earlier, Naloric had been banished following a long war.  So I did what made the most sense – I found this place, where his capital used to be.  Most of the city was wrecked, ruined in the war, but this castle was still here, hidden by powerful illusions. The Sharshun, those that had not fled with Naloric, still held it. But it would not have stayed hidden for long from the Spire, not with Naloric gone.  

“So, I hid it better.  I shifted it, the Eye shifted it… no, _I shifted it._. The knowledge was mine. I was still myself, a little, and I was the greatest living mage.  The leader of the Sharshun… I destroyed him, took his place, and saw to it that we devoted all of our energies to finding the seven other Eyes, so I could send someone back in time.  But I couldn't leave. The Obsidian Eye wouldn't let me leave. It was needed here to keep the place safe.  I was a spider trapped in my own web, but I had many faithful servants.  The Sharshun obeyed me without question.  They knew better than to question anything I said or did.  And so I sent them out to find the Eyes.  You found some, they found some…”

Ernie interrupts, whispering. “What did you do to Sagiro?”

Moirel laughs.  “The Eye dominated him, of course. The Eye could dominate anyone completely, lastingly, utterly.  It left their personality alone, and in some ways they were still themselves. But they obeyed… us… me… unquestionably.  Until the day they died, and possibly beyond.”

“Is Sagiro dead?” asks Morningstar.

“I don’t know.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

Moirel thinks.  “I… sent him to find one of the missing Eyes, and I never heard from him again.  One of my many failures.”

Morningstar shakes her head. “Why would the Eye not want you to return to Naloric?  Why did it not let you return to your own time?”

“I think,” says Moirel slowly, “that, ultimately, it was under the control of my father.  Had it gone back, it would have been under my father’s control again. It desired to be in control, rather than to be controlled.  Like all of the Eyes, it had a mind of its own.”

“And,” says Aravis, “If it was made with the black essence, it had a larger goal in mind.”

“ Naloric,” spits Moirel.  “There was something he wanted.  It was all he thought about, day and night, night and day.  He dug for it, convinced it was deep beneath the earth.  He controlled everything, and what did he do with all the slave labor he could wish for, drawn from every corner of the kingdom?  He dug.”

Dranko thinks to the others:  _Naloric dug, but what he didn’t know is that the underworld had been sealed off.  That was why our red-armored friends have gone beneath the barrier. To find what Naloric was after._

Morningstar agrees.  “It’s all to free the Adversary,” she says to Moirel.

Moirel looks confused.  “The Adversary?  You mean, the Adversary from story, from whom the Travelers came here fleeing? Perhaps Naloric wanted to kill that being.  What he was looking for was called the Fist of the Godslayer.  I remember that now… it’s what he was digging for.”

“What did it do?” Dranko asks.

“Slay Gods, presumably.  Honestly I didn’t give it much thought.  I always considered it a fool’s errand.”

“Maybe it’s a giant hammer,” thinks Grey Wolf.  “That would be cool.”

But internally, the Company thinks it far more likely that Naloric, infused with goo, was looking to free the Adversary, not kill him.

“He was digging in many places,” says Moirel.  “Like I said, a fool’s errand.  He never seemed to find what he was looking for, and eventually he had to curtail his efforts in order to prosecute the war with the Spire.”

“I guess you don’t know, then,” says Aravis.  “But that black substance, that he used to craft the Black Eye?  That’s the blood of the Adversary.”

“How… how did it get here?”

“Part of Him came to Abernia,” says Aravis, “and crashed to the ground.”

“So He’s here?”

“A portion is.”

“What portion,” presses Moirel.

“His essence,” says Ernie.  “He was trying to reach through the door of his prison, and it closed.  Some of his spiritual fingers, as it were, were sliced off.”

“And those… fingers… escaped and came here?”

“He’s been giving us the Spiritual Finger ever since,” Ernie grumbles.

Morningstar gives Moirel a grim smile. “The Black Eye, infused with Adversary blood, had control of you all of these years.  You have been doing its bidding all of this time.”

Moirel again grows quiet, but Morningstar knows she’s thinking furiously, trying to integrate this new information with her own fragmented memories.  Her mind jumps to Sagiro, and to the Cauldron of Lies.

“I have… I have a cauldron,” Moirel says out loud.

“We know,” says Ernie.

Moirel laughs.  “Of course you know.  You are Alander’s chosen.  The Eye knew about you.  It feared you.  That was one of the reasons it stayed here and wouldn’t leave.”

“What did the Cauldron tell you?” Dranko asks.

“That’s the confusing part.  It said ‘Sagiro, in the end, will fail you.’  And he _did_ fail me. So how is that a lie?”

“Couldn’t you use the Cauldron again?” Dranko suggests.

“A person may only stir the Cauldron once.”  

She closes her eyes again, thinking hard, and then asks, “If the stories of the Adversary are true, He would destroy the world!  Who would let that happen?”

Aravis sighs.  “There are always people who are convinced that they will be spared.”

“Then they are idiots!”

“Rememeber,” says Kibi, “They’re controlled by Black Goo just like you were. They can’t _help_ but try to bring the Adversary back.”  Then he says, “You said your life was a failure, and your only goal to avenge your father, but do you really think that’s what you father would want?”

“Yes!” Moirel exclaims. 

“Wouldn’t he rather see you happy, than to…”

“He was a man of great pride, as well as great intellect,” says Moirel.  “He would understand that I wouldn’t _be_ happy until he was avenged.”

“While you may have failed to kill Naradawk,” says Aravis, “by preserving the Watcher’s Kiss, and keeping it away from those who wanted to destroy it, you have allowed it to come to us.  And _that_ may be what lets us destroy the Adversary, and by doing so destroy the source of Naradawk’s power.”

Moirel thinks, and then smiles.  “And if that comes to pass, Sagiro will not have failed me, after all.”

…to be continued…


----------



## Quartz

More! More!


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Update! Wheeee! Thank you!

Very interesting discussion. Things falling into place rapidly now, about what's really been going on all this time. And I can see how this might go, if Our Heroes are victorious...but we're a long way short of that, and there are an awful lot of save-or-die saving throws to be made.

Incidentally, what sort of levels are the PC's at this stage, and do they level up again before the end (spoilers permitting, of course)?


----------



## Chronikoce

Woohooo! Update! Makes me want to start reading from the beginning again!


----------



## carborundum

*Re: Sagiro's Story Hour: The Further Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 2/24/13)*

Excellent stuff! But... hang on a minute, a person can only stir the cauldron once? Didnt they just go on a crazy stir-fest? 
Must...reread...


----------



## Sagiro

carborundum said:


> Excellent stuff! But... hang on a minute, a person can only stir the cauldron once? Didnt they just go on a crazy stir-fest?
> Must...reread...



Aravis, Dranko and Kibi each stirred the cauldron, but only once.


----------



## carborundum

*Re: Sagiro's Story Hour: The Further Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 2/24/13)*

Thanks!
Amazing that *both* of them showed such self-control  Adventurers are usually more impulsive.


----------



## Piratecat

carborundum said:


> Thanks!
> Amazing that both of them showed such self-control  Adventurers are usually more impulsive.



We were aware that some things are best not meddled with too frequently.

I don't remember what level we were at this point. 19th, I'd guess.


----------



## carborundum

Jolly wise!

OT: did your high-level combats take spectacularly long or only when it got really tense and suddenly sixteen pages needed to be checked for footnotes?


----------



## Piratecat

Hmm. I don't remember most combats taking a particularly long time, but that may be faulty memory. Certain fights (the dragon, and the upcoming epic battle against Octesian) took longer than normal or multiple sessions. But it was 3e/3.5e, and I don't remember combat feeling like it was dragging until we were ludicrously high level (and even then, we were dishing out so much damage that things went fairly quickly.)

Worth reiterating that this encounter with Moirel went _nothing_ like what I'd expected. It's fun to stay surprised.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 353*_
*In Which Something Finally Goes Right For a Change*


Before the Company takes their leave, Moirel has a warning, and a final favor to ask.

“There are two other Cauldrons,” she tells them.  “They create dangerous monsters in the hands of the Black Circle. The Ghost Cauldron was destroyed centuries ago by the Silver Shell, but the third, the Shadow Cauldron, is capable of…”

“Already taken care of,” says Aravis, grinning.  

“Oh. Good.”

“Yeah,” says Dranko.  “So, what’s the favor?”

“I’m sure that I’m wanted by the King for my various past crimes,” she says.  “I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t mention to anyone that I’m here, at least for a while.”

“We won’t,” Aravis assures her. “When we return from our mission beneath the earth, we will intercede with King Crunard, and get you a pardon.”

“I would go with you,” she says, “but with my magic burned away, I am no longer capable of heroics.”

“Now that the castle isn’t protected by your time powers,” says Morningstar, “someone might come across you by chance.”

“I have an idea,” says Dranko.  “I’ll get in touch with Lucas and we’ll send the Overmen to guard her.”


/*/


It’s only mid-morning, so they _teleport_ home, intending to spend the remainder of the day relaxing and planning.  The first thing they do is cast _identify_ on the Watcher’s Kiss, and to their surprise the spell is not suppressed or otherwise prevented from functioning.  The golden blade has a number of extremely powerful properties:

-	It’s a +6 dagger
-	It does an additional 10d6 damage per hit against Divine targets.

Dranko points at Aravis.  “Don’t shave with it.”

-	When one strikes and does damage with the weapon, it does equal damage to all same-aligned creatures within 30’.
-	Once per round, as a free action, you can automatically end a grapple, deal 6d6 damage to the grappler, and fling them 30’.
-	If the wielder is damaged by an energy type, they are thereafter immune to that energy type until the end of the encounter.
-	The wielders is constantly _flying_ and has evasion.

That all sounds great, but there’s one catch:

-	At the end of any encounter in which someone uses any of the Watcher’s Kiss’s abilities, or deals damage with it, that person takes 3d6 damage to every ability score. That damage which cannot be restored until the victim has had a full night’s rest.

Having discerned all of that, they give the Watcher’s Kiss to Flicker, with strong admonishments that he should only use it in dire emergencies.


Once Flicker has calmed down, Eddings brings the party a late-morning meal while they discuss what to do next.  The endgame is in sight now; none of them doubt that they should be wrapping up loose ends, and making preparations to pursue Seven Dark Words, Meledien and Tarsos into the Underdark, to prevent whatever Adversary-rescuing plans the Evil Trio has going.

Dranko pulls out the written list they keep of their ongoing quests and entanglements.

“Wipe out the bugbears,” he reads, nodding to Aravis.

“It seems unlikely,” the wizard admits.  “I’d like to avenge my parents, but we have more important things to worry about now.”

Other items that seem like they’ll fall by the wayside include killing Parthol Runecarver and wiping out the Council of Nine. “I may hate them,” says Aravis, referring to the assemblage of intelligent rats, “but Quarrol created them, and it’s not for me to destroy them.”

Looking over Dranko’s shoulder, Ernie reads “Kick Farazil’s butt.”  

“He’s working for us now,” says Kibi.

“Can’t we kick his ass once he’s done?” asks Flicker.

“I have to wonder,” says Dranko. “What benefit is he _really_ after, asking for citizenship.  What’s in the fine print?”

Some other things can now be crossed off the to-do list as substantially completed, mainly dealing with the Sharshun and Darkeye, and destroying the remaining Black Circle cauldrons.  They decide that the short list of things still on their collective plate includes assisting the relocation of the Gurundian dwarves, rescuing Tor from the Delfirians, and stopping the red-armored Octesian who’s now murdering random citizens in their sleep.

Dranko pays a visit to Lucas at the underground HQ of the Undermen, explaining as much as he can, and stressing that he’ll soon be going somewhere from where he’s not supposed to be able to return.  But before Lucas can even shake his head in annoyance and resignation, the two hear a commotion from somewhere above.  One of Lucas’s minions pokes his head into the office.

“Sorry to disturb you, but you really should get up to the street.  Something’s happening, down at the docks.”

Lucas and Dranko exchange glances, and Dranko hustles up through the warrens of the Manse to the surface.  Once on the streets of Tal Hae, a foul smell greets his nostrils. The city has a faint tang of fish at all times, but now there’s a horrid rotting smell wafting through the salt air – and he’s still a good quarter mile from the harbor.  As he dashes through the streets, mind-link chatter tells him that the others have also caught wind (so to speak) of something unusual occurring, and they wind up meeting atop a small hill that overlooks the harbor.

There’s a wall of people down at the harbor’s edge, jostling for a view, but also wrapping their faces against the powerful ambient stench.  From their high vantage point, the Company can easily see what’s causing it.  Dead fish are washing into the harbor from out in the ocean, in such vast quantities that they have already formed a thick, unbroken carpet of aquatic corpses.  For as far out towards the ocean as they can see, the surface is a thick mass of dead sea creatures, now baking in the August heat.  A few brave souls have moved to the edge of the water with nets.

“What happened?” asks Flicker.

“Same reason all the turtles died,” says Dranko.  “Something bad.”

A few of them fly down for a better look, and on closer inspection see that the fish are mostly of an unusual sort, and _not_ the mackerel, cod and silverscales that composes the bulk of the fishing fleet’s usual catch.  Many of the bodies are more like eels than fish, or have oddly shaped bodies, strange dangling appendages, or unusually large, toothy mouths.  

“Deep sea fish,” says Aravis with sudden understanding.  He flies higher, and sees that the ocean beyond the bay is topped with a mass of dead sea creatures for as far out as he can see.  There must be millions of them.

Dranko wrinkles his nose.  “I think the only thing we can about this, is to get going after Meledien and company, before it gets worse.”

It appears that the clock is ticking a little faster than they thought.


/*/


As the Company returns to the Greenhouse, Kibi receives a _sending_:

*This is Teggin, leader of the dwarven scouts.  We’ve had some unexpected good developments in the last two days.  Hope you’ve been okay.  Come visit!*

Kibi replies:  _*Okay. I’ll be there soon.*_

Dranko has an odd request on the way back.  “Flicker, I need to borrow the Watcher’s Kiss for a few minutes.”

“Oh?”  Flicker is immediately suspicious. “Why?”

“I want to show it to someone?”

“Who?”

“Berthel.  My old landlady.”

“Why in the Gods’ names would you want to do that?” asks Flicker.

“Flicker, just indulge me.”


/*/


Berthel has fixed up the old tenement since his last visit, and in fact has purchased the entire building with the money Dranko had left her.  Dranko hears the sound of children laughing from the second-floor dwelling, and smiles.

“This is nice!” he says, sitting back in a comfortable chair.

“Let me show you the best part!” Berthel answers jovially.  She opens a closet door to reveal a wine rack, burdened with a dozen bottles of cheap wine.  She pulls out one of the bottles, opens it, and pours two glasses.  “Saved this one for you,” she says.

“I got you something too,” says Dranko.  He produces an expensive bottle of Elvish wine, knowing full well that its subtleties and flavors will be lost on his old landlady.

“Hm,” says Berthel, looking at it doubtfully.  “Will I get drunk if I drink it?”

Dranko smiles and nods, and then grows a bit somber.  “You may never see me again,” he tells her.  “I’m going off to do one of those things that will probably get me killed.”

Berthel chuckles.  “You’re on the run from the law, aren’t you,” she accuses.

Dranko doesn’t answer, but says instead, “also, I wanted you to see this.”  He pulls the Watcher’s Kiss from its scabbard, and its golden glow immediately captures all light and vitality in Berthel’s apartment. Everything else goes gray.

“What is that?” asks Berthel, awed.

“That’s the dagger that a Goddess used to stab another God in the back.  And now you’re one of the only people who’s ever seen it.”

Berthel’s eyes go wide, and then she laughs.  “You’re carrying around a sword that one God used to stab another God?  Come on, Dranko, pull the other one.”

Dranko sighs, and moves to the window.  Berthel takes a long sip of wine.

“Good bye Dranko. Take care of yourself.”

Dranko gives her one last smile, and jumps out.


/*/


After another _sending_ to learn the dwarves’ exact location, the party _teleports_ to Cloud Mountain, one time abode of Azhant the Ancient, and now prospective new home of the oppressed dwarves of Gurund.  At once the smell of rotting sea creatures is replaced by the bracing fresh pine smell of mountain air.

A few things are immediately evident.  One, a large portion of the collapsed entrance hall has been cleared out and built back up.  Two, there are dozens of dwarves busily at work here – many more than Kibi left here a week ago with the mission of simply scouting out the area.  Third, there are nearly as many halflings here as dwarves.

As the Company looks around, bewildered, they hear the sound of grinding stone coming from around the corner of the great hall.  Behind that sound comes the lovely strains of harp music.  The party moves to see the source of these sounds, and discovers two halflings seated on chairs, surrounded by about ten dwarves looking nervously curious.  As the halflings strum on small golden harps, it appears that a small army of unseen servants is moving rubble, building columns, mixing mortar and putting up walls.  Three of the dwarves are loudly explaining to the halflings about how the building should proceed, and what things should look like.  The place is renovating itself to the music of the harps!

The dwarf Teggin approaches, a broad grin parting his beard.

“Kibilhathur!”

“Teggin,” says Kibi.  “You’ve been… busy!”

“I’ve hardly done anything, personally,” says Teggin.

“Who are these halflings?” Kibi asks.

“Oh, they’re from Appleseed, a country a few hundred miles to the north. They move quickly, but then, we asked them to as part of the agreement.”

“Oh?”

“Limited mining rights,” says Teggin. “The halflings can always use more mineral resources, and Cloud Mountain is a nearly-endless supply.  It’s mostly iron and silver, but it’s high-quality stuff.”

“But how…?”

“It turns out that some of the dwarven resistance in Gurund had contacts in Appleseed,” says Teggin cheerfully.  “You know, the resistance that you funded a while back.  Those contacts have been working on an agreement for months now, and it finally paid off.  The halflings have some wizards who can _teleport_, and some magic that lets them turn into air and fly incredibly fast.  That’s how most of ‘em got here so quickly.  And they have these things…”  He gestures to the halflings playing the harps.  “They’re called Lyres of Building.  It would have taken us months to do what these little beauties have managed in a couple of days!”

Kibi can only look astonished at this turn of events.

“And that’s not even the best part!” says Teggin, his grin growing wider.  “We’ve got some extra muscle on hand.  You ever heard of Galeb Duhr?  They’re big living rocks that walk around.  There was a whole colony of Galeb Duhr living in this area, mostly staying – ahem – underground, hiding from the dragon all these years.  No more dragon, so they came up to see what we’re up to.  They agreed to help!  They’re incredibly friendly, if a bit weird and hard to understand.  Between them and the halflings, the future is looking bright as crystal.”

He waves over one of the halflings.  “Hey Sara, these are the people I was telling you about.  The ones that killed the dragon and opened Cloud Mountain for business.”

An armored halfling strides over and greets the Company individually by name, though she’s never met them before.  Dranko’s is the only name she can’t seem to remember.

“High Priestess Maple Sunblade sent me,” she said.  “I’m to brief you on what’s been happening.  Please, walk this way.”

Sara leads them to a small side room, in an area that was a jumble of fallen masonry and splintered stone last time the Company was here.  It’s been furnished as an office, and they all crowd inside.  Teggin joins them.

“We’ve signed a treaty,” Sara says.  “We’re going to be giving the dwarves a great deal of relocation assistance, as well as helping restore this place to accommodate the expected influx.  Some other details need to be worked out.”

“But what about the Guild of Chains?” asks Kibi.

“Maple sent a military detachment to Gurund, to serve as a protective military force during the relocation.  We’re guessing that One Supreme Intellect will not wish to start an international incident over this affair, though it’s possible that there will pressure from the Guild of Chains, leading to… physical altercation.  In the worst case, the Jewels of the Plains could send their massed armies against us, if Supreme Intellect and the nobles feel it’s in their economic interest. But we feel that is highly unlikely, as Djaw also has trade agreements with Appleseed that they won’t easily toss aside.  So, we’ll see how this goes.  

“The Guild may act on its own, of course, and One Supreme Intellect is unpredictable.  It’s a highly fluid situation, and we won’t know what to expect until we have enough troops on the ground in Gurund. But things have been extremely quiet along the Anlakis border for a few decades now, and Appleseed boasts a great number of seasoned military professionals who are looking forward to some boots-on-the-ground action.

“Of course, for us, it’s all about the mining rights. Appleseed is farmland rich but mineral poor; we’ve always had to import most of our raw ores. The opposite of Cloud Mountain.  There are many synergies at work.”

Kibi’s mouth hangs open in surprise. Sara smiles at him.

“In the meantime,” she says, “we’ve gotten into a new business – slave purchasing.  Because there’s nothing that says we can’t free them as soon as we’ve bought them.”  

“But can you afford it?” asks Kibi.

“It’s a significant expense,” Sara admits, “but Appleseed has a sizeable treasury. Our bureaucrats say the value of the minerals will offset the outlay.  We’ve been hiring human agents so not to arouse suspicion. We’re trying to maintain the same general buying patterns that they’re used to.  By the time they figure out what we’re doing, we want it to be too late.

“The thorniest part of the whole operation is the _teleportation circles_. We have two wizards in the kingdom capable of creating them in a permanent sort of way. The problem is finding places close enough to Gurundian population centers to get enough dwarves out before the Guild of Chains figures out what’s happening.  It’s a big country, and our soldiers can’t defend all of it. We’re hoping to do it on the sly for as long as possible. And if we have a large enough force on the border facing Djaw, that may compel the Guild of Chains to write off Gurund.  Not that we have much experience with the slave trade, but our bean counters back home think that the non-dwarvish slave market may still be lucrative enough, that the Guild will not wish to overreach and risk all of their profits. And even if they were to defeat us, it might leave them weakened enough to succumb to anti-slavery forces in the Djawish court.”

Kibi takes a deep breath, hardly daring to believe that everything has worked out so well.

“We’re going to be leaving for a while,” he tells Sara.  “Probably forever.  So, if there’s anything we can do before we go…”

“You can help us set up extra _teleportation circles_” says Sara. “The more we have, the quicker and smoother the evacuation will go.”

“Things are looking up,” says Teggin, “and we have you to thank for it.  We’d hardly be moving in if there was still a dragon living in there. It also turns out that your names have some value up in Appleseed. I guess you guys did a favor for them recently?”


/*/



And so, still giddy with the good news, the Company _teleports_ back to the Greenhouse with one more thing to check off their list.

“It’s about time,” says Kibi, “that something worked out for us, and for the dwarves, without us having to do all the work.”

“It’s a pleasant surprise,” Grey Wolf agrees.

Alas, the Company’s next surprise is going to be much less pleasant…

…to be continued…


----------



## SolitonMan

So great to hear that the Gurundian dwarves are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel.  Even with darkvision, they must be relieved  

Thanks for the update Sagiro!


----------



## Piratecat

*Sagiro's Story Hour: The Further Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 3/3*

This is a good example of why not to over-prepare. I am told Sagiro spent a ton of time figuring out how we might overthrow the Guild of Chains and free the dwarves in a major political adventure. Then other things took precedent, the moment passed, and all that prep work wasn't needed. I feel bad! Or I would if he hadn't just done the same thing to me in my campaign. 

Dranko would feel bad too, but, eh... dwarves.


----------



## steeldragons

WHO would feel bad? There's Sagiro and the Guild of Chgains...and...something about someone who is involved...?...but what was that..."his name was...Well, isn't that diabolical...It's on the tip of my tongue..." [major HUGE points to anyone who knows the reference/line]


----------



## SolitonMan

steeldragons said:


> WHO would feel bad? There's Sagiro and the Guild of Chains...and...something about someone who is involved...?...but what was that..."his name was...Well, isn't that diabolical...It's on the tip of my tongue..." [major HUGE points to anyone who knows the reference/line]




Witches of Eastwick?

BTW SD, shouldn't you be working on your story hour?


----------



## steeldragons

SolitonMan said:


> Witches of Eastwick?




CORRECT! Well done. Have some XP.



SolitonMan said:


> BTW SD, shouldn't you be working on your story hour?




<eyes downcast> Yes. Yes I should.

[Why do I suddenly have the distinct impression of being a kid who's been busted for not doing his homework. ]

Actually stateside at the moment for my sister's wedding...when I get back to the mountains of Andorra, I will.

I promise!

Look for an update next week...

some time...

for sure...

[and thanks SM and everyone else who's been giving me the occasional kick in the proverbial pants to get on it!
and, as always, for your continued interest.]
--SD


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 354*_
*Swan Song*

Knowing that a confrontation with Octesian cannot wait much longer, Morningstar visits Previa that evening at the temple.  They exchange pleasantries for a few minutes, catching up on each other’s’ lives.  Previa seems tense, which is not unexpected given the coming dangers.

“I was a rock for a while,” says Morningstar, as she tells her friend as much as she can about the assault on Moirel’s castle.

“You appear to have gotten better,” says Previa, wincing.  “Or at least, you’re looking more yourself.”  She pauses, then adds, “Your life is very strange.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” says Morningstar.  “And I had to do it, for the _time stop_ to work.”

“You can stop time?”

Morningstar laughs. “Aravis and Kibi can .  Dranko can too, because of the tentacles in his head.”

Previa doesn’t laugh.  Instead she grows intensely pale.

“That’s… interesting,” she says, her voice catching a bit.  “And not in a good way.  Our investigations into the murders – Octesian’s murders – have included _though captures_ cast both in Dream and the waking world. Every single person who has been killed, died in the same way.  In their dreams, they all had… had tentacles jammed down their throats.  And you say that… your husband has magical powers he has gained due to tentacles?  I don’t mean to offend, but have you been… keeping tabs on him all this time?”

“It may be the same source,” says Morningstar, “but I’m sure it’s not Dranko.”

“All the same,” says Previa, “you may want to make sure he’s not doing anything he can’t remember afterward.  I’m not saying that it’s him, of course, but it’s just a strange coincidence that you mention it.”

Dranko, like the rest of the party, is listening to all of this over the mind-link, and comments, “Octesian is mad.  Remember, he went looking for the Adversary in the Far Realms.”

Morningstar explains to Previa about Octesian’s powers and motivations.  “It’s all part of the enemy’s plot,” she says. “To bring back the Adversary.”

“So he went to the… the Far Realms, and acquired some tentacles, and now he’s using them to suffocate people?”

“Looks that way.”

“But there’s still no connection that we can see among all the people he’s murdered. What’s his motivation?”

“We don’t know,” says Morningstar, “but it’s possibly he’s just trying to get my attention.”

“Then what will you do?” Previa asks.  “How will you find him?”

Grey Wolf makes a suggestion over the mind-link.  “We could send Dranko out to scout.  After all, he and Octesian have something in common.”

“You mean like a Dream Goat?” says Ernie. They can hear his smirk. “Or Dream Chum?”

“I do _not_ approve!” Dranko protests.  But there’s actually something to the idea after all, and after Morningstar finishes her debriefing with Previa (learning that the Dream Team grows stronger and more proficient every night), the Company gathers back at the Greenhouse.  Morningstar casts _dream anchor_ and brings the entire party into _Ava Dormo_, directly outside the Greenhouse door.

Everyone looks at Dranko, expectantly and little nervously.  He himself is not entirely sure what he’s supposed to do, but he takes a deep breath and focuses his will inward, on the black source of his tentacular nature.  He prods the soft, juicy core of madness that was placed there by the creature from the Far Realms, and it’s like touching the skin above a deep bruise. Deep inside his mind is that unspeakable, unknowable horror that he dares not dwell upon.

Wincing, he lets loose the madness that surrounds that place of horrors in his brain, casting it outward, a nascent insanity loosed upon the Dream.  The others, watching, think that maybe, just maybe, they detect something squirming beneath the skin of his face.

“It’s just a dream,” Grey Wolf mutters to himself.  “It’s just a dream.”

He and the rest feel waves of utter _wrongness_ rolling out from Dranko, as the half-orc extends his mad senses into Ava Dormo.  He need not extend them far.

“He has been _here_!” Dranko exclaims.  “Right here, or somewhere very nearby.  And recently!  Octesian has been trying to gain access to the Greenhouse.”

“Perhaps as Morningstar says,” says Aravis, “he has been trying to attract our attention.”

Dranko’s voice is slow, wavering, layered with irrational overtones.  “His very presence distorts the nature of the dream.  The dream is a heavy sheet, and Octesian was like a heavy weight, that distorts the fabric even after he’s gone.”

But Dranko, even casting his turbulent mental net farther afield, cannot sense where Octesian is _now._  And Morningstar doesn’t want a confrontation here anyway, not without her dream warriors.

“Come back, Dranko,” she says.

With an effort, Dranko reels in his violated psyche and regains his senses.  When he sees the others regarding him with revulsion, he assures them, “All the squirmy bits have been pushed behind the door, and the door has been closed.”

Morningstar creates a black triangle of stone the size of book, and wills words to appear on its surface.  _Octesian, I am looking for you._  She drops it on the ground outside the Greenhouse door.  Dranko wants to chalk some rude graffiti directed toward Octesian on the walls of the Greenhouse, but is voted down.


/*/

Morningstar takes her friends to one more stop while still in Ava Dormo – the temple there in Tal Hae.  There are always sisters on watch, and she finds Obsidia there, training with Leona and Raven – three of Morningstar’s thirteen-woman strike team.

“Morningstar!” Obsidia exclaims. “What a surprise!”  Raven  and Leona say nothing, but are awed to be in Morningstar’s presence.

“We’re here following up on something Previa told me,” Morningstar tells her sisters. “Has she told you that the victims who have been dying in dream, have all perished from tentacles pushed down their throats?”

The three Ellish sisters look stricken.  “No!” whispers Obsidia. “We haven’t been part of the investigation.  Is it some aquatic monster that’s killing people, then?”

“No,” says Morningstar.  “I just told Previa this an hour ago, but it’s my old nemesis, Octesian. The one who you’re all training to fight.”

Obsidia looks grim.  “We have been training hard,” she says.  “And we’ve beaten him once, so we know we can beat him again… though I hope with fewer casualties.  Evenstar’s bodyguard, Scola, has progressed beyond any of us – she’s become one of the best fighters I’ve ever seen, and she’s even better in Dream than in the waking world. With you, and Swan, and Scola and Evenstar on our side, I like our chances.”

Morningstar nods, but says nothing.

“Oh, there was one other thing,” says Obsidia, becoming uncharacteristically shy.  “I understand you carry a holy Ellish weapon.  Can… may I see it?”

Morningstar draws _Ell’s Will_ and hands it to Obsidia, who holds it reverently.  

“To be in its presence,” she breathes, “and in yours.  It’s just incredible.”

It’s all Morningstar can do not to roll her eyes.

“Dranko,” she says, turning to her husband.  “I hate to ask this of you, but can you see if Octesian has been here as well?”

Dranko once again opens his mind to his inner madness and quests about with some ineffable sense.  He deduces that Octesian indeed been lurking about the Ellish temple, though not quite as recently as at the Greenhouse.

“But members of our church are here every hour of every day, keeping watch,” says Obsidia.  “I think your husband is mistaken.”

Dranko wheels on her. “I’m mistaken about a lot of things.  My attractiveness.  How funny I am. How good my cigars smell. But I am _not_ mistaken about this.”

To Obsidia, Raven and Leona, Morningstar delivers a stern warning.  “It’s going to be soon.  I’m going to press him.  Have our team ready to fight tomorrow at midnight.”

She leaves a second message for Octesian.  _I will be at Gohgan’s basement, tomorrow, midnight_.  She leaves an identical stone next to the first one, back at the Greenhouse.


/*/

That night, asleep in the physical world, Morningstar has a dream.  Octesian is there.  She finds herself in a nebulous, frustrating state, aware of having the dream as it unfolds, but being unable to affect it.  At its deepest level, it is simply an ordinary dream, and only upon waking does she recall it completely.  But in other ways, it is far from ordinary.

Octesian appears in front of her, clad in his red mail.  His face is covered by his helmet, but tentacles sprout from beneath it, and indeed protrude out from other parts of his armor like corrupted cilia. The scene around them shifts, from the Greenhouse living room, to the Battle of Semek’s Tower, to the basement beneath Gohgan the rug merchant’s shop where the two of them first met.

He speaks, and his voice is both quiet and frantic.  His words come stuttering, punctuated with gasping breaths, as if finishing each sentence is causing him pain.

“I met him you know… I went to the… the… d… to the distant place.  Where Ava Dormo borders the Great Far Reaches.  He… told… told me… to … bide my time.  I c…c… couldn’t free him.  Not that way.  But it doesn’t matter.  He t… he told me, he… to… he told me to bide my time. That he would not be trapped for long.  His… his time is almost come!  He’ll have… he… he’ll have… vv.. his revenge on… Uthol Inga and the rest.  But… but before that happens, he… told me to KILL you!”

With this last utterance, his voice rises to a shocking screech.  It takes him a few seconds of wheezing breaths to recover before he continues, and there’s a new feverish pitch to his monologue.

“He… told me that...  and so I will.  I will… he told me… to kill you but… I don’t see anything wrong with…” Morningstar catches a glimpse of something squirming in his mouth.  “…anything wrong with… playing with my food before I eat it.”

Octesian pauses here, and cocks his head to one side.

“Excuse me,” he says.  He reaches a tentacle into the air and pushes it through a rift in space, as though he’s just parted the fabric of dream like a curtain of opaque silk.  The tentacle vanishes into the rift, up to Octesian’s armored shoulder.  “I… have to… have to… even the odds a bit.”  His voice grows strained, even more gasping, as his tentacle works its unseen business beyond the rift.  “I know… know what you are doing, but…but your friends can’t help you.  Nnnnngggh!  Epsecially not… not… _this_ one!  Aaaaaaagggnnn!”

Octesian pulls the tentacle back from the rift, and it’s entirely coated in fresh, steaming blood.  Morningstar seethes in frustration.  She is _there_, in some sense, but not one that matters.

“That.. took some doing,” Octesian says, his voice taking on a gleeful, frantic edge. “I didn’t know if it would work from here. It did. It worked.  But d… don’t worry. I’ll save killing the rest for when you’re all together, because I want you to see them.. .when it happens to them. They’re not ready.  You’re not really ready either… but… they’re not like us.”

He takes a couple of deep, spastic breaths before continuing.

“I’ve seen Him, you know… He told me to kill you.  He talked to me. I c… couldn’t… couldn’t breathe.  But it doesn’t matter.  He’ll be out soon anyway.”  He splutters and retches, as though it pains him to recall these memories. “It’s been too long Morningstar,  too long since we’ve met in person.  But that will happen soon now.  You want it, and I want it. It will happen soon.”

He licks the end of the bloody tentacle.

“You’ll just have to do with one fewer. I have to be going now… lots of p… preparations to make.  Is it tomorrow at midnight, you said?  Down below, in that basement?  Did you think of that yourself?  You have such a sense of… st… story… and oh, it’ll be a story I’ll be telling for a long time.  I’ll tell Him when I see Him again.  Goo… goo.   Good bye.  Oh, and tell your husband…"

And here his voice drops an octave and sounds like it comes from a dozen throats at once.

“…that we all say hello.”


/*/


Morningstar wakes up at that moment, soaked in sweat, recalling her dream in full. A _sending_ has woken her, from Sable, one of her team.  

_*“Morningstar, please come to Kallor. There’s been an incident. Something has happened to Swan.”*_

…to be continued…


----------



## carborundum

Whoa.

Jiminy Cricket, that's horrible. Did you do the voice? PC, did he do the voice?


----------



## Everett

Is Swan someone who's ever appeared in the SH?


----------



## Everett

And Sagiro, as we approach the boss fight, would you give us a recap of the party's history with Octesian?  I don't recall specifics.


----------



## Sagiro

Sure thing!

If you search on Swan's name in the "Complete Part One" of StevenAC's awesome PDF's, you'll see how she was involved early on.  Short version: she was once one of High Priestess Rhiavonne's most trusted advisers. She was an early advocate of what eventually became the Daywalker movement, the fact of which made her _persona non grata_ with Rhiavonne for a time thereafter.  And she was present at Octesian's assault on Semek's Tower in Ava Dormo, concurrent with the Battle of Verdshane.  Oh, and Swan was the priestess who first learned how to cast _dream anchor_, the prayer that allows Dreamwalkers to bring non-Dreamwalkers into Ava Dormo.

As for the party's history with Octesian: he was one of the three red-armored servants of Naradawk who were "squeezed through" the planar gate near the start of the campaign.  (Of the other two, Restimar was killed by the party early on, while Meledien has joined forces with Tarsos and Seven Dark Words and is currently on some fell mission beneath the surface.)  Morningstar first encountered Octesian in the Dreamscape while scouting out the ruins beneath Gohgan's rug shop; she didn't know who he was then, but he was clearly villainous.  Not long after, Morningstar was granted a vision by her avatar, of Octesian and Meledien meeting in the Dreamscape, a meeting which made it even more clear that Octesian was a powerful and proficient Dreamer.  

The party's primary interaction with Octesian was, as mentioned above, when he and a small force of dream soldiers attacked the Tower of Semek during the Battle of Verdshane.  Though he was driven away and his assault cut short, he managed to kill fourteen Ellish Dreamwalkers in the battle, since he had the rare ability to deal real physical damage when attacking a person's dream persona. 

After that, the party has learned that Octesian eventually journeyed far afield in Ava Dormo, searching directly for the Adversary's prison in the Far Realms.  Alas for him, as he approached the boundary between Ava Dormo and the Far Realms, close enough in fact to hear the words of the Adversary, he went utterly insane.  

And now he's back, be-tentacled from his close brush with the Starry Madness, and killing people, horribly, in their sleep.


----------



## Piratecat

*Sagiro's Story Hour: The Further Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 3/8*

He did the voice. Oh, God. The voice.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 355*_
*Tonight, Morningstar*

Morningstar answers the _sending_.  *Yes, I felt it happen. I’ll be there immediately.*

She wakes everyone else as quickly as possible.  “Octesian killed Swan,” she says simply.  “We need to get to Kallor right away.”

At the Ellish temple in Kallor, Swan’s body has been moved to a side chapel where healers examine it. It appears that she died in her sleep, hours earlier, from something akin to suffocation.  Morningstar considers the option of bringing her back from the dead to help fight Octesian, but realizes that there’s not enough time.

Sable, one of the local members of Morningstar’s “Dream Team” and a friend of Swan, stands somberly over the body.

“Octesian did this,” Morningstar tells her quietly.

“The one we’ve been training to fight,” says Sable, sounding quite calm though her lip trembles.  “How did he do it?”

“He sent me a dream,” says Morningstar.  “In the dream, he accepted my offer of a time and place for our showdown, but he also reached out a tentacle and shoved it down Swan’s throat.”

“A tentacle?”

“You don’t want to know,” says Dranko. The rest of the party stands at the back of the room, giving Morningstar and the Ellish sisters a respectful distance.

Sable turns on him, her face dark but resolute. “Yes, I do.  I’m going to help fight him, and I fully expect to die in doing so.  I think I deserve to know everything.”

Dranko blows out a breath. “Fine. Long story short, we were lost in a timeless network of demi-planes that were all linked to one another, when…”

“What?”

Morningstar translates.  “He means when I was on the strange journey when no one could find me.”

“Right,” Dranko continues.  “I accidentally threw a bottle into…”

“Accidentally?” Grey Wolf throws Dranko a look.

“Fine. I threw a bottle with a note in it, into the Far Realms.”

Sable looks puzzled.  “Why?”

“Because he’s an idiot,” says Grey Wolf.

Dranko ignores the commentary. “Haven’t you ever stood on the edge of the ocean, and thought, ‘wouldn’t it be cool if you threw a bottle with a note in it into the ocean, and someday it washed up on a far shore, so other people could find it?’”

“Is that common?” asks Sable.

“Yes,” says Dranko.  “Yes it is. And so, with my bottle, somebody found it.”

“Somebody found your bottle… in the Far Realms.”

“Yes.”

“So people live in the Far Realms?” Sable asks.

“No.  Not people.  Monsters.  I was visited by a hideous tentacles monstrosity, of an intelligence that I cannot even begin to fathom.”

Sable tries her best to understand.  “Okaaaay.  Did you fight it?”

“I didn’t have the ability to fight it, unfortunately.”

Sable frowns. “But we have the ability to fight Octesian?”

“That is correct,” says Dranko.

“The tentacled monstrosity has a link to Octesian’s ultimate goal,” says Morningstar.

“Octesian embraced these intelligences, and I did not,” says Dranko.  “So now he’s very tentacle-y.”

Slowly, Sable tries to summarize.  “He acquired tentacles, because of his association with the monsters of the Far Realms?”

“It’s like he sold his soul to an insane Devil,” says Ernie.

“And he’s lost most of his sanity in the process,” says Morningstar.

“Right,” says Dranko.  “My very small encounter with one of the monsters has left me with certain abilities, which Octesian may also have.  For instance, I can stop time. I can sprout tentacles, which can attack my enemies.  I can see magic, all the time, everywhere. I can push anything living away.  Octesian might be able to do those things, too.”

A new priestess appears at the doorway to the side-chapel, breathless, and waves over the healer attending to Swan.  They have a short, hushed discussion. It appears that in one of the smaller shrines, on the other side of town, there’s been a similar murder of a sister there, a Chronicler named Florinda.  Suffocated in her sleep, like the others.

“We’ll kill him,” says Sable, resolutely.  “We’ve trained enough.  We’re ready, I think.”

“He’s been watching you train,” Morningstar warns.  “You may want to plan something unexpected.  We’re assembling at midnight in the Dreamscape, beneath the building that was once Gohgan’s rug shop in Tal Hae.  Don’t worry, I’ll scout it out ahead of time, and make sure we all meet safely.”

Outside the temple, a sizable crowd has gathered.  At least fifty or sixty people are milling around the front door, and some of the louder and more aggressive members of mob are shouting for answers. Dranko works the crowd and discovers the source of their anxiety: at least twenty people throughout the city have been found dead this morning, and more bodies are still being discovered.  It’s an extremely random assortment of victims; there is no commonality of family, age, gender or profession.

While Morningstar stands in the doorway, watching her husband expertly sift the throng for details, an acolyte touches her arm.  “Morningstar, I have been sent to bring you back inside.”

As part of the investigation, clerics have cast _thought captures_ in the room where Swan died.  “We picked up two very specific thoughts,” says the priestess who had cast those spells.  “One was pure emotion, from Swan, as she experienced her own… suffocation.”

The priestess pauses for just a moment.  “There was also a very distinct thought from someone else.  It said, “Tonight, Morningstar. Tomorrow, everyone else.”

Grey Wolf rubs his temples.  “Oh, joy.”

“I can’t die!” exclaims Ernie.  “Yondalla is going to kick me right out the door if I show up dead again.”

“I haven’t died yet,” mutters Dranko.

“But you sold your soul to tentacular guys,” Ernie points out.  “Isn’t that worse?”

“Not on purpose!” Dranko protests.  “Besides which, they’ll have to fight Tapheon for it.”

Ernie rolls his eyes.  “Oh, _that’s_ a recommendation!”

“At least when I died,” says Aravis, “I made sure that souls weren’t going up to Heaven, so I wouldn’t _have_ to meet my God.”

Morningstar is still mulling over the dire words of Octesian when she receives yet another _sending_.  

_*Morningstar, this is Previa. There have been a large number of murders in Tal Hae.  Your name comes up in thought captures.  Would rather speak to you in person.  Please advise.*_

Morningstar answers wearily. _*Yes, in Kallor as well.  Met Octesian last night.  Meet me in Ava Dormo, at the temple*_

“He’s flexing his muscles,” says Grey Wolf.


/*/


“We’re not sure of the numbers in Tal Hae,” says Previa.  “We think between fifty and a hundred last night. Our sisters have cast _thought captures_ in a few of these places, and…”

“Let me guess,” says Morningstar.  “’Tonight, Morningstar. Tomorrow, everyone else.’”

“Ah, I see you’ve heard already.”

The Company talks briefly with Previa about strategy, and there’s a moment of revelation when they realize that if their waking bodies are resting in a Temple while they fight Octesian, other sisters can be constantly healing their wounds.  It’s the downside to dream wounds that also afflict physical bodies, and that could give them a huge edge.

After a few minutes Previa takes Morningstar to review her team, all of whom are now there assembled in Ava Dormo for a final afternoon of sparring and meditation.  She spends a few minutes talking to each of them, giving them words of advice and encouragement.  Her team is composed thusly:

*Evenstar *is old and feeble, but fearless and a natural leader.  Her spell-casting savvy has not suffered with age. *[14th level cleric]*

*Scola *is Evenstar’s bodyguard, and an extremely accomplished dream-fighter.  She has a great talent for altering terrain to her favor during battles.  She is tall, wiry, with short hair and an utter disdain for church politics.  She just wants to fight.  *[12th level fighter]*

*Fautish *is tall, lithe, fair and muscular – a stereotypical paladin, though with more of a sense of humor than one would think upon first meeting her.  She’s Starbrook’s older sister.  *[11th level paladin]*

*Corinne *is a Shield from Kallor, and has always been suspicious of Morningstar and the Daywalker movement.  She has angular eyebrows, close-cropped black hair, and she seldom smiles. She’s more of a battle-priest than a spell-caster, and prefers to cast spells on herself to improve her melee skills.  *[10th level cleric]*

*Obsidia*, one of Morningstar’s oldest and closest friends in the church, is short, stout, and extremely loyal.  *[5th level cleric/6th level warrior]*

*Previa *is the plain-looking Chronicler that’s been with Morningstar since the beginning. Her fighting skills aren’t fantastic, but she’s the smartest Ellish priestess Morningstar has ever met. Since things started to get dangerous, she’s made herself into a tactical genius, and so is always good to have around. Morningstar has left the training of the Dream Team mostly in Previa’s capable hands.  *[9th level cleric]*

*Starbrook *is very short (4’ 11”) and powerfully built; it’s hard to believe she’s the sister of Fautish, but she has the same eyes and determined look.  She’s near fanatical about this battle, as two of her closest friends were among those killed by Octesian during the Battle of Verdshane. *[9th level paladin]*

*Sable*, the sister Morningstar recently met in Kallor, is aptly named, with dark skin, dark hair and a dark demeanor. She’s very fatalistic about the upcoming battle, but wants to die with Octesian’s blood on her mace.  *[8th level fighter]*

*Gyre *of Kynder Hold has red curly hair, freckles, pale skin, and is as feisty as a hungry weasel.  She can’t wait for tonight’s showdown with Octesian.  *[8th level paladin]*

*Raven *of Minok is scrawny, but gets by on her cat-quick reflexes.  She is very quiet and businesslike, and doesn’t socialize much with the other team members. *[8th level fighter]*

*Belle *is from Hae Charagan, a good fighter with a cheerful disposition. She has dyed her hair white to honor Morningstar.  Some of the others think she’s not taking the upcoming confrontation with Octesian seriously enough, but Previa assures Morningstar that this couldn't be farther from the truth. *[8th level paladin]*

*Leona *of Minok is huge – probably 6’ 3”, 270 lbs. She’s massively strong, but has always relied too much on her strength, and so her fighting skills are a bit lacking.  She’s probably better off just casting spells, despite her desire to punch enemies in the face.  *[7th level cleric]*

Finally there is *Molly*, from Morningstar's own temple in Tal Hae.  Molly is the one taking Swan’s place on the team.  She is short, mousy and shy, but was never cold to Morningstar growing up, unlike most of her peers. Molly doesn't have tremendous natural talent or piety, but is a very hard worker.  She tries, and mostly fails, not to gush with thanks about being chosen to be part of this endeavor.  *[7th level cleric]*

That makes thirteen altogether, a number chosen because she can only bring nineteen people in with her to the battle, and six of those will be the rest of the Company.  Morningstar smiles and approves and tries to project confidence, but can’t help but wonder how many of these brave sisters will be alive to see the next dawn.


/*/


The Company goes with Morningstar to investigate the Ava Dormo version of Gohgan’s sub-basement; she casts _dream anchor_ and brings them there directly.  Here are the remains of the once-grand palace of the Warlord Pinfaro, servant of Emperor Naloric before the war against the Spire. All is as Morningstar remembers it: the torture chamber where a troll partially closed her in an iron maiden; the dining hall where bugmonkeys dropped from the ceiling; and the study where they found Pinfaro’s desk half buried in Floam, along with the note about his impending flight through the portal to Volpos. 

There is no sign of Octesian, though something bothers Morningstar for a couple of minutes before she realizes the problem: this place shouldn’t _be_ here anymore!  The Dreamscape was wiped clean of man-made places when the Black Circle attempted to merge Volpos and Abernia.  So why is it still here?  

She concentrates hard on the “terrain” of this bit of Ava Dormo, and comes to the sudden realization that the entire place has only existed for at most a day or two.   It’s an extremely faithful recreation of Pinfaro’s ruined palace, but now she spies small errors: rotting furniture out of place, rooms slightly the wrong size, and sporadic inconsistencies in color. 

“Are you saying it’s all a fake?” Dranko asks.

“Yes and no,” Morningstar answers. “It really is Ava Dormo.”

She reaches out with her will and warps the nearest wall.  Then she manifests a burning torch in her hand. “I seem to be able to use all of my dream powers.”  Looking about with her innate _true seeing_, everything looks as it should.

“Fine,” Dranko concedes, “But you’re also saying Octesian built this place himself, just in the last day?  Hold on a sec…”

Dranko opens his mind just a crack, to the horror that lurks inside.  He sniffs the air, testing it with his inner sense, and sure enough there is just the tiniest whiff of Cleaners in this place.

In the dining hall, this sense of wrongness is slightly stronger.  Morningstar walks to the center of the room and casts _thought capture_, and picks up a very clear thought.  *See you t… tonight, M…M…Morningstar.”*

Morningstar frowns.  Could there be hidden traps here?  Dranko is already thinking that way.

“Octesian could have laid traps behind the walls,” he says, “and then built the walls back up.  Your _true seeing_ wouldn’t detect them.”

So Morningstar erases one of the lengthwise walls with her will, and recreates it herself.  It is quite easy – no different than in any other portion of Ava Dormo – and there are no traps hidden behind it.  Dranko reports that his feeling of Cleaners has not lessened.

At Aravis’s suggestion, Morningstar (with what little assistance the others can offer) spends a couple of hours simply erasing the entire palace, leaving in its place a single, empty cube, some two hundred feet on a side.  There’s no place left for Octesian to hide any traps, and Dranko’s sense of Cleaners has receded to only tiniest wisp of nausea.  

“Of course, nothing will stop Octesian from coming back here and rebuilding the place after we leave,” says Grey Wolf.

“Sure,” says Flicker.  “But if he’s back here, building new walls and laying traps, he’s not out there killing more people.”

Satisfied, the Company returns to their bodies in the Greenhouse, to get a final afternoon of rest and relaxation before their confrontation with Naradawk’s insane, red-armored, be-tentacled dream warrior.

There’s a knock on the door.

It’s not anyone they could have possibly expected.

…to be continued…


----------



## coyote6

I'm going with either Sagiro, or the Spanish Inquisition.


----------



## Piratecat

It's utterly bothering me that I don't remember who this is. I know who I *think* it is, but I don't remember if the timing is right.

I hope Sagiro posts a photo of the battlemap for our upcoming fight. It was... impressive.


----------



## carborundum

*Re: Sagiro's Story Hour: The Further Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 3/14/13)*

And an mp3 of some voices


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> I hope Sagiro posts a photo of the battlemap for our upcoming fight. It was... impressive.




Second that -- would love to see it.


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> Second that -- would love to see it.




I don't remember the Octesian-fight battlemap being particularly memorable.  Piratecat, are you perhaps thinking of a different one that comes much later?


----------



## Piratecat

*Sagiro's Story Hour: The Further Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 3/1*

Hmm. Probably. I remembered the Octesian one being cool, too, but that's probably me conflating it with a few other fights. 

The person at the door is King Crunard telling Dranko he's a long-lost prince, right? Right?


----------



## RangerWickett

Sagiro just used a knock knock joke as a cliffhanger.

I'm guessing it's an interrupting cow.


----------



## Everett

RangerWickett said:


> Sagiro just used a knock knock joke as a cliffhanger.
> 
> I'm guessing it's an interrupting cow.




And here we sit, without opposable thumbs...


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> Hmm. Probably. I remembered the Octesian one being cool, too, but that's probably me conflating it with a few other fights.
> 
> The person at the door is King Crunard telling Dranko he's a long-lost prince, right? Right?




Hang on -- Dranko?  Didn't the party have a squire by that name?  Kept Grey Wolf's sword buffed?  Died when a giant turtle stepped on him, like a decade ago?


----------



## Chronikoce

First off, woo exiting. Can't wait to see what happens. 
Second, huge thanks Sagiro! I just dropped 4 Greater Null Shadows against my group tonight. Group was composed of 7 people ranging between levels 8 and 9. I am not going to lie, I got a shoe thrown at me tonight for this combat but it was soo worth it. Of the people in the party only 2 were wielding non magical weapons and nobody figured out this was the link until after they had all been defeated. One of these two rolled 1's on his d20 3 rounds in a row and ended up lit on fire and unconscious for his efforts. 

One party member tried everything he could think of and then finally just fled the battle. Another grabbed a lantern off a pole on the street they were on and started beating the shadows with it and were overjoyed to be dealing 1-2 damage a round. Everyone had a great time and it was extremely funny to listen to them spending 30+ minutes after the combat trying to figure out why the guy dealing 6 damage a round with a non magical spiked chain killed all 4 shadows while the Skirmisher with an insane bow dealing 50+ damage a round caused nothing to happen. 

My character in the campaign one of my players DM's is probably in mortal peril now.


----------



## Piratecat

Chronikoce, that's the funniest thing I'll read all day today. That's _awesome._ I'm glad that our suffering lead to your players' suffering, too.


----------



## Sagiro

Chronikoce, it warms the evil cockles of my heart to know that my legacy of Null Shadows lives on, and that you used them to such excellent effect. Thanks for sharing that story!

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 356*_
*King of the Carch Din*

Eddings moves to answer the door.  Whomever is out there is extremely impatient, as the knocking gets louder and faster just during the five seconds it takes for the butler to cross the living room.

Outside on the street, a large crowd has gathered.  At the head of the mob, standing just in front of the door, is a large humanoid creature with dark bluish-gray skin, and a face that while handsome is also a trifle fuzzy and indistinct, as if there’s a sheet of gauze hanging in front of it.  A wispy gold crown rests upon his head, and his clothes are rich and elegant.  He reminds the Company a bit of Al Tarqoz, the genie that they occasionally summon.

Behind him is a crowd of… bakers?  Yes, it appears that every baker and baker’s apprentice on the street has joined this strange being. Even Turlissa is there. The bakers all stand deferentially behind the alien noble, except for one, the tallest of the bunch, who stands off to the side so as to cast his shadow across the noble’s face.

Eddings, unflappable as always, nods perfunctorily and asks, “And who might I ask is calling?”

The crowned creature frowns.  “Aravis?” he asks.

“I am Aravis,” says the wizard from inside the house.

The creature relaxes a bit.  “And is there a man named Ernest here?”

“Yup!” Ernie pipes up.

“And you are…?” prompts Grey Wolf.  All of them have moved into the foyer to look out the door.

The creature draws in a breath, and in a booming voice, says “I _command_ that you produce… Farazil!  I want him.  Bring him to me this instant!”

For a heartbeat the entire Company is taken aback by this request.  

“We no longer have him,” Ernie answers.  “Although we would be happy to…”

“_Unacceptable!_” shouts the creature, glowering down at the halfling.

“Again,” says Grey Wolf, “who _are_ you exactly?”

“I am High King Nebbizik!”

Despite the impressive physical presence of the King, some ill-concealed laughter comes from the back of the living room.

“Wait a minute,” says Ernie.  “You're Farazil’s _boss?_"

“I am his sovereign ruler!” booms Nebbizik.

“In that case we can tell you exactly where to find him!” says Ernie brightly.

“Can we offer you some tea?” adds Dranko.

“I do not wish to _find_ him,” says King Nebbizik. “I wish him brought to me.  I have traveled enough for one day. But I accept your offer of tea.  May my retinue accompany me?”

“My Lord,” says Dranko.  “You won’t be hurting any of your retinue’s… hosts, will you?”

“Hurting?  Of course not!  My court has discretion and a deft touch. What do you take me for?”

“Well, clearly not Farazil,” says Dranko.

After a second or two of silence, one of the bakers whispers, “…’Your Majesty’.”

“Oh,” says Dranko.  “You don’t have to call me…”

Ernie elbows him in the thigh.

“You will refer to His Majesty as ‘High King’ or ‘His Majesty,’ or ‘Your Majesty’ when you address him directly,” says the baker.

“If I were in the High King’s court, maybe I would,” says Dranko.

Morningstar leans over and whispers harshly in her husband’s ear.  “He’s going to make Farazil go away!”

Ernie fills the awkward silence.  “Our home is not sufficient for one so great as His Majesty.  But we have a magical tower that can be made however suits His Majesty’s wishes.”

That sounds more to King Nebbizik’s liking. The Lucent Tower is erected in the back yard.  As the group walks around behind the Greenhouse, Nebbizik’s retinue arranges themselves so that His Majesty is cast in shadow as much as is possible.

Once they are all inside, Ernie asks, “Does your court or His Majesty require refreshment?”

“I doubt you have anything that we could eat on this benighted Prime,” grumbles the King, looking around for a place to sit.

“You’d be surprised,” says Ernie.  “Name your pleasure, Your Majesty.”

“You don’t even have names for it,” the King answers. “We don’t eat _food_. However, I’m sure the court would appreciate an opportunity to sit, and while this tower is very impressive, it is also very _empty_.”

Ernie grabs one of the “handles” of the Lucent Tower and wills into being two dozen fancy padded brocade chairs with large velvet cushions.

“Excellent,” Nebbizik declares.  “And for me, a throne!”

Ernie makes him an ornate throne with a canopy.  The King sits down and closes his eyes for a second.

“Acceptable,” he says. “Now, as I have asked already, where is…”

“No,” says Aravis.  “You have not asked.  You have demanded, Your Majesty.”

Nebbizik stares for a second at Aravis, then says jovially, “Right you are!  As I have already _demanded_, I wish Farazil brought to me this instant.  My divinations indicated that you know his whereabouts and can produce him. Now do so!”

“Please explain _why_ you wish him to be brought here, Your Majesty,” says Aravis.

Nebbizik stares again, but doesn’t smile this time.  “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

Aravis persists. “Except, Your Majesty, that without us, he won’t be brought here.”

“We have reached a limited truce with Farazil,” Ernie adds. “If we hunt him down and turn him over to you, and if that action comes back to us, he might be inclined to renew his.. annoying behaviors towards us.”

Nebbizik chuckles. “Farazil is a scoundrel, isn’t he?”

“Yes!” Ernie can’t agree emphatically enough. 

“Then you should be pleased that I will take him off your hands, and you will never see him again,” says King Nebbizik.  “In fact, I will have him executed!”

Most in the Company don’t see a downside, but Dranko decides that this crosses the line.

“Here’s the problem with that, Your Majesty,” he says.  “Farazil is… that is, he may be in the process of reforming.”

“I don’t care!” says Nebbizik. “He is my subject!”

A thought comes suddenly to Dranko and Aravis.

“If he were a citizen of Charagan,” Dranko asks, “Would he no longer be your subject?”

“He is _not_ a citizen,” Nebbizik grumbles, “so it is irrelevant.”

“That’s not what I asked, Your Majesty.”

“I would need to see the laws of your Kingdom,” Nebbizik concedes.  “But he will always be my subject, as far as I’m concerned. Until he’s dead, of course.”

“Can you tell us _why_ you want him dead, Your Majesty?” asks Dranko.

Ernie can answer that one.  “’Cause he’s a big jerk!”

King Nebbizik laughs.  “I see he is no different here than he was back at the Umbral Court.”  

“Here, he’s been a burr in my britches,” says Ernie.

“That’s not actually true,” says Dranko. “Recently, he’s been extremely useful and helpful.”

“He seized my mother!” Ernie protests.

“Well that is his way,” says Nebbizik. “He also seized my daughter!  Thus, his pending execution.”

Dranko can’t help himself. “Is she cute?”

Nebbizik glowers, and his face seems to fall deeper into shadow. “You will apologize for the insinuation,” he seethes.

“Your Majesty,” says Dranko, “I apologize for insinuating that your daughter is cute.”

“Enough!” thunders Nebbizik.  The other members of the Company each take a step back. 

“I have no doubts your daughter is gorgeous, Your Majesty,” says Dranko hastily, “and would be desirable to anyone!  I’m sorry if I offended you.”

Grey Wolf intercedes.  “Your Majesty, you’ll have to forgive our friend.  He’s an idiot.”

“Who’s standing right here!” says Dranko.

“Yes, you are,” says Grey Wolf.

“Unfortunately,” adds Aravis.

Ernie drags the conversation back to Farazil. “The King has a legitimate claim to his subject,” he opines.

“All I can think of,” says Morningstar, “is the sound of the gates closing us into God’s Thorn.”

“But what about what he’s done since!” says Dranko.

“What about it?” says Ernie.  “Roaming around, causing trouble, taking over my mother…”

“…and riding around in my body!” adds Flicker.

“You just like him because he has a certain roguish aspect,” says Ernie.  “But he doesn’t have your dignity or sense of honor.”

King Nebbizik starts to show real signs of impatience.  “Why are you discussing Farazil’s character, instead of fetching him and bringing him to me!”

Morningstar sighs. She has other things on her mind. “As much as we want to help you, we actually have more important things to do today.”

“Then get him here quickly,” Nebbizik suggests. “I will take him, and get off of this disgusting Prime, and leave you alone.”

“Your Majesty, how are we to do that?” Ernie asks.  “If we grab the body he currently occupies, he’ll just disappear.”

Nebbizik sounds exasperated. “Find him when he is alone, grab him, and _teleport_ him back here. I know you have the means to do that, do you not?  Then he’ll either be in the body he’s in now, or one of _you_. Either way, bring him before me. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Without harming the resident body?” asks Ernie.

“Yes, without harming the resident body. Though why you place such value in these revolting flesh bags, I cannot imagine.”

Dranko has decided to take a stand on this one. “Your Majesty, do you wish to replace him with another ally for us, because he’s doing important work.”

Nebbizik sighs. “You can hire another servant on your time.” 

“Dranko,” hisses Ernie.  “Farazil’s not doing anything that we couldn’t get someone else to do. Someone more reliable and more trustworthy, too.”

“You should listen to your friends,” Nebbizik says to Dranko  “They understand him better than you.  He’s a scoundrel, with no honor.”

Dranko turns to Ernie and the others.  “But we promised to ask about getting him citizenship. We haven’t yet held up our part of the bargain.”

The others admit, begrudgingly, that Dranko has a point.  

“I don’t believe he’s reformed, though,” says Ernie.  “If I honestly thought he was trying to go straight, I would give him a chance, you know that.  But I don’t think he has.”

“But we’ve done divinations,” Dranko presses. “We know Farazil is going to be loyal to us until he isn’t anymore.  Loyal to a point, right?”

“Then assume you and he have reached that point, and hand him over!” barks Nebbizik. 

“Did he break any laws?” asks Aravis?

“Yes!” Nebbizik’s temper is wearing more and more thin by the minute.  “I _make_ the laws!”

“Did he break any laws that were laws at the time he supposedly broke them?” continues Aravis.

“He was consorting with the daughter of the King, without the King’s permission! So, yes!”

“Would Your Majesty ever grant such permission?  To anyone?” asks Dranko.

“Yes,” says Nebbizik. “But not Farazil!”

“Was it consensual?” 

“It doesn’t matter!”

“It probably did to her!”

Kibi pipes up in partial agreement with Dranko.  “I don’t like Farazil, but I don’t want to see him executed for… this.”

“Why don’t you get him, and do all of this moralizing and equivocating later?” asks Nebbizik.  The bakers are starting to mutter among themselves.  They have never seen their High King put off for so long as this.

“I’ll find him, says Aravis.  “Then you can decide what to do about it.”  He turns his back on King Nebbizik and walks out of the Lucent Tower, so he can _scry_ Farazil in private.

“Our hosts are rude, Your Majesty,” says one of the bakers.

“You don’t rule us, Your Majesty,” Dranko points out.

“It doesn’t matter if you are my subjects,” says Nebbizik, glancing after Aravis out the door of the tower. “I am still a High King, and deserving of more deference than you are showing.”

“Sir, _we_ are personages worthy of deference,” says Morningstar. 

“For instance,” says Ernie.  “Aravis is a God.”

When Nebbizik looks down at Ernie askance, Grey Wolf adds, “It’s true.”

“Ah,” says Nebbizik.  “You’re a collection of court jesters then.”

“No,” says Ernie.  “We’re Knights of the kingdom!”

Aravis successfully _scries_ Farazil – or at least, the body they had lent him. In the scrying mirror he can see the prisoner standing in a street; behind him is a makeshift barricade.  He has acquired a uniform bearing the insignia of the ruling house of Sentinel.

“No, I insist!” Farazil is saying to someone.  “It’s too dangerous. No one can approach the mine, at least for another couple of days, to give us time to complete our investigation. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”  The person Aravis is looking at is much more well-spoken than the dullard whose body Farazil was given.

Aravis comes back out and beckons the others to the lawn outside the Lucent Tower, where she shares what he has seen.

“See!” says Dranko.  “He’s reformed!  My whole life, since I met you guys, is based on that if you trust someone to do what’s right, they’ll do the right thing.”

“I don’t trust him to do any right thing,” says Ernie.

“I think we have to take the leap of faith.”

“Maybe he should start doing the right thing by apologizing to his wronged King,” Ernie suggests.

“I just want a simple problem for once,” Grey Wolf groans.

They bicker for a few more minutes.  Dranko has clearly decided to side with Farazil.  Aravis is starting to lean that way, though mostly from a dislike of Nebbizik. Kibi feels like they should honor the agreement they had made with Farazil, to see about getting him citizenship. Ernie and Morningstar feel just the opposite; the sooner Nebbizik cuts off Farazil’s annoying shadowy head, the better.  

“What do you think, Flicker?” asks Ernie.  “You’re the one who suffered the most.”

“Well, I’d say ‘annoyed’ more than ‘suffered,’ but I feel no great love for Farazil, I don’t mind saying.”

“We need to decide quickly,” says Aravis, “because Tal Hae is entirely without bakers at the moment.”

Nebbizik agrees with his desire for a speedier resolution; he appears in the doorway of the Lucent Tower and calls to the Company assembled on the lawn.  “Well? I’m bored.”

“We’ll be with you in a moment, Your Majesty,” calls Ernie.

Nebbizik beckons Grey Wolf over.  “You seem like a sensible fellow.  Is it true that you are all Lords and Ladies of the Realm?”

Grey Wolf nods.

“Then why don’t you live in a castle?  Why are you instead in a bakery?”

“We own multiple castles, Your Majesty,” Grey Wolf explains.  “But this house is more secure than they are.”

Aravis, overhearing, adds, “It’s protected by magics more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

Nebbizik looks dubious. “Oh, is that so?  Because I can imagine quite a lot. You think this bakery is well protected?  Then let me show you something.”

The King of the Carch Din walks to the nearest wall of the Greenhouse, and spends a few seconds manifesting a roiling ball of shadow around his hand.  He reaches out to the wall, clearly expecting his hand to simply pass through it, but it meets unexpected resistance.  He frowns, pushes harder, and is rewarded with a painful jolt to his arm.

“With all due respect, Your Majesty,” says Grey Wolf dryly, “you might injure yourself if you keep doing that.”

“Hmmm,” says Nebbizik with a worried look.  “Perhaps I have misunderstood your place in the social hierarchy.”  He turns to Aravis.  “But look here.  Are you really a God? And if so, of what?  And then why are you here, on this malodorous Prime, looking like… like that?”

“I am a God of Cats,” says Aravis.

“Cats? That’s ridiculous!  You look nothing like a…”  He stops, perhaps concerned about causing offense.  “Well, never mind.  In the time you’ve been standing around, bickering with one another and with me, you could have brought back Farazil and his ten closest friends!  You say you have better things to do, but if you’re wasting time, you have only yourselves to blame.”  

“If we bring Farazil to you,” asks Kibi, “will he get a trial?”

“A _trial?_” Nebbizik roars.  “Of course not!  He is a low-ranking member of my court, and my power over him is absolute.”

“But he told us he was King Farazil,” says Ernie.

Nebbizik blanches.  “_King_ Farazil? He has been passing himself off as a _king?_ I’ll have to execute him twice.”

Ernie smiles innocently.  “King of the Carch Din, he said.”

Nebbizik’s face practically vanishes into angry shadow.  “He is most certainly _not_. He is minor nobility. I suppose in a kingdom like this, he’d be something like a Viscount. I’m not certain how you flesh-bags’ titles work.  But if indiscretions with our royal daughter weren’t already grounds for execution, passing one’s self off as a King of the Carch Din… I’ll execute him in pieces!”

The party has a final burst of discussion about what to do, and settles on a compromise.  

“Your Majesty,” says Ernie, “We’ve agreed that we’ll let you know where Farazil is, but you’ll have to get there under your own power.”

Normally Nebbizik would not stand for this, but he looks nervously over at the Greenhouse, and surreptitiously rubs his throbbing hand.  “Fine, fine.  I see I’m not going to get anything else out of you.”

Aravis draws Nebbizik a picture of the body in which Farazil currently resides. 

“You can kill that body,” says Ernie.  “He was sentenced to execution anyway.  But only if there's no other choice, and no one else!”

“And then I can take Farazil home and execute him,” Nebbizik grumbles. “Fine.”

Ernie bows.  “I’m sure Your Majesty, in your  infinite mercy, will make a proper judgment call as to the fate of Farazil.”

Nebbizik shows a mouthful of teeth. “My mercy is not infinite. Infinitesimal, more like!  Hah!”

“Your Majesty jests,” says Ernie.

“You’d like to think so,” says Nebbizik.

Kibi produces a map of the Kingdom, and they show their guest where the city of Sentinel is located.

“Umbral Court!” shouts Nebbizik. “It looks like we’re going elsewhere to nab our miscreant!  Come along!”

He turns to the Company. “Thank you, Lords and Ladies. You've been… well, less than helpful, but at least you told me where he was.”  And with that, High King Nebbizik of the Carch Din vanishes into a vortex of shadows.  At once all the assembled bakers blink and start to looking about them in confusion.  It’s clear that none of them remember coming here, or have any idea of where they are. Ernie mollifies them as best he is able, and faced with the prospect of burning bread and confused customers, the bakers quickly return to their places of employ.

“Boy,” says Ernie.  “And I thought Farazil was a pompous jerk!”

“I know you don’t all agree with me,” says Dranko, “but thanks for listening to my point of view.”

Dranko decides to do Farazil one more favor.  Though Morningstar and Ernie refuse to issue a _sending_ on his behalf, Dranko nonetheless dashes through the streets of Tal Hae until he reaches the main Church of Delioch.  Once there he commandeers a scroll of _sending_ and gives warning to Farazil.

_*Farazil, King Nebbizik showed up, demanded we turn you over. He knows we refused, but knows your location.  Before you flee, what did you learn?”*_

The reply:

_*Nebbizik? He’s here? Crap! Crap, crap, crap! I learned you can help. I’ll make my way back to you. Don’t go anywhere!*_

That’s not likely to happen, since it will be days at best before Farazil can return to Tal Hae, even assuming he manages to evade Nebbizik and his court.  But Dranko feels he has done all he can, and returns to the Greenhouse.  Perhaps now, with that diversion out of the way, the Company can get on with the business of saving the Kingdom from Octesian.

…to be continued…


----------



## Sagiro

Just a quick note:  I have now transcribed exactly 239 of the game's 266 sessions. So, only 27 more runs to go. They're fairly well packed with action, plot, and some unexpected surprises, all of which I look forward to sharing with you!


----------



## Piratecat

Hard to believe it's so few! Lots of action packed into those. Horrible, terrible action. And if Everett is waiting for Dranko to get what's coming to him, well...


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> Hard to believe it's so few! Lots of action packed into those. Horrible, terrible action. And if Everett is waiting for Dranko to get what's coming to him, well...




Yeeaaahhh... I'll believe it when I see it.


----------



## Piratecat

Everett, in about 20 sessions there's going to be a knock-down, drag-out argument about this very subject. When it occurs, I think we'll preemptively put you on Team Ernie and NOT Team Dranko. No one is going to blame you. And if it makes you feel any better, a different session (not for a while) should be entitled "Dranko Learns a Horrible Lesson About Humility," aka "Sagiro is a Very Large Rat Bastard." Stay tuned.

For me, the interesting thing about the "do we turn over Farazil?" session is how strongly Dranko had an opinion about the matter. There was a time when he would have gladly thrown him to the dogs. Now, though? A reprehensible King Nebbizik may have rubbed him the wrong way, but Dranko wouldn't have been able to live with himself if they'd betrayed their sorta-ally. I'd never have guessed when we started this game that loyalty would turn out to be his defining attribute.


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

Yeah, I thought that was really interesting to read.

In the write-up, I perceived Nebbizik as really strongly evil--stressing his lack of mercy, wanting to execute a noble for an apparently consensual interlude with his daughter (if it weren't, he would not have denied that that mattered), kidnapping all of the bakers ("fleshbags") as hosts, etc.  As between helping a really annoying, formerly clearly bad but perhaps reforming sorta ally, or helping an evil spirit king--I'm surprised that so much of the party went with the evil spirit king.  (I'm not surprised by some of the neutral-ish characters, like Morningstar, but I was surprised by Ernie's attitude.)

(Not criticism, of course, just expressing surprise.)


----------



## Piratecat

Nah, he wasn't strongly evil from our perspective -- more selfishly, obnoxiously neutral with evil tendencies. And remember, Ernie carries a grudge. When that grudge involves someone possessing his mother, he carries that grudge forever.

Also, you didn't hear the sound of the gates of God's Thorn clanging shut on us.


----------



## Cervante

This story hour never ceases to amaze, I can't believe the depth that all these characters have.


----------



## Everett

Cerebral Paladin said:


> Yeah, I thought that was really interesting to read.
> 
> In the write-up, I perceived Nebbizik as really strongly evil--stressing his lack of mercy, wanting to execute a noble for an apparently consensual interlude with his daughter (if it weren't, he would not have denied that that mattered), kidnapping all of the bakers ("fleshbags") as hosts, etc.





Just have to say that I don't find it coincidental that the stuffy king's catch-phrase echoes HK-47s.  KOTOR much, Sagiro?


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> Just have to say that I don't find it coincidental that the stuffy king's catch-phrase echoes HK-47s.  KOTOR much, Sagiro?



Er... no, actually.  I'm not familiar with HK-47, so whatever echoes you detect are in fact pure coincidence.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> Er... no, actually.  I'm not familiar with HK-47, so whatever echoes you detect are in fact pure coincidence.




Enthusiastically articulate, highly opinionated assassin droid.  Refers to organics as "meatbags".  The comic highlight of both _Knights Of The Old Republic_ games.


----------



## MorningstarofEll

Greywolf told me that Sagiro had been updating the story hour and was up to this battle..and I had to log in.  I just caught up.  Oh boy.

Thank you for the recap on Swan, and yes she was all those things.  To Morningstar, Swan was more than that.  Swan was an ally in the early days when no one in her temple seemed to much like her or trust her.   She risked her place with Rhiavonne to stand up for what she felt was right.  She was calm and courteous and brave.  And these days, she was one of the few people who trusted Morningstar but did not stand in awe of her.  Octesian picked his target well.

And Octesian.  Morningstar (and her player) had been looking forward to this combat for a long time…and this wasn’t what she had been looking forward to.   I see why Sagiro set it up this way, it sets the tone for what is coming.  Look here, this was one of your feared enemies and he is nothing to what is coming.  It also gives us a different kind of fight than the last big showdown we had with him.  But I wished that we made Octesian a priority on the list earlier.   The person Morningstar had wanted to defeat was really already gone, this was a mad dog needing to be put down.  And to make it worse..DRANKO was infected by the same terrible madness.

And then Farazil came barging into our lives again.  Lets just say I was with team Ernie on this one.   Those doors shutting in Gods Thorn, our loved ones made vulnerable, every darn time we opened our doors with stupid ploys to try to protect ourselves from Farazil and then having to hope we hadn’t just let him into our one safe haven.  Yep.  No sympathy for poor Farazil here!  Morningstar had detected no sense of 'reformation' from Farazil.  Just an extremely powerful and exquisitely self-interested being who could not be trusted with any side but his own.

As Morningstar I went into this battle worried for Dranko, and wishing I hadn’t gone through such trouble to train these dreamwalkers some of whom were certainly about to suffer Swan’s fate.   They had a right to stand up and fight, but I feared I might be better off with only my trusty company by my side.


----------



## Everett

MorningstarofEll said:


> As Morningstar I went into this battle worried for Dranko, and wishing I hadn’t gone through such trouble to train these dreamwalkers some of whom were certainly about to suffer Swan’s fate.   They had a right to stand up and fight, but I feared I might be better off with only my trusty company by my side.




Anyone want to take odds on how many dreamwalkers the mad dog's gonna take down with him?


----------



## Tamlyn

Everett said:


> Anyone want to take odds on how many dreamwalkers the mad dog's gonna take down with him?




I'm more concerned with how Octesian's tentacles affect Dranko's tentacles.


----------



## steeldragons

Oooo...yes. The effects of the dreaded Tentacle Envy. I hadn't considered that. S'gonna be a mess!

;P


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:
			
		

> Everett, in about 20 sessions there's going to be a knock-down, drag-out argument about this very subject. When it occurs, I think we'll preemptively put you on Team Ernie and NOT Team Dranko. No one is going to blame you. And if it makes you feel any better, a different session (not for a while) should be entitled "Dranko Learns a Horrible Lesson About Humility," aka "Sagiro is a Very Large Rat Bastard."  Stay tuned.




BTW, I'm... so pleased...? that I've been pre-emptively slotted into a category that I won't have any idea about for at least 3 months.  



			
				Piratecat said:
			
		

> For me, the interesting thing about the "do we turn over Farazil?" session is how strongly Dranko had an opinion about the matter. There was a time when he would have gladly thrown him to the dogs. Now, though? A reprehensible King Nebbizik may have rubbed him the wrong way, but Dranko wouldn't have been able to live with himself if they'd betrayed their sorta-ally. I'd never have guessed when we started this game that loyalty would turn out to be his defining attribute.




Oh, looking back at the early chapters of the story, I can definitely see it coming.  What greater journey is there for him to go on?


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 357*_
*Far Gone*

Dranko returns from his errand, and gratefully takes a bite of cheese offered by Eddings.

“You know what they’re saying on the street?” he says to others.  “They’re saying that the plague which wiped out the fish is starting to wipe out the people as well. That’s how they’re explaining Octesian’s murders. There are crowds gathered outside every temple I went past, demanding protection.”

Morningstar spends a nervous afternoon casting _sendings_ and arranging for her “dream team” to be brought to the Greenhouse.  Throughout the evening they arrive, most of them _teleported_ from their home temples. Other Ellish priestesses show up as well – eighteen extras in all – whose job it will be to heal the bodies of the dreamers while they engage the enemy in Ava Dormo. 

In addition to the Ellish women, one other warrior arrives, to Morningstar’s great delight.  It’s Snokas, who has decided to join Scola in protecting Evenstar during the battle. He bows at the doorway of the Greenhouse.  “As always, I am eager to serve.”

When the full team is assembled, Morningstar spends a final hour dividing them into groups and giving them general instructions: to hang back and cast spells, but to avoid engaging Octesian directly if possible, and to focus on any minions their nemesis may bring to the fight. To bolster their effectiveness and confidence both, Morningstar distributes a pile of the party’s spare magic weapons, rings and armor pieces to her troops.  Soon after the collected Sisters break into small knots, talking quietly of the coming encounter while Previa and Evenstar  circulate with tactical advice.

As the midnight hour approaches, Morningstar is approached by Fautish.  By dint of her natural charisma and talent, the tall and beautiful paladin has assumed a secondary leadership role.

“Excuse me,” she says. “Morningstar, we wanted… all wanted… to make sure you understood.  It has occurred to every one of us that some, or perhaps all of us, will not survive tonight’s encounter.  And we are all very, very okay with that. We will do our best to help you, and whatever happens will happen. From what we know of Octesian, there is no finer way for any of us to leave this mortal life, than in bringing about his downfall.”

Morningstar bows her head.  “Thank you,” she says earnestly.

“And along those lines,” Fautish continues, “if you find that you need to… expend… one of us, in order to achieve victory, we all expect that you will.”  She looks hard at Morningstar, almost as if daring her to object.

“Thank you for that as well,” says Morningstar.  “I’m honored.”

“The honor belongs to us,” says Fautish. She looks down at her feet for a second – an uncharacteristic gesture – and then meets Morningstar’s gaze again. “Though it is not much discussed, we all realize that our  collective poor treatment of you these past several years has been shameful.  We are all, collectively, trying to atone.”

Morningstar shakes her head.  “I think the omens around me were created in order to test us.  And I think we’ve passed that test with flying colors.”

“I would agree,” says Fautish. “I suppose that make tonight the final exam.”

Morningstar smiles. “The only think I can think of that’s better than standing with the Company against my foes, is to stand with them and my sisters as well. It has been an incredible honor.”

“Very good,” says Fautish with a grin. “And I think that’s enough small talk for one evening. Let’s go kick Octesian’s butt.”

While the collected sisters cheer, Morningstar thinks silently to herself how relieved she is to have Fautish to energize the troops, sparing her the burden.  Ernie leans towards her and whispers, “Kick Octesian’s butt?  That makes you the Mother Superior of Kicking Posterior.”

Morningstar laughs. “We have to assume he’s set some wily trap.”

“Yes,” agrees Aravis. “Let’s go spring it.”


/*/


At one minute before midnight, Morningstar and her twenty allies arrive in the Ava Dormo reflection of Gohgan’s basement.  The single large chamber, into which Morningstar had earlier transfigured the subterranean ruins of Pinfaro’s palace, appears undisturbed.  There are no obvious traps, and no sign whatsoever of Octesian.  Morningstar scans the area with _true seeing_ and all is as it seems.

The final minute ticks away in silence. Precisely at midnight there is a quivering disturbance in the center of the room, and a large black portal appears, round, ten feet across, and facing Morningstar at a direct perpendicular.  The portal is a flat, shadowless black, and framed by a brown tentacle as thick as a man’s thigh.  Smaller tentacles, three to four feet long apiece, sprout from the frame like the spokes of a wheel, or the rays of an obscene black sun.  

Stuck onto the tapered tips of these tentacles are human heads.  All but one of these is unfamiliar, but the tentacle at the keystone position of the portal skewers Swan’s head, her dead face’s expression fixed in utter horror.  Finally, the entirety of the portal sits in the interior of an enormous partially-open (illusionary) iron maiden, its long spikes pointing inward.  They will have to enter this huge torture device to go through the portal.

Dranko mutters, “Let’s not do our bedroom like this.”

Morningstar shouts into the portal.  “You are such a coward!”

Her voice returns no echo.

Aravis takes a moment to study the portal, and guesses it’s nothing more than a simple gateway to a demi-plane.  No one makes a move to go through, but as the seconds spin away from the midnight hour, the iron maiden creaks a few inches shut. Octesian won’t wait for long.

Ernie decides this is a good time and place for a _miracle_, and steps forward.  “If there are any negative environmental effects in the demiplane beyond this portal, or negative effects which result from passing through it, I pray that they will not affect any of us for the next hour.”

He casts his spell, and power blows out of him in a golden wave, slamming into the flat black surface of the portal and vanishing inside it. The dark gateway ripples, and for a moment sparkles with flecks of green and golden light, before returning to its natural state, while the air smells sweet, and the vile aura of Cleaners is forgotten.

Morningstar grunts in satisfaction.  “Let’s go.”

As a group, they move into the jaws of the iron maiden, and through the portal, to whatever waits beyond.


/*/ 


The place in which they find themselves is extremely… strange.  Morningstar immediately senses she’s still in Ava Dormo, but in a demi-plane _inside_ the dreaming, and beyond that nothing seems familiar. 

Beneath their feet the ground undulates gently, giving them the sensation of being on a ship at sea.  It flexes slightly as well, as though they’re standing on a taut rubber sheet.  Scattered here and there, rising like trees in a forest of madness, enormous tentacles rise from the ground and vanish into the darkness above.  They sway in time to the flexing of the floor. Distance is hard to gauge, but the gathered heroes get a sense of unbounded space all around them.  Purplish, sourceless light bathes everything in a sickening glow. 

Everyone here can feel a terrible fear, borne of Cleaners, beating at their psyche, and yet it doesn’t deter them.  Something is deflecting or absorbing the terror. The air itself feels sticky and humid, and while parts of their animal brains scream of poison, it is nonetheless perfectly breathable. It seems that Ernie’s _miracle_ has saved them from some grim consequences of this wretched place.

Though they entered the portal in a group, they have arrived scattered about, with Morningstar in the relative center. The thickest of the tentacle-trees rises up before her, and  held to its flesh with a spike of bone is what looks like a giant-sized piece of parchment, ten feet high and five across.  Across the top of the parchment is scrawled, “_The Book of Morningstar_” written in her own handwriting.  Beneath that, rather than words, are a series of shifting images, scenes from various Ellish temples around Tal Hae.  In each of these images there are priestesses talking, and their voices blend together into a cacophony, though each is distinctly audible.

“She’s a freak; I don’t know what she’s doing here.”
“She’s not really one of us, you know.  She’ll be out of the church in a month.”
“The sooner she gives up and goes home, the better.”

“Oh, dear Goddess!” exclaims Morningstar, her voice a-drip with sarcasm.  “They don’t like me! Whatever shall I do?”

The central image shifts to Amber, talking to someone outside the picture. “I don’t have to _like_ her,” Amber is saying.  “I just have to _use_ her.”

And it shifts one final time, to High Priestess Rhiavonne, addressing a council that includes Swan. “Thank the Goddess she’s in such a dangerous business,” Rhiavonne says. “She’s bound to die before she becomes a real problem.”

These images then blend in with the others, ever shifting, each one repeating the theme of Morningstar as outcast.  And included in these are some spoken by the very priestesses in her team, many of whom are looking somewhat guilty as they stand scattered and confused.

High above them, and nearly directly over Morningstar, an illusion of Octesian’s head appears.  He wears a goatee and a wicked sneer, but his complexion is green and rubbery and riddled with protruding tentacles.

“So… happy to s…s… see you, Morningstar!” it exclaims.

Morningstar gestures to the ‘Book of Morningstar.’ “These games might have worked, if I were still, oh, I don’t know, fifteen years old.”

“Then how old are you?” asks Octesian.  But before she can answer, he continues.  “It doesn’t m… matter. I’ll taste your mind before we’re done. I promised Him that I would.”

“Promised who?” Morningstar asks.

The eyes on the huge illusionary head sweep over the assemblage. “The Great and Terrible One,”  he whispers reverently.

“I’m curious,” says Morningstar. “How did you go from serving the Emperor, to serving the Adversary?”

“What do you think the E.. Emperor was doing?” Octesian shrieks. “We are all in His service. It’s the whole point! To wake Him up.  And He’s waking, oh yes, He’s waking. You can feel it, can’t you?  You can feel it in the ground. You can feel it coming up from the oceans.  And when He’s done waking, he’ll eat… everything! He’s much more mad than I am.  He’s been trapped there so long, He doesn’t know where He begins, and where the  madness ends.  I think…”  And here Octesian’s facial tentacles squirm and curl.  “…I think they may be one and the same.”

His head quickly swivels, and the huge eyes fix upon Dranko.  “You have it… worse than I do, don’t you?” he whispers.  “I’m appalled!”  Octesian lets out a long, gurgling sigh.  “And… I’m jealous.”

“You clearly have some personal issues,” says Ernie. “And I know a way we can make it all  better for you.”

Octesian’s face splits into a huge grin, and they can see tentacles writhing inside his mouth.

“Then let’s play!” he screams.

…to be continued…


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

This cliffhanger is making me want to break the profanity rule on ENWorld. Love it!


----------



## Everett

*ROUND ONE: FIGHT!!!*


----------



## KidCthulhu

Piratecat said:


> And remember, Ernie carries a grudge. When that grudge involves someone possessing his mother, he carries that grudge forever.




You do *not* mess with Ernie's Mom.


----------



## Everett

Damnit!  Bump.

I haven't anticipated a fight in Sagiro's SH this much since Condor.  Seriously.


----------



## Piratecat

*Sagiro's Story Hour: The Further Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 3/3*

Should be soon—we gamed tonight, and Sagiro mentioned he was halfway through the battle. It has a LOT of participants. Although there ends up being fewer and fewer as the fight progresses…


----------



## steeldragons

Ain't that always the way? You throw a perfectly lovely combat [open bar, nibbles, the works] and the guests start leaving [in body bags] early. SO inconsiderate. See if they get invited to the NEXT combat! hmph!


----------



## Sagiro

Piratecat said:


> Should be soon—we gamed tonight, and Sagiro mentioned he was halfway through the battle. It has a LOT of participants. Although there ends up being fewer and fewer as the fight progresses…



More specifically, I've finished _transcribing _the first half of the battle, and now am in the process of writing it up. It's a bit challenging to write it in a narratively interesting way, since it's a battle with 35 entities participating at the start, but I should be done part 1 in the next couple of days. I can't promise specifically when I'll post, but I _can_ promise that it'll end on another cliffhanger. 

-Sagiro


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> It's a bit challenging to write it in a narratively interesting way, since it's a battle with 35 entities participating at the start




So Octesian has 15... entities with him?  Or just 15 tentacles?


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 358*_
*A Battle in the Madness *

The enormous illusionary head vanishes, and Octesian appears, hovering a few feet off the ground in the center of the demiplane. He is clad in the familiar red plate mail, and the visor on his helmet is lowered, obscuring his face. Brown-green tentacles sprout from every gap and seam in his armor, including one that comes (impossibly, gruesomely) straight out of the helmet’s eye-slit. They surround him, a writhing nimbus of horror.

In Octesian’s hand is the familiar glowing black sword that seems to come standard-issue with the deadly armor. But there is something… wrong… with the blade. While on first glance it seems to be solid black metal, sharp and deadly, it also seems rubbery, bendable, swaying slowly on its hilt. In defiance of sense, it is both at once – a sword, and a tentacle.

In the split second after he appears, his whole body sucks inward, as though he’s taking an impossibly deep breath almost to the point of implosion.  Then he balloons out like a puffer fish, and from somewhere inside his armor little masses of tentacles come flying out, landing around the battlefield with little squishy plops. They’re the size of small dogs, and they emit a maddening babble, an inhuman cacophony of burbling and squelching noises.

“I’ve got it _worse_ than _him_?” Dranko mutters to himself.  “I beg to differ.”

Finally, and worst of all, duplicates of Octesian appear scattered about the small demiplane.  There are seven in total, all identical, all hovering, in addition to the nine tentacle blobs.  There are now twenty members of the Forces of Good, facing off against seven Octesians and nine masses of tentacles, scattered among a dark forest of enormous tentacular trees, in poor light, while the air is filled with an insane babbling.

There’s no point in trying to talk, but Morningstar is connected to all of her allies via _telepathic bond._.  “Sisters, I’ve known all along what everyone has thought of me, and I just don’t care. Let’s just kill the bastard, okay?”

Grey Wolf reacts first, and tries to _summon the pack_, but this is immediately foiled.  It seems that creatures cannot be summoned into Octesian’s demiplane. While Flicker dashes into better striking position near Dranko, Ernie releases _Beryn Sur_ and casts _spiritual weapon_ at the closest Octesian.  It bounces off harmlessly, foiled by spell resistance.  (He’d rather have cast _flame strike_ or even _firestorm_, but his allies are intermixed too thoroughly with his enemies.)

One of the Octesians steps up to Aravis and swings his black sword, scoring a hit, but it’s clear that this version has less speed and fighting prowess than they recall the true Octesian possessing. Even so, the sword blow sends a jolt straight to Aravis’s mind, which he barely manages to shrug off.   A second Octesian steps to the paladin Fautish and delivers a similar blow, and a third delivers a damaging cut to Ernie. But while Ernie, like Aravis, resists the mental sting of the strike, Fautish feels her head grow muzzy, and for just a second loses her concentration.

*>> With each sword blow, target must make a Will save or take 1 point of wisdom damage*

With Flicker providing a flanking buddy, Dranko moves and lashes at the nearest tentacle mass.  Though his damage is high, he doesn’t kill the thing, and it responds by lashing out with a long pseudopod and grabbing Dranko’s shoulder.  Its oozing, suckered tip latches on, and using this attachment it pulls itself up onto the back of Dranko’s neck, where its insane babbling grows even louder.  With the thing gibbering directly into his ear, he can hardly hear himself think. It’s maddening.

Other tentacular masses take similar actions, and soon Snokas, Aravis, Ernie and Fautish also sport “babblers” perched on the backs of their necks.  

*>> When a babbler latches on and pulls itself up, the victim suffers one point of wisdom damage, no save.  Also, as long as it’s there, victims are at a -4 penalty on every d20 roll they make.  With a standard action, anyone can remove their own Babbler, or one attached to an adjacent ally.*.

Fautish and Snokas flail wildly, until they’ve grabbed their own babblers and flung them away from themselves.  The paladin Gyre steps up and wrenches away Dranko’s unwanted guest, while Sable removes Ernie’s and the warrior Scola easily plucks away the babbler on Aravis.  The cleric Corinne also casts a healing spell on Aravis.

The Octesian closest to Morningstar glides forward a step and strikes with the martial fluidity and grace of a seasoned warrior.  (“There’s our boy!” says Dranko.)  In addition to the damage from the rubbery/sharp blade, the sword itself sprouts a tentacle that whips around and plunges a sharp tip into Morningstar’s neck.  She fights off waves of revulsion as she feels it squirming beneath her skin.

Morningstar shakes her head, concentrates, and  uses what is arguably her most powerful ability in the Dreamscape.  She bestows upon all of her allies the same set of dream powers she herself possesses: flight, _true seeing_, _freedom of movement_, and bonuses to attacks, armor and reflex saves.  This will only last a minute, but it bolsters her allies’ confidence as well as their abilities.

Having done so, she decides to spend the seconds necessary to focus her consciousness on her physical body, to see what’s happening in the Greenhouse.  She was hoping that the priestesses there would be healing their bodies (with corresponding restoration happening here), but so far that hasn’t happened.  It only takes her a second or two to realize why: the priestesses gathered around their physical bodies are moving in extreme slow motion.  With a groan of dismay, she realizes that time is flowing much faster here in Octesian’s twisted demiplane, and by the time any of her sisters in the Greenhouse will be able to react, the battle here will be long over.  So much for that advantage!

With a sigh she quickens _divine power_ on herself, and smashes Octesian with _Ell’s Will_. The holy weapon shears through the front of his plate mail like its smashing through soft cheese, and tentacles spill from the gash like twisting intestines.  Octesian looks down, then wags a finger at Morningstar.  “You… you naughty girl!”

Aravis endures another sword-swipe from his own Octesian-copy and casts _cone of cold_, finding an angle that catches only enemies. Several babblers are damaged, as are two Octesians despite being somewhat resistant to cold. The babblers launch another wave of attacks, and soon Grey Wolf, Starbrook, Belle and Previa are burdened with yammering tentacle-masses. 

Kibi sends Scree to Morningstar, and the little earth elemental pelts the sword-tentacle with rocks until it slides back out of Morningstar’s neck.  Kibi himself casts his own _cone of cold_, this one maximized, followed by a quickened _coldfire_. Some of the tentacle masses are destroyed outright by this barrage, and now a few of the Octesians are looking particularly battle-worn.

Octesian – the _real_ Octesian – winces at Morningstar, and in a halting voice says, “Ex…cuse me for a moment.”   His shape shudders and bulges, and across the battlefield the least-damage Octesian-form does likewise. The new host body for the true Octesian stands next to Fautish, and with a series of brutal sword-slashes he strikes Fautish down.  Morningstar immediately casts _delay death_, which temporarily prevents her ally from dying from hit point loss, though Fautish is still rendered unconscious and brutally wounded.

Two more lesser Octesians converge on Corrine; their sword-strikes sap away her wisdom and leave her on the edge of consciousness.  Previa and Starbrook take the time to divest themselves of Babblers, while Belle and Leona cast spells upon Ernie to heal his wounds and restore his lost wisdom.  Grey Wolf quickens _true strike_ and uses Bostock to channel a maximized _acid orb_ into the Octesian closest to him.  His target erupts in a gout of sizzling green goo, bits of burned armor and tentacle flesh sloughing off to fall onto the rubbery ground.  A rancid smell wafts up, but Grey Wolf just smiles.  The acid-burned Octesian wobbles on his feet, but doesn’t fall.

Flicker runs another babbler through with his dagger, driving his blade through so powerfully that his arm comes out the far side of it. He has to jiggle his arm violently to get the corpse to fall off.  Ernie nails the current “true” Octesian with _energy drain_, and the mad warrior’s tentacles quiver in pain, but from beneath his helmet comes the sound of insane chuckling.

One of the lesser Octesians (dubbed “Mocktesians” by the heroes over the mind-link) cuts through Corinne’s midsection, a deep and immediately fatal blow – but Previa reacts with _revivify_ and Dranko follows up with _close wounds_ to bring the Ellish sister back to consciousness.  Two more Mocktesians attack; one misses Morningstar, but the other strikes Evenstar, draining away another point of the old cleric’s wisdom.  She curses and shakes her head to clear it.

Dranko activates his _boots of haste_ and gives the true Octesian a serious whipping, just as two of the remaining babblers hoist themselves onto the backs of Snokas and Gyre.  Snokas reaches his arms up and immediately flings his unwanted guest away, while Gyre spins around in a panic before doing likewise.  

Evenstar still has the wisdom to drop a _flame strike_ on a pair of Mocktesians, and while one of these largely resists, the second (whose body the “real” Octesian has recently vacated)  is turned to ash.  Morningstar gives her a thumb up and an encouraging smile.

Scola takes a full attack on the nearest Mocktesian, but cannot land even a single telling blow through its red armor.  She screams in frustration, being unused to any sort of martial failure.  Obsidia endures an attack from a babbler as she heals Fautish, though the paladin is so badly injured that she still lies senseless on the ground, and would still be dead if not for Morningstar’s _delay death_.

Aravis unleashes a maximized _chain lightning_ targeting the most conveniently situated Mocktesian.  It barely survives the lightning stroke, and the secondary blasts scorch the remaining babblers and kill a second more-injured Mocktesian.

The battlefield is definitely becoming less chaotic as the enemies are whittled down.  Morningstar takes advantage, seeing that she now has the possibility of shaping a _firestorm_ properly.  Here in Ava Dormo, even an aspect of it that's been corrupted and twisted by Octesian, her ability to concentrate and comprehend is without equal.  Cold flames rip through the demiplane, and when they die down, all of the remaining babblers have been silenced, and one more Mocktesian has been slain.  She turns to the true Octesian and shows him _Ell’s Will_, but her foe just continues to laugh beneath his helm. His laughter is starting to become particularly unnerving, given that the tide of battle is clearly going against him. 

Kibi takes a chance and casts _prismatic spray_ at two of the remaining Mocktesians.  One is ripped apart by electricity, while the other resists petrification. Then, because he’s learned his lesson before now, Kibi quickens a _magic missile_ on the true Octesian to test for _spell turning_, rather than lead with (for instance) _Otto’s irresistible dance_. It’s a wise precaution; the missiles are reflected and smack back into Kibi.

The true Octesian, laughing continuously now, jams a tentacle into the back of Dranko’s neck and lifts him bodily off the ground, holding the half-orc like a dangling piñata above his head.  Dranko feels little pain, but there’s the sickening feeling of it writhing beneath his skin like a hot wire. “Stay!” Octesian cackles.  Then he turns to Obsidia, standing nearby, and cuts her down with one devastating stroke.  Morningstar expends her final _delay death_ to keep her from dying.

One of the two remaining Mocktesians hacks at the injured and recently-revived Corinne, killing her a second time.  Grey Wolf responds by blasting it with a twinned _sound lance_.  Two thunderclaps resound through the demiplane, and bits of red armor are shivered off the villain’s body.  Ernie targets the true Octesian with a  _bolt of glory_ followed by a quickened _flame strike_ (counting on Dranko being able to dodge it even while suspended by a tentacle), and this takes the current host body from perfect health to near death in a single painful moment.  And yet, the laughter doesn’t cease.

Flicker continues his deadly dagger-play, this time running up his enemy’s chest and sticking his weapon into the visor-slit of one of the two remaining Mocktesians.  As he kicks off and vaults backward, he takes his foe’s head with him; tentacles spill out onto the ground as the body topples.  Now there remain only two Octesians, one of which is badly damaged.

Dranko can feel the tentacle questing beneath his skin, and is starting to experience seconds of blackout.  Nonetheless he has the presence of mind to drop his whip and call his backup weapon  -- the whip _Alazar’s Tongue_, taken from the horde of Azhant the Ancient.  He manages to strike Octesian in the head with it, and while the damage isn’t significant, he inflicts an enervating effect that should make it harder for Octesian to resist further magics.

Evenstar casts her final _revivify_ on Corinne, once more bringing her back from death.

Aravis quickens a _dimension door_, and has Pewter deliver it to Dranko, the cat leaping bravely onto Octesian’s back and actually running up the tentacle that holds the half-orc aloft.  Once his ally is safely away, Aravis targets Octesian with a _disintegrate_. Thanks to the effect of _Alazar’s Tongue_, Octesian cannot resist, and the body is flashed to dust. 

The one remaining Octesian-body bulges and becomes the final vessel for the mad warrior. This is the one that stands toe-to-toe with Scola.  His laughter grows louder as he hacks her to pieces, and no one close enough has any means of saving her.  After many close calls, the first of Morningstar’s team – and their most accomplished fighter – has perished.

Seeing that Octesian has no more extra bodies into which he can retreat, Kibi captures him in a barred _forcecage_.  His tentacles slap futilely at the invisible bars.  Finally, to the echoing sound of Octesian’s ceaseless laughter, Morningstar mutters, “time to see what’s next”  and blasts her nemesis with a _bolt of glory_ of her own.  The _forcecage_ fills with darkness, and bands of shadow spill out from between the bars.  When the blackness fades, the cage is empty… and yet the laughter doesn’t stop.  The insane chuckling reverberates without source all around the demiplane, and the collected heroes look frantically around, wondering what additional difficulties Octesian might have planned for them.  When nothing happens, the team hurries to heal the injured and those under the effects of _delay death_.  Fautish, Obsidia and Corinne are all healed back to consciousness, and Fautish immediately sets to using a _wand of restoration_ to restore lost wisdom.  Someone casts _revenance_ on Scola, so that she can fight whatever’s coming even after death.

While the post-battle healing is going on, Dranko uses his tentacular nature to cast _true seeing_.  Though he sees nothing new or illusionary, casting the spell here brings him a sense of comfort, like he’s found his true home after long travels. He also gains an innate sense that the tentacle “trees” are more like parts of a living creature, and that the demiplane exists on the skin of some monstrosity.   

The pervasive laughter never lets up, and despite a lack of enemies there’s a feeling of impending doom that’s nearly palpable.  Then the effects of Morningstar’s _perfect awareness_ run out on her allies, and they feel a heaviness of spirit as they no longer enjoy the attunement with Ava Dormo. 

Only when all of the short-term beneficial magics have worn off Morningstar and her allies, do a number of the tentacle trees start to sway and slowly arch inward.

“We’re getting bored!” calls Morningstar into the darkness.

The laughter stops abruptly  “Don’t worry,” says Octesian, his voice coming from somewhere high above. “It will all be over soon.  But I’ve enjoyed all of this… dancing.”

“What’s it like to lose your soul?” Ernie asks quietly.

 “Oh, I still have a soul,” Octesian answers.  “It’s just… different now.”

“You were more intimidating when you were sane,” says Morningstar defiantly. “Now you’re just a rabid dog who needs to be put down.”

“You can try!” Octesian screeches.  “Anyway, as my Master would say if he were… sane… nothing sharpens the shock of inevitable defeat like a fleeting glimpse of tantalizing victory.  You must be… “  Octesian sniffs, and his voice for a second becomes a caricature of pity.  “…so sad!”  Then his voice distorts and takes on a choking, gurgling sound.  “It almost seems a shame to put an end to you!” 

A huge tentacle descends from the darkness above, like a smaller version of the Trunk from beyond the Black Door in Het Branoi.  Its tip splits open, and it disgorges Octesian like a squeezing sphincter.  He stands twenty feet tall, his armor glowing red and asprout with enormous tentacles.  He’s as much a Cleaner as he is a man.

Then, in all of their heads, Previa thinks to her allies as calmly as she can, “Morningstar, without your _perfect awareness_, the rest of us have no ability to inflict real damage upon him.  If anyone other than you delivers even the slightest wound upon his body, then when he is killed, he’ll simply wake up wherever his body is, very much alive.”

Morningstar frowns.  “So, you’re saying that…?”

“I’m saying that if we mean to put an end to him here, once and for all, then only you can harm him.”

…to be continued…


----------



## Quartz

Moar!!


----------



## StevenAC

Sagiro said:


> With a groan of dismay, she realizes that time is flowing much faster here in Octesian’s twisted demiplane, and by the time any of her sisters in the Greenhouse will be able to react, the battle here will be long over.  So much for that advantage!



A brilliant piece of RBDM-ness, Sagiro.  _*applause*_

I can't wait to see how this fight plays out.  In the meantime, I've added another chapter to the Collected Story Hour, bringing the story up to just before the combat begins...


----------



## Quartz

Was Octesian known to have Wisdom-draining powers? Or could the PCs have reasonably learned it? Because that seems a little too targeted to me.


----------



## Sagiro

Quartz said:


> Was Octesian known to have Wisdom-draining powers? Or could the PCs have reasonably learned it? Because that seems a little too targeted to me.



Really? Because to me, the notion that a creature empowered by a brush with the Far Realms would acquire wisdom-draining powers, seems almost _too_ cliched in its obviousness. But if it helps, look at it another way: Octesian was tasked by an insane God to kill a powerful priestess, and has had a long time now to work on a plan of attack. It's even possible that the imprisoned Adversary _bequeathed_ powers upon Octesian for just that purpose.  

No matter how you slice it, I think wisdom drain was entirely fitting to the encounter, and not an unfair "gotcha" to a bunch of clerics. YMMV, of course.


----------



## coyote6

*Re: Sagiro's Story Hour: The Further Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 4/12/13)*

Yeah, in D&D, insanity is modeled by Wisdom damage and drain, and Far Realms critters are all about inducing madness. They're positively Cthulhu-esque about it.

Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk 2


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> just before two of the remaining babblers hoist themselves onto the backs of Snokas and Gyre.  Snokas reaches his arms up and immediately flings his unwanted guest away




Typo?


----------



## MorningstarofEll

Yep, the wisdom damage was frustrating.  Not more frustrating than say,  the fact that he had been able to reach out and just kill Swan with me  standing there helpless.  I had wanted him dead since he had taunted me  by tormenting a dreaming child while I sat there helpless oh so many  levels ago. Octesian knew me well enough to exploit that that and it was  pretty scary.  

 The fact that he was able to just wait out my  one spell that enabled the rest of  the group to do damage felt more targeted at me than the wisdom drains.   But the thing is, he had plenty of time to target me while I was off  saving the world.  

There just isn't much fair about coming  apocalypse.   I did some fairly heavy wishing that we had dealt with MY  nemesis a bit earlier in our list of things to do.   

Memories from this part of the battle

- being really frustrated when Octesian left that first body when it was damaged to decimate poor Fautish.

-  It seemed to me that Dranko was caught hanging like a pinata waaayyy  longer than he actually was.  I was so grateful to Aravis for getting  Dranko out of there. Using that delay death on Obsidia with Dranko  hanging was a tough choice.

- I had spent a statistically  improbable amount of time in this campaign rolling single digits  whenever I tried to use a weapon.  Things had gotten better since I had  received Ells Will but our cliffhanger was just a bit scary.  Octesian  was going to escape to kill goodness knows how many people if I didn't  manage to hit the broad side of a tentacle in the next few rounds...

I sure do miss this game!  Not this moment perhaps..but this game!


----------



## Piratecat

Dranko's biggest weakness was avoiding a grapple. He was awful at it, and it was hands-down the fastest way to utterly neuter him in combat. I was not a big fan of being a Dranko pinata; my wisdom and hit points were dropping, and the wisdom wasn't too high to begin with. 

I really love the fact that it was solely up to Morningstar for this second half of the battle. It made any victory or failure really in her hands, and it was great for the party members who were normally on the front lines to have to drop into a support role. Very enlightening and frustrating at the same time.

Courtesy of Grey Wolf, here's a blurry photo of the battle. You'll see the tentacles, the small d6s indicating allies or foes, and the four-tentacled true Octesian. 

[sblock]
[/sblock]


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 359*_
*Shadow of Ell*

As the ramifications of Previa’s warning sink in, the entirety of the demiplane warbles, shifts and becomes less solid, sending the Sisters of Ell into a momentary panic.  But Morningstar recognizes this for what it is; a vision, a memory, projected from Octesian’s mind into his corrupted slice of Ava Dormo. 

In this memory they are all traveling through the Dreamscape, and are very far afield.  They are approaching Ava Dormo’s ragged borders, its misty, unknown edge.  In front of them, still miles away, is… madness, a place of terrible insanity, whose ripples of psychic horror are just starting to impinge on their minds.

Octesian is headed there, apprehensively, gleefully, on a mission of supreme import.

Grey Wolf swallows his fear and moves in toward Octesian’s towering, tentacular form, knowing he mustn’t attack.  His goal is merely to serve as a distraction.  Flicker does likewise, but is knocked aside by a tentacle for his troubles.

In a gurgling, raspy voice, barely human, Octesian croaks “Morningstar…” and brings down his sword.  It becomes a tentacle as it strikes, bringing crushing pain and waves of nausea.  Worse, Morningstar can feel the Octesian’s weapon trying to tear away pieces of her psyche.  This she barely resists, and she blinks back tears.  Around her, her sisters come running, intent on protecting their leader at any cost.  Previa, Sable and Raven are swatted with tentacles as they approach, but are not deterred from trying to distract and interfere with Morningstar’s great enemy.

“Why…? gurgles Octesian. “Why do you surround yourself with… dreaming insects?  Excuse while I… swat them!”

“They have a right to resist you!” Morningstar retorts.

Tentacles burst out from new holes and creases in Octesian’s armor, a dozen or more of them, longer and with more suckers, and many of these quickly wrap around Morningstar’s allies. Previa, Aravis, Scola, Sable, Belle and Molly are all hoisted into the air, where they flail helplessly at the ends of Octesian’s pseudopodia.  All of these victims are heavily damaged as well, squeezed mercilessly in the tentacles’ grasp, and drained of wisdom by their touch. 

Octesian looks down upon Morningstar and laughs.  “You’re all just so small,” he croaks. “Look at you!”

“We’ve fought turtles larger than you!”  says Morningstar, undaunted.  She quickens a _divine power_ and swings _Ell’s Will_ with all of her might.  The holy weapon is blacker even than Octesian’s sword, and it shears away her enemy’s red armor, gouging out huge rents in the plates.  Where Octesian’s flesh is exposed, there are nothing but thick clustered cables of writhing tentacles, and these boil out of every wound like maddened snakes.

“There’s not much of you left in there,” Morningstar observes.

“It’s all me!” Octesian gurgles.  “All that’s left.  And it is enough!”  Morningstar can see that new tenatcles are sliding into place to support Octesian’s weight, where she had torn open his leg.

Aravis quickens a _teleport_ and easily escapes Octesian’s suckered grip. He appears some distance away, but not too far to cast _energy drain_.  This deals no damage to the villain, but the black energy plays over Octesian’s entire body, even to the tips of his tentacles, all of which shudder and droop slightly.  A howl of pain and dismay comes from beneath his helmet.

Snokas moves up to stand next to Morningstar; once he served as her Devoted Defender, and now he is prepared to do so again.  Fautish moves up as well to protect her, while Evenstar and Dranko casts healing spells upon her.  Ernie then targets Morningstar with _righteous wrath of the faithful_, making her martial prowess all the more formidable.  

The vision around them changes.

Octesian has come to the uneven border where dream and madness blend into one another.  He is peering into a writhing gloom, and from that shadowy miasma comes a distant call.  Octesian cannot make out the details of that cry, but he is drawn to it like a moth to a fire.  Every sane part of his mind tells him to go back, but his body does not obey his sanity, and he crosses the border.

“So,” says Morningstar.  “You weren’t strong enough to stop yourself.”

“I was strong enough to continue!” Octesian retorts.  “You misunderstand my strength of will. I fought back my own sanity, to do what I had to do.  I stayed true to the end.”

He angles his head down to look at Morningstar directly; a dull purple light gleams from somewhere within his helm. 

“Speaking of the end… say goodbye to your friends.”

Octesian bends his tentacles, and touches four of his entangled victims to his deadly red armor.   The bodies of Sable, Molly and Belle are immediately blackened, their burnt corpses crumbling into lumps of congealed ash and melted bone.  Previa screams as her flesh touches the armor, but though she is horribly burned and loses consciousness, she remains barely, barely alive, still gripped in a tentacle.

As the bodies of his victims fall away, some of the gray miasma of the _energy drain_ grows weaker, and Octesian’s wounds grow lessened.

“Delightful,” he groans.

Kibi saps away some of his regained vigor with a _ray of enfeeblement_; Octesian turns briefly to regard him.  “I’ll get to you eventually,” he groans.  Scola, wrapped in a tentacle but not touched to the red armor, feels the strength of her bonds grow less and renews her struggles to escape.  She fails, and screams in frustration.  Corinne rushes in to Morningstar’s side but is plucked up by a tentacle for her trouble and held high above Octesian’s head.  Morningstar barks a warning to her remaining sisters to hang back rather than move forward to be grabbed, though Grey Wolf and Flicker still move up to help shield Morningstar from attack.  Grey Wolf also casts _mountain stance_ on her, which will make it more difficult for Octesian to lift her up.

But Octesian is not interested in grappling Morningstar.  He raises his black tentacle sword – and for a moment it is drawn, clearly against its wielder’s will, towards Dranko.  With a strangled grunt Octesian regains control of his weapon, and slashes at Morningstar.  His first blow goes wide, as there are so many of her allies surrounding her and getting in the way that his concentration is spoiled. His second strike is better aimed, but Snokas jumps into its path at the last minute and absorbs a crushing blow from the sword. But having knocked Snokas out of the way, and finally clearing away the annoying rabble at his feet with a myriad of tentacles, he lines up a perfect blow on his true enemy.  At his sword strikes, it turns fully into a thick, powerful tentacle and wraps around Morningstar’s midsection.  She can feel her armor buckle and bones crack in its crushing grip.  Then the tentacle unwinds and hovers menacingly over her.

“Soon!” cries Octesian.

Starbrook runs in, hoping to lay hands upon Previa, but at the last moment Octesian lifts the unconscious sister high out of reach.  Octesian laughs, a hideous, choking sound.  Then he plucks Snokas from the ground with a tentacle wrapped around his arms and body.  “Don’t stand between me and my prey, you imbecile!” he croaks.   More tenatcles descend, and soon Fautish, Starbrook, Grey Wolf and Raven are also wrapped up and bound, little bundles waving high above Octesian’s head.  All take severe damage and are drained of wisdom.

“Soon I will have killed them all, Morningstar!” Octesian bellows. “Soon you will be alone!”

Morningstar’s wrath surrounds her like a dark aura and flows into _Ell’s Will_. Her holy weapon strikes once, twice, thrice, each time knocking away chunks of armor and tentacle-flesh like it's paper mache.  Her last strike takes off the bottom of Octesian’s helmet, and where his chin should be a cluster of tentacles comes spilling out like an obscene beard. Dark ichor wells up from Octesian’s many wounds, and his body slumps in odd ways, shored up by the quickly shifting tentacles that seem to make up his entire physical being.  He shouts angry words, but Morningstar has destroyed his mouth and only garbled nonsense comes out.

Aravis has been watching Octesian’s tentacle-bound victims, noting the patterns in which they sway high above them.  With his superhuman intellect and unflappable concentration, he thinks he’ll have a moment in which he can save two of them.  He just has to wait until they’re…

His moment comes.  He quickens a _teleport_ and appears in the air, in the middle of the thick forest of Octesian’s waving pseudopods.  In the split second he starts to fall, he comes into contact with Snokas’s shoulder and Fautish’s foot.  He _dimension doors_ away, taking both of them with him, and before anyone can full register what a crazy stunt it was, Aravis is standing back on the ground twenty feet back, Fautish and Snokas beside him.

“Go get him,” says Aravis to Snokas, and Morningstar’s defender rushes back to her side, enduring the slap of a tentacle as he approaches.  Fautish is close on his heels; when she reaches Morningstar she _lays on hands_, emptying her reservoir of holy power into her leader.  Dranko adds another healing spell of his own.

Ernie decides to risk trying _withering palm_ on Octesian, even though it will involve touching the red armor.  He ends up getting by far the worst of the exchange, as Octesian’s spell resistance thwarts the magic, but Ernie is still badly burned by his contact with the armor.  His hand smokes and terrible burns race up his arm.  When he pulls away, large patches of his skin are left stuck to Octesian’s plates, sizzling.  Feeling dizzy, Ernie activates the final scroll of _heal_ in his _quickscroll tube_ and heals his own wounds.

Once more, the vision all around them changes.  Now Octesian has moved beyond the border of the Dreamscape and plunged into a place of boiling lunacy.  His sanity is burning off like velvet dipped in acid, but he perseveres, and has come at last to a Prison, a Prison entirely of madness made manifest.  There are no bars, no physical walls, but the Prison is nonetheless more impenetrable than steel.  There is something trapped in the Prison, but Octesian cannot look upon it, and just _attempting_ to see the Prisoner rips away the last of Octesian’s tattered sanity.  Whatever is there, unimaginably powerful, overwhelmingly evil, cannot be seen by mortal eyes.  All of the heroes experiencing this vision instinctively turn their heads from the Prisoner. They have no choice.

Except for Dranko. 

Dranko looks steadily into the Prison, and deep inside there is an indistinct humanoid figure, a being of divine stature whose nature is changing but has not yet changed, and who fights to retain His sense of identity.  Dranko knows that even glimpsing the wavering silhouette of the Adversary should be scouring his mind of reason, but it does not.  Instead, Dranko is able to retain his focus for several seconds, and during that time gains a terrifying insight into the Adversary’s mind. For behind the madness and frustration of imprisonment, the Adversary is radiating the calm satisfaction of someone who knows He is playing a long game, a game which He has already won.

Octesian screams again, face erupting in fresh tentacles, and Dranko mutters to himself, “Delioch, I love You, but if You are ever trapped in the plane of madness, You’re on Your own.”

Once more, Octesian brings some of his bound victims down to touch his armor.  Corinne and Raven are blown to charred dust.  Previa, Morningstar’s oldest and truest ally, and who never regained consciousness after her first contact with the armor, is incinerated so thoroughly that even her ashes flash to steam.  Scola, still “living” on borrowed time thanks to a _revenance_ spell, cries out in pain but endures the red metal’s burning touch.

“So… few remaining to you,” says Octesian, his voice only barely comprehensible through the flapping tentacles that compose his mouth.  “If you all… leave now… you’ll spare those who are left.”

Morningstar shakes her head.  “What was it you said?  ‘Tonight, Morningstar, tomorrow everyone else?’  If you’re hoping we’ll flee, you’ve already blown that chance.”

Kibi has been keeping a final _wish_ in reserve, in case anything happens to Morningstar, but realizing the terrible casualties Octesian is inflicting, decides to spend his most powerful spell.  

“I _wish_ that all those tentacles just go limp, unable to move, or grab anyone, or do any bad thing to my friends!”

A ripple of power blasts outward from the dwarf, rocking the tentacle trees and sending a shudder through Octesian. All at once his many tenatcles flop to the ground, including those still clutching Grey Wolf and Scola.  

“Don’t feel bad,” says Dranko.  “That happens to everyone sometimes.”

Gyre runs up and frees Scola from her tentacle, dragging her ally away.  Grey Wolf unwraps himself as he stands, throwing off what has become a wet, slimy rope.  

Octesian jerks his shoulders, but none of his deadly tentacles do anything more than twitch.

“What happened?” he gasps.

“I have friends,” says Morningstar, looking up at him with a grim smile.

“I had friends, too, when I was sane,” Octesian bubbles. “I don’t… remember them.”  Filled with fury, Octesian gathers his remaining strength for a death blow.  His sword comes down like a demon’s hammer, and his malign will surges forth as he swings, transfixing Morningstar in preparation for this final mortal strike.  As it approaches, the black blade uncoils into a thick tentacle, hideously strong. Morningstar knows she is going to die.

Then Snokas is standing in her place. He has shoved her out of the way at the last second, and Octesian’s tentacle-sword wraps around him instead of her. It squeezes like an iron snake, and there is a sickening wet crunch.  Blood bursts from his nose, his mouth, his eyes.  The tentacle unwraps, dumping Snokas’s lifeless body to the rubbery ground.

Morningstar stares, a cold rage filling her.  She hears Ernie’s voice sounding as if from far away.  “I can _revivify_ him!  Morningstar, finish that monster once and for all.”

With a terrible cry, Morningstar swings _Ell’s Will_ with a breathtaking fury.  Her first blow takes a chunk from his chest.  Her second removes his right leg at the thigh, and his body slumps as tentacles squirm from his wounds like a frenzy of squid. He prevents himself from falling prone by planting his hand on the ground, but this brings his head down to the same level as Morningstar’s.  

Her final swing removes Octesian’s head from his shoulders, and his entire body collapses in a mass of writhing tentacles, rasping and squirming impotently. 

And then several things happen in quick succession.

Black wings, like those of an avenging angel, burst from Morningstar’s back.  Her entire body grows taller, and a halo appears above her head like a ring of churning smoke. Her left eye hardens to a glittering black, while her right eye blazes with fierce light. And in her mouth, though it’s a small, subtle change, her teeth grow ever-so-longer and ever-so-sharper.

While Morningstar’s friends gape as this transformation, the entire demiplane also undergoes a rapid change. The tentacle trees shake and fade and lose their substance, and somehow they are gone, and the rubbery ground is gone as well, replaced by springy turf. A fresh wind blows through, clearing the air of Octesian’s stench, and high above a pale moon shines out in a clear sky filled with pinprick stars.

A half dozen robed figures appear before Morningstar, standing over Octesian’s remains, except that every sign of him has been expunged in the demiplane’s sudden rebirth. Morningstar once trained in Ava Dormo with a being like these – an Avatar of Ell.  Now six such beings stand in front of her.  One that is taller and darker than the others steps forward and places a hand upon her brow.

“Morningstar Brightmirror. You are now and forever Ell’s Shadow, for you indeed are as the shadow cast by the Goddess into this world of Abernia. It has been centuries since Ell has declared a mortal champion. She does so now because Her need, and Abernia’s need, is at its greatest. There is one final task set before you: to descend beneath the Barrier of Yulan, to prevent the awakening, the full awakening, of our great enemy.  Already He stirs, and the earth groans, and the animals die, and the sky trembles.  Should He arise, he will split Abernia asunder, and all living things upon it will be flung into death.  Beneath the Barrier you will be dim in the sight of Ell, but know that She is always with you, for you are Her shadow, and ever will She be your source of being. And She gives you this place as a gift – a place of sanctuary during your trials to come.  You need only dream of it.”

All of the avatars bow before Morningstar.

“Go forth, Shadow of Ell. Dream of victory, and it will be yours.”


…to be continued…


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

WOW. 

...what a fantastic battle. Huge kudos to everyone involved for something that came out so well-balanced! 

And particularly to Aravis, for that stunt! Can we get a behind-the-scenes mechanical description of how that played out?


----------



## RangerWickett

"Like velvet dipped in acid." Wonderful image.


----------



## Quartz

That wouldn't be the Saint template being applied or her first level of Divine Emissary, would it? 

That was an awesome tale.


----------



## Everett

Mmm, that's a battle for the ages.

Did any of the sisters survive?  Lost count.

Also: Snokas?  Half-orc, swung picks for weapons?  Didn't he die some years ago?  What's he doing here?  Bit lost.


----------



## Piratecat

Everett said:


> Also: Snokas?  Half-orc, swung picks for weapons?  Didn't he die some years ago?  What's he doing here?  Bit lost.




That's him! He didn't die; Morningstar trained out of the henchman feat, so he went off to help someone else.

Post #1105 (part 357), 4th paragraph. "In addition to the Ellish women, one other warrior arrives, to Morningstar’s great delight. It’s Snokas, who has decided to join Scola in protecting Evenstar during the battle. He bows at the doorway of the Greenhouse. “As always, I am eager to serve.”"


----------



## Waylander the Slayer

Who is left in the Church of Ell?


----------



## KidCthulhu

As I recall, this was one of our first big battles since Ernie changed over to full cleric.  It was really gratifying to a) be able to lay down some spell smack and b) to allow Morningstart to do what she needed to do without having to man the healing wagon the whole time.  It was a brutal combat, but I think we all did some of our best work here. Even Senor Pinata.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> That's him! He didn't die; Morningstar trained out of the henchman feat, so he went off to help someone else.
> 
> Post #1105 (part 357), 4th paragraph. "In addition to the Ellish women, one other warrior arrives, to Morningstar’s great delight. It’s Snokas, who has decided to join Scola in protecting Evenstar during the battle. He bows at the doorway of the Greenhouse. “As always, I am eager to serve.”"




Makel Troutman died to bridge the Uncrossable Sea, but I thought I remembered Snokas dying as well...


----------



## MorningstarofEll

Snokas went off to study or something didn't he?  At some point we decided that we wanted to trim the number of NPCs in our battles   I always thought the devoted defender class was quite cool, and Snokas inspired me to play a bodyguard as my first character in Piratecat's campaign.  

Thanks for the write up Sagiro..and for making Morningstar look so badass in it.    Being named Ell's Champion was an extremely cool moment for me!

Thank goodness for all those spells that buffed me up and weakened Octesian.  That final wish would be my second favorite of Kibbe's wishes.  My favorite one you won't read about till the very last battle of the campaign.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 360*_
*Lions and Rhinos and Djinn*

After a time her halo dims, and her wings fade, and her eyes and teeth return to normal, but the authority within Morningstar remains. The avatars fade gently away, leaving the surviving sisters to crowd around their leader, open-mouthed.

Morningstar speaks to them. “I said before that it didn’t matter what has been said about me.  But I misspoke. It mattered in that it hurt, but what is important is that you stood by me when the need was greatest. You have done that in a way I could never have imagined.  Thank you.  I could not have done this without you.”

“Look over there,” whispers Fautish.  A short ways away, amidst a moonlit patch of purple flowers, are a half-dozen marble gravestones, each carved with the name of a fallen sister.  Molly, Belle, Raven, Sable, Previa and Corinne have all found their final resting place in this Ellish sanctuary.

And there is one more miracle, that takes everyone a few more minutes to notice. Scola is still standing, and looking very much alive, though she had been animated only through the grace of a _revenance_ spell for much of the battle against Octesian. Now she is at full health, though is at a loss to explain how this came to be.

“Ell still has plans for you,” Evenstar tells her with a smile.  Morningstar approaches her and gives her a gift: the weapon, blessed by Ell, that Morningstar carried before receiving _Ell’s Will_. 

“Are you sure?” Scola breathes. “Shouldn’t this be in a display case in the temple of Kallor?”

“No,” says Morningstar. “It should continue to be used in Her service.”

Scola takes it, swings it around a couple of times, and spots a small bush as a practice target.  With a deft strike she uproots the shrub and sends it soaring away.

“I’ll clean it after every battle,” she promises, picking out leaves from the weapon’s spikes.

“Morningstar,” says Evenstar, touching her on the shoulder.  “What is Yulan’s Barrier?”

“The next place we have to go,” says Morningstar with a sigh. 

“When we leave the world to go beneath,” Dranko adds, “we will probably never return.”

Evenstar laughs nervously. “I don’t have to believe that, do I?”

“No,” says Morningstar, “But that’s what we’ve been told, and the source seemed extremely trustworthy.”

“Hmph,” says Evenstar.  “It sounds like one of those overblown dire warnings that simply means that no one ever _has_ come back. Not that no one ever _will._"


/*/


Morningstar returns the dreamers to the Greenhouse, and they are met with a grisly sight as they wake.  There are many Ellish sisters there wide-eyed with shock, and some are sobbing.  All are covered in blood, and indeed the entire Greenhouse living room looks like a slaughterhouse.  

One of the acolytes, who cannot be more than sixteen years old, looks at Morningstar helplessly.  “They… just exploded.  We had no time.  They just… burst into pieces, and there’s nothing left.  We had no time…”

Morningstar does her best to explain what happened, and about how time passed differently in Octesian’s demiplane. She assures her sisters there was nothing they could have done. The news that Octesian is dead fills them with a surge of emotion;  the young priestess breaks into fresh tears and throws her arms around Morningstar.

“What do we do now?” asks another of the healers.

“Honor the dead,” says Dranko.  He looks around.  “And clean the living room,” he adds.

“Your sisters died bravely,” Morningstar tells them.  “We would not have been victorious without them. Octesian is dead, and no one else will die by his hand.”

Dranko wrinkles his nose.  Even stronger than the iron tang of blood in the Greenhouse is the putrid stench of rotten fish wafting up from the harbor.  “We’re running out of time,” he observes.

The young acolyte looks up at Morningstar.  “Time until what?” she asks.

Morningstar lets out a long breath.  “What is your name, child?”

“Anna.”

“Anna,” says Dranko.  “You know all about religion, right? Well, the Adversary is trying to return, and we’re going to stop him. _Morningstar_ is going to stop him.”

Anna looks confused. “What adversary are you talking about?  I though you said Octesian was dead.”

“Do you know how Ell came to Abernia?” Dranko asks her.  He instinctively thinks about his peek at the Adversary in Octesian’s vision, and hot pain shoots through his head.  

“Of course. She came here with the other Travelers when they fled from… from… oh.”

“Is that why the fish are dying?” asks another priestess.  “Is the Adversary killing the fish?”

“Yes,” says Aravis.  “That’s also why luck has been having wild swings recently.”  

Over the mind-link, Aravis adds for his party’s benefit:  _Though there’s a big difference between fish dying because the Adversary is coming near, and wimpy-ass Gods fleeing because they’re scared of him. I think if you ask Ell, she’d agree with me._


/*/


As a group, the collected priestesses leave the Greenhouse, covering their noses with their sleeves to filter out the reek of dead fish.  While the wizards use _clean_ cantrips to fix up the Greenhouse, Morningstar issues a _sending_ to her mother in Kynder Hold.  

_*Dear Mom: Octesian dead, six sisters fell, bravely. I wanted you to hear from me: Ell made me Her Shadow, Her champion on Abernia. Yikes! *_

The reply: *Does being the Champion’s Mom give me powers? I’m so happy and proud of you, Morningstar. Visit soon!*

Up next for Morningstar is a visit to High Priestess Rhiavonne in Kallor. Grey Wolf agrees to _teleport_ her there.  Dranko just wants to stay in the Greenhouse and get as drunk as possible, and the others think that sounds like an excellent idea. The death of Octesian seems like an fine occasion for a party.  Scola and Evenstar decide to stay as well.

In the Twilight City, Morningstar is granted an immediate audience with the High Priestess, and the first words from Rhiavonne are, “I suppose it’s a good sign that I’m seeing you in person.”

Morningstar casts her eyes downward.  “I lost six.”

“Six?” says Rhiavonne.  “I feared it would be worse.”

“Including Previa,” Morningstar adds.

“I’m so sorry. I know she was close to you.”

Morningstar looks up again. “And… Ell made me her Shadow.”

Rhiavonne smiles wanly. “I know. And I’m very pleased for you.  But I’m also extremely worried, that Ell _needs_ a Shadow. I’m not surprised, though. I’ve heard about the fish, and the earthquakes, and… there have been disturbing rumors about the town of Sentinel recently, reports of a strange attack or something similar. Nothing solid. We have a small church in that city, but we cannot contact anyone there.  I suspect it’s all related to the threat posed by the Great Enemy.”

Grey Wolf, standing respectfully at the back of the room, raises an eyebrow at the mention of Sentinel. That’s where Farazil was investigating the strange murders committed by two of the deep miners.

“Ell also told me that we’d be leaving soon,” says Morningstar.

“Yes, it’s ironic,” says Rhiavonne, “that we get the first Champion of Ell in centuries, and now you’re going to leave, never to return. Though I hope that’s apocryphal, of course.”

For just a second, Morningstar considers confronting the High Priestess with the images she was shown by Octesian in his demiplane, but decides there’s nothing to be gained by it. Instead she gives a little laugh.

“I don’t think it’s a job with a long life expectancy.”

“Perhaps,” says Rhiavonne. “But if anyone was going to come through it alive, I’d put my money on you.  You’ve survived… a lot of things that most would not have weathered, in just a few short years.  But I’ll sleep easier tonight, as will every priestess of Ell who’s aware of what was at stake… not to mention every citizen of Charagan, whether they know it or not.”

“My sisters were incredibly brave,” says Morningstar. “They went in knowing they probably wouldn’t survive, helping me attack Octesian.  And half of them didn’t.”

“We will certainly afford them every honor the church can bestow,” says Rhiavonne gravely. “Do you have the bodies?  They should be interred here at Kallor.”

Morningstar explains the odd circumstances of the sisters’ deaths, and the unusual locale of their collective burial site.  Hearing that Morningstar can take two hundred people there for a service, Rhiavonne promises to make arrangements.

“I don’t know what else to say,” says Rhiavonne, finally. “’Congratulations’ seems insufficient.”

“We saw a bit of what happened to Octesian when he went looking for the Adversary,” says Morningstar. “He was projecting his memories into his demiplane.  And the Adversary is feeling very… confident.”

“You’ll just have to prove that his confidence is misplaced.”

“Indeed,” says Morningstar. “Octesian was also confident of victory.”

“Overconfidence is a common flaw in the villainous,” says Rhiavonne.  “Now, go, rejoin your friends. You deserve to celebrate.”

As Morningstar and Grey Wolf leave, the High Priestess calls out, “Oh, Morningstar, one more thing!”

Morningstar knows what Rhiavonne has remembered: her promised holy writings. “Yes,” she calls back. “It’ll be done before I leave.”

“… good.  Thank you.”

Just before they close the door, they hear Rhiavonne mutter to herself, “Well, thank Ell for that.”  Does she refer to the writing? Or to Morningstar’s ascension to Shadow?  Or to the fact that the church will finally be rid of Morningstar’s tumultuous political influence, as she leaves on her one-way journey?  

“Grey Wolf, let’s go home.”


/*/


Back at the Greenhouse, Morningstar and Grey Wolf find Dranko lounging on a sofa with a mug of beer in his hand. His feet are comfortably propped up on a recumbent rhinoceros. 

“His name is Pokey,” Dranko explains.  There’s a chicken leg skewered on Pokey’s horn, but the rhino, who’s lapping at a large mixing bowl filled with Kibi’s finest ale, doesn’t seem to mind.  Flicker reaches up, grabs the chicken, takes a bite, and returns it to the horn.  “These things are useful!”

“I dunno,” says Aravis.  “I think your chicken might be undercooked.”  He sears it with a jet of flame which, even inebriated, he’s skillful enough to deliver without singing the rhino.

“You’ll be gone in less than ten minutes, little fellow,” says Dranko, his speech ever-so-slightly slurred. “Always remember this. It’ll be the best ten minutes of your life.”

Eddings walks in, wearing a guardedly neutral expression and carrying a platter of cheese.

“As you requested,” he says.  “Now, will you or the rhino need anything else?  More beer?”  He peers suspiciously at the huge beast.  “A diaper?”

Kibi comes up from the basement and looks aghast at the drinking rhinoceros. “You’ve been feeding my hand-crafted brew to a rhino?”

Dranko looks incredulous. “You’d have had us feed it inferior beer?”

“Where did that even come from?” asks the Dwarf.

The answer is Dranko’s _bag of tricks_, but Flicker waves his hand.  “Ooh, ooh, I know!  It comes from the Elemental Plane of Rhi… Rhinoc… Rhinoceroseses.”

“Rhinos aren’t an element,” says Aravis.

“They’re like an elephant, though,” says Flicker.  “Doesn’t that count?”

“So,” says Morningstar, and the revelers finally notice her at the door.  Evenstar, Scola and Snokas are talking together in a corner, sipping drinks and laughing.  Evenstar raises her mug in a silent toast, then looks over at Dranko and smiles.

Morningstar walks to where her sisters and Snokas are gathered. “Rhiavonne is taking care of the guest list for the funeral.”

“Better her than you,” says Scola.  “You have more important things to do.”  Morningstar agrees.

The rhino vanishes.  Dranko pouts, pulls out the _bag of tricks_ again, and produces a lion.  He instructs his new pet to continue drinking from the bowl of beer.

“Hey, you know who would love this party?” exclaims Flicker.  “Al Tarqoz!”

Aravis is reluctant and first, but between Dranko and Flicker’s cajoling, and the beer he has already consumed, the wizard is convinced to rub the ring on his fingers and summon the Djinn. Al Tarqoz appears on the floor, dressed in purple silken pajamas, lying peacefully on his back, eyes closed.  But quickly the eyes snap open, and he sits bolt upright. His nose crinkles.

“Is that… dead fish?”

“Welcome to the Greenhouse!” exclaims Flicker.

“I was sleeping,” says Al Tarqoz.

“Well, you’re not sleeping now!” says Dranko.  “So have a beer!”

Al Tarqoz turns to Aravis, then back to Dranko.  “Are you _commanding_ me to have a beer?”

“No, I’m _offering_ it to you.”

The Djinn turns again to Aravis, who nods.  “I see that it would please you,” says Al Tarqoz, “and you _are_ the master of the ring.”  He accepts the proffered mug and takes a sip.  “Unusually high quality,” he says, with the tiniest lift of a well-manicured eyebrow. “Who’s responsible for it? You, Master Dwarf? Well done.”

To Aravis he then says, “Now, what else. Or did you simply summon me to drink a beer?”

“I summoned you to enjoy yourself!” says Aravis.

“I was sleeping.  And I was enjoying sleeping.  And I…”

He finally notices the lion.  

“You prime material beings are crazy, you realize this, yes?”

Aravis grins. “The lion is technically one of my worshippers.”

Al Tarqoz blinks. “Your what?”

“I’m a God,” says Aravis.

“No you’re not,” says Al Tarqoz.”

“Yes I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes I am.”

“No you’re not.”

“He is of a sort,” says Morningstar.

“Fine,” says Aravis. “I’m a Divine Being. I’m not entirely sure what the distinction is.”

“You can’t grant spells to your followers,” says Dranko.

“True,” Aravis admits. He looks crestfallen for a moment.  “Though I haven’t really _tried_ granting spells to cats. Only to Flicker, and that didn’t work out.”

“I stopped worshipping you months ago,” says Flicker.  He pauses to draw a long gulp of Kibi’s finest. “No offense, Aravis, but you were kind of second rate. You couldn’t even grant me one measly orison!”

Aravis grins wickedly. “How about I turn you into a cat, and see what I can grant you then?”

“No thanks!”

“Then watch the blasphemy.”

“What blasphemy?  Did you grant me a spell and I missed it?  Hey, Kibi, is there more beer?”

Al Tarqoz shakes his head, but does take another sip from his mug.

“Hey, hold on,” says Dranko.  “Flicker, come help me with something.”  The two of them bound down to the basement, and drag up a large, empty barrel.

“Hey Al Tarqoz,” says Dranko.  “You can create wine, right?  Can you make it in this barrel?”

Aravis nods, so the Djinn grants Dranko’s request.

“The lion’s going to love it!” says Dranko, and he decants some of the wine into bowl, now empty of beer.

“So, Al Tarqoz,” says Dranko, watching the lion sample the wine. “Tell us about your home life!”

The Djinn keeps his answer brief. “I live in the City of Brass, and make my living as a silk merchant.”

“Then how’d you end up in a ring?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Hey!” says Dranko. “Sometime we’ll travel to the City of Brass and we can all have dinner together.  And buy silks!”

“Please,” says Al Tarqoz, turning an odd shade of aquamarine. “Please never visit me in my home.”

“We can go back to your place after dinner,” continues Dranko, unmindful of the Djinn’s request. “We can summon you in your own house.  You’ll just go from one side of the room to the other!”

“He’s not a toy,” Aravis admonishes. “Nor a parlor trick.”

“I’ve been summoned before,” adds Kibi.  “It’s annoying.”

Aravis becomes grave. “Al Tarqoz, in a  few days, we’ll being going on the last quest of our lives, to stop an enemy who’s going to destroy the world.”

“That’s terrible,” says Al Tarqoz, with the straightest face he can manage.

“We might summon you while on that quest,” adds Aravis.

“Oh. Then I will be happy, as always, to serve my most benevolent master.”

The party is interrupted by the whining summons of the crystal ball in the secret room.  Dranko races to get there first, but Aravis _teleports_ there ahead of him. Ozilinsh’s face appears in the crystal sphere.

“Sorry to wake you,” he begins.  (It’s well after midnight, and a reasonable supposition.)

“No, no,” Dranko assures him. “We were just feeding wine to the lion.”  In a roundabout fashion, they explain everything that’s happened recently, along with some of the details of their post-victory festivities.

“I see,” says Ozilinsh, when Aravis and Drano have finished explaining.  “Can you have the place cleaned up by the day after tomorrow?  The King wants a meeting of the Spire at the Greenhouse.  He considers it an emergency.”

“It’s probably worse than he thinks,” says Dranko.  “The Adversary is coming.  I’ve seen him.”

Ozilinsh perks right up.  “Oh?  What does he look like?”

“Pretty horrible. It makes my brain burn to think about.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” says Ozilinsh. “Describe him!”

“No, sorry, not tonight.”

Morningstar has joined them by this time.  “Octesian was made of tentacles,” she offers.

“Really? All of him? What percent of his body mass would you say was tentacles?”

Eventually they mollify Ozilinsh enough that he lets them return to their merrymaking.  They have promised to clean themselves and the Greenhouse in plenty of time for a Spire confab. 

And in the wee hours they go to sleep, and all of their dreams are good ones.

…to be continued…


A quick note about this run:  for what I think is the only place in the Story Hour, I've made up something that happened differently in the game.  That's because we collectively made a mistake about Scola.  In the first part of the big battle, Scola was killed and re-animated via the _revenance_ spell. But in the second part, which was over a month later, we mistakenly thought that she had been saved via _revivify_. So she was left alive and well after Octesian was killed, even though by rights she should have keeled over dead when the _revenance_ timed out.  The bit about the "Miracle of Ell" that left her alive was really a miracle of us forgetting what spell was used.  

Oh, and MorningstarofEll: the write-up made Morningstar _look _like a bad-ass because she _was_ one.  The tape doesn't lie.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> After a time her halo dims, and her wings fade, and her eyes and teeth return to normal




*WHAT??* I thought she was gonna look like that forever!! Change her back! Or have Al Tarqoz do it!


----------



## steeldragons

I make humbled supplication to Ell, Delioch, Yondalla...heck, even Aravis if it helps...

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE novelize this...Yes, all of it!

The action, the plots, the weaving of plots that all interact and come fruition throughout, the characters themselves and their amazingly developed individuality, the FANTASTIC "down times" and their NPC interactions. Case in point: serving animals from Dranko's bag of tricks alcohol, summoning Al Torqoz for a party (and Al Torqoz's general attitude hand character as always tickled me), the solemnity and reverence interactions -over the years- with Rhivionne and other "superiors"...the 'off screen" gold of the PC's families and other loved ones (Previa, Snokas, etc...).

It's all just gold!!! 

A trilogy [or more] is just BEGGING to take up room on my book shelves.


----------



## MorningstarofEll

Everett said:


> *WHAT??* I thought she was gonna look like that forever!! Change her back! Or have Al Tarqoz do it!




*Lol*  I am not sure Dranko would agree with you..all though who knows maybe he would. 

Sagiro added the pointy teeth and wings in for me.  Waaay back when, when our biggest problems were pits of rats, someone..ok..probably Dranko.. had mocked Morningstar.  Saying that Ellish priestesses turned into vampire bats or something didn't they.  I had told Sagiro that it would be funny if there was some truth to that rumor after all.


----------



## KidCthulhu

Wasn't it a common rumor that Ellish priestesses were vampires?  Because no one ever saw them in daylight?


----------



## Everett

Seriously though, does Ell's Shadow get any combat bonuses/abilities you can lay out for us, Sagiro?


----------



## Chronikoce

This story hour is so wonderful. Thank you for as always for continuing to write it! I especially enjoyed the Rhino and Lion bit haha


----------



## Sagiro

To answer some recent questions:



Mathew_Freeman said:


> WOW.
> 
> ...what a fantastic battle. Huge kudos to everyone involved for something that came out so well-balanced!
> 
> And particularly to Aravis, for that stunt! Can we get a behind-the-scenes mechanical description of how that played out?



It was pretty simple, really.  Aravis told me his plan, and asked how many wrapped-up victims he could rescue. I asked him to make an intelligence check, and that the result would dictate a number between 0 and 3.  He said he wanted to make sure Snokas was rescued, and his roll was such that I let him rescue one other person as well.  Aravis had a history of "extreme teleporting" during the campaign, so I figured it was the sort of thing he'd be naturally good at.



			
				Everett said:
			
		

> Did any of the sisters survive? Lost count.



About half of them did.  There were six deaths among Morningstar's "Dream Team."



			
				Waylander the Slayer said:
			
		

> Who is left in the Church of Ell?



I'm not sure I quite understand this question.  The Church as a whole lost only a tiny percentage of its membership. There are hundreds of Ellish sisters all over Charagan, and only a handful perished at Octesian's tentacles.



			
				steeldragons said:
			
		

> PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE novelize this...Yes, all of it!



I've thought about this a great deal over the years. As I'm sure I've mentioned in the past, there are many problems with novelizing a D&D campaign: the pacing is off, there are a ton of issues with intellectual property, there would have to be _many_ fewer combats in a novelization, etc. However, I may do some exploration into the possibility _after I'm done the Story Hour._  I don't think there's room in my head for two simultaneous Charagan-based writing projects.  But sometimes I realize that I'll have written over a million words of Story before this is over, and there must be _some_ way I can turn them into half-way decent fantasy novels.  



			
				Everett said:
			
		

> Seriously though, does Ell's Shadow get any combat bonuses/abilities you can lay out for us, Sagiro?



Nope. There are no explicitly game-mechanistic benefits to being Ell's Shadow.  I told Morningstar's player that she may manifest the physical signs when exerting her authority and power, either in combat or out, but that I was purposefully leaving the tangible benefits thereof vague.

On a related note, all the PC's hit 20th level immediately following Octesian's death.


----------



## Piratecat

Just a note - Sagiro and family are off traipsing around southern Europe at the moment. Don't expect an update for a couple of weeks.


----------



## Teflonknight

What is the gender make up of the players? It seems to me to be pretty even. Saigro
I just wanted to say that this is an excellent campaign and I am really enjoying reading it. The twists that you have thrown in have been really great.


----------



## Piratecat

We're split exactly 50/50. Dranko, Gray Wolf and Aravis (and Tor, many years ago) are played by men; Ernie, Morningstar and Kibi (and once upon a time, Kay and Mrs. Horn) are played by women. Flicker is a NPC.

Teflonknight, glad you're having as much fun reading it as we did playing it. And just wait. Mr. "Look a plot twist that makes your mind break" Sagiro is far from done.


----------



## Chronikoce

shamelessly bumping this since we know Sagiro will be back eventually. 

Also, reading through some of the earlier stuff and I am really impressed by the number of NPC characters that are part of the party. When I DM it usually gets hard to remember to have the NPC's in the party do anything (especially during combat).


----------



## Piratecat

He's back from Spain! Where, conveniently enough, it rained mostly on the plains. It also rained in the mountains, though, where he was hiking. 

He may still be slightly damp.


----------



## thatdarncat

So he had plenty of time hiding out in his tent to write, right?


----------



## Everett

I always picture Sagiro writing in a palatial living room area, at the table they gamed the campaign at, which is naturally a huge oaken structure about 10 feet wide and 30 feet long, with a crystal chandelier overhead...


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 361*_
*Essences*

The Company has a busy schedule.  In the next two days they intend to investigate Sentinel, host a meeting of the Spire, and hold a funeral service for the sisters of Ell who fell in the battle of Octesian. They've decided not to delay their pursuit of Seven Dark Words any longer than that.

Eddings starts preparing the living room for the following night’s big meeting, while the party wolfs down the morning’s _heroes’ feast_. 

“We’d love to help clean up,” says Aravis, “but we have a busy couple of days ahead of us.”

“Nothing to worry about,” the butler replies. “Cleaning up the Greenhouse is my job, after all, and this will not be the first time we’ve entertained dignitaries. Fortunately the rhino and lion did not… deposit any lasting remains upon the floor.”

None in the party have been to Sentinel, a city of some five thousand people perched on the western coastal cliffs of Nahalm.  But Sentinel is only a couple of hours _wind walk_ from Kallor, so they _teleport_ to the Ellish city and fly in from there.  Morningstar cannot imagine what could have caused a cessation of all contact with the sisters there, _sendings_ included, but she’s soon to find out.


/*/


About five miles out, just when they expect to see Sentinel on the horizon, the Company feels the first uneasy pangs.  Two minutes later and the feeling is unmistakable – it’s the hot, sickening feeling that emanates from Adversary blood.  And they’re already feeling it, from three miles away?  Not good!  They land and solidify long enough for Ernie to cast _magic circle of protection from evil_, and then they speed the rest of the way to the city.

There is a short line of carts and wagons waiting outside the eastern city gate, but none are moving.  The party lands, and finds a body lying on the ground outside the wagon closest to the wall. A well-dressed middle-aged merchant lies in the dirt, a pool of sticky congealed blood beneath his corpse. He has died from a number of puncture wounds, as if someone has stabbed him to death with a small knife. It can’t have been more than a day since his murder.

The other four wagons are abandoned, but Grey Wolf discovers a second body in the back of this one, a younger man dressed similarly to the first victim outside.  A letter opener protrudes from his eye socket. 

Dranko scratches his head.  “They all went crazy and killed one another?”

“Seems likely,” says Grey Wolf.

Hearts filled with apprehension, the Company walks through the open city gates.  No watchmen challenge them, though a rancid smell wafts out from inside the walls. And inside – pure horror. Bodies litter the streets, most of them either beaten or stabbed to death.  Some trail smeared tracks of blood, as they staggered about before dropping.  A few corpses come in pairs, their hands tight around one another’s throats.

Smoke rises here and there around Sentinel, and the faint crackling of fires comes from several directions. There is no sign of life.

“This is pretty horrible,” says Dranko.

Grey Wolf shakes his head. “The city annihilated itself. This is worse than Octesian.”

Morningstar casts _brain spider_, the easiest way to detect anyone who may still live in this city-turned-abattoir.  She immediately discovers two living minds within a hundred feet or so, and she focuses on the surface thoughts of the closest of these.  

_“I want to find someone else to kill. I need to kill someone. Too many are dead already; I need to find someone else to kill. Ah… my leg… broken… no, it doesn’t matter. What matters is finding someone else to kill. I need to kill….”  _

Morningstar reports that it’s a young woman thinking these thoughts.  She severs the connection in disgust and focuses on the second mind, but it’s much the same.  This one is an older man, and there’s some confusion mixed in with his homicidal litany, as well as regret… that he’s too old, too feeble to kill anyone.

It’s a grim thing, but the Company takes the time to comb the city, letting Morningstar scan it for survivors. Altogether there are sixty-eight people still living within the walls of Sentinel, sixty-eight people who have all either done murder but were injured in the process, or who were too feeble, old or clumsy to have slain their fellows.  Sixty-eight, out of a town of over five thousand citizens.

Morningstar drops into Ava Dormo long enough to see that the local dreamscape is empty.  All seven Ellish sisters here are among the dead.

“Whatever happened here, it spread through the whole city,” Dranko observes. “We _really_ don’t want it to spread any further.”

There is one other gap in the city’s wall, a low, wide gate to the north from which a road leads to the nearby copper mines.  Recalling the initial two murders – committed by copper miners – the party heads that way to investigate the source of the city’s horrific fate. 

Morningstar frowns as they leave the shadow of the wall. “The Emperor was _digging_ for something, wasn’t he?” 

The others all nod. 

The mining site is a large road that slopes downward into a man-made ravine.  Down on the ravine floor, six mineshafts have been bored into the walls at even intervals.  As they approach this ravine, the feeling of Adversary blood grows more potent, more _hot_, pressing against their _circle of protection_.  They start to walk down the pitched road, but stop before they’re even halfway there.  The ravine floor is still in shadow this early in the morning, but they can see well enough that it's inches deep in black goo.

“Guess what they struck?” says Grey Wolf with a bitter laugh.

They return to the gaseous aspect of their _wind walk_ and waft down the long ramp to the ravine floor, some seventy-odd feet below ground level.  Being careful not to touch the black liquid, and crowding around Ernie to stay inside the protective _magic circle_, they make a closer investigation of the mine.  The ravine is a hundred yards long and thirty yards wide, and every inch of it is covered with Adversary blood to a depth of four inches. At least its level isn’t rising at the moment, and there is no sign of a continued inpouring of the stuff.  The most likely explanation is that the “Essence” bubbled up through one of the mineshafts, from somewhere far beneath the surface.

The Company retreats from the ravine, and Morningstar issues warning _sendings_ to Ozilinsh and Yale about what they’ve found.  She suggests that Sentinel be quarantined. The replies are similar, boiling down to “That’s horrible. Be careful. Discover what you can.”

They also _send_ to Farazil:  *Don’t come back to Sentinel. Everyone’s dead.  What did you learn while you were here?*

His answer:  _*No one had died.  Had decided murderers had discovered mind-affecting artifact in deep copper mine. No sign of black goo. No plan to return.*_

“If those people are infected with something,” says Morningstar, “we might not be able to let them out of the city.  Is it the place, or the people?”

“And even if we _can_ cure them,” says Dranko soberly, “they’ll know they killed their own friends and family.”

All agree that there’s no good outcome to this.

“Why is this happening _now_?” Dranko asks out loud. “And why is the Adversary’s blood making people kill each other?  When Ernie and Aravis were infected, this didn’t happen to them.  Thank God.”

Grey Wolf graces Dranko with a grim smile. “The God fell down, crashed into the center of the world, and now His blood is bubbling out.”

“And if He’s waking up,” adds Morningstar, “His blood might have new, or different effects than it did before.”

Dranko rubs his chin. “I’m uncomfortable leaving behind a town with seventy-five mass murderers in it.”

After a short, unhappy discussion, the remainder of the Company agrees.  They know from experience that purging a single person from even the tiniest exposure to Essence requires _miracle_ and _wish_ cast concurrently. Weighed against the risk of the infection spreading beyond Sentinel, and considering the horrible internal thoughts of the infected, the extreme solution is unavoidable.  With as much speed and mercy as they can muster, the Company finds and executes every one of the sixty-eight survivors of Sentinel’s disaster.

Before taking their leave of the city, the heroes visit the town prison.  As they hoped, the two original murderers – the ones they had sent Farazil to investigate – are dead in their cells, having been stabbed through the bars, probably by the warden.  Morningstar casts _speak with dead_ on one of these.  His body gurgles and coughs up blood as it animates.

“What were you doing right before you decided to kill your wife?”

_Eating dinner._

“Was there anything unusual about that day?”

_Something in the mine, maybe?_

“Did you find something unusual in the mine?”

_More like a smell?_

“How would you describe the smell.”

_“Wrong.”_

“Did you see any unusual fluids leaking up into the mine?”

_No._

“Did you feel strange after you left the mine?”

_Yeah, little bit._

Did you want to kill more people than just your wife?

_Not until later._

“Did the smell spread over time, or did it stay in the mine?”

_Didn’t smell it so much once I came back to my house.  Smelled it more a little later, once I was here in prison._

“Did you receive any commands to kill people, or did it just seem like a good idea?”

_Wife burned the bread.  So I thought I’d kill her._

“Can you sense who else wants to kill people?”

_No. Well, the warden, obviously. Heh. Heh, heh._

After casting some intra-party _detect evils_ (to make sure they’re not carriers of the infection), the party _wind walks_ back to Tal Hae with heavy hearts. They try to take their minds off the day’s cruel trials by helping Eddings prepare the Greenhouse for the next day’s Spire meeting, but it’s hard not to dwell upon the effective death of one of Charagan’s coastal cities.

“I have an idea.”

Morningstar gathers everyone around her.  “If we’re going to have to fight the Adversary in some form or another, I’d like to know how. And one way we can do that is to watch how he was fought the last time.”

Everyone waits to hear where this is going. 

“When we were in Het Branoi, we passed through a part of Ava Dormo where battles were recreated in dreams by those who had fought in them . If we can watch the dream-version of the battle where the Adversary fought the Travelers, we might learn something.”

Dranko stares at his wife. “Have I mentioned recently that you’re totally brilliant?”


/*/

That evening, Morningstar dreams the party to that distant place in Ava Dormo where dream battles are fought.  All around them there is a slow-moving fog, and through that mist they can hear the sounds of battles coming from many different directions.

“Hello?” calls Morningstar.  “Dream Essence, are you here?”

Soon a bobbing sphere of light appears through the mist, and it coalesces into a humanoid shape in from of Morningstar.

“Welcome back,” it says.

“Thank you.  It’s good to see you again.”

“You’ve changed,” says the Dream Essence.  “How can I be of help to you.”

“We’re going to be fighting an important battle,” Morningstar explains. “One that resonates with a battle that happened a long time in our past.  I wondered if it was possible to find an echo of that battle here, so we could learn from it.”

Dream Essence nods its glowing head. “Can you describe it?  Perhaps we can find it for you.”

Morningstar draws the _Watcher’s Kiss_. “Some very unique weapons were used.”

“Ah,” says the golden bit of sentient dream.  “_That_ battle.  Yes, it has a strong resonance here.  You may have… difficulty observing it.  It was fought between divine beings, and isn’t meant for mortals to witness. But I’ll take you there.”

“We’re afraid we’re going to have to fight to the Adversary, who was part of that battle,” Morningstar explains.

“One of the divine beings?” asks Dream Essence, surprise evidence in its inhuman voice. “But you are not divine.”

“Yeah,” says Dranko. “We’re pretty much screwed.”

The Dream Essence glides through the fog, and the party follows, nervously.  “The dream you will see is fashioned somewhat out of the dreams of the divine, and somewhat out of the dreams of those mortals who were present while the battle was fought.”

They cover dozens of miles in just couple of minutes, dreaming themselves along.  Their guide stops in front of a patch of empty, hazy dream space, seemingly no different than the rest of this strange place.

To Morningstar, the Dream Essence says, “You will have to think hard about what you want to see.”

“You’ve been super helpful,” says Dranko. “Is there anything we can do for you, little ball of light?”

“’Little ball of light?’”  The Dream Essence sounds amused.  “No, but it’s nice of you to offer.”

The Essence of Dream parts the fog like a curtain, but what it reveals is not immediately clear. Battles between Gods are not like those of mortals; for the most part the Company does not see volleys of spells, or slashing blades, or divine blood spilled upon the ground.  If not for Morningstar’s status as Ell’s Shadow, they would probably sense nothing at all.

They glimpse the battle between the Adversary and the Gods of Darvin as a series of impressions. The Adversary is not from this world; He has come from somewhere Outside, an invader, and his might is so great, it casts a pall over even the likes of Brechen, Ell and Werthis. He has devastated the world of Darvin; millions of mortals have already been killed, piled up around the metaphorical feet of the Gods as they strive against one another.    

There is a sense of place – a stronghold the Adversary has made for Himself, and the battle rages in front of it. Below the towering presences of the Gods, lesser divine beings and powerful mortals fight to save (or kill) the remaining peoples of Darvin.  Morningstar has a moment of clarity, or perhaps her mind chooses to translate the event into understandable terms, and she sees the demigod Aurelia dart into the fray and land a hit on the Adversary’s body with Ell’s Will. The Adversary roars, turns to smite her, but is engaged by Werthis before He can dispatch her.

The battle slowly turns in the Adversary’s favor. One truth that pervades the battlefield is that for all the Gods’ might, they _cannot kill[/il the Adversary.  They lack either the knowledge how, or the strength to make it so, but either way this battle cannot be won.  And the Adversary knows this. He has killed several of the Darvin Gods already – He can certainly kill them. 

At last the Gods decide to flee, taking with them as many of their mortal flock as they can manage. They had hoped to lure the Adversary into a prison they had prepared, but there is no hope of that now.    Werthis curses the name of Uthol Inga, who alone of the Darvin Gods has chosen to join the Adversary, as He shepherds the mortals toward a distant point of safety and escape. Ell cloaks the fleeing masses in protective shadows, while Delioch heals the wounds of untold thousands.  

As the Adversary makes to follow his prey, a golden spike protrudes from His heart. Uthol Inga has stabbed the Adversary with a specially-crafted blade, long forged in secret for just this purpose. She has placed her attack carefully -- The Adversary’s heart is not where a human’s would be, but lower and to the left. The towering God falls to His knees, screaming in pain and betrayal, as the golden sword shatters in the Watcher’s hand.  And while even this is not enough to slay Her enemy, Uthol Inga now has the chance to shift the Adversary into the prison prepared for Him, a cage of thoughts and power and adamant and madness that protrudes into the Far Realms. Having done so, Uthol Inga flees after the rest, catching up to them as they prepare to leap across the multiverse to safety.

Behind them the Adversary recovers from His wound, but too late.  The prison is fast closing, and already He is finding it difficult to move.  But with a final effort of will, He thrusts his left hand through the last small opening of the prison, and as it closes and seals, His hand is sliced cleanly off.   And it plummets, streaking through the cosmos, in pursuit of His enemies.  

…to be continued…_


----------



## SolitonMan

Another great update!  

I'm going to have to go back and read this entire story hour once the final entry has been posted.  Thanks Sagiro!


----------



## Piratecat

I did recently, SolitonMan. It was great! StevenAC's compiled PDFs are a thing of beauty.

This was a weird and completely spooky game. We went expecting to have to fight something. We hadn't expected the town to have done it for us.


----------



## SolitonMan

Piratecat said:


> I did recently, SolitonMan. It was great! StevenAC's compiled PDFs are a thing of beauty.




+1 to that!  

I forget how recent my last download of the PDFs was.  I've read through them about four times over the last few years.  Once the entire story hour is completed will be the time to do so once again.  

It will be a day of some regret when this story hour is completed, though.  While waiting for the next installment is always something I do with impatience, knowing there will be no more will be a wistful time I'm guessing... but damn it's been a wild ride!  For me your adventures exemplify the type of game in which I'd like to play.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 362*_
*The Watcher’s Daughter*

Ernie rubs his temples.  “So now the Adversary is giving us the finger?  But at least we know not to stab Him  in the heart… or where we think His heart is.”

Quietly, Morningstar adds, “And now we know that even a God couldn’t kill him.”  

“Say,” asks Dranko. “Are there any battles here that _we’re_ in?  ‘Cause we’ve been in some pretty kick-ass battles.”

“Not enough time has passed since you fought them,” says the Dream Essence.

“But our battle with Condor was a thousand years in the past,” Grey Wolf points out.

“Oh, yes!” says the Dream Essence. “I had forgotten.  That one should certainly be here.”

She takes them to a place where the dream of their titanic battle against Naloric’s earth mage is played out.  They find that while it is an accurate retelling of their fight, it is also very impressionistic. Everyone in the Company  has had dreams of this battle, dreams which reflect its realities and chaos, and the version they observe is formed from their collective dreams of it.

“You know what I think?” says Ernie. “I think we should talk to the Utholites.”

Dranko snorts. “If we go talk to them, and say, ‘hey, we have the weapon that your Goddess once held,’ I wouldn’t give us good odds of getting out with a fight.”

Ernie shakes his head. “But they might know more than anyone else about how to hurt the Adversary.”

At Morningstar’s suggestion, they return once more to the battle of the Gods. This time they focus their attention mostly on Uthol Inga herself, and notice that as She plunges her golden blade through the heart of the Adversary, there is a clear expression of doubt on Her divine features.  But no one can tell whether this doubt stems from not knowing if Her betrayal will succeed, or from not knowing if She even wants to betray Him in the first place.


/*/


“I’m supposed to use that sword.  And now we find out it won’t actually work? How could it? It didn’t work when the Goddess herself was using it. How are we going to use a little piece of it to kill the Adversary?” Kibi is disgusted. He takes a mug of beer from Eddings and drinks deeply.

“It’ll hurt him,” says Grey Wolf.  “And make him mad. That’ll have to be enough.”

Dranko taps the side of his head with his finger.  “I’ve been told by tentacular monstrosities that someday, someone will pluck my brain like a ripe peach, and be completely horrified by the nasty core inside of it. My hope, and my expectation, is that the Adversary is going to peel apart my brain, and be overcome by the damp canker deep in my soul. That’s when Kibi should be sticking our golden sword into Him.”

Kibi looks doubtful.  “Maybe.”

“So,” says Ernie.  “I still want to find the Utholites and learn more about the sword. They must know _something_ that would help.”

The others agree, but there’s a problem. No one knows where any of them are. Nowhere in the kingdom are there any pubic shrines, temples or churches to the Watcher.  As far as the Company knows, the followers of Uthol Inga have always been hidden, except for the time they emerged in the streets of Sand's Edge to (unsuccessfully) defend the Ventifact Colossus. The party has no leads.

So Aravis creates one. He casts _vision_, with the goal of learning how they can contact the highest levels of Uthol Inga’s church.  Into his head comes the image of a large city on the coast, almost certainly Hae Charagan. 

“Well, I’ve narrowed it down to the biggest city in the kingdom,” he says.

The others look at Aravis, hoping to hear something more useful, but that’s all the _vision_ gave him.  It’s past midnight by now, and the Spire meeting is hours away.

“Can we try _discern location_?” asks Ernie.  “To find the high priest of Uthol Inga in Hae Charagan?”

“Not unless we have something he’s touched,” says Morningstar.  But of course, no one does.

“We have this,” says Kibi. He pulls out the _Watcher’s Kiss_, and the colors of the Greenhouse interior are washed away.  All eyes are drawn to the brilliant golden glow of the Goddess’s blade.

“I doubt the Watcher high priest has ever held that,” Flicker opines.

But they try it anyway, since perhaps the holiest object ever known to the Watcher’s religion might serve as a focus to find their leader.  Morningstar casts the spell.

She doesn’t learn the location of her target.  

She _does_ learn the location of an altar, and that place is in Hae Charagan.

“Good enough for me,” says Dranko.  “Let’s go.”

They _teleport_.


/*/


The street location in Morningstar’s head is on a short block of artisan’s shops. There are glassblowers, table-makers, several smithies and a chandlery.  Morningstar stops in front of a clockmaker.  “It’s in here.”

It being after midnight, the shop is closed. Grey Wolf knocks on the door.

After a couple of minutes and a few more knocks, the Company hears the sound of feet thumping down some stairs from the second floor of the shop.  This sound is followed by bolts being drawn, after which the door opens to reveal a slight old man in his pajamas.  His hair is wispy and disheveled. 

“We’re closed,” he says testily.

 “We’re sorry to disturb you at this hour,” says Morningstar, “but this is a matter of great urgency.”

The old man rubs sleep from his eyes. “Who are you? Do you have something on order?”

“We’re the people who have to finish what the Watcher started,” says Dranko.

The man rubs his scalp. “You're what now?”

Morningstar’s not buying it. “There is an altar here, of great power.”

She fires off a silent, still _detect thoughts_, and is not terribly surprised to find that the old man’s mind is shielded. 

“We’re looking for the Watcher’s children,” says Ernie.

“I’m just a shopkeeper,” says the man.

Morningstar graces him with a look of skepticism. “Then why is your mind shielded?”

The man blinks. “So I don’t get rooked!  Pretty common practice.  Who are you, anyway?”  

“We’re the Heroes of the Kalkas Peaks,” says Ernie.

“The who of the what now?  Look, if it’ll make you go away, I’ll sell you a clock right now.”

Dranko steps forward. “You know how the Adversary is coming, and you know how the Emperor has done his best to enter the world three times?  We’re the people who stopped him.  Now we would like to stop the Adversary from coming, and we need your help. We’ve told no one else of this shop’s existence, I promise.” 

The old man peers at Dranko, then sizes up the rest of the Company.  Finally he says, “You don’t want a clock.”

“No,” says Dranko.

“Then let me see if I can find you something more to your taste.”

He closes the door.  Ten seconds later he opens it again.

“You’re not going to come in armed, are you?”

“Not if you don’t want us to,” Dranko answers.

“I don’t want you to.”

“Some of us have weapons given to us directly by agents of our Gods, so that might not be possible,” says Dranko. “How about if we swear that we won’t attack anyone unless we ourselves are attacked?”

The old man nods.  “Could you say that one more time?  Slowly?”

“I swear on my God Delioch that we will not attack anyone unless we ourselves our attacked.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“By the way, I’m Dranko Blackhope.  Heard of me?”

The man turns his back and beckons them to follow into the shop. “Yeah, I know who you are,” he says over his shoulder.

Dranko laughs. “Someone knows me!  In your face, evil tentacled monstrosity who stole my fame!”

“You’re the torchbearer to the group of heroes you’re with,” says the old man. “Now, all of you, come on, follow me.  Last one in, close the door.”


/*/


The shop is stocked with dozens of beautifully made clocks, pendulums and gears swinging and turning, filling the place with a quiet percussive soundtrack.  There’s a door in the back of the shop which should, given the layout of the city block, lead to a narrow back alley.  But by some dimensional trickery it opens instead into a large hall like a museum, with a variety of relics housed in glass cases.

“Don’t touch anything,” barks the old man.

Dranko calls up a cigar from his haversack and lights a match against Ernie’s armor.

“Want one?” he asks the old man.

“No.”

Ernie nudges the half-orc. “They’re nasty, Dranko.”

“I know,” says Dranko.  “After all, I started smoking them just to annoy the people at the temple.”

The old man wheels around. “Do you know what I might expect from you people?  Gravitas.”

Morningstar laughs at that. “If we tried to maintain gravitas,  we’d long ago have been driven mad, given the things we’ve seen.”

“Right.” The man stops in front of a door at the opposite end of the museum hall. “She’s in here.”

Dranko inclines his head. “Thank you.”

“But you can you leave your _other_ weapons at the door,” the old man reminds them.  “The ones that aren’t gifts from divine beings.”

“Are you gonna take ‘em?” Dranko asks.

“Nobody’s going to take them. You’ll need ‘em.”  He knocks on the door, and a woman’s voice comes from within.  

“Come in. Let’s see our visitors.”

The old man opens the door and stands back, not going in himself.  They all enter, except for Pewter who stays behind to guard their weapons -- just in case.  Beyond the door is what looks like a small mess hall, its long tables and wooden benches empty at the moment, except for a woman sitting and drinking from a wooden cup. She is dressed in plain clothes, and projects nothing of power or spiritual might.

Morningstar leads the Company as they approach her table.  “Good evening Your Holiness. I’m sorry we woke you up. How should we address you?”

“My name is Jahnda,” says the woman. “You can address me as High Priestess or Your Holiness if you’d like, but Jahnda will do.”

“Pleased to meet you,” says Ernie.  “I’m Ern…”

“Ernest Roundhill,” says Jahnda.  “Yes, I know.  I know who you are.”

“You’ve been watching?”

Jahnda chuckles. “Very good.  Yes.  I’ve been watching everything.”

“Sorry we opposed you in that turtle fight,” says Dranko. 

“You did what you felt you had to, just as we did.  So, what brings you here, at last?”

“We need to finish what Uthol Inga started,” says Ernie gravely. “And the more we know how She did what She did, the better prepared we’ll be to finally finish off the Adversary.”

Jahnda stares hard at Ernie. “You’re… going to finish off the Adversary.”

“That seems to be the ticket we’ve drawn,” says Ernie quietly.

“And what is your… plan of action?” asks Jahnda.

For a second or two no one answers.  Dranko clears his throat. “I’d like to think we don’t want to lock ourselves down. To maintain flexibility, you know…”

“We don’t have a plan,” says Grey Wolf.

Jahnda takes another sip from her cup. “And you think that you can succeed where the Watcher failed?” She is not bothering to mask her skepticism.

“Can we trust one another?” Morningstar asks their host.

Jahnda throws her arms wide. “I trust you already.  I let you in here, didn’t I?  And I let you keep Ell’s Will on your person.”

“My Goddess gave me that blade.  It’s one of the reasons we believe we are destined to be at the final battle with the Adversary.”

“Not necessarily,’ says Jahnda. “There will be other battles, battles of great import.”

Dranko sighs. “We've spent a lot of years, and dealt with a whole lot of stupid prophecies, and they’ve all been pointing towards this. I’ve been told, directly, by hideous tentacled monstrosities, that this is coming.” 

“Tentacled monstrosities?”

Ernie makes a face. “Dranko has an unfortunately strong familiarity with the Far Realms.  And given that’s where the Adversary _is_…”

“I take your meaning,” says Jahnda. “So, you are intending to use your powers not toward protecting our escape, but to stop the Adversary from emerging altogether?”

“That is correct,” says Dranko. “We’re not here to help anyone flee.  We’re going to make sure they don’t have to.”

Morningstar takes a step closer to the Watcher’s high priestess. “I didn’t know you _had_ a plan to have everyone flee.”

“Oh, it’s not _my_ plan. But I have faith that it is the Gods’ plan.”

“Well, except for the chicken ones who already ran,” says Dranko.

Jahnda glowers. “Already ran?  That’s what you think?”

“Uh… yes?” answers Dranko. “I’d be more than happy to be proven wrong, though.”

Jahnda narrows her eyes.  “You’re a priest, yes? I would expect that you’d have more faith.”

“I’m not a very _good_ priest,” Dranko admits. “Are we wrong?  Are they preparing a way out?”

“They have to be,” says Jahnda wearily. “The Adversary is coming. The last time that happened, the Gods saved as many of their mortal flock as they could, and fled here.  If the Adversary has finally found them, I expect they will do the same this time, saving whom they can and fleeing the Adversary’s wrath. I would presume that even as we speak, Delioch is preparing to save as many people as possible.”

“Sure,” says Dranko. “But our job is make sure he doesn’t have to save _anyone_.”

“But it’s possible,” says Morningstar, turning to her husband, “that our job will be to hold the way open, so as many can flee as is possible. We don’t know for sure.”

“I hope that _is_ your job,” says Jahnda. “We could use more people here like you when the time comes.”

“But we have seen signs that we’ll have to confront the Adversary,” says Morningtar.

Jahnda shakes her head. “He’s going to destroy you, you know.  You cannot defeat Him.”

“I think maybe that’s why Uthol Inga failed the first time,” says Ernie. “Because She didn’t believe that She could kill Him..”

Jahnda starts, and almost looks as though she will rise from her chair.  “You have… great gall, to say something like that in this place.”

“We’ve seen the fight,” says Dranko. “The one where she stabbed the Adversary.”

Jahnda looks at him like he’s gone completely mad. 

“It’s true,” says Ernie. “The moment before she struck, she felt a great doubt.  We saw it on her face.”

Real anger fills Jahnda’s face. “And how do you know that, exactly?”

“We saw it,” says Ernie. “We have been to a place where echoes of past battles still linger. We saw the Gods battle the Adversary.” He sits in the chair opposite Jahnda and leans towards her. “What did Uthol Inga do?  Where did that weapon come from?”

Jahnda leans back. “Weapon? You mean the Sword of the Watcher? It failed.  It was meant to kill the Adversary, but it did not.”  

“What was it made of?” asks Ernie. “It was clearly forged with great power and magic…”

“It was filled with Her own Divine Essence, among other things,” says Jahnda. “But it was destroyed.  No weapon touches the Adversary and survives. Do you seek to forge another, similar weapon?  You’ll need to find a God or Goddess willing to give up their Essence. But I think you’ll find that the Gods are saving themselves for the more practical contingency of flight.”

Ernie stares evenly at Jahnda.  “I’ll cover the retreat if it comes to that, but personally, I don’t like retreating.”

When Jahnda glowers at this, Dranko says, “Uthol Inga made a great sacrifice, and her followers have been excoriated for it ever since, unjustly.  We’d like to redeem the sacrifice which she made for all of us.”  

Jahnda smiles, but eyes betray her bitterness. She sits back in her chair. 

“So you have the intention of confronting and defeating the Adversary himself, and you admit that at the moment, you have no plan for how to do that.  Do you even know where He is?  Where He’ll show himself?  What _His_ plan of attack is?”

Ernie stands back up, disgusted. “Perhaps we made a mistake in coming here. If all we’re going to hear are doubts, and words about how our quest cannot be done, then there’s nothing to be gained by staying.  I understand your disbelief, but if you can’t help us, we need to go elsewhere. We don’t have _time_ for this. I’m sorry we wasted yours.”

“It was useful to know your opinion that a way is being prepared for your escape,” says Morningstar.  “What is your intent, when the Adversary returns?”

Jahnda turns to Ell’s Shadow. “My intent is to watch, for the moment that escape is made available to us.  I have great faith that Uthol Inga and the rest are working out ways to escape when the Adversary returns to this world. It is my job to make sure that my flock is ready,  so that we may avail ourselves of the opportunity when the Gods present it.  To watch for the signs, that the moment is coming.”

“And what are the signs?” asks Morningstar.

“They are all around us now,” says Jahnda. “The earthquakes.  The fish…”

“And we just lost an entire city…” adds Dranko.

“Ah,” says Jahnda. “So you’ve heard about Forquelle, then?”

This brings everyone up short. 

“What?” says Grey Wolf.

“Oh God…” says Morningstar.

“No,” says Dranko. “I was talking about Sentinel.  What happened to Forquelle?”

Jahnda’s face is grim. “My understanding is that it was… washed away.”

“Washed away?” says Dranko. “Tor’s going to be really unhappy once he’s back in his right mind.”

“What were _you_ talking about then?” asks Jahnda. “What happened to Sentinel?”

“Everyone killed each other,” says Dranko.

The Company shares their recent experience in Sentinel, and the bubbling-up of the Adversary’s blood from the copper mines.

“The world is awash in signs,” says Jahnda. “We are in Abernia’s final hours. Whatever you intend to do, you should do it soon.”

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” says Dranko.

“You’re leaving,” Jahnda repeats. “If you don’t mind me asking… for where?”

“We’re going to go beneath,” says Dranko. “To the part of the world that was blocked off.”

Jahnda cannot conceal her surprise. “Beneath  Yulan’s Barrier?”

“That’s where the agents of the Adversary have gone, preceding us,” says Dranko.

“I see,” says Jahnda.  “Ordinarily I would tell you that Yulan’s Barrier is impenetrable, but I imagine you hear that many things are impossible, which you go on to prove are not.  Including things I’ve just told you about the Adversary, maybe?” She lets out a long breath. “Good luck to you, then.  If something occurs to me that I can do to assist, some knowledge or advice, then you will have it. I cannot give you material support; what I have, I will retain, to assist in the escape of our people when… should you fail to kill the Adversary.”

“For what it’s worth,” says Morningstar, “I’m sorry.”

“As are all people who live to see such times,” says Jahnda. “Most people on Abernia… are going to die. As they did last time. The Travelers brought many mortals with them here, but most of them perished. I expect it will be the same this time around.  I am sorry that you won’t be here to assist in the escape, but it seems the Gods have another plan for you. You are like an arrow launched at its target from a great distance… unlikely to hit its mark, but a chance worth taking.”

She stands.  “I’ll give you one piece of advice, should you intend to physically kill the Adversary.  You will need a weapon capable of piercing His divine flesh. I doubt even Ell’s Will is capable of that.”

“If we had such a weapon, do you have any idea how we might use it?” asks Morningstar.

"Uthol Inga stabbed the Adversary through the heart with such a blade, and that wounded him, but did not kill him. You’d also need some other weapon, or force, or source of power. The weapon will be necessary, but it will not be enough.”

She looks intently at Morningstar, searching her face.  “You have such a weapon, don’t you,” she says. “Good. That’s something.”  She stretches, then says, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for an appointment with my bed.”  But as she turns to leave, she asks one more question.

“How did you find me?”

This question brings about a flurry of discussion over the _telepathic bond_, about whether they should reveal the existence of the _Watcher’s Kiss_ to the Watcher High Priestess. They decide to be forthright.

“We have a piece of the sword that was used in the Gods’ battle with the Adversary,” says Morningstar. 

Jahnda’s eyes grow wide. “You have a piece of the Sword of the Watcher?”

“We found this place by using it.”

“Do you have it here?”

Technically it’s in a _bag of holding_. Another mind-link conference leads to the conclusion that while telling Jahnda about the sword is one thing, showing it is quite another.

“No,” says Morningstar.

Jahnda stares daggers into Morningstar for several seconds. She clearly sees through the lie.

“Fine,” she shrugs. “But I would like to have seen it.”

Morningstar folds her arms across her chest. “If you were in my position, what would you do?”

“If I were you, I suppose I would keep it hidden, because you can’t trust me not to try to take it. Because I realize what a difference it might make, in the defense of our escape.”

Morningstar nods.  

“But also if I were you,” continues Jahnda, “I would ask me to swear an oath on my Goddesses’ name, that I would _not_ try to take it from you.  And thus, being convinced of my good intentions, you could show it to me.”

Morningstar looks at the others, and nods again.

Jahnda takes a final sip from her cup. “I swear on the name my Goddess Uthol Inga, and, Goddess willing, my undying soul, that if you show me a fragment of the Sword of the Watcher, I will in no way attempt to remove it from your possession, or have it removed by someone else.”

Satisfied, Ernie pulls the golden blade from the bag, and unsheathes it. “This is the _Watcher’s Kiss_,” he says.  

All the color is washed out of the room, save for the sword itself, and a bright golden glint in Jahnda’s eyes.

“May I?”  Jahnda reaches out for the sword.

Nervously, Ernie hands it over.  Everyone leans forward as Jahnda’s hand grasps the hilt, not certain of what to expect. The High Priestess’s eyes roll up into her head, and for a full minute her mouth trembles while the others look on anxiously.

Finally Jahnda’s eyes snap open. She looks around, and hands the blade to Kibi.

“Did you speak to your Goddess?” asks Grey Wolf.

Tears fall from her cheeks to the wooden table, some landing in her cup. “I didn’t do any speaking,” she whispers. “Go beneath the Barrier, and stop your enemies. Go with my blessing… and Hers.”

…to be continued…


----------



## Piratecat

This was one of my favorite games, and one of my favorite scenes. Fantastic roleplaying all around, especially from Sagiro who as far as I know had NONE of this planned out. It was tremendously satisfying.

The sense of impending departure, the knowledge of likely loss and failure, was palpable. Grey Wolf actually stating "we have no plan" really hurt because it was so true.


----------



## steeldragons

It's just such a bittersweet joy to see each update and continue reading this most amazing of Story Hours, knowing with each installment, there's that one less update to go.

It is a most curious sensation. But always worth it.


----------



## Everett

How many installments left?  Around 20?


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> How many installments left?  Around 20?



There are about 22 game sessions left before the end, but I've been averaging about 1.5 Story Hour posts per game session.  So, I'd estimate about 35 more updates before I'm done telling the story.


----------



## Everett

Also, I COMPLETELY missed wherever we learned that Kibi has to be the one to stab the Adversary, or didn't register the significance when it came up.  Why Kibi?  When did we learn that?


----------



## Quartz

There's also the bit about surrendering divine essence to make another blade, and we all know who has divine essence, don't we?

Edit: and it was interesting to see Dranko speak so casually about sacrificing himself.


----------



## StevenAC

Fantastic update, Sagiro.  But I can't resist pointing out one small goof...



Sagiro said:


> As far as the Company knows, the followers of Uthol Inga have always been hidden, except for the time they emerged in the streets of Hae Charagan to (unsuccessfully) defend the Ventifact Colossus.



That should actually be Sand's Edge, unless the timeline got changed in a fairly major way...


----------



## Sagiro

StevenAC said:


> Fantastic update, Sagiro.  But I can't resist pointing out one small goof...
> 
> That should actually be Sand's Edge, unless the timeline got changed in a fairly major way...



Oops... good catch!  Fixed.

As for this:



> Also, I COMPLETELY missed wherever we learned that Kibi has to be the one to stab the Adversary, or didn't register the significance when it came up. Why Kibi? When did we learn that?



The Company doesn't _know_ that Kibi has to be the one to stab the Adversary.  What they do know is that in Leantha's Book -- the one seemingly left by the dead Goddess of Knowledge as an answer to Aravis's question of "how do we defeat the Adversary" -- one of the drawings shows Kibi holding up the Watcher's Kiss with a smile on his face. And now we've seen the priestess of Uthol Inga hand the blade to Kibi after communing with her Goddess.  So, there's circumstantial evidence, but nothing solid.


----------



## Everett

Quartz said:


> There's also the bit about surrendering divine essence to make another blade, and we all know who has divine essence, don't we?




Well, yeah, we do... Aravis. Plot-lines concerning Kibi: 1) Kibi as the "opener", 2) Cranchus.  Neither revealed any divinity in Kibi's background.



Sagiro said:


> What they do know is that in Leantha's Book -- the one seemingly left by the dead Goddess of Knowledge as an answer to Aravis's question of "how do we defeat the Adversary" -- one of the drawings shows Kibi holding up the Watcher's Kiss with a smile on his face. And now we've seen the priestess of Uthol Inga hand the blade to Kibi after communing with her Goddess.  So, there's circumstantial evidence, but nothing solid.




Yes, I do remember that.  Bit cryptic... were I Kibi's player, I'd probably be looking for something more solid...


----------



## Piratecat

Quartz said:


> Edit: and it was interesting to see Dranko speak so casually about sacrificing himself.



Yeah, well, he rather foolishly believes he'll survive the process. Call it innate optimism that stems from a sub-10 Intelligence score.  

Also, there is massive, glorious foreshadowing in this conversation -- the second time we've seen it now -- about something that the entire party entirely missed until damn near the final sessions. My hat is off to you, Sagiro, you magnificent bastard. We never even came close to noticing despite the hints.


----------



## Sagiro

Piratecat said:


> Sagiro, you magnificent bastard.



I don't know which is more applicable: what they say about the praise of the praiseworthy, or that it takes one to know one. 

And, hey, here's another update:

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 363*_
*Farewell Party*

Even with the windows and doors shut tight, the stink of a million dead fish finds its way into the living room. The Company eats a hurried breakfast, waiting for the meeting of the Spire to begin. The first to arrive is the adventurer Royce, only survivor of “Fortune’s Children” following the Battle of Verdshane. He smiles grimly as he’s invited in, shakes hands, and helps himself to some hors d’oeuvres.

Over the next half an hour, the rest of the Spire’s membership filters in. After Royce comes Anhaya Sunblossom, the High Priestess of Yondalla on Charagan.  She has never been in the Greenhouse before, and is delighted to find that Ernie lives in a converted bakery.  

Several former archmagi arrive in a group – Fylnius, the old elf from Ghant; Alykeen from Minok, and Salk, the Spire’s leader after the death of Grawly. Ozilinsh comes down the stairs separately, having teleported into the secret room directly from his tower.

King Crunard is accompanied by his stalwart adviser Yale, and Duke Nigel of Harkran. A dozen royal guards remain outside, setting up a defensive position around the Greenhouse. 

Also in attendance are the adventuring duo of Wellington, the child-prodigy wizard, and his protector and companion the paladin Glade, tall and beautiful.  Cornelia, High Priestess of Pikon, and Dalesandro, leader of the Stormknights of Werthis, come in on the heels of the Generals Anabrook and Largent. 

The only person the Company doesn’t recognize is introduced as Junaya, of whom they have heard often but never seen.  Junaya is even taller than Glade, lithe, with a warrior’s bearing. She and her brother Jerzembeck lead the Spire’s secondary adventuring team.  She greets the Company warmly.

“Nice to see how the other half lives,” she laughs, looking around at the Greenhouse. 

“What I want to know,” says Aravis, “is which one of us is the group that’s just sent off to mislead and distract the Spire’s enemies.”

“Hard to say,” says Junaya with a grin. “But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you’ve been doing _something_ useful with your time.”

Last to arrive is a newcomer to the Spire ranks – the diviner Belinda, who was recently instrumental in tracking down Mokad.  She cannot hide the look of concern on her face, even as she is introduced to the others. In fact there is a gloomy pall over the entire gathering, and not only resulting from the odor of dead fish that now reaches into every street of Tal Hae. Though all assembled are exchanging handshakes and pleasantries, worry and sadness show on every face. The King himself looks pained, and rubs his temples with his fingertips.  Though the Masking is nearly gone, a lifetime of defying its effects has taken a great toll on the old ruler.

When all are seated, Salk stands in the center of the Greenhouse living room.  “A fine place we've come to,” he says, shaking his head.  “I suppose we ought to start with the reports of current events. The death of all the deep-sea fish is quite evident.  It is no doubt related to the death of the Ventifact Colossi in the Mouth of Nahalm.  Something down below is affecting Abernia, in ways that are killing the things upon it. And it is not simply that. The worst news of all is about Forquelle. I know some of you had friends there.  I am sad to say that it is unlikely that any of them got out in time. There are no reports of survivors, though it is possible that some were able to teleport away, before the sea rose up and swallowed the islands. The city of Oasis is under three feet of water, as are many of the east coast settlements of Lanei. The ocean has since receded, and we don’t think it’s likely to happen again soon. But we don’t doubt it will be something else.”

“Like the volcanoes,” says General Largent.  “In Hae Kalkas.” 

This is news to many, and it sets the gathering to mumbling. 

“There hasn’t been volcanic activity there in centuries,” says Largent, “until about a week ago. It’s all been high up in the mountains, no need to evacuate yet. The dwarves are handling it well, by all reports.”  But Kibi looks plainly worried; his family lives in Eggemoggin, a small town high above Hae Kalkas. 

“And there’s Sentinel,” says Dranko.  Many heads turn to regard him, as this is news to most. “The miners hit a vein of the Adversary’s blood, which bubbled up, and everyone in Sentinel went insane and killed one another. It was not pretty.” 

This pronouncement causes a great stir among the guests; the knowledge that Adversary blood is even a consideration is not known to several people, and for those privy to the fact, Dranko’s words are even more alarming. 

“We have the area locked off with a _forbiddance_,” Ernie assures them. 

There are several ticks of silence, before Wellington asks, “What about Octesian? We heard that he was rampaging through the Dreaming, killing people.”

“Octesian is dead,” says Morningstar.

“We got him just before he was going to kill everyone in the kingdom,” Dranko adds.

“He had found the Adversary in the Far Realms,” says Ernie, “and went completely mad.”

“And very tentacular,” says Dranko. “But we killed him.  Morningstar killed him.”

Anhaya Sunblossom sits up a bit straighter, a puzzled look on her face.  “The Adversary is in the Far Realms?  Then what exactly is causing the problems here on Abernia?”

“The Adversary is escaping,” says Aravis.

“And His agents, and agents of the Emperor, have gone into the Underdark on some evil mission,” says Dranko. “They’re probably responsible.”

“Unfortuately,” says Belinda, “divinations seem vague and largely ineffectual on these topics. But I have news that I cannot decide if it’s good or bad.  Although we have been struck by this wave of natural – or as is more likely, unnatural – disasters, they seem to be over.”

“What do you mean?” asks Dranko.

“I don’t think we’re going to have any more.  It either means that whatever was causing them is over and failed, or it’s over and succeeded.”  

“It’s theoretically possible,” says Wellington, “that the part of Him that landed here in Abernia, is regenerating into a whole… a whole new Adversary.”

“I don’t like that theory,” says Ernie.

“Can you come up with something else?” asks Dranko.

Wellington blinks. “Yes. Perhaps the Adversary’s blood infected something extremely powerful that was _already_ in the Underdark, and now there is a new shadow-Adversary arising down there, and _that’s_ what’s affecting the surface.”

“That one’s not much better,” Ernie mutters.

Dranko picks up an hors d’oeuvres.  “When I saw the Adversary, I was pretty sure that...”

“What?” Largent interrupts.  “When you _saw_ the Adversary?  When was this?”

Dranko takes a minute to explain the vision he saw during the battle with Octesian.  “The Adversary was in a cage, in the Far Realms, but He looked triumphant, like He had already won.  But only I could  see Him.”

“And why is that?” Largent presses.

“It’s a long story.”

“We’re all here to hear these stories, so we can figure out what to do next!” Largent exclaims.

Dranko sighs, and launches into the tale of Het Branoi, describing the starry void left behind when Cleaners ripped apart the Vree’s slice of Chaos. “Those  Cleaners lived in the Far Realms,” he says in summary.  “Where logic and sanity go to die.  And, uh, accidentally, one my personal belongings ended up in the, er…”

“Dranko has acquired something like an ally,” Aravis cuts in. “It provided Dranko with something it thinks will help us.” 

“It wasn’t an accident,” says Kibi accusingly.  “Dranko threw a bottle into the Far Realms, with his name inside it.”

“You did?” Royce’s eyes go wide, and he smiles broadly.  “That’s fantastic! And now you say you have a tentacular nature yourself?”

Dranko looks pained. “We made a deal.  I gave up something important to me, and it put something in my brain.  It said that without whatever’s in there, we’re going to lose.  But now, when something rips open my brain to see what’s in there, it will uncover this hideous nugget of madness, and suffer for it.”

Yale looks at Dranko very intently. “Where exactly do you need to be, to make use of this…tentacular nature?  And when will you need to be there?”

“I don’t know,” Dranko admits.

“I would say it’s almost assuredly when we face the Adversary,” says Aravis.

“So you’re going to the Far Realms?” asks Yale.

“No,” says Aravis. “We’re going to the Underdark to chase the servants of the Adversary.”

Yale looks confused. “So the Adversary is somehow going to leave his cage in the Far Realms, and appear in the Underdark?"

Dranko nods. “Yes, that’s what we think. That his servants are going to find some way to make that happen.”

“We’re following the instructions we found in Leantha’s Book,” says Kibi.  “It led us to this.” He unsheathes the _Watcher’s Kiss_, and all eyes are drawn to its golden glow. Color leeches away from everything but itself. 

“This is a fragment of the blade that Uthol Inga used to stab the Adversary,” says Dranko.

“It’s all in this book,” explains Aravis. “It was a gift from a Goddess.”

Anhaya cannot mask her astonishment. “A Goddess?  Which one?”

“A dead one,” says Aravis.

“And how did you acquire a gift from a dead Goddess?”

“We went to the tombs of the Gods,” says Dranko.

Ozilinsh turns to Fylnius, chuckling. “See?  I told you I wasn’t making any of it up.”

Kibi frowns. “But Tarsos and Meledien and Seven Dark Words have gone down to the Underdark first.”

At this point about half the assembly demands more explanation, and an entire summary of the Company’s relevant adventures.  When this is done, Junaya turns to Aravis with a little shake of her head.  “I guess now we know which group was the diversion.”

The general laughter at this is interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Must be Parthol Runecarver,” jokes Dranko.  

Salk doesn’t laugh.  “Yes, I expect it is. I invited him.”

The sounds of mirth die away at once.  “He can’t get on his own anymore,” says Salk to the Company.  “One of you will need to invite him in.”  He turns to Belinda, who nods.  “We are confident he will not try anything during this meeting.”

Eddings opens the door, and Aravis stands at the threshold. Standing in the street is Parthol Runecarver, forked gray beard hanging from his chin, a serious expression etched into his old features, and the faintest shimmer of an Astral cord snaking away into the aether. 

“May I come in?” Parthol asks politely.

“Yes,” says Aravis.  “But only for this one meeting.”

“Fair enough, ”says Parthol with a shrug, and he takes a confident stride into the house.  Everyone is quiet as he enters.  Fylnius, who’s become particularly lighthearted and jovial since his “retirement,” stares daggers into the new arrival, his face a thundercloud. 

Salk never takes his eyes off the new arrival.  “I have invited Parthol to this meeting so that he can tell us what he knows.  That’s the only reason he’s here, and when he’s had his say, he will go.”

“How true,” says Parthol.  He spreads his arms and addresses the Spire. “I don’t expect any of you to like me. Have no fears on that count. I still maintain that Abernia would not be in these dire straits had it been governed properly by a magocracy these past thousand years, but since you Spire folks have managed to land your kingdom in this pickle, I should do what I can do help get it out.  Because although I once harbored a great desire to rule Charagan, I have a much greater desire to see that it is not consumed by the Adversary.”

If he expects any reaction to this, he is disappointed.  Cold hard stares are all he earns.

“Also, I dare not leave my current abode, because you would all band together and kill me.”

Under his breath, but loud enough for all to hear, Royce mutters, “Damned straight we’d kill you.”

Some of the Archmagi cannot help but look a bit nervous at this statement.  It’s unlikely that Parthol knows that they have lost all of their magical powers, but anything is possible.  Either way, Parthol continues with only a quick, sharp glance at Royce. 

“I don’t know how many of you know of Yulan’s Barrier.  It is an iron shell around the inner parts of the world, placed there by the father of all Kivian Gods to prevent the armies of the Underdark from conquering the surface world.”  He turns to Belinda.  “Belinda, that’s your name, isn’t it?  You at least have  realized that divinations regarding the Adversary, or even the Black Circle, are often futile. When you are beneath the Barrier, it will become even worse. Your divinations will suffer from… distance. You will be farther from your own Gods there. Divinations will be taxing, ineffectual to a degree you are not used to.”

“What about divinations that are not divinely based?” asks Aravis.

Parthol shrugs. “I’m not sure.  There may be additional difficulties simply because you will not be a native to those lands. You will find things very strange beneath Yulan’s Barrier. It is both like and unlike the surface world. There will be things familiar to you… peoples, civilizations, politics, comings and goings of folk powerful and mundane; and also customs alien to you I’m sure, things that make no sense.”

He looks pointedly at Aravis as he says:  “For instance, below the Barrier, there are Gods who walk the earth. I don’t know where they came from, or if they were there even before the Barrier was set in place. But unlike all the Gods that we know, possible company excepted, they live on – or in – Abernia.  And they make the rules. So, yes, your arcane divinations may be more efficacious than ones powered by your Gods, but I’d still be prepared to learn things the old fashioned way.”

“You mean beating people up until they tell us,” says Dranko.

Parthol nods, perhaps missing the humor.  “Another thing. As you may have learned in your underground journeys _above_ the Barrier, long-distance teleportation is impossible. The nature of the Underdark prevents it.  But…”  Here he stops, and his face tightens, and he closes his eyes, like he’s trying to recall a distant, painful memory.  “But, there is a connected series of teleportation circles that can circumvent that restriction. Gaining access to that would be of great benefit to you.”

“That’s good to know,” says Kibi.  “But do you have any information about where they are specifically, or _how_ to access them?”

“No,” says Parthol. Seeing beneath the Barrier is… very difficult. I’m the only one on the surface who can, and even my views are vague, foggy.”

For a startling moment, a small black lesion crawls up his neck from beneath the collar of his robe. He closes his eyes and concentrates until sweat beads on his brow, and then it fades away.  When he opens his eyes again, all the collected members of the Spire are looking at him with revulsion.

He laughs.  “Yes.  I can harness that power.  That’s how I learn things that no one else knows.”

“You always think you can control it…” says Ernie, shaking his head.

“I _can_ control it!” barks Parthol.  "Where I currently reside, I can control it. It’s a large part of the reason that for now, I am content that my physical body remains where it is.”

“Good,” spits Glade. “You can stay there and rot.”

Parthol graces the paladin with a wan smile.  “Don’t be rude. I have presents for you.”

He holds out his hand, and _wills_ something into his palm.  Whatever it is flickers briefly, and then vanishes. He frowns, sighs, and walks to the front door.  With some grumbling about Abernathy, he opens the door, sticks his hand out into the street, and tries again.  This time a small leather pouch appears in his hand.  Parthol returns to the center of the living room and empties out eight green glass stones onto the table. 

“These will let you speak and understand Undercommon. Whichever of you are going to go beneath the Barrier, you should take them.”

“Should we swallow them?” asks Dranko.

Parthol glowers.  “What?  No!  Just carry them on your person. Swallow them? What kind of demented magic would work in that fashion?”

“Earth magic,” Dranko deadpans.

“Oh.  I didn’t realize earth magic required you to _eat_ rocks.”

“Only sometimes,” says Kibi defensively.

“Lastly,” says Parthol, “Something I have confirmed through my own divinations, though perhaps you already know it.  Whichever of you goes, you cannot, and will not, be returning. It would violate the nature of the Barrier, and the laws laid down by the Old Gods.  Even if there is a way through it in the downward direction, there is no coming back up through it.”

“Yeah,” says Dranko, “but lots of people tell us that, and we _always_ come back.”

Parthol smiles indulgently. “If it buoys your spirits during the long journey, to think that someday you might come back, then by all means go on thinking it.”  He bows his head.  “That’s all I have for you.  I hope it helps.  Now, I assume you have some questions?”

“Will the stones let us read undercommon, too?” Dranko asks.

“Yes. They’re extremely potent.  Please don’t lose them.”

“What about Melendien and Tarsos?” asks Kibi.  “Do you have any idea what they’re up to down there?”

“No. Though I concur with Belinda, that they have completed some stage of their mission. Whether it concluded successfully for them or not, I don’t know.”

“I bet it did,” says Dranko glumly. “Say, when you said Gods walked the earth, what did you mean?”

“I meant exactly what I said,” says Parthol. “The Gods of the Underdark – real Gods, and not Godling pretenders – live among their mortal flocks.”

Dranko sees Parthol looking at Aravis as he says this.  “What was that about being polite?”

“Forgive me,” says Parthol with a bow.  “I meant Nature Demigods. Divine Sparks. I intended no offense. But actual Gods live in the Underdark, and walk among the people.”

Kibi brightens. “If they’re Gods, could they help us get back?”

“Highly doubtful. They are clearly nowhere near as powerful as Yulan and the Kivian Gods.”

“If you’re in the Underdark,” Dranko asks, “can you _plane shift_, or go to the Astral?”

“No. Though you should be able to enter extra-dimensional spaces whose only egresses are back into the Underdark. But there is no _gating_, no _plane shifting_. Anything you summon will have to come from elsewhere in the Underdark.”  He looks at Kibi.  “Don’t worry, there will be Earth Elementals in great supply.”

“I never thought I’d say this,” says Kibi quietly, “but thank you.”

“You’re very welcome. I’ve only ever wanted what I thought was best for this world.”

“Which is you being in charge of it, and with the Emperor’s help.” says Dranko.

Parthol looks annoyed. “The Emperor was only a means to an end. I wouldn’t trust him any farther than I could throw him.   And I don’t _personally_ need to be in charge. Aravis, you of all people, I’d think, would understand what I’m saying.”

“I understand that wizards would not make good rulers,” says Aravis.

With a look of profound disappointment, Parthol sighs.  “Anything else?”

“Yes,” says Ernie. “You can get out of my house.”

Fylnius speaks up from the back of the room. “I don’t trust you, Runecarver.  You’re still playing some game with us, aren’t you?”

Parthol looks affronted.  “I’m playing the game we should all be playing – saving the world from destruction.  Anything else I wish to do can wait until after that.”

Dranko points at Parthol. “If we come back, and find that you’ve taken advantage of our absence to cause trouble, it will not go well for you.”

Parthol laughs. “I assure you I am in no position to do that, even if I wanted to.”  

“He’s lying!” says Flicker.

Aravis stands and moves to the door. “He should remember that while no human agency can bring us back from below the Barrier, we are only pawns of the Gods, and they can make up their own minds.”

“Harbor what false hope you wish.” Parthol also steps toward the door.  “But no Divine agency can bring you back, either. I have learned as much.”

“Even if we don’t come back,” says Kibi, “there are plenty of other people here to keep you in line.”

Parthol looks slowly around the room. Does his gaze linger a little too long on the now-powerless Archmagi? No one can say for sure. “Yes,” he says. “Yes there are.”

Dranko opens the door.

“Ah,” says Parthol. “I see you’re inviting me to go. I pray for all of your success. Salk, if you need to talk to me again… you’ll have to wait.”  

Parthol exits the house and vanishes from the street.  The room collectively exhales.

Junaya looks at the small pile of stones at the table.  “He only gave us eight? We’re going to need at least twenty!”

“What do you mean?” asks Dranko.

“Well, you don’t think you’re going down there by yourselves, do you?”

“Well, yeah,” says Dranko.  “We kind of do.”

“Why?”

“Someone has to stay behind, to cover the retreat if we fail,” says Aravis.  By way of explanation he summarizes their recent chat with High Priestess Jahnda.

The Stormknight Dalesandro scoffs.  “Retreat?  Wait a  minute.  You went and spoke to Jahnda the Watcher?”

“It was Uthol Inga who last did damage to the Adversary,” says Ernie.

“Yeah,” growls the Stormknight.  “And a fat lot of good it did us.”

“It got the Adversary imprisoned,” Aravis notes, “and gave us thousands of years of peace.”

“But if failed to _kill_ the Adversary,” says Dalesandro. “I have to agree with Jahnda that it won’t work the second time, either. The Watcher didn’t, and still doesn't, have the might within her to kill the Adversary.”

Dranko looks Dalesandro in the eyes. “I know that your God and your religion have certain… theories and parables about Uthol Inga, but some of them just aren't true.”

The Stormknight looks like he wants to spit on the floor.  “You were shown the truth and didn’t see it,” he says bitterly. “From your description, Uthol Inga had sided with the Adversary. The others fled. Then, at the end, the Watcher realized that if she stayed, the first thing the Adversary would do would be to turn on her and kill her. So she panicked, and stabbed Him in the back to save her own skin, and then begged the others to let her come with them, lying about her motives for staying in the first place!”

“Does it matter?” asks Ernie. “She still stabbed him in the back!”

“Only after betraying the other Travelers.  And only to save herself.”

“Enough!” says Salk, and the old wizard’s voice still has power, even if his magic is gone. “This is not the place for a religious feud.”

To Junaya, Aravis says, “There may come a point when the Gods will have to flee again, and taking whomever they can.  People capable of assisting them will have to remain here.”

“That is absolutely true,” says Cornelia, High Priestess of Pikon. She looks at Junaya, and Royce, and Glade and Wellington. “Only Abernathy’s company is going to make the journey. Pikon has granted me a vision that it must be so. The rest of you will be needed here, though whether that is to cover a retreat, I don’t know. But in the Company’s absence, there will still be great dangers besetting Abernia and our kingdom of Charagan, and we will need you here to stand against those dangers.”  She turns to the Company. “Because while you are thwarting the Adversary’s designs, if all on the surface is destroyed in the meantime, it will all have been for naught.”

Junaya sighs and laughs. “Well, you _are_ the ones who went to the city of dead Gods, and you _are_ the ones who traveled a thousand years into the past to rewrite history, and you _are_ the ones who stopped Mokad from joining the planes together…”  

“Yeah,” says Ernie.  “We get all the crappy jobs.”

“I don’t think so,” says Junaya. “Harrying the supply lines of the Delfirian army for six months?  _That_ was a crappy job.”  

The boy Wellington steps forward, bows to Cornelia, and says gravely, “I will pledge to defend Charagan against any and all dangers, while Ozilinsh’s Company is traveling.”  He elbows Glade, who stands and adds, “Me too.”

Royce gestures to the table. “You have an 8th stone.”  He makes a show of counting the seven members of the Company.

“It would be honor to fight by your side,” says Dranko, “but it’s not going to happen this time. I have great respect for you, Royce, but we’d feel better if we knew that Charagan was in your hands.  Also, we’re likely to get our asses kicked numerous times, and you’d probably end up..”

“Yes, yes, I understood the subtext, thanks,” says Royce.

“If it makes you feel any better,” says Kibi, gesturing to Dranko, “you’re way more famous than he is.”

That’s too much for Dranko to take.  “Oh… Gaaaaaah!” He addresses the room, gesticulating wildly. “We’re going to have this out right now.  Do you know what I gave up for the tentacles?  You know what I gave up for the thing in my head?  Being famous!  That’s what I gave up!  I used to be famous!  I was in the frikkin’ parade with the rest of you!  I was knighted too!”

No one answers him, but everyone looks at him with pity.  

“Dranko,” says Salk gently, “I understand that having a piece of the Far Realms lodged in your head must be a very strange and difficult way to live, but…”

“Then answer me!” Dranko demands. “How is it that the rest of my Company is famous, and I am not?”

“Because they have done the greater deeds, those worthy of fame,” says Salk.

“Oh no they have not!  That is not true!  I was knighted!”

Salk regards Dranko kindly. “Don’t think that the Spire doesn’t value your contributions extremely highly, Dranko.”

Dranko’s shoulders slump. “Never mind.”  Over the mind-link, he hears Ernie’s voice. “We know, Dranko.  No one else knows, but we know.  We’ll always know.”

King Crunard IV stands, with difficulty. His body is hale, but his eyes show a mind that is losing itself, and casting about for an anchor. The Company is put in mind of the sage Richter, who lost all his sanity for the study of Masked subjects.

“You should… go soon, I think,” says the King.  Nigel and Yale nod, as if the King has said something profound.

“I’m sorry I’ve let things come to this,” Crunard continues.  I’m not sure what I could have done…  but it’s my… my responsibility. I just wanted to say that I am proud to have such a collection of fine.. people.. helping out with… things.  Yes, you should go soon. They’ve had a long head start, haven’t they.  Could you go… tomorrow?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” says Dranko..

“Good. Good. Thank you,” says the King.  With effort he focuses his eyes on the Company.  “I’m sure it’ll all work out for the best.”

…to be continued…


----------



## RangerWickett

Excellentness.

By the way, you said, "Farm Realms."


----------



## Sagiro

RangerWickett said:


> Excellentness.
> 
> By the way, you said, "Farm Realms."



Fixed. Thanks!


----------



## steeldragons

RangerWickett said:


> Excellentness.
> 
> By the way, you said, "Farm Realms."






Sagiro said:


> Fixed. Thanks!




I caught that too...but the image of Dranko in overalls with a pitchfork and piece of wheat hanging from his teeth whilst standing in front of a pig sty or barn with tentacles streaming out of it behind him was just too good to point it out. 

...GREAT! Now the theme to 'Green Acres' just kicked in...be hearin' _that_ all day!


----------



## Quartz

steeldragons said:


> I caught that too...but the image of Dranko in overalls with a pitchfork and piece of wheat hanging from his teeth whilst standing in front of a pig sty or barn with tentacles streaming out of it behind him was just too good to point it out.




Didn't an early Dungeon magazine do an adventure where there were monsters that pretended to be houses? Househunters, I think they were called. Just apply the pseudonatural template and job done!


PS Moah!


----------



## Siuis

Good golly gosh this is exciting. You know what?

When all is said and done, I'm gettin this – provided your blessings, good folk – formatted, printed, and bound, professional style. And illustrated. This is going on my bookshelf. My grandchildren are going to tell jokes about me always whispering, deadly serious, "Remember. Remember Dranko."


----------



## livywnka

*Sagiro's Story Hour: The Further Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 6/7/13)*



Siuis said:


> When all is said and done, I'm gettin this – provided your blessings, good folk – formatted, printed, and bound, professional style. And illustrated. This is going on my bookshelf.




Oh wow, I'd really like that too!

Any chance there could be a kickstarter campaign for that? 



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD


----------



## Everett

livywnka said:


> Oh wow, I'd really like that too!
> 
> Any chance there could be a kickstarter campaign for that?




A chance of a Kickstarter campaign for that?  Certainly: if the people on this thread make it happen.

All in favor?

I believe that setting it up is a very simple matter; with some discussion and relevant input from Sagiro, we could have it up and running in several days' time.


----------



## RangerWickett

Siuis said:


> "Remember. Remember Dranko."




Who?


----------



## Everett

Here's Kickstarter's publishing page, to get a discussion started: http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/publishing?ref=footer


----------



## Siuis

livywnka said:


> Oh wow, I'd really like that too!
> 
> Any chance there could be a kickstarter campaign for that?




To contrast Everett's infectious optimism, I would say; probably not. That runs remarkably close to Sagiro's own publishing a D&D novel, which means it may be in a sticky space as far as licensing and such is concerned.

That said, the idea is intriguing and with Wverett's link already there for the clicking, I will totally investigate it. Although, getting the illustrations done would have been probably a decade-long project in between rejiggering the PDFs to be better suited to a book format...

Man. Now I have ideas! Darn you, Everett!


----------



## Sagiro

While it's obviously flattering that anyone is even considering this idea, there are a couple of issues.  First, I'm not done yet, and probably won't be for quite some time.  Even if I manage to crank out an update three times a month (which is optimistic), I'd still be about a year away from finishing.

Second, as Siuis says, there's my plan to turn the Story Hour into a novel.  It won't be a D&D novel explicitly -- I'm teasing out the trademarked stuff -- but I've actually committed to writing it*, and am about 10,000 words in at the moment.  (Disclaimer!  Life can derail all plans including this one!)  It's more likely that someday, when a sufficiency of agents has rejected my fantasy epic, I'll explore the self-publishing route, and perhaps then a Kickstarter will be more in order.

In the meantime, unless StevenAC objects, you can always print out the .pdf's, and get it bound at a print-shot somewhere.

* I'll still write the Story Hour, of course, which has always competed with other creative projects for my spare time. Now it's just competing with a version of itself.


----------



## StevenAC

Great to hear you're working on a novelised version, Sagiro -- good luck!  So, ten thousand words down; that's about another 990,000 to go, then? 



Sagiro said:


> In the meantime, unless StevenAC objects, you can always print out the .pdf's, and get it bound at a print-shot somewhere.



I have no objection whatever to anyone printing out the PDFs for their own use -- it's what I plan to do myself, after all, once the story is complete.  But an actual publishing venture (whether for profit, or not) is out of the question, as far as I'm concerned; the copyright/trademark issues make the whole idea a minefield.

Incidentally, for anyone who's planning to print out the PDFs in the near future, you might want to wait until Part Three is completed, which should only take another one or two updates from Sagiro.  I've just finished another pass through the whole story (wonderfully enjoyable, as always), during which I found and fixed a few dozen minor typos and small formatting glitches.  Once I've uploaded these changes, Parts One, Two and Three of the story will (hopefully) have reached their final forms.

(It's amazing how typos can somehow stay invisible even after many readings of a passage.  My favorite one was in Chapter 13 (page 139 of Part Two) where one wrong letter turns a sentence into funny nonsense -- and I must have read that page at least a dozen times before without spotting it.)


----------



## SolitonMan

If other venues for distribution of this great story are under consideration, how about "Abernathy's Company: The Animated Series"?

I'd love to see Pixar's take on tentacles popping out of the head of...that...orc...guy...

What was his name?


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

SolitonMan said:


> I'd love to see Pixar's take on tentacles popping out of the head of...that...orc...guy...
> 
> What was his name?




You're talking about the torch-bearer, right?


----------



## SolitonMan

Mathew_Freeman said:


> You're talking about the torch-bearer, right?




Yes!  Thank you, that's who I'm thinking of.  Would've nagged me all day, trying to remember...


----------



## Piratecat

*Sagiro's Story Hour: The Further Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 6/7*

I pretty much hate you guys.


----------



## Kaodi

Given that we spend all of this story hour looking over the Company's shoulders, I wonder whether we would actually be exempt from the "no fame" rule in the same way the party members are; if we were extending the "rules" to real life.


----------



## Siuis

Sagiro said:


> While it's obviously flattering that anyone is even considering this idea, there are a couple of issues.  First, I'm not done yet, and probably won't be for quite some time.  Even if I manage to crank out an update three times a month (which is optimistic), I'd still be about a year away from finishing.
> 
> Second, as Siuis says, there's my plan to turn the Story Hour into a novel.  It won't be a D&D novel explicitly -- I'm teasing out the trademarked stuff -- but I've actually committed to writing it*, and am about 10,000 words in at the moment.  (Disclaimer!  Life can derail all plans including this one!)  It's more likely that someday, when a sufficiency of agents has rejected my fantasy epic, I'll explore the self-publishing route, and perhaps then a Kickstarter will be more in order.
> 
> In the meantime, unless StevenAC objects, you can always print out the .pdf's, and get it bound at a print-shot somewhere.
> 
> * I'll still write the Story Hour, of course, which has always competed with other creative projects for my spare time. Now it's just competing with a version of itself.




Neat!

That being said, I have no problems Re-uploading the more book-friendly version(s) or sending them to StevenAC. Book bindin is easy to ape, you just need to do some minor net research. The fun is going to come from embossing it.



Kaodi said:


> Given that we spend all of this story hour looking over the Company's shoulders, I wonder whether we would actually be exempt from the "no fame" rule in the same way the party members are; if we were extending the "rules" to real life.




I don't know about you guys, but I think Dranko is a damn hero and a fine if tongue happy fellow. Maybe it's all that planar travel and the 66 ranks of knowledge (Forbidden)?


----------



## Everett

Kaodi said:


> Given that we spend all of this story hour looking over the Company's shoulders, I wonder whether we would actually be exempt from the "no fame" rule in the same way the party members are; if we were extending the "rules" to real life.




What "rule"?  Said "no fame" rules only apply to... um... (/snapping fingers)... that one guy, the guy with the tusks.


----------



## The_Warlock

Dranko shall ever be remembered. Why? Because he had the best idea of any character in any campaign ever..."If I were staking out that building, what roof would I want to BE on?" "That one." "Ok, I get on the best roof to watch THAT roof."


----------



## jmucchiello

Actually an epub for other ebook format would be nice too.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 364*_
*Goodbyes*

The greatest and wisest personages of Charagan, members of the Spire all, stand and stretch as the meeting adjourns.  General Anabrook rolls her head to work out a crick in her neck before walking over to where the High Priestess Cornelia of Pikon talks with the diviner Belinda. “You say you’ve had visions?” Anabrook asks Cornelia. “That everyone except for Ozilinsh’s group needs to stay behind and protect the Kingdom? From what, exactly?”

Cornelia is obviously frustrated by the question. “By indirect evidence, something related to the Black Circle, given that our attempts to divine the specifics all failed. Beyond that, I don’t know.”

Dranko attaches himself to the edge of the conversation.  “And Rosetta isn’t here, I can’t help but notice.”

“No,” says Belinda. “I couldn’t find her. She’s too well concealed by her Silver Shell anti-divinatories.”

“Which is not surprising,” adds Cornelia, “since we couldn’t find her last time, either. But she was up to great good, and performing a vital task. I trust she is doing something similar right now.”


/*/


One by one the guests file past the Company, shaking each of their hands, wishing them the best of luck, and assuring them that despite Parthol’s dire warnings, they’ll surely come back triumphant when all is said and done.  But while the well-wishes are sincere enough, these assurances of a safe return ring a bit hollow.

As the teenaged Wellington offers his thanks and hopes for success, Dranko leans in and whispers, “Remember, girls don’t dig wizards who spend all their time at home with their noses buried in books. Get out there and live a little too, right?”

Wellington blushes and can’t stop himself from glancing at Glade. Dranko smirks.

When Yale is saying her goodbyes, Kibi asks her quietly, “Is the King… has he gotten worse recently?”

Yale clicks her tongue. “Long years of a constant need to know Masked subjects, have put an irreversible strain on his mind. It’s amazing that he’s lasted so long with this level of cogency.  But he’ll be all right. It won’t kill him, and I don’t think he’ll become demented. It will just be difficult for him. We’ll keep him comfortable, and as sane as we can.”

“He’s lucky to have you,” says Dranko.

Yale bows her head in thanks.

“And so are we,” Dranko adds.

Yale smiles. “It’s been an honor to work with you all these years. The kingdom is lucky to have you.” She gives them one last searching look, an assessing look, perhaps wondering how great a challenge they’ll be able to meet, then smiles and walks out the door.

When the last guest has departed, Dranko looks down at the little pouch of translation stones left by Parthol Runecarver on the living room table.  “I bet these things will allow Parthol to spy on us.”  He scoops the pouch up anyway and puts it in his haversack.  “So, the Underdark! Can you imagine all the loot down there that’s waiting for us to find?

“It’s a whole world of things you haven’t licked yet,” says Ernie.

“What do they grow in the Underdark?” asks Flicker worriedly. “Do you think they grow tobacco?”

“It’s probably all fungus,” says Dranko. “Have you ever smoked a fungus cigar?”

Flicker makes a face. “Then we’ll have to bring some with us. Do we have any extra _bags of holding_?"


/*/


The remainder of the afternoon sees the members of the Company teleporting about the kingdom, saying their goodbyes to friends and family.  Kibi arrives in Eggemoggin and finds that his mother is at home, but his father is up in the high mountains looking to help those who need evacuating from earthquake- or lava-damaged regions. The seismic activity has ceased in the past day, but several mountain outposts have been damaged.

Kibi explains the nature of his errand as best he can to his mother.  “…and we probably won’t be coming back,” he finishes sadly.

“I don’t believe that,” says Gela dun Bim. “But if it’s true, we’ll just have to wait a few more decades, and then we’ll see each other in Moradin’s halls and you can tell me all about it.”

Dranko has a number of stops to make.  He starts with his grandfather in Tal Korum, then goes to the Church in Tal Hae to say goodbye to Harmon, Califax and Praska.  Finally he visits Lucas in the Manse of the Undermen. 

“Here’s the deal,” he says to Lucas. “This time I’ve been told we’re really not coming back, so it looks like you’re done with me.”

Lucas just rolls his eyes.

“No,” says Dranko earnestly. “Seriously. But either way, it’s been an honor and a pleasure working with you.”

Lucas gives Dranko a searching look. “Just try to remember everything, the next time you come back.  I’m sick of explaining your own life to you.”

Aravis visits the Feline Conclave to warn them of what’s coming. Most of the cats are alarmed, but don’t seem to take in the true gravity of the situation.  Only Inkspot, eldest of the Conclave, understands the enormity of what Aravis is telling them.

“Curious,” says Inkspot, “that with all this going on, there’s a movement among the Gods to prepare to flee. I have sensed none of it. Not from Quarrol, certainly. Perhaps the Gods don’t want anyone to panic.”

“Perhaps,” Aravis agrees. “But two of the Gods have vanished from this world already, and we hope it’s to prepare the way.” 

Inkspot swishes his tail. “Don’t you think they would have told someone?  Do the leaders of your human churches know?”

Aravis shakes his head. “None of them know for certain.”

“Human civilizations come and go,” says Inkspot. “A new set of humans may be moving in, but cats will always be here.”  

“I suspect Quarrol will let you know what you need to do, when the time is right,” says Aravis.

“We will abide. Good luck, Aravis.”

“And to you. It’s been an honor being one of your number.”


/*/


After saying tearful goodbyes to his parents, Ernie _plane shifts_ to Evergreen, to say his fond farewells to Yoba.  He finds her relaxing in a field tent, but she leaps to her feet and runs to embrace him. He had planned to jump right in with breaking the news of his upcoming journey, but can’t quite muster the nerve. Instead he starts regaling her with the tales of his adventures since they had last spoken. She has loved listening to Ernie’s stories since the day the first met in Het Branoi, but as he sets in with the tale of the Crimson Maw, her attentive smiling face grows cloudy.

“Uh oh.”  Ernie’s stops his narrative. “What did I do?”

“You didn’t tell me,” she says flatly. “You held _Tava’s Righteous Fury_ in your hands, and you didn’t tell me!”

“Uh, I guess I did,” Ernie admits. “I… I gave it away to a great hero of Yondalla, in the burial place of the Gods.”

“Well of course you did,” says Yoba, frowning. “When you’re done with _Tava’s Righteous Fury_, you give it away, and it shows up where it’s needed next. That’s how it works.”

“So you’ve heard of it,” says Ernie, feeling his heart sink. “If you want, I can, uh, go back and get it for you.”

“No,” says Yoba. “It’s probably not there anymore, anyway. So you… no, it doesn’t matter. It’s fine.”

Ernie’s face crumbles. “It’s not fine. Even I can tell it’s not fine. You’re upset, and you have every right to be.”

“It’s my fault,” says Yoba. “I should have said something before it was too late.”

Ernie gives her a quizzical look.

“Did you know that I was named after Yoba Greenwater? She was one of the most famous heroes of my people. Probably the most famous. She was the only one on my world that had ever held Tava’s Righteous Fury. I had always wanted to hold it myself. Growing up, I secretly hoped I’d be the next one the sword chose to wield against the goblins.”

Ernie’s heart keeps sinking, right down to his toes. He has no words to express his remorse.

Yoba smiles at him. “At least tell me all about it,” she says.  And so Ernie finishes his tale, and by the end it seems that Yoba has forgiven him.

“Ernie, promise me, if you ever need to fight goblins again, you’ll _tell_ me, and invite me along.”

Now Ernie realizes he can’t put it off any longer. “I’m not sure I’m ever going to fight goblins again,” he says quietly. “They might not have them where we’re going next.”

“Oh.”  Yoba can sense there’s more Ernie hasn’t said.

“Yoba,” he blurts, “I can’t come back from where we’re going. And you can’t come with me. What kind of cleric to Yondalla would I be if I took away their greatest defender?”

Yoba’s modesty is reflexive. “I’m not their greatest defender. A good military thinker, yes, but…”

“You understand what I’m saying,” says Ernie, hoping fervently that she does.  

“That’s all right,” Yoba says with a smile. “I can still come with you. I don’t mind not coming back, as long as I’m not coming back with you.”

Ernie remembers to breathe. “I just can’t bear the thought that you would get killed because of me. We’re not coming back from the Underdark, but we probably won’t survive, either!”

“Oh, and it’ll be easy for me to live with myself, knowing that you might get killed in the Underdark, when I could have protected you!”

“I’m not very good at this, am I?” says Ernie in a small voice. 

“Fortunately no,” says Yoba. “I’d hate to think you’ve had practice.”

They both laugh, and then look at each other for a long time, until they have reached a wordless understanding.  Yoba holds his hands between her own.

“Ernest, look at me. Look right in my eyes, and promise me you’ll come back. I know you don’t think you can. I know you’ve been told you can’t. But I know you’ve been told things like this before, so look at me, and promise me you’ll come back.”

Ernie looks into Yoba’s deep green eyes. “I promise. I promise I’ll come back.”

Yoba takes a step back and breathes a sigh of relief. “Then I will wait for you,” she says. “And don’t even _think_ about telling me we need to break off our engagement.”

“I, uh, already thought about it, but I’ll unthink it. And here, I have something else to show you. It’s not _Tava’s Righteous Fury_, but…”

He draws the _Honor of Nemmin_, and tells her more stories of his adventures.  When his narrative has caught up to the present, Yoba takes his hands again and squeezes them.

“I’ll think about you every day. And so will Yondalla. Besides, something tells me I’ll see you again before it’s all over. It’s just a feeling I have. So be of good faith, and get ready to kick the Adversary’s ass.”

Ernie lets go of her hands and fishes out the token that will let him _plane shift_ back to Abernia.  Yoba gives him a slightly mischievous smile and makes a simple request.

“Can you stay the night?”

Ernie sets all existing records for fastest blush, turning a deep red all the way to the tips of his ears.  

Yoba laughs. “Think it over, then, and _plane shift_ back if you decide you’d like to.”

But Ernie brightens and exclaims, ”Cayyat!”

“Excuse me?”

He tells her about the Company’s plans to spend a couple of months in the timeless demiplane of Cayyat, crafting and studying one final time before their downward journey. 

“You could come with us,” says Ernie. “From your point of view, no time will pass here at all!”

Yoba cannot suppress her delight. “So I get to spend an extra month with you, and they won’t miss me here at all? I don’t see the downside. Count me in!”



/*/


When all are reunited later that day, Aravis opens up the door to Cayyat, and in they go. As before, they are standing on the deck of a mountainside cabin, with a crystal blue lake down below reflecting sunshine in a dazzling shimmer.  They go into the cabin and find that the little goblinoid caretaker Gibbil is there waiting for them.

“Don’t kill him,” whispers Ernie to Yoba. “He’s a good guy.”

“Hello, masters,” says Gibbil. “Nice to see you again.”

“Say,” says Ernie. “Will Cayyat open into whatever plane it’s activated upon, or is it tied to Abernia in some way?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir,” says Gibbil. “I never leave Cayyat. If you don’t mind my asking, where do you expect to be?”

“We’re off to the Underdark to kill the Adversary,” says Dranko modestly.

Gibbil blinks. “Could you say that one more time, sir? I must have misheard you.”

“We’re going to the Underdark,” says Dranko, “which is an underground world sealed off by the Gods, and we’re going to kill the Adversary.”

“I see, sir,” says Gibbil. “Utterdark.”

And upon that pronouncement by the little goblin, the cabin is plunged into darkness so deep, even their daily _mass darkvision_ is foiled.

…to be continued…


----------



## Piratecat

*Sagiro's Story Hour: The Further Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 6/1*

…oops. 

Where did we get Cayyat from, again? Oh yeah. Black Circle.

Apparently it has a security system.

This, it's fair to say, does not end well.


----------



## Everett

OKAY, a George R.R. Martin-style cliffhanger today.  Just don't take 6 years writing the next update.

FYI, wrong & missing punctuation & italics, this line: [Flicker makes a face. “Then we’ll have to bring some with us. Do we have any extra bags of holding.]


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> …oops.
> 
> Where did we get Cayyat from, again? Oh yeah. Black Circle.
> 
> Apparently it has a security system.
> 
> This, it's fair to say, does not end well.




Wow.  And you never got any inkling of this from Gibbil previously?  And isn't he a neutral party, anyway?  Fascinating.


----------



## StevenAC

Looks like we're about to see what prompted this comment from nearly three years ago...



Piratecat said:


> Sagiro's a great big jerk, and after what he pulled at the game last night we may throttle him before he has a chance to finish the story. We were _forcibly _reminded that if we like someone, they must be eeevil. It'd been just long enough that the rule had slipped our minds.
> 
> Rat. Bastard.



Well played, Sagiro.


----------



## Piratecat

Gibbil is a construct and not a person, an invariably polite and likeable entity that comes as part of Cayyat. After interacting with him so well for so long, it's no surprise it slipped our minds. 



StevenAC said:


> Well played, Sagiro.



Stop encouraging him!


----------



## Everett

I'm curious, however; could (whatever's coming up) have been avoided if it had occurred to them that it might not be wise to be so forthright with the likeable goblin? Or was it a set piece that would've happened in any instance?  Sagiro?


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 365*_
*The Beginning of the End*

There’s a moment of dismay over the mind-link at this sudden turn of events, and that dismay is amplified as those in Cayyat realize that Morningstar and Grey Wolf, through some unfair trick of trans-demiplane passage, haven’t yet arrived. Dranko can clearly hear a horrible sound, a tearing and squelching, coming from where Gibbil was standing.  

“I think he’s getting bigger,” he shouts.  Unable to see, he nonetheless activates his _boots of haste_ and lashes out toward the noise with this whip.  Ernie draws the _Honor of Nemmin_, steps toward the gruesome sounds, and slashes.  He feels the blade bite deep into something huge and… chitinous?

Whatever Gibbil is turning into, it lets out a horrid rasping roar.

“Your accent has changed!” says Dranko.

So, it seems, have its teeth. Dranko feels huge sharp teeth bite down on his shoulder, and a powerful claw rakes across the side of his head.  The creature's gurgling, raspy breath is now coming from up near where they think the ceiling is.  Yoba swings her own sword upward but doesn’t strike anything solid.

Aravis quickens a _cone of cold_, blasting upward and outward, and using the _battlestone of St. Jenniver_ to avoid damaging any allies in its area of effect  He follows this up with _greater dispel magic_, but this has no effect on the blanketing darkness.

Kibi quickens a maximized _ray of enfeeblement_ and fires it upward toward the noise of the beast, but can’t tell if it’s struck true. The he takes a chance with _Otto’s irresistible dance_ and waves his hand as high as he can reach, but he fails to make contact with his enemy’s body.  Dranko continues to lash with his whip, making occasional contact, while Ernie does likewise with his sword. After Ernie drops a quickened _holy smite_ on it, they all hear the sound of a great lumbering beast retreating to the far side of the cabin’s huge main room.  

A sickening wave of negative energy washes over them, draining away their life-force. Dranko and Yoba get the worst of it, but all of them feel the sadly-familiar gut-draining pull of CON loss.

The Company hears the sound of Yoba charging across the room.  “I think he’s up near the ceiling!” she yells.

Aravis quickens a _true strike_ and sends a maximized _disintegrate_ towards where he imagines the monster to be.  He is rewarded only with a series of crashes as part of the roof, robbed of its structural integrity, comes tumbling down upon the furniture.  Kibi foregoes the _dance_ still on his fingertips to try his own _greater dispel magic_, and this manages to partially banish the inky blackness.  In the twilight-gloom that remains, they can see the shape of their foe – it’s a wingless dragon, its serpentine body over fifteen feet long, clinging to the ceiling with his legs splayed out.  Between its claws is an enormous hole where Aravis’s _disintegrate_ went clean through two support beams and the thick wooden ceiling.

Now that Kibi can see his foe, he quickens a _cone of cold_ and blasts it, coating its scaly body with blue ice. Dranko runs over and whips it in the face.  And Ernie finishes it off with a _flame strike_ that reduces the monster to an unholy char.  The corpse drops to the floor at Dranko’s feet and then vanishes.  Light returns.  

In less than 20 seconds the majority of Cayyat’s interior space has been utterly trashed.

Gibbil reappears in the center of the devastation.

“Hello sirs!” he announces brightly. “Hello, madam,” he says specifically to Yoba. “Welcome to the demiplane of Cayyat.  It’s a pleasure to see you here. This place passes timelessly, making for very efficient use of your time. My name is Gibbil, and I am the caretaker of Cayyat. How may I serve you today?”

“Don’t mention our mission!” urges Ernie over the mind-link.

“How are you at woodworking?” Dranko asks, gesturing to the complete devastation all around them.

“Oh. Oh dear,” says Gibbil, surveying the destruction. “This doesn’t seem right. Cayyat is meant to be intact and safe for visitors! I’d best get to work on it right away.”


/*/


Two (relative) months fly by quickly. Many items are crafted, scrolls inked, and potions brewed. Ernie and Yoba spend plenty of quality time together, and Morningstar finishes writing her chapters of Ellish scripture promised to High Priestess Rhiavonne. She keeps her tone informal, and makes sure to provide context for everything she writes so as to leave as little as possible open to interpretation for future generations.  She specifically notes the importance of the Daywalkers, but adds a warning. “They are a weapon,” she writes, “and like all weapons, they can be a danger to their wielder.”

Though two months have passed in Cayyat, it’s still the afternoon before the big Ellish funeral when they return. The proceedings start at midnight, and while it’s a somber affair (as all funerals are), it carries an edge of righteous joy, and of celebration, since the sisters died in the service of so successful a cause.

Morningstar is happy to see both her parents in attendance, but is more surprised to see Ernie’s parents, Hob and Rowan. As she looks around at the guests paying their respects, she notices that Dranko’s grandfather is there all the way from Tal Korum. And Grey Wolf’s brother and sister. And Kibi’s parents.  It turns out that Yale has done the legwork necessary to get all the Company’s families together in one place, so that a final round of goodbyes can be said before the party starts their final subterranean journey.  Though she is not personally in attendance, Yale has sent several royal guardsmen to watch over the funeral, and one of these whispers to Morningstar that for many years now, Yale has arranged for all the Company’s family to be guarded as well as possible.

When the public mourning and heartfelt speeches have concluded, the Company returns to the Greenhouse for a final night’s sleep before the big day.  


/*/


Over breakfast, Eddings refuses to become emotional.  Despite the Company’s strong belief that they will not be coming back, Eddings remains supremely skeptical. 

“I’ve heard this sort of thing before,” he says dryly. “You’ve come back from everything else – from the past, from a Gods’ cemetery, from an inescapable mountain prison, from a demiplane full of goblins, from a maze in a madman's mind, just to name a few.  I’ll plan my future based on the evidence, and will see you upon your return.”

And so, the party says goodbye to Eddings and the cats, and Kibi casts _greater teleport_, whisking the Company far across the sea to the beach of Ula’s island. Soon they have squeezed through the cliff-side fissure and lowered themselves down into the ten-sided chamber, its walls adorned with the holy symbols of the Kivian pantheon.

There is no little girl waiting for them. Instead, an old woman offers her greetings. She sits wearily against one wall, her skin wrinkled and her eyes rheumy. 

Dranko approaches her. “Are you the same girl that we met here before?” 

“Yes.”

“How is it that you’ve aged?”

Ula smiles. “I suppose that my time is almost up?”

“Does that mean we’re late?” Dranko asks.  “Is everything doomed?”

“Oh, no,” says Ula. “I imagine that your arrival is the reason I am nearly at my end.”

This causes a stir of consternation among the party, but Ula shakes her head.  “You misunderstand. This was my purpose all along.  Yulan created me so that when you found this place, it was my beginning. When you leave it will be my end. I will have served the purpose for which I was created…  which is a nice feeling.”

“But...” says Ernie. “Was your life fun?”

“I don’t see what fun has to do with it,” says Ula. “But I feel fulfilled, if that’s what you mean.”

She looks at all of their serious faces.  “So, this is it. You’re ready this time. You have that look about you.”

All seven heroes nod their heads.

“I should warn you: magic doesn’t necessarily work the same way down below. Lots of things don’t. You may find your most potent magics muted.”

Dranko gestures to his _helm of brilliance_.  “If this doesn’t work after all the money I spent on it, I’m going to be very, very angry!”

Ula chuckles. “Abernia’s going to miss you, Dranko. They broke the mold with you.” 

She grows more serious. “I’m sure the world will miss you all in the weeks and months to come, but it will be best for you to take this course. Your enemies have a long head start, but I suspect they have much to keep them occupied down there.”

“If you could give us one bit of advice, what would it be?” Dranko asks.

Ernie laughs. “Don’t sass the demon?

“Say,” says Dranko. “Once we go down there, the demon lord can’t get my soul anymore. In your face, Tapheon!”

Ula looks at the group. “My advice would be: ‘take nothing for granted.’”

“I’m going to miss the sky,” says Dranko.

“I’ll miss Ell!” says Morningstar.

“Oh, don’t be too worried about that,” says Ula. “The Gods will still keep their eyes on you. They’ll just have to work a little harder to exert their influence, and they’ll have more competition than they’re used to.”

“This whole thing about Gods walking around kind of freaks me out,” says Dranko.

Aravis clears his throat and grins.

“I guess it’s time,” says Kibi. Alone among the Company, he doesn't mind the prospect of living out his life in an underground environment, and is eager to get started.

“Right below here,” says Ula, “is another room, just like this one, though it has no trap-door.” She points to the two large handles that protrude from the floor. “In that room you will see a green glowing circle in the center.  It is a one-way _teleport_ device, which Yulan put there soon after he made the barrier. It will take you very, very far down. Hundreds of miles of down. Better to say that the distance doesn't matter. It’s prohibitively far.

“The _teleport circle_ will take you to the one spot where the Barrier can, in theory, be breached.  I don’t know _how_ it can be breached; you’ll have to figure that out for yourself. It is possible that those three miscreants, who forced their way past me when I was younger, are there right now, scratching their heads. They might not know how to get through the Barrier, either. You should be prepared to fight them, in case you find them waiting for you.

“After that, you’re on your own. Are you ready?”

She struggles to her feet, refusing several offers to help her up.

“This is probably my last hour on Abernia, so let me do what I’m meant to do.”

Ula reaches down and grasps one of the handles. She looks like she couldn't pick up a dictionary, let alone the enormous marble trap door, but she lifts it effortlessly. “Down you go.  Good luck!”

Dranko puts on a grave expression. “Ula, we’ll remember you fondly after you’re gone.”

“Thank you, Dranko.”

The party drops down into the lower room, and above them Ula closes the trap door.  This chamber is lit only by the glowing green _teleportation circle_, a flickering column of light three feet across.  By its ghostly luminosity they can see the symbols of the Kivian Gods and Goddesses etched into the walls. 

There is no more discussion. One by one they move into the circle, and each in turn is transported deep into the heart of Abernia.

It is, at last, the beginning of the end.

…to be continued…


----------



## weiknarf

Sagiro said:


> “Say,” says Dranko. “Once we go down there, the demon lord can’t get my soul anymore. In your face, Tapheon!”
> 
> Ula looks at the group. “My advice would be: ‘take nothing for granted.’”




Oh dear


----------



## Everett

Here's a *bump* for the two-week mark.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 366*_
*Welcoming Committee*

There is no momentous feeling of having traveled hundreds of miles, or indeed of having traveled at all. Each member of the Company steps into the light, and steps out into darkness.  

The horrid feeling of Essence bombards them, and Ernie hastily casts _magic circle of protection_ before anyone passes out. The assault on their senses is blunted.  After an initial fear that Seven Dark Words has laid a trap for them, they see with their _darkvision_ that they are alone.

The party stands upon a single iron slab that extends past the edge of their vision in all directions. There are no walls, and nothing holding up the vast rock ceiling that looms not more than twenty feet above their heads.  The iron is unnaturally smooth, appearing almost polished over its entire surface, except for one blemish. Ten feet from where they stand, the party sees a ragged-edged hole in the iron, as if some impossibly strong acid has burned its way through it. It is from that hole that the taint of Essence comes.

Kibi walks tentatively to the hole and looks down.  He sees that an irregular shaft has been made, barely wide enough for a single person, extending downward at least sixty feet. The walls of the shaft are iron – Yulan’s Barrier is at least that thick. Kibi doesn’t see any of the Adversary’s blood remaining on the interior walls of the hole, which is good, because he thinks it would be impossible for anyone to descend through it without touching the sides.

Grey Wolf casts _enhanced senses_ and takes a look after Kibi has moved away. He thinks he can spot the end of the tunnel, far below, at least a hundred feet. A faint flicker of light shines from the depths.

Staying close to Ernie, they briefly explore the area around them, and find that if they walk a hundred feet in any direction, the ceiling slopes downward until it presses against the immense iron slab. They are in what is effectively a bubble, a solitary air pocket, countless miles below the surface.  

Back at the foul shaft, Ernie murmurs a prayer to Yulan. “You know why we are here, and what we are trying to do. Will you allow our passage?”

Flicker drops a lit coin down into the hole, while Grey Wolf watches it fall to better gauge its depth. The coin’s light shines upon the walls, until it drops out the bottom of the tunnel, bounces off of something even farther below, and rolls out of sight.

Aravis casts _light_ on the end of a torch, and they lower it down on a rope. After it exits out the bottom of the shaft, it goes another fifty feet before it touches the ground.

“I don’t think they’re waiting for us,” says Ernie. “They have a job to do, and I’m sure they’ve moved on to do it.”

Dranko goes first (after getting a personalized _protection from evil_ from Ernie), shimmying down the rope through the narrow shaft --  a shaft burned through Yulan’s world-spanning iron shell by Adversary blood. He can look up and see the others watching him, but when he reaches the mid-way point they start to fade, and his connection to them via the _telepathic bond_ goes out. By the time he has reached the bottom, he can hear faint whispers around the edges of his mind – similar to the mental chatter over the mind link, but as a background noise, indecipherable. 

As he emerges from the shaft, Dranko finds that there is light here that is not coming from the party’s enchanted objects, a light that is brighter than twilight though not so bright as daytime sunlight. It is coming from dust. Tiny glowing specs float all around him, and though Dranko cannot focus on any single one of them, the little motes provide a constant glow.

In the light of these illuminated dust-specks, he sees that the Blood-bored shaft opens into an enormous cavern that stretches for hundreds of yards around him.  Down below – not directly beneath the hole, but hundreds of feet off to his left – is a large stone building, a temple of some kind, with symbols etched onto its walls. The most prominent of these symbols is an open black hand, and with a shudder Dranko thinks of the Hand of the Adversary, which fell to Abernia and smashed its way down to the Underdark. Has it given rise to its own foul cult?

Two gigantic stalactites, easily a hundred feet tall and twenty across where they meet the ceiling, hang above the temple, pointed downward towards it like giants' spears. A third stalactite, just as large, has already broken off and smashed through the temple’s roof. It’s impossible for Dranko to tell how long ago it fell.

There are no signs of people, no noises of animals, and no stirring of breeze.  The coin they had dropped has come to rest half-way down a wide stone staircase that winds its way up from the temple along one wall of the cavern. The staircase ends directly beneath the hole, and otherwise leads nowhere at all.

Dranko tugs on the rope to indicate it’s safe, and soon all seven of them are standing on a wide stone platform at the top of the staircase.  They all have questions, obviously, but before anyone can speak, they each become aware of something… odd… in their minds.  They can hear one another’s thoughts, just barely, even outside the mind-link! Not enough to make out anything specific – it’s more like an incoherent background whisper, the mental equivalent of the din of voices in a crowded plaza. 

Morningstar is an expert at teasing out the thoughts of others; she tries to zero in on a single train of whispered thought, and finds Flicker’s. As he talks out loud, he is also broadcasting his thoughts in a small way, and Morningstar hears thoughts and speech simultaneously. It’s severly jarring, and makes it hard for any of them to talk to one another, as a natural residual telepathy occurs concurrently with their spoken words. 

When they all stop talking, the telepathic echoes quiet, though Morningstar thinks she can still detect the faintest of mental reverberations at the edge of her perception. 

“Hello?” she calls. “We hear you out there.  Are you trying to talk to us?”

Physical echoes bounce back from the temple below, but no one answers.  She tries a _detect thoughts_ and clutches her head in her hands.  The thoughts of her friends, typically easy to ignore, are a raucous babbling in her mind.  But with an effort she filters them out, and becomes satisfied that there are no other thinking minds close by.

The stairway down to the temple runs along the cavern wall on  their right, and every minute or so there is a long flat section. Jutting from the wall at each of these platforms is a black hand carved from some sort of polished black stone. They’re shiny, probably from being touched repeatedly.  The stairs themselves are also well worn, as though hundreds of feet have climbed them over the years.  It’s all evidence that this staircase was built to allow a pilgrimage, from the temple up to the rocky dead-end where the Company happened to drop down into the cavern.

Finally they reach the ground, and walk to the huge double doors at the front of the temple. These are made of something similar to wood, but which is not wood – more like a petrified fungus coated with resin. Open black hands are carved into both, and they stand ajar.

Grey Wolf, with his _enhanced senses_ active, smells death coming from inside the temple.

“Oh, joy,” he says.

The party walks through a small antechamber and into a huge open space like the nave of a cathedral.  In the back right they can see the bottom section of the great stalactite that has pierced the ceiling, its point gouged into the marble floor. All around it is smashed rubble, boulder-size chunks of worked stone from the walls and ceiling, along with broken off bits of the stalactite itself. 

Morningstar casts _detect evil_, and the spell warns her of a very weak emanation that permeates the entire temple.  And though there are no bodies in sight, Grey Wolf is certain that the smell of corpses is coming from the far end of the great hall. By the light of the glowing motes, he can see several doors leading out to other parts of the cathedral (where the stalactite has not clogged the exits with detritus). The motes bob and float in a slow dance, though there is no breeze here at all.

By the dust layer on the ground,  Dranko guesses that the place has been abandoned for months. On a lark he casts _know age_ on one intact wall of the temple, and learns that it is 810 years old. All of them are pleased that a divination spell worked, but Dranko is suspicious enough that he casts it a second time. It returns the same answer. This temple was built 810 years ago.

“Hey, look at this!”

Ernie has noticed a series of intact murals set into the wall to their left. They are beautifully carved, and have avoided all damage from the stalactite, which fell into the opposite corner of the temple.  The Company crowds around to look, as the six detailed panels tell a story.

The first panel shows a large empty cavern, empty, but with three huge stalactites hanging from the ceiling.

The second panel shows that same cavern, but a huge black hand reaches out of one wall. A light shines from the palm of the hand, onto the floor of the cavern.

The third panel depicts the temple itself, half-built, on the very spot where they now stand. The creatures shown building it are humanoid, though not quite proportioned correctly.

The fourth panel shows the temple fully built, with a bright corona around it.

The fifth panel shows a crowd of humanoids on the left side of the frame, and a little black hand has been drawn over each of their heads. They are all bowing. In front of them, on the right side of the frame, are seven more humanoid figures, four of which are about the same size as those in the black-hand crowd, and three of which are noticeably shorter.

The sixth and final panel shows one of the figures with a black hand symbol, putting a circlet or crown on the head of one of the shorter members of the group of seven.

“So,” says Dranko. “We should have worshippers. Where are they?”

Kibi frowns. “I have a feeling that the people who were supposed to give us that crown, are who we’re smelling in the back of this temple.”

As if his comment were a summons, a throng of creatures comes streaming in from various doorways leading out of main temple chamber. They are between six and seven feet tall, and humanoid, though they are top-heavy, broad-shouldered, with slanted torsos and oddly-jointed legs. They float a few inches from the ground, and dirty gray robes with hoods are draped over their bodies – robes bearing the symbol of an open black hand on the sides of the hoods. The faces of these creatures are pale, sallow, and in the middling stages of decomposition. 

Each has a large, burned out hole where its heart should be.

The nausea of Essence accompanies them.

…to be continued…


----------



## StevenAC

Wow, that's a great way to get the party invested straight away in this new environment they've been dumped into - have a group of people who've been anticipating their arrival and ready to welcome them for who knows how long, except the bad guys got there first and killed them all off.  Well played again, you RBDM. 

And with the new phase of the story now under way, Part Three of the collected Story Hour is now finished and uploaded.  Most of the earlier chapters have also had some minor typos or formatting glitches corrected as well.  Enjoy!


----------



## Quartz

Awesome!

And definitely a RBDM moment. Which I am so totally going to steal.


----------



## Everett

*Bump*

Just for the sake of letting the thread be active: when did the party first get their permanent mental link?  I've no idea, myself; seems like they've just always had it.


----------



## Middle Snu

I vaguely remember that they simply started casting it every day as a "standard practice" once they hit high level, and I assume they still do.


----------



## Everett

Well, then...

*bump*


----------



## carborundum

I reckon Sagiro will be a bit busy til Cardhunter launches (this week? )
Then updates-a-gogo!  

One can always hope


----------



## LightPhoenix

Card Hunter goes live this Thursday midnight EDT.  After that I'm guessing naps-a-gogo, then updates.


----------



## Sagiro

It hasn't been Card Hunter eating most of my time, though we're obviously excited that we're so close to shipping. Rather it's been a combination of family vacations, dealing with kids' back-to-school stuff, reading novels, and working on the novelization of this very story. (Now over 80k words, and I've hardly scratched the surface!). But the Story Hour is not forgotten, and I continue to chip away at it, bit by bit.  

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 366*_
*Onward and Downward*

Dranko wastes no time. He activates his _boots of haste_, shifts to a better defensive position, and annihilates one of the floating robed creatures with a salvo of perfectly-placed whip strikes. The thing drops into a mangled heap, its long wooden staff clattering to the floor.

Each of these things has such a staff which, like their faces, crawls with squidgy black lesions, the telltale mark of Adversary blood infection.  One of the monsters glides forward and taps Aravis gently with his staff.  Aravis vanishes. His voice, annoyed, still sounds over the _telepathic bond_.  “Ah, crap. I’m in a tunnel somewhere. A long tunnel.”

“I thought teleportation didn’t work down here,” says Flicker.

“That may be,” says Aravis, “but that thing just managed it. But if I can be teleported to wherever I am, I should be able to get myself back.”

A second of the infected creatures stares at Dranko, who feels the horrid burning of sympathetic black lesions rising to his own skin. Then it touches its staff to his chest, and he can feel intelligence draining from his mind. Also, the interior of temple disappears, and he finds himself transported high up on the path they had already traversed, not far from where they emerged from the hole through the Iron Barrier.

“They did something to me!” he complains over the mind-link. His brain doesn’t seem to be working correctly. “What’s that word? Tumbleport? I think they tumbleported me. Er, I’m having some trouble thinking about words.”

Yet another of the foul things taps Kibi with its staff, and the dwarf reappears directly outside the temple. His head feels muzzy, like he’s trying hard to come fully awake.

Ernie pulls out his holy symbol and holds it forward, invoking the name of Yondalla as he tries to turn the Essence-infused undead. They flinch, very slightly, but are otherwise unharmed. “Oh, crud,” Ernie mutters. “I think I was supposed to cross my fingers or something. I haven’t turned undead in a while!”

Grey Wolf decides he wants nothing to do with these robed menaces and their brain-sucking forced-teleportation staves. He changes into a dragon, flies upward, and circles, getting ready to breathe. Such a contingency doesn’t occur to Flicker; he stabs the closest foe repeatedly with a dagger, though with some misgivings about having lost Dranko as a flanking buddy. His target doesn’t drop, and he feels the wrongness of Essence flowing from it like a poison.

Kibi is still plenty smart. He casts _effulgent epuration_, surrounding himself with twenty silver discs. So girded, he runs back into the temple doorway and quickens an empowered _coldfire_. This strikes two of his enemies, but while they do suffer some damage, it’s not severe. These things have some resistance to fire. But there is a strange side-effect to his spell. Where the burst of magical energy detonated, the little light-motes that provide illumination here in the Underdark are completely wiped out.  A strange black sphere of un-light now hangs in the temple interior, almost like a solid object itself, and only slowly do the light-motes along its edges start to drift inward to re-illuminate the gap.

Morningstar also tries turning, imploring Ell to smite her foes, but again the monsters resist. Sighing, she quickens a _divine favor_. 

Aravis tries to _teleport_ back, but it fails. “Wait,” he complains. “I can’t teleport back, even though I was teleported here? Damn it” He adds a few more curses about the injustice of the universe’s inner workings, while Dranko dashes back down the stairs toward the temple below. 

The corrupted priests press in upon the Company. Ernie resists their attempt to _teleport_ him away, but suffers terrible damage from their pulsing black lesions. Morningstar and Flicker are sapped of intellect and sent elsewhere – Morningstar to an upper floor of the temple (where she can see Grey Wolf’s draconic form wheeling around almost at eye-level), and Flicker to the wide cavern outside.

Ernie busts out his ultimate weapon against the undead – _mass heal_ – and catches two of the enemy in its net. One is nearly blasted to pieces, leaving it with protruding bones and leaking sludgy black fluid. The second is badly damaged, though not so thoroughly as the first. And of course he himself is healed of his wounds. Seeing that one of his enemies could almost be felled with harsh language, he finishes it off with a quickened _holy smite_.

Grey Wolf dive-bombs and breathes on the enemy, but they dodge nimbly away from the center of his acid cone, and worse, their energy resistance extends to acid as well. Bostock, subsumed into Grey Wolf’s dragon form, is still able to communicate. *They’re not resistant to steel*, he says, obviously frustrated. But like Kibi’s spell before it, Grey Wolf’s dragon breath has left a wide cone of darkness slashed through the ambient light of the temple interior.

Kibi foregoes the energy attacks this time around and casts _summon monster IX_, calling into being a pack of five greater earth elementals. Two of these immediately move to grapple Kibi’s enemies, while the remaining ones pound them with boulder-fists. Dranko rushes into the room just in time to see this happen; he charges forward, whip cracking, and tears chunks of moribund flesh from one of the corrupted monsters’ bones.

Morningstar downs a potion of _fly_ and swoops from her high balcony to rejoin the fight, just as the two grappling elementals vanish, teleported to who-knows-where. The newly-free undead stare at Dranko and Ernie, their black pustules squirming along their skin and causing similar lesions to form and burst on their victims’ faces.  Ernie fights down the horror and returns fire with _searing light_, but his target is nimble and dodges the ray.  Grey Wolf retains his dragon form, but since his breath weapon has proved ineffectual, he goes for the bite instead. He is spared learning what a mouthful of Essence-infected undead tastes like, as the agile creature ducks under Grey Wolf’s closing jaws.

Kibi still has three elementals left. He instructs two of them to grapple the undead, and once they have done so, the third punches one of their heads right off its shoulders. 

Only one enemy now remains, and it doesn’t last much longer. Morningstar burns a hole through its stomach with a _darkbeam_, and Dranko rips it apart with a barrage of whip-cracks. Its infected staff clatters to the floor.


/*/


Even before the Company can catch its collective breath, a massive sound echoes all around the temple and the cavern surrounding it, a wrenching-metal sound, like a huge iron barrel is buckling beneath an indescribable weight. This grows louder over a handful of seconds, and then finishes with a thunderous slamming, as though a metal giant the size of a ship had pounded its fists together.

Dranko rushes outside to look, expecting maybe that one of the remaining two stalactites has broken off, but they are both still hanging above the temple. He thinks the sound may have come from the stairs down which they descended, and runs off to investigate. The others follow.

There is no more hole, burned through Yulan’s shell with Adversary blood. The sound they heard was the Iron Barrier re-sealing itself, leaving only a thin, ragged seam behind. If a return to the surface world seemed doubtful before, now all doubt has been erased.

Over the mind-link they hear Aravis’s voice.  “I’ve come to a door. I think it leads _into_ the cavern with the welcome temple, the one you all are in. The door I’m looking at is locked, chained and barred from _this_ side. And there are four glyphs carved into it, which I can read thanks to Parthol’s translator beads. They mean ‘Danger,’ ‘Warning’, ‘Stop’ and ‘Death.’

He casts _knock_, so that he can return to his friends, all the while grumbling that Adversary blood allowed the enemy creatures to _teleport_ others, in apparent violation of the rules of the Underdark.  Once all are gathered, Morningstar uses a _wand of restoration_ to cure everyone of the intelligence drain inflicted by the dead priests. 


/*/


With freedom to search the rest of the temple free of distraction, the Company discovers a richly-appointed room on the upper story. In the back of this chamber is a statue, a tall woman sculpted of black rock, her hands raised, palms up. She is humanoid, though not human, and the hands of the statue match closely the many hands they have seen ornamenting the lower temple and the walls outside.

In the center of the room is a table, on which rests a cushion. There is a round indentation in the pillow, where a heavy circlet must have rested for generations.

Next to the cushion is a severed head, of the same race as those creatures the party just fought.  And stacked behind the statue in the back,  in a reeking heap, are twenty more bodies. Most are wearing priestly robes, and all of their clothes are made of an odd, stiff cloth. Each has a hole burned into its chest. 

The Company’s hatred of Meledien at this moment is difficult to overstate.

Morningstar casts _speak with dead_ on the head upon the cushion. Its answers are barely audible, coming in rasping groans.

“I’m sorry we’re late. We are the seven you were waiting for. What were you supposed to give to us?”

*Circlet of Yavin.*

“Who was Yavin?”

*One of the Sister Gods.*

“What was the Circlet of Yavin supposed to do for us?”

*Guide you.*

“Why were we the ones supposed to receive it?”

*Prophecy of Yavin. *

“Was there anything else you were supposed to give us?”

*No.*

“Is there anywhere else we can find the Prophecy of Yavin?”

*It is well-known… oral tradition.*

“No one in your temple survived. How should we put your people to rest?”

*Burn.*

Thinking that perhaps this head was left by their enemies to convey some message, Morningstar grits her teeth and asks, 
“Is there anything else you were supposed to tell us?”

*They said, “it’s already over.”*

“Where was the Circlet supposed to guide us?”

*The place where you will fulfill your destiny.*

“If you were us, where would you head next?”

*Kessedth.*

The others, listening to the head speak, hear only a guttural gibberish, scattered sub-vocalizations and coughed-up snippets, but Morningstar can divine their meaning. That’s because even the poor decapitated priest is speaking partly with sound and partly in thoughts, but only Morningstar hears the thought-portions of the answers. 

The answers only confirm the Company’s fears; this Temple and everything in it was dedicated to _them_, and housed an artifact meant to guide them to where they would, presumably, save the world. But that has all been derailed by Meledien, Tarsos and Seven Dark Words, who now have the Circlet of Yavin to go along with their six-month head start.

Due diligence leads them to explore the remainder of the temple. In a desk drawer, along with a pen and pot of dried-up ink, Flicker discovers several high-quality diamonds and sapphires, along with four or five gray crystal fragments. A second drawer holds over twenty square mithril chits. The halfling guesses the total is worth at least ten thousand gold pieces, and Dranko rejoices that at least some good has come from their arrival. 

Kibi strokes his beard.  “We should have brought twigs and branches and normal cloth with us. Imagine how valuable they’d be to someone down here.”

Before leaving the temple, the Company makes a pile of the slain priests, and burns them, uttering prayers to the Sister God Yavin. The dust-mote lights drift away from the flames.


/*/


They leave the Cavern of the Temple by the door Aravis has discovered, its chains and locks and bars now in a pile on the ground. Dranko crosses out the existing glyphs and adds his own: the symbol meaning “safe.”

The tunnel leading away from the cavern starts out wide and high, with a floor worn smooth, especially down its center.  Soon enough, though, it becomes lower, narrower, and filled with twists and turns. Always it heads downward, usually gently but sometimes precipitously, though in the latter places, ladders or ropes or even stairs have been built in to make it easier to navigate the steep drops.

Taking a page from Dranko’s book, Ernie licks one of the ‘wooden’ ladders and detects a faint taste of fungus.

An hour into their journey, the dust motes begin to grow dim. It’s not that they’re entering a darker area; even the lights behind them are darkening. Aravis makes the connection first; that somewhere miles above them, the sun is setting. Kibi _stone shapes_ the ground flat, in an area large enough to support Aravis’s _secure shelter_. Soon enough the light-motes have winked out, leaving them in darkness. All of them can still hear faint whispers whenever it’s quiet, the murmur of thought-voices that could be just outside the shelter or a hundred miles distant. 

They sleep, spending their first night beneath Yulan’s Barrier. It passes without incident. They wake to find the light-motes are brightening once more.

For hours the next day they follow the tunnel as it winds and bends downward and (Kibi thinks) eastward. At one stretch it widens out and the ground becomes flat; there are several barrels and bags here, and a large crate pushed against one tunnel wall.

*>>
Piratecat: “I click on them!”
Sagiro: “They burst open, except for one barrel, which explodes!”
>>*

Flicker pries open a barrel and finds it full of musty water topped with a layer of scum. The crates contain moldy food, including something which looks suspiciously like an apple. After casting a purifying orison on it, Dranko takes a bite. It’s not an apple, though the taste is reminiscent. It’s tart, slightly bitter, and not wholly unpleasant.

Morningstar casts a _thought capture_. It’s difficult to translate what she finds, so alien are the thought processes of the Underdark natives, but she thinks she understands the sentiment well enough: it’s someone eager to see the temple where the saviors are prophesied to arrive.

“I hope there’ll still be someone alive to save,” says Dranko. The next living creature they see down here will be the first.

After another night in a _secure shelter_, Grey Wolf decides to speed up the journey by casting a _phantom steed_ for everyone in the Company. Their progress improves markedly. Every ten miles or so is another flattened and widened length of tunnel stocked with food and drink; some of these have moldy straw pallets as well. By the time they arrive at a second door at the far end of the tunnel, Kibi thinks they’ve descended another mile and a half below where the temple waited.

Like the door far above, this one is locked. Kibi casts _knock_, and they hear the sounds of bars, chains and locks falling away. Flicker slowly pushes the door open, and they step out onto a high and wide ledge overlooking a large natural cavern which is home to a little town. There are eight buildings clustered below, through which runs a little stream. Several tunnels lead out from the cavern. The far wall is more vertical than the others, and is covered with something multicolored that glistens in the light of the motes. 

There is no sign of movement down in the town, but as they fly their mounts downward they detect no stench of death, which is something of a relief.

“Anyone here?” calls Dranko.  His voice echoes but is not answered.

The shimmering wall turns out to be a vertical garden, growing fungus in parti-colored varieties. A system of pumps and pipes brings water to the top of the wall, where it sheets down over the sprouting mushrooms. Even Ernie is not familiar with the types.

Three buildings stand out, larger than the rest. The one at the far end of the cavern is probably a temple, judging from the huge carved black hands that adorn its walls. A second is an old general store, its crumbling shelves stocked with moldy food, boots, ropes, water skins and climbing equipment. Kicked under the counter are two gray crystal chits and three mithril squares. There is no blood or other sign of violence, and no indications of a hasty evacuation. The Company speculates that this was a town that supplied pilgrims headed to the Cavern of Arrival. It’s no wonder that it’s been abandoned.

The third large building was once a two-story inn. The party wanders through its rooms and halls; the beds are made of a wood-like hard fungus, and the mattresses stuffed with something similar to, but not exactly, feathers. 

Grey Wolf, under the influence of _enhanced senses_, hears a sound coming from one of the rooms at the end of the second-floor hallway. 

It sounds like snoring.


…to be continued…


----------



## carborundum

Good grief - that sounded like a tough fight (for 20th level characters)!

And I'm shaking my fist at Meredien in sympathy, guys 

PS: Weird - got no notification of this update, found it by happy chance!


----------



## Quartz

Yay!

PS Moah!


----------



## Everett

Hope to see more soon....


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 367*_
*Q & A*

Slowly, Ernie opens the door from behind which the snoring is coming. There is (unsurprisingly) someone asleep in a bed, a creature of the same race as the doomed priests from the Temple. His skin is a mossy green, heavily wrinkled. He is eight feet tall and broad-shouldered, but the bed is sized for his kind. Grey Wolf pokes his head in and sees a staff leaning up against the wall next to the bed, but there is no sign of armor or weapons. 

Grey Wolf casts _mage hand_ and taps the sleeping figure on the shoulder. The tall man’s eyes open; he blinks a few times and sits up slightly, looking confused.

“Hello,” says Ernie from the doorway.

“We’re the saviors,” Dranko adds. “Sorry we’re late.”

“Not sure I would have opened with that,” Grey Wolf grumbles.

“Sorry to wake you,” says Kibi. “But you’re the first living being we’ve seen down here.”

The creature sits up fully, his body folding and unfolding in ways that are just slightly wrong due to his odd physiology. He speaks in a strange tongue that is translated into heavily accented common by Parthol’s stones.

“You are… late.”

“We’re not late,” says Ernie. “Just those jerks were here first.”

The creature looks at them askance and cocks his head.  It’s tricky for the members of the Company to make themselves understood; they are talking too much, and garbling the thought-parts of their speech. When the native creature had spoken, it was mostly subvocalizing, but he was also thinking what he was saying, directly, and employing a rudimentary form of telepathy to augment that. But Parthol’s beads are up to the task of mimicking this odd half-thought communication.

“You are very late. But better late than never. So, you have come from the Temple, then?”

“Yeah,” says Dranko. “We’ve put all your people to rest.”

“Then you have dealt, I trust, with the creatures.”  He looks at them carefully with green, oversized eyes. “Seven from Outside,” he intones, as if reciting something from memory. “And here you are, seven from the Outside.”

“I’m Ernie.”

“I am Toq.”

Toq stands up and stretches. His arms are freakishly long.

“Is this Kessedth?” asks Kibi.

“Yes. And what is your name?”

“I’m Kibilhathur Bimson.”

“He’s the opener,” says Dranko.

“Is that important?”

The Company has by now all moved into the room, and they introduce themselves to Toq one by one.  They make sure to stress that the temple is now safe for visitors.

Toq makes some odd clicking noises in his throat. “But now there is no reason to go, because you are here. I suppose the most devout may wish to see the place, but there is no longer the chance of meeting you coming down.”

“Were you expecting us at a particular time?” asks Kibi.

“Everyone had a different guess,” Toq replies. “For 900 years people have been guessing.”

“What did the legends say we were going to do?” asks Ernie.

“Yavin’s Prophecy,” says Toq. “Yavin is the Sister God of…”  Here he speaks a word that Parthol’s stones find difficult to translate, but more-or-less means ‘she who solves problems peacefully.’   “The Prophecy of Yavin is very simple,” Toq continues. “That deep in the heart of the Underdark is that which will mean the end of all things, all life. But seven from the outside will come to set things right. That is all there is.”

Kibi nods. “And the Circlet will take us?”

“It has been waiting there for you for almost a thousand years.”

“Well, it’s not there now,” says the dwarf.

“So,” says Dranko, “if you had a circlet like that, and someone stole it, and it was supposed to tell you where to go next… where would _you_ go next?”

“I don’t know,” says Toq. “A group of many pilgrims went up, one came back, saying something horrible had happened, and everyone was dead, and the Circlet was gone. But no one ever attacked the town.”

“Wait a minute,” says Ernie. “If no one attacked, but the only way down from the temple is through Kessedh, where did Meledien and Tarsos _go_?  

“They must have disguised themselves, or snuck through at night,” says Dranko.

“Next we sent an armed force up to the temple,” said Toq. “None of them came back either, so we locked the doors, added the glyphs, and sent out warnings that people should stay far away from this place. After that, slowly, one by one, the inhabitants of Kessedth, many of whom have been my friends for a long time, left to go elsewhere. Mostly to Emmenth. Now it is only me. I thought someone should stay behind. The danger did not seem so great, as the creatures in the temple did not seem interested in traveling all this way. The doors were locked and sealed, and I have plenty of food and water, thanks be to Yavin.”

“For your steadfastness, may you be blessed with long life and great riches and peace,” said Dranko.

“That is very nice,” said Toq.

“Are you a priest of your people?” asked Morningstar.

“I am a farmer-priest. I tend to my gardens.”

“”Anything else you can tell us?” asked Dranko.

“Yes,” said Toq. “We did see one stranger, but she did not come from up, but from down.  Not a Zeraphin like myself, and not one of the Stribe. She was of a race I had not seen, and she asked about the temple, and whether someone had come from there. She was… arrogant, I would say. Disrespectful.”

“Did she wear red armor?” asked Morningstar.

“No, but her skin was red, and horns curved out of her head like a macoot.  She radiated power, and an unconcern for us.  But when we told her no one had come from the temple, she lost interest, and she left, in the direction of the Crystal Wood.” 

Dranko raised an eyebrow. “Crystal wood?”

“That tunnel there goes to the Crystal Wood, but there are no riches left there to be harvested.”

“And she hasn’t come back?”

“No… that was two months ago.”

Aravis draws pictures of Rosetta and of Meledien, but Toq shakes his head when he looks at them. 

“Who are the Stribe?” asks Morningstar.

“They are… how do you say… bugs.  But we do trade with them. They are not hostile. Not very communicative. They have thriving cities.”

“So we’ve got you, the Stribe, and red-skin lady. Anyone else?” asks Dranko.

“The Stribe and the Zeraphin are the only races who live in this region. There are others, I’m sure, far off in other directions, but we do not know them.”

“Are there any predators we should know about?”

“Ah, yes,” says Toq. “Living in the darkness and tunnels. You should be careful of the peshovar.  They are very big. Hard shell. Tail with big ball on the end. Teeth in the front. They stay away from civilized areas, and I have not seen one in a long time, but they sometimes prowl the dark tunnels and caves.”

Dranko gestures to the shining dust motes in the air. “Do you know what the light is made out of?”

“It is light,” says Toq. “It is not _made_ out of anything.”

“Our light comes from a huge ball of fire in the sky,” says Morningstar.

“Sky?”

“Imagine there was no ceiling,” says Dranko, “and open air just went up and up and up…”

“That sounds horrible!” Toq exclaims.

“I could show you…” says Morningstar.

“Show me what’s it like without a roof?  No!”

“It’s wonderful,” says Morningstar.

“No! I think perhaps you are not yet speaking our language correctly.”

“We find having a roof always over our head to be… confining,” says Morningstar. “Constricting.”

“Speak for yourself!” Kibi grumbles.

“We find it comforting to know, to understand the boundary of the world,” says Toq. 

They talk for a while longer about cultural and racial differences between the surface world and the Underdark, before the Company turns the conversation to the local Gods, purported to walk among mortals.

“There are two Sister Gods,” Toq explains. “Yavin and Wlaqua.  Do not have truck with Wlaqua.  She is a Goddess of …”  Again, the translation is spotty, but it comes across as “she who solves problems with violence.”

“_We_ solve problems with violence,” Ernie points out.

“So you serve Yavin,” says Morningstar. 

“Yes. Almost all of the Zeraphim and the Stribe do, though here and there you may find a bad seed who reveres Wlaqua.”

“Are there other Gods?” asks Dranko.

“The Sister Gods would not _allow_ other Gods. I shudder to think what they would do if they found any.”

Aravis tries not to look as nervous as this suggestion makes him feel.

“Have you ever seen Yavin walking around?” Dranko asks.

“Alas, it has never been my good fortune to see Yavin.  But She will sometimes manifest in people, when she feels it appropriate.  Here in the Outward North, Yavin is ascendant.  But I understand that as you go south and down, you will reach places where Wlaqua is more influential.”

“So worship is not divided among races?” asks Ernie.

“No, it is personal, though I imagine most races are naturally inclined to worship one or the other.” 

“Do you have a creation myth?” asks Morningstar. “How the Sisters came to be here?”

“They were once like us,” says Toq, “but they grew in strength, and then found a source of great power, and ascended to Godhood. At first there was great strife between them, but as  neither could destroy the other, they reached an accord.”

“And where did they find a source of divine power?” asks Ernie.

“The legends do not say. But it is my belief that the earth itself… we call it Abernia… endowed them with the power.”

“Have you noticed anything strange happening in the past few months?” asks Kibi. “On the surface, our fish are dying.”

“That is happening in places here, too,” says Toq. “Strange deaths of sea creatures, that correspond with earthquakes, which are happening more frequently than usual.”

“What we are supposed to do, will stop that,” says Kibi.

There are several tunnels that lead out of the village of Kessedth, and the Company asks Toq about where they go.

“If you go that way,” says Toq, pointing to the nearest tunnel, “you will have to duck under. The tunnel has only recently been built. It goes directly to the Stribe capital of Keshem, where I think there is a Leaping Circle.”

That gets the party’s attention. He must be talking about the _teleportation circles_ Parthol had mentioned. 

“Where does it lead to?” asks Dranko.

Toq shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably another Stribe city. I do know that the Stribe restrict its use greatly.”  

He points to the next tunnel. “That way takes you to the Croaking Oracle. I have never actually seen it, and I don’t intend to. I have no questions I want answered badly enough.”

“Is there a price?” asks Ernie.

“I don’t think there is a price you _have_ to pay, but if you want better answers, it prefers you bring a live Stribe to eat. It is a big toad. It likes to eat insects. It sits in the middle of the Pressing Lake. It is said to have perfect knowledge of all things in the Underdark.”

“Could we bring it a peshovar?” asks Dranko.

“That is not an insect. It is more of a reptile,” says Toq.

The Company is not happy about feeding the toad a sentient creature, but figure they might be able to feed it something else. Toq tells them the Croaking Oracle is not far, maybe a week’s walk to get to Pressing Lake. The oracular toad is said to live on an island in the middle of the lake.”

Before conferring on which of these place to go next, Dranko asks about the gray crystal chits. 

“Ah, those are khet chips,” says Toq. Dranko then shows the mithril squares. “Those are bits,” says Toq. “Ten bits to a khet.”

“Wait,” says Ernie. “the crystal is more valuable than the mithril?”

“Of course,” says Toq. “Mithril is commonplace.  Not quite as commonplace as those other gems…” here he points to the diamonds and sapphires in Dranko’s palm, the ones found at the Temple of Arrival. “The khet only come from crystal khet trres, that grow in groves around the Underdark, very slowly. If you own one and control the growing of them, it is good for your people, but they circulate about.”

Dranko looks crestfallen. “So, the emeralds and sapphires and diamonds…”

“They are pretty,” says Toq. He points to a sapphire in Dranko’s hand, one probably worth five hundred gold pieces on the surface. “That is probably worth half a khet, to someone who wants to use it for a craft of some kind.”

Dranko takes off his gem-studded _helm of brilliance_, for which he paid tens of thousands of gold pieces not long ago.  “What would you say this is worth, then?”

Toq looks it over. “Not a great deal. But the craftsmanship is nice.”

Dranko tries not to cry.

…to be continued…


----------



## carborundum

Beautiful. Every offhand reference says "this is a living  world" and sets my curiosity bone a jiggling. Hats off to Sagiro


----------



## Piratecat

So we're clear, Dranko did cry. Do you have _any idea_ how much that friggin' helm of brilliance cost him? 125,000 GP. And he mostly brought it to look rich and impressive.

*sob*


----------



## Everett

Is good.  More?  Within this calendar year?


----------



## Solarious

Piratecat said:


> So we're clear, Dranko did cry. Do you have _any idea_ how much that friggin' helm of brilliance cost him? 125,000 GP. And he mostly brought it to look rich and impressive.
> 
> *sob*



Now, instead of looking rich and impressive, you look shabby and uncultured. Pretty, gaudy, and terribly common. Ah, the perils of being on the leading edge of fashion; trends can change so quickly.

Still, at least I can look forward to seeing you feed an elder air elemental _Polymorphed_ into a giant tarantula to a truly enormous oracular toad. Cheer up! You rip an abandoned divine abomination made entirely out of wings a new one in the process.


----------



## Neurotic

Piratecat said:


> So we're clear, Dranko did cry. Do you have _any idea_ how much that friggin' helm of brilliance cost him? 125,000 GP. And he mostly brought it to look rich and impressive.
> 
> *sob*




Well, you have to understand, someone might think Dranko is someone of consequence if he has that kind of money to spend or someone gave such gift to him. After all, we all know he didn't do anything important, right?

Oh, and if you teach that toad to use bag of many tricks it can have giant insects for life - and introduce unwanted specimens in Underdark ecology


----------



## Anxe

I have finished! After half a year of reading through the archives I am done! And I'm happy the story is soon coming to a conclusion. I don't have to wait decades like some of the loyal fans.

And I might as well stir the pot while I'm here. When does Rosetta stab you in the back?


----------



## gerg_861

Ditto, just caught up after a 10 year break. Thanks for the story.


----------



## Everett

Anxe said:


> I have finished! After half a year of reading through the archives I am done! And I'm happy the story is soon coming to a conclusion. I don't have to wait decades like some of the loyal fans.




Decades?  No.  "Soon"?  No.  Just a solid year or so.  Settle in.


----------



## Sagiro

To gerg and Anxe, thanks for coming back to the story! I appreciate what an undertaking it must be, reading the entire thing from its humble beginning.

To Anxe: you'll be hearing about Rosetta in the next few updates. 

A general note: after this update, there are 20 runs remaining to transcribe. (Which doesn't necessarily mean 20 updates; I average more than one update per run.)


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 368*_
*The Croaking Oracle*


From the possible places to go next, the Company decides to pay a visit to the Croaking Oracle. Toq has little more to offer, never having been to visit the prophesying toad.  “I have heard he is very big… bigger than you, I think. Though as I have said, I find it unsavory that he prefers to eat a live Stribe.”

“I want to thank you,” says Dranko, as they prepare to depart Kessedth. “It took dedication and faith to wait here all this time for us. We really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome,” says Toq.

“I’d give you a diamond or an emerald, but… wait… I have an idea.”  Dranko spends a minute describing a tree. Toq says they have something similar in occasional large caverns, but that they are very rare. Dranko fishes around in his pack for an old wooden holy symbol of Delioch, which Toq accepts with great reverence. Wood is extremely valuable, and on top of that he considers its hand-shaped design to be a reference to Yavin.

“What are you going to tell people, now that we’ve arrived?” asks Dranko.

“I was hoping to go with you,” says Toq, “to see what you will do. I have been waiting a long time; it seems a shame to abandon you so soon.”

“You might die, and we’ll feel terrible,” says Dranko.

“Am I likely to die if I travel with you?  That would… change things in my mind.”

After the party assures him that their journey is bound to be filled with horrible perils of every sort, Toq opts to remain behind, and wishes them well. “Follow the main tunnel,” he advises. “I believe it goes directly to Pressing Lake. The whole of the Underdark is riddled with tunnels and passages, old mineshafts, natural fissures, vertical shafts and abandoned burrows, but very few of them lead to anywhere interesting, let alone inhabited.  The ones that _do_ go somewhere interesting, you will know because they have been widened, and worn down by many feet, and there are often ropes and ladders to help travelers. Some have not been maintained well, and I suspect that your path will be rough. The Croaking Oracle, for all his supposed knowledge, does not get many visitors.”

“Could we bring the Oracle some other insects?” asks Kibi.

“There are some tarantulas in the tunnels, but they are very small compared to the Croaking Oracle. I doubt it would be satisfied.”

Though Toq estimated a week of travel to reach Pressing Lake, he was not taking into account that the party would be flying on _phantom steeds_.  While the tunnel does wind up and down, back and forth, with bridges spanning crevasses, ropes snaking up nearly vertical shafts, and rough patches with tilted floors, the Company finds it all easily navigated. 

During the journey they see no other travelers, and the tunnel floors are not nearly as worn as those leading to and from the Temple of Arrival. After many hours have passed the light motes start to dim, indicating that night has fallen many miles above.  They stop and make camp in a wide and (relatively) flat section of tunnel, and though Aravis casts _rope trick_, most choose to sleep ‘old school’ right on the floor of the passage. Some little blue ant-like creatures scurry about, but they’re harmless and shy away into the corners.

Dranko lights a cigar and blows out a stream of smoke. It forms into the words _extremely dangerous._

“I bet that’s about the Croaking Oracle,” says Ernie.

Dranko agrees. “Since they knew we’d immediately go to the Oracle, they’ve probably set a horrible trap for us.”  Everyone understands that by ‘they,’ he means Meledien, Tarsos and Seven Dark Words.

“We could find out by asking the Croaking Oracle,” says Flicker.

Nothing extremely dangerous, or even mildly worrying, occurs overnight. They wake stiff the next morning as the light motes grow bright. All is silent, and no breeze stirs the gently wafting lights. Grey Wolf summons up their _phantom steeds_, and after a quick breakfast they’re off down the passage.

By mid-day, or what they assume is mid-day, the tunnel empties abruptly onto the narrow shore of Pressing Lake. It’s immediately evident from whence comes its name; the lake extends out away from them in all directions, but the flat ceiling above it is no more than eight feet above water level. There is a pier of hardened fungus jutting near at hand, and a little boat is tied up there. Next to the pier is a bucket with three khet chips. Visitors to the Croaking Oracle who don’t have _phantom steeds_ at their disposal must use this little boat to reach it. Morningstar casts _thought capture_ and finds it difficult, but thinks she detects a though of someone having doubts, and wondering if the Stribe they have tied up is really a dangerous criminal.

Kibi casts _prying eyes_ and sends them off to scout, with instructions to stay within a mile of him, and to report back if they see anything that’s not water or featureless shoreline.  Grey Wolf, with _enhanced senses_ cast, takes a whiff of the air and smells fish, but no salt. Kibi casts _veil_ to make them look like rats (though they’ll be rats on flying horses), and Ernie casts _water walk_ on everyone in case they become unseated while over the water.  Finally, Dranko casts a _light_ spell on the shore, so they’ll have a beacon to return to.

They ride out perpendicular from the shore, figuring that if Pressing Lake is more-or-less a circle, they’ll be heading towards its center. Though the hoofs of their _phantom steeds_ skim the water, their heads come uncomfortably close to the low stone ceiling as they gallop along. It’s intensely claustrophobic.  Ninety minutes into the journey one of Kibi’s _prying eyes_ returns and reports. It had arrived at an island at the center of the lake, a small stony protrusion from the water, less than a hundred feet across. The ceiling above the island rises, forming a rough dome only 30’ high at its apex. In the middle of the island, squatting in a damp indentation, is an enormous dark green toad. It’s about the size of a baby elephant, with heavy lidded eyes and warty skin. Every few seconds its vocal sac inflates and it lets out a resonant croak. Kibi is relieved to see it is alive, no hole burned in its chest.

Kibi adjusts the party’s course and before too long the island comes into their actual view.  But no sooner do they reach the comfortingly high ceiling of the Croaking Oracle’s dome, than something else comes streaking towards them from another direction. It’s a large spinning tornado, tipped sideways to fit betwixt sea and roof, with two glowing green eyes. Its entire form is outlined with an aquamarine aura.  Water from pressing lake is being drawn up into its vortex and spewed out in all directions.

It appears that the Evil Trio has left a trap for them after all.

Flicker leaps from his horse (not being much skilled at mounted combat) and sprints along the water’s surface to meet the charging elemental.  Dranko does the same, activating his _boots of haste_ and maneuvering into flanking position. (Thanks to Cranchus’s marble, he is able to land sneak attacks upon elementals.)  He whips the creature as Flicker slashes at it.  The elemental’s eyes rotate around the outer layer of its tornado body until they become fixed, unwavering, on Dranko. Then two more elementals come whooshing in from the darkness, also rimmed with blue-green light, and these too head straight for Dranko, ignoring several other members of the Company.  The three elementals buffet him with powerful tendrils of coruscating air.

Grey Wolf fires off a _chain lightning_ at the trio of elementals, but their preternatural reflexes allow them to avoid much of the damage. Inverted lightning bolts of darkness are left behind, as light motes are vaporized by the electricity. Morningstar casts _darkbeam_ at one of the attackers, but it twists out of the way with minimal harm done.

Something new arrives, flying even faster than the elementals, and comes to a halt fifty feet away.  It’s difficult to get a good look at through the spray churned up air and water, but it has several flapping wings, and glows with the same aquamarine aura as the elementals. It fires off a thin green beam that strikes Dranko in the chest, and Dranko feels the heavy enervating burden of negative levels.

Kibi entraps this new threat in a solid _forcecage_ before quickening a _rainbow pattern_ that draws away one of the air elementals.  Ernie quickens _iron bones_ on himself and rides closer to the melee, then tries to cast _searing light_, but he finds it too difficult to cast while riding; it’s all he can do not to topple from the phantom steed. Aravis discovers the same. It’s been too long since they’ve tried to cast from horseback. 

Flicker continues flank an elemental with Dranko, and so while his own sword strokes aren’t greatly damaging, he allows Dranko to do massive harm with his whip (despite the negative levels). The elemental bursts into a cloud of quickly-dissipating vapors, its blue-green outline fading to black. 

The remaining non-fascinated elemental continues to harass Dranko, though it’s unable to cause him any injury. Grey Wolf, the only one in the Company with tremendous riding skill, has no difficulty staying mounted while burning a hole in the elemental with an _acid orb_. The spell also leaves a round black spot in the air where the light motes have been dissolved.

The winged creature vanishes and reappears next to Dranko. Up close it seems to be nothing _but_ wings, each a dirty beige, hundreds of them, clumped together with no body to explain them.  A tail snakes out of the mass of matted feathers, and the whole thing stinks like a carcass left out too long in a hot sun.  (The Company has never seen such a horror, and a good thing for them; this newcomer is a Chichimec, one of the most fearsome denizens of the Elemental Plane of Air.) It lashes out with the tail, draining away some of Dranko’s charisma. 

Kibi lobs an empowered, maximized _coldfire_ into the melee around Dranko, knowing his friend will evade its flames.  The elemental and the Chichimec are both burned, while another clump of light motes is wiped out. The battlefield has become twilight-dim with the death of so many. Kibi quickens a _magic missile_ and penetrates the Chichimec’s considerable spell resistance, wounding it further. Its wings flap and twist manically.

Morningstar casts _firestorm_, obliterating the remaining two elementals and wiping out so many light-motes that the Company is forced to rely on their backup _mass darkvision_ to see. The Chichimec is badly seared but continues to flap around Dranko like a huge angry bird. Morningstar quickens a _searing light_ that is foiled by its spell resistance. 

In all this time, the Croaking Oracle has not moved, nor reacted in any way to the raging battle going on all around it. The Company has been careful to avoid catching it in the area of their spells, and the hostile air creatures have been doggedly fixated on Dranko.

Ernie and Aravis hastily dismount. Ernie casts _lion’s roar_, emboldening his allies, but the Chichimec is unaffected. Aravis quickens a _true strike_ and casts a maximized _disintegrate_, but the Chichimec resists most of the damage. Flicker and Dranko again launch a barrage of sneak attacks, and while these are effective, the winged monstrosity is largely resistant to their weapons – even Dranko’s +5 whip.  Still, his aim and good enough to yank out two of its wings; these retain the aquamarine aura as they float to the ground, then vanish with a faint crackling sound.

Grey Wolf channels a maximized _acid orb_ through _Bostock_. The sword cannot penetrate the flapping wings, but the monster has no resistance to acid, and is horribly burned. More wings drop out of its mass. 

Dranko hears a telepathic voice whisper in his mind.  “Dranko…  Blackhope…” 

“Hey, who’s that?” Dranko calls. “Are you the thing I’m killing?”

Either way, the Chichimec erupts in a storm of whirling, bludgeoning wings. Dranko takes massive damage and suffers charisma drain so profound that he nearly loses his capacity for thought.  “Hey… stop… stop it… bleaughhgh!”  He spits and snorts, which is about all that’s left to him in terms of speaking his mind.

Morningstar fires a _darkbolt_, and Ernie follows immediately with _bolt of glory_, a divine recourse perfectly suited for ripping apart evil outsiders.  Both of these spells pierce the enemy’s resistance, and Ernie’s holy blast finishes it off.  The Chichimec explodes in a spray of ichor and smoking feathers, each one individually glowing. One by one the feathers flutter and vanish. 

There is one elemental remaining, rendered harmless by Kibi’s _rainbow pattern_. Kibi looks at it and scratches his beard. “I have an idea,” he muses.

“Your ideas are stupid!” Dranko blurts. The half-orc is drooling a bit and chewing on his lips.  

Kibi ignores him. “We should _polymorph_ that elemental into a tasty insect snack for the toad.”

“Hey Ernie,” says Flicker. “Nice job finishing off the winged whatever-it-was!”

“Yeah,” says Dranko. “You actually did damage for once! You must be so proud of…”

Grey Wolf casts _restoration_ on Dranko in mid-sentence, and Dranko’s expression changes from slack-jawed contempt to one of red-faced embarrassment.  “Ah… sorry about that.”

Aravia casts _polymorph any object_ and turns the air elemental into a dog-sized tarantula, after which Kibi lures it nearer to the Croaking Oracle with his sparkling magic lights.  The toad still hasn’t moved from its spot at the center of the island; only the occasional bulge of its chin indicates it’s even alive.  When the tarantula has crawled close enough, the Oracle’s eyes snap open and a long sticky tongue shoots from its mouth.  The ensnared tarantula is jerked violently into the huge toad’s mouth; its neck bulges as it swallows, and just like that the elemental-turned-arachnid is gone.

The Croaking Oracle gives a satisfied croak, and speaks telepathically into each of the Company’s minds.  “Questions?”

For a minute or two the party debates the best way to phrase its queries, but that proves too long. Somewhere in the toad’s gut the summoned elemental dies and vanishes. The Oracle croaks, blinks its eyes, and burps. Its body seems to deflate slightly. “Unsatisfied. One question.”

After more discussion, Ernie poses their query. “There was a crown, the Circlet of Yavin, that was going to lead us to a specific place. How do we get to that place?”

The toad closes its eyes and croaks complacently, and the party starts to wonder if it’s decided not to answer at all. But eventually its eyes open again, and it thinks its prophecy to them.

“Hopping, hopping. Five, nine, two.”

They wait for the rest, but that seems to be the entirety of what the Croaking Oracle is willing to share.

“That’s it?” exclaims Dranko.

“It really didn’t like our offering,” says Kibi. “Maybe we should…”

He stops. He feels something. A massive surge of Earth Magic is welling up from somewhere below them, from directly beneath the little island. It comes erupting out of the ground, a volcano of deep-stone power that only he can feel. Earth Magic suffuses everything around them, with the Croaking Oracle in the center of it.

It croaks in alarm, looks around in confusion, croaks several more times, and then words of prophecy flood into the minds of the Company.

*
One brings many, flame’s design.
One does also, all malign.
One trip started, one trip done.
One loves all, and one hates one.

Three are bringing, now in place.
Three have won the downward race.
Seven haste, and roll the dice,
Spun by fortune’s sacrifice.

Four are needed, ‘fore the end.
One to take the shell and rend.
One for what is in his head.
One to channel what makes dead.

One at last, but not yet known.
One forever dead as stone.
One to drive the spike clean through.
One to die, and hope renew.

One last journey then to make.
One last prison bar to break.
One last thread of fate to pull.
One last circle to come full.
*

…to be continued…


----------



## coyote6

I bet they were hoping for something more like "ready oil and open flame light the way to victory".


----------



## Quartz

An update! Yay!


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> *
> One brings many, flame’s design.
> One does also, all malign.
> One trip started, one trip done.
> One loves all, and one hates one.
> 
> Three are bringing, now in place.
> Three have won the downward race.
> Seven haste, and roll the dice,
> Spun by fortune’s sacrifice.
> 
> Four are needed, ‘fore the end.
> One to take the shell and rend.
> One for what is in his head.
> One to channel what makes dead.
> 
> One at last, but not yet known.
> One forever dead as stone.
> One to drive the spike clean through.
> One to die, and hope renew.
> 
> One last journey then to make.
> One last prison bar to break.
> One last thread of fate to pull.
> One last circle to come full.
> *




This has been up for almost 24 hours and no one's yet begun to dissect the prophecy?  Get cracking, folks!

So -- the "three" and the "seven" are obvious.  The needed "one for what is in his head" would be Dranko, of course.  "One to channel what makes dead"... Aravis?  Something to do with necromancy?

"One to take the shell and rend" -- my only guesses are Ernie (as in, being called to smite something) or Grey Wolf, only because "to take the shell and rend" seems suggestive of the way that Grey Wolf was meant to be sacrificed in the first part of the game.

And one of the party will have to die, before the end...

But who are the one who loves all, and the one who hates one?  The "hater" could be any of the three villains, but I don't know of anything to indicate which one.  Likewise, the "lover" could be any of the party, or someone else.

Sagiro: can you give us a quick recap (or just point us to the relevant parts of Steven AC's collected Story Hour) of Tarsos and Seven Dark Words?  I remember Meledien as one of Octesian's red-armored compatriots, but that's all.


----------



## Quartz

What levels and how well equipped are they now? Since a Chichimec was only a little more than a speedbump, I'm guessing that they're in the lowish 20s and all have epic weapons.


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> Sagiro: can you give us a quick recap (or just point us to the relevant parts of Steven AC's collected Story Hour) of Tarsos and Seven Dark Words?  I remember Meledien as one of Octesian's red-armored compatriots, but that's all.




Sure.  Tarsos was a red-armored warrior who escaped from the Battle of Verdshane -- the battle where the Emperor's invasion was foiled by Aravis's use of the Crosser's Maze.  Tarsos later joined up with Meledien and the two of them stormed Naslund, Graveyard of the Gods, where they stole Wards necessary to survive in the presence of true divinity.  (Ernie was given the last of these, by Naslund's single surviving caretaker.)  

Seven Dark Words was the Black Circle mastermind and architect of Het Branoi. He was driven mad by Het Branoi's failure, and became the "mad sculptor" wandering the Slices, carving statuettes of Kibi. 

After the dissolution of Het Branoi, Seven Dark Words regained his sanity and joined up with Tarsos and Meledien.  Now the three of them are several months ahead of the Company, as they descend into the Underdark to (presumably) locate, and then do something bad with, the deeply-buried Hand of the Adversary.


----------



## Sagiro

Quartz said:


> What levels and how well equipped are they now? Since a Chichimec was only a little more than a speedbump, I'm guessing that they're in the lowish 20s and all have epic weapons.



I believe everyone in the party was exactly 20th level during this fight.  There were several factors that made it an easy battle for the party: 

- A Chichimec is 'only' a CR 21 creature, and I took away its _wail of the banshee_ power and replaced it with _energy drain_.  
- The party has 7 people, and 7 PC's of level N vs. a single monster of CR N+1 doesn't rate to be that difficult.
- The party had two Epic Weapons  -- _Ell's Will_ and _Honor of Nemmin_ -- but I don't think either of them were used in this battle.
- The players rolled absurdly well on their spell penetration rolls. The Chichimec had SR 33, but the level 20 PC's met that about 75% of the time.
- Conversely, when the monster hit Dranko with _energy drain_, I rolled a 3 on 2d4.
- The Chichimec and its summoned elemetals doggedly focused on Dranko, who's the hardest of the PC's to kill. 
- The Chichimec was immune to electricity and resistant to fire and cold, but Grey Wolf did a ton of acid damage, and the poor beast had nothing it could do about that.


----------



## Quartz

Ah, rolling dice well helps a lot. I'm glad you let the Charisma drain be not permanent. That's one of the things I really dislike about a number of the monsters in the ELH.


----------



## coyote6

Everett said:


> The needed "one for what is in his head" would be Dranko, of course.




Or Aravis - the Crosser's Maze. 



Everett said:


> "One to channel what makes dead"... Aravis?  Something to do with necromancy?




Gotta be negative energy. That's what makes things dead most directly. Maybe one of the three is needed - any of them a cleric? Or Morningstar or Ernie, to cast _inflict_ or _harm_ or the like.

"Drive the spike" - if "spike" is a poetic way to say "sword", that could be _Bostock_ or _Honor of Nemmin_ (if I remember which weapons are swords correctly).

Maybe the shell is the barrier? Who can "rend" that?


----------



## Zelc

Let's take another look at Leantha's book.


Sagiro said:


> Inside are a series of beautiful child's drawings – as if an artistic genius had been tasked to create the works in the style of a toddler. Slowly Aravis turns each page, committing each drawing to memory.
> 
> The first page shows a map of the known world, with Charagan at the western edge, Kivia at the eastern edge, and the Uncrossable Sea between them. Not far from the center, but somewhat to the north, is a small island.
> 
> On the second page there is a great castle.  In the doorway of the castle, a huge, dark male figure is being stabbed in the back by a smaller female figure with a long golden sword. The sword is shattering from the blow. Outside the castle seven others are fleeing, as are hundreds of tiny figures at their feet.
> 
> The third page pictures a fissure in the side of an immense cliff. Two stones with embedded Divination Sinks, like the ones the party found at Het Branoi, sit on the ground outside of the fissure.
> 
> Across the next two pages is a drawing of a Sharshun woman, her face a hidden shadow, holding aloft a long, serrated golden dagger.  It is clear from the coloring and artistic style that this golden dagger and the shattering golden sword are, at very least, made from the same metal.
> 
> The sixth page shows a dwarf with a well-groomed beard, and a pile of rocks at his feet. The dwarf holds aloft that same golden dagger. He is smiling.
> 
> On the seventh page is drawn an ambiguous humanoid figure, wearing the distinctive uniform of the Spire Guard, lying dead, the golden dagger clutched in one hand.
> 
> Drawn large on the eighth page is an image of a Ward of Drosh, hanging from its necklace.
> 
> The ninth page shows a scarred man with protruding tusks and white priestly robes. He is shouting as if in great pain, while blood runs from his eyes.
> 
> And on the tenth and final page is shown a silver coin emblazoned with a lightning bolt – Laramon’s holy symbol.
> 
> 
> /*/
> 
> The party talks at great length about the pictures in Leantha’s book.   They all agree that the dark figure being stabbed with the golden sword is the Adversary, and that the stabber is Uthol Inga.  The other seven figures must be the remaining Travelers:  Brechen, Delioch, Ell, Werthis and Corilayna, as well as the deceased Caba and Aranod.
> 
> The fissure with the divination sinks is a mystery, though the most popular theory is that it’s the entrance to the Sharshun headquarters hidden in the Greatwood.  They’re more certain that the Sharshun woman holding the golden dagger is Darkeye, and Farazil confirms that Darkeye is rumored to possess a powerful dagger known as the _Watcher’s Kiss_.
> 
> The exultant dwarf holding the dagger is obviously Kibi, and the half-orc bleeding from the eyes is clearly Dranko. (“Ugh,” Dranko grumbles. “Kibi gets to smile, and I get to scream while my head explodes.  Great.”)
> 
> As for the dead figure wearing the raiment of the Spire Guard – who knows?  It could be one of the Company, though Dranko is inclined (with no real evidence, admittedly) to think it’s Rosetta.
> 
> The picture of the Ward of Drosh is a dead-on match for the one given to the party by Viersk in Naslund.  As for the silver coin, it’s the symbol of Laramon, Kivian Demigod of Luck.  With Corilayna having fled with the coming of the Adversary, it makes sense that Laramon may be extending his influence throughout the world. As for its meaning, the Company agrees that Leantha is telling them that to defeat the Adversary, they’re going to need good luck, and lots of it.
> 
> …to be continued…




Now back to the Croaking Oracle's riddle:



> Seven haste, and roll the dice,
> Spun by fortune’s sacrifice.






Sagiro said:


> Dranko peers into the Cauldron of Lies.  At first he thinks it’s empty, but then he sees that the bottom third of its volume is swirling with thick black vapors.  Aravis picks up the obsidian-capped stick, dips it into the cauldron, and begins to stir. He feels a tingle in his hands, and experiences a tactile illusion of the stick becoming slimy and befouled.  As the seconds tick by, a deep malaise comes over him, a despairing lethargy that threatens to overwhelm his senses.  But he stays focused, girds his will, and continues to swirl the vapors.
> 
> After a minute or two of this, the vapors leap vigorously from the iron vessel, filling the air above it and forming into words as if pressed onto an invisible tablet.   The others cannot make out the forms of the letters, but Aravis can read their message clearly.
> 
> *Corilayna has indeed joined Drosh in the Crosser’s Maze.*



Very interesting!  It seems like Corilayna got killed or sacrificed herself for some purpose.  Leantha's book also has the holy symbol of Laramon.  Maybe that is related?



> One to take the shell and rend.



The only shell I remember from this story is the Silver Shell.  Isn't Rosetta making an appearance soon?



> One for what is in his head.



This is probably Dranko.



> One to channel what makes dead.



I wonder if the Ward of Drosh is related?



> One at last, but not yet known.
> One forever dead as stone.
> One to drive the spike clean through.
> One to die, and hope renew.






Sagiro said:


> Kibi stirs the cauldron, and fights his way through the unnatural depression it brings. The smoke rises before him, and brings this message:
> 
> *The Cranchus you remember is alive and well.*




Crazy theory: The dwarf with the rocks in Leantha's book is not Kibi, it's Cranchus.  He somehow became "dead as stone".




> One brings many, flame’s design.



The only flame of significance I remember is the Burning God.  Didn't Tor's father, Davarian Firemount, take over Thewana's body?  Last I heard, this story arc was unresolved.  Maybe they have something to do with this?


----------



## steeldragons

Alright. Let'sssseeee...

CALL THE BOOKIES!
Lay the odds
Steel Dragons' guesses,
Jus' because. 



Sagiro said:


> One brings many, flame’s design.
> One does also, all malign.
> One trip started, one trip done.
> One loves all, and one hates one.




The One that brings many would be the Adversary...he's the root of why everyone [good and bad guys] is racing down here, isn't he?
"...all malign" could be another reference to the Adversary...or the first line is someone from the Evil Trio and this line is about the Adversary...or vice versa.

The trip seems evident to the party's ending of their journey's above ground and the start of their trip into the Underdark.

One who loves one...might be Ernie, I'm thinking.
One who hates one...my money's going on Morningstar for Meledien.

OR, both of these are referencing members of the Evil Trio [or new/added foes to come?]...making the whole stanza refer to the Evil part of the equation.



Sagiro said:


> Three are bringing, now in place.
> Three have won the downward race.
> Seven haste, and roll the dice,
> Spun by fortune’s sacrifice.




Obvious. The Evil Trio and the Seven party members.



Sagiro said:


> Four are needed, ‘fore the end.
> One to take the shell and rend.
> One for what is in his head.
> One to channel what makes dead.




Nowwwwww the prophecy....[lol. "NOW a warning?!" lol]

The one who's gotta take the shell and rend...ya got me. THAT could be Dranko...having to rip [rend] open his head [shell] for the power/tentacular goodness inside...needed to defeat whatever's to come. It could also be Aravis...ripping open the "shell" of the dimensional Crosser's Maze...something I figure it would take a "god" to do...I will defer to other's assertions about something to do with Grey Wolf's past, as that escapes me right now. My final conclusion, since other's seem to fit other lines, I'll lay my odds on Aravis, here.

"...to channel what makes dead." That's another crap shoot. What makes dead? Yes, necrotic energy, but in simpler terms...WOUNDS! Damage and wounds make you dead...who channels that? Yeeup, another Ernie or Morningstar toss up. As Monringstar had that big to do of demonstrating her ability (more than once, I believe) to bring folks back from teh dead, my money's on Morningstar.



Sagiro said:


> One at last, but not yet known.
> One forever dead as stone.
> One to drive the spike clean through.
> One to die, and hope renew.




One at last but not yet known...I'm thinking this is a reference to Rosetta...dunno why...Just do.

One forever dead as stone...this is either referring Flicker (as the DMNPC he can be killed off for good) OR, there's a WAMPEER down here someplace! Forever dead as stone...someone has to drive a stake through?...One to die and hope renew...I'm thinking, this is going to be a big "finale" scene of one of the heroes battling some grand daddy of all vampires and dying in the process...Grey Wolf might do this also...

On the other hand..."dead as _stone_"...driving_ spikes_...One of Kibi's favored spells/tactics far as I've read is casting Spike Stones...so maybe this is something to do with Kibi and some big earth magic throw down...but I'm leaning toward Flicker's gonna bite it.



Sagiro said:


> One last journey then to make.
> One last prison bar to break.
> One last thread of fate to pull.
> One last circle to come full.




a.k.a. "This is the absolute last adventure these guys are going on." Be sad, be very very sad.


----------



## Everett

"One for what is in his head..."



coyote6 said:


> Or Aravis - the Crosser's Maze.




But he doesn't have it anymore.  Steeldragon also mentioned that as a possibility.  It's just an intuitive feeling, but I don't think the Crosser's Maze is going to play a role in the endgame.  Aravis' "ghost" -- the piece of himself he sent off -- is still out there, and could show up, but it certainly isn't "in his head."  I think that's got to be Dranko.



			
				coyote6 said:
			
		

> Gotta be negative energy. That's what makes things dead most directly. Maybe one of the three is needed - any of them a cleric? Or Morningstar or Ernie, to cast _inflict_ or _harm_ or the like.




I've long since forgotten what Morningstar's class actually is -- Sagiro? -- but she seems the most likely.  None of the evil trio are clerics.



			
				coyote6 said:
			
		

> "Drive the spike" - if "spike" is a poetic way to say "sword", that could be _Bostock_ or _Honor of Nemmin_ (if I remember which weapons are swords correctly).




Bostock is the more likely suspect.  Honor of Nemmin isn't a sentient weapon.



			
				coyote6 said:
			
		

> Maybe the shell is the barrier? Who can "rend" that?




Well, Kibi is the Opener...



			
				steeldragons said:
			
		

> One who loves one...might be Ernie, I'm thinking.




You're misquoting.  If the prophecy had been "one loves one", Ernie would work -- he loves Yoba -- but it was "one loves all."  That ain't Ernie.



			
				steeldragons said:
			
		

> "...to channel what makes dead." That's another crap shoot. What makes dead? Yes, necrotic energy, but in simpler terms...WOUNDS! Damage and wounds make you dead...who channels that? Yeeup, another Ernie or Morningstar toss up. As Monringstar had that big to do of demonstrating her ability (more than once, I believe) to bring folks back from teh dead, my money's on Morningstar.




She is the Slayer, after all, and she's the most no-nonsense of all the party when it comes to dispatching foes.  I can go for this theory.


----------



## Everett

"One brings many, flame's design."



Zelc said:


> The only flame of significance I remember is the Burning God.  Didn't Tor's father, Davarian Firemount, take over Thewana's body?  Last I heard, this story arc was unresolved.  Maybe they have something to do with this?




I wouldn't count on Tor having anything to do with the endgame.  I mentioned his unresolved story arcs some time ago and Piratecat indicated as much...


----------



## Piratecat

coyote6 said:


> I bet they were hoping for something more like "ready oil and open flame light the way to victory".



Yes. Yes we were.



Sagiro said:


> - The Chichimec and its summoned elemetals doggedly focused on Dranko, who's the hardest of the PC's to kill.



Seriously. What's up with that? Clearly, someone or something has a grudge against poor Dranko, and that grudge involves epic level monsters. This bodes poorly.



Zelc said:


> Very interesting!  It seems like Corilayna got killed or sacrificed herself for some purpose.  Leantha's book also has the holy symbol of Laramon.  Maybe that is related?



Where the heck were you years ago, when we NEVER PUT THIS TOGETHER?
EDIT: to be more specific, we never gave much thought to Corilayna and what happened to her, kind of assuming she just buggered off to a place where Gods go. We should have given it more thought.


----------



## Zelc

Piratecat said:


> Where the heck were you years ago, when we NEVER PUT THIS TOGETHER?



Not playing in this awesome campaign?   But yay, 1 out of 6 isn't bad .



> Seriously. What's up with that? Clearly, someone or something has a grudge against poor Dranko, and that grudge involves epic level monsters. This bodes poorly.



*Tapheon has forgotten all about his encounter with Dranko.*


----------



## Anxe

*One brings many, flame’s design.
One does also, all malign.
One trip started, one trip done.
One loves all, and one hates one.*

This verse seems to define the villains and the party. The villains are "all malign" and the Company are "flame's design." The villains are done with their trip and the Company have started. The issue I have with this interpretation is the final line. Neither the Company or the trio seem to fit that as a whole. Ernie might work for both halves of the final line, but it seems out of place to reference just one out of the ten previous people.

*Three are bringing, now in place.
Three have won the downward race.
Seven haste, and roll the dice,
Spun by fortune’s sacrifice.*

Pretty obvious here referring to the trio and the Company. The info we get is that the trio are already where they wanted to be. That probably means they are now waiting for the Company. Maybe because they need the Company for something more as the Black Circle needed Grey Wolf in the past? Maybe they need Kibi to be the Opener and open up the prison that the Adversary is in.
Fortune's sacrifice is another important part of this. Probably referring to Corilyana's (spelling?) "death." Can't say how that's going to come up though.

*Four are needed, ‘fore the end.
One to take the shell and rend.
One for what is in his head.
One to channel what makes dead.
*
The shell might mean the Silver Shell or it might mean, rending the protection around the Adversary's prison. Hell, those might be literally the same thing. Maybe the Company need to kill the Adversary to really deal with the problem the trio has set up.
One for what is in his head is Dranko. We already know that one.
One to channel certainly sounds like Grey Wolf to me. The "what makes dead" part confuses me. Perhaps Grey Wolf is the one who needs to wear the Ward of Drosh?

*One at last, but not yet known.
One forever dead as stone.
One to drive the spike clean through.
One to die, and hope renew.*

The whole verse references that one of the Company will have to make a sacrifice. Already know from the earlier book prophecy. We see Kibi holding the Watcher's Kiss, then we see a Company member holding the Watcher's Kiss, dead. Kibi is also needed to remove the wound/spike in the Earth, that giant black hole in the east. Sounds like Kibi needs to open up the way for the Adversary to come to the world. Then they can kill the Adversary with the Watcher's Kiss, but Kibi dies in the process.

*One last journey then to make.
One last prison bar to break.
One last thread of fate to pull.
**One last circle to come full.

*This verse also supports the idea that the Adversary will be getting out of his prison. The part about the circle might be a double meaning as well. Either way, this is just a "end is coming soon" verse that could mean any number of things, but is probably just rounding out the prophecy.

Also, awesome to hear that Rosetta is coming back! 

EDIT: Thought, maybe "one hates one" is Tapheon as someone else already said?


----------



## Everett

Anxe said:


> *One last journey then to make.
> One last prison bar to break.
> One last thread of fate to pull.
> **One last circle to come full.**
> 
> *This verse also supports the idea that the Adversary will be getting out of his prison. The part about the circle might be a double meaning as well. Either way, this is just a "end is coming soon" verse that could mean any number of things, but is probably just rounding out the prophecy.




Actually -- the first two lines, I'm thinking, most likely refer to the Company (whoever's left) doing the supposedly undoable -- leaving the core and returning to the surface.


----------



## Zelc

I wonder if "All loves all, and one hates one" might refer to the goddesses Yavin and Wlaqua?



> One brings many, flame’s design.
> One does also, all malign.
> One trip started, one trip done.
> One loves all, and one hates one.



I wonder how many different beings this stanza refers to.  The third line doesn't seem to refer to any being, and it's weird to say that "One loves all" and "one hates one" are the same being.

Actually, I wonder what the message of this stanza even is.  The other stanzas have a clear message.  What is this stanza's purpose?


----------



## Everett

Zelc said:


> it's weird to say that "One loves all" and "one hates one" are the same being.




They probably aren't.


----------



## Zelc

Does anyone have thoughts on WHY the goddess of Luck would sacrifice herself?  What would that accomplish?  Set up her tomb in Naslund?  Maybe to leave Laramon in charge since he has different abilities?


----------



## jmucchiello

Anxe said:


> *Four are needed, ‘fore the end.
> One to take the shell and rend.
> One for what is in his head.
> One to channel what makes dead.
> *



So if "four are needed", why are only three participants listed? The next stanza talks about one last journey and not to one being participating. What is the fourth required action?


----------



## Everett

jmucchiello said:


> So if "four are needed", why are only three participants listed? The next stanza talks about one last journey and not to one being participating. What is the fourth required action?




The _last_ stanza tells us of the final journey.  You seem to have missed entirely the stanza that tells us of the fourth:

*One at last, but not yet known.
One forever dead as stone.
One to drive the spike clean through.
One to die, and hope renew.
*

The problem is, we don't know if this stanza refers to one person, to four different people, or to some number in-between.  We don't know if the one who is "not yet known" is also the one "forever dead as stone."  We don't know if the one "forever dead" is also the one who must "die, and hope renew."  We don't know if the one who dies for hope's renewal is the one who "drives the spike."  It's completely open-ended.


----------



## jmucchiello

Well the last stanza is even worse since the "one" in it could always refer to the adversary:

One at last, but not yet known: If this goes with the prior stanza it could mean someone new joins the "party". Or it could be the adversary, which we can agree will never be a "known" entity.
One forever dead as stone: This line seems out of place if it is in reference to the four in the prior stanza. One could again hope this is the adversary, dead as stone forever.
One to drive the spike clean through: Is this Dranko hitting with his chain or is this "one" who have a spike put through him, such as the adversary?
One to die, and hope renew: Well, renewed hope would certainly occur when the adversary dies.


----------



## Everett

jmucchiello said:


> Well the last stanza is even worse since the "one" in it could always refer to the adversary:
> 
> One at last, but not yet known: If this goes with the prior stanza it could mean someone new joins the "party". Or it could be the adversary, which we can agree will never be a "known" entity.
> One forever dead as stone: This line seems out of place if it is in reference to the four in the prior stanza. One could again hope this is the adversary, dead as stone forever.
> One to drive the spike clean through: Is this Dranko hitting with his chain or is this "one" who have a spike put through him, such as the adversary?
> One to die, and hope renew: Well, renewed hope would certainly occur when the adversary dies.




A direct reference to the Adversary seems too easy.  That the party has to confront and banish him somehow goes without saying; it's hardly revelatory information.


----------



## wedgeski

OT, but of passing interest to some I'm sure. The camera loves you, Mr. Hart! ;-)

Edge article on Card Hunter


----------



## Piratecat

Isn't that a great article? He's _dreeeeamy._ 

He's also a rat bastard. Just now, I figured out something in that prophecy that we misinterpreted the entire time, but which didn't make sense until the last game -- and which I didn't realize was prophesied here until this very moment. We were misreading it the entire time. (I won't say what, due to spoilers.)

EDIT: Sagiro disabuses me of my notion and tells me that I'm wrong, wrong, wrong. Never mind.


----------



## Quartz

Bump!


----------



## Quartz

Piratecat said:


> He's also a rat bastard. Just now, I figured out something in that prophecy that we misinterpreted the entire time, but which didn't make sense until the last game -- and which I didn't realize was prophesied here until this very moment. We were misreading it the entire time. (I won't say what, due to spoilers.)




How did you interpret it at the time? The whole prophecy, that is, not just the bit you got wrong!


----------



## Piratecat

*Sagiro's Story Hour: The FINAL Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 11/...*

Damned if I remember. Similarly to how it's been analyzed here, but we reviewed and updated our understanding every time we got a new clue. There were a lot of reviews!


----------



## Everett

Bumping at the one-month mark.

No updates.  Sad.


----------



## carborundum

Happy Christmas, everyone in this thread


----------



## Sagiro

I apologize for posting without an update, but I wanted to note, briefly, that as is common, this is a particularly hectic time of year here in the Sagiro household. As such, the next update will probably not occur until January sometime.  But I'm still chipping away.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all!


----------



## Neurotic

Sagiro said:


> But I'm still chipping away.
> 
> Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all!





Good to know! Merry Christmas everyone!


----------



## steeldragons

Sagiro said:


> Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all!




and to you, Sagiro. Wishes for a fantastic 2014.


----------



## Solarious

Sagiro said:


> I apologize for posting without an update, but I wanted to note, briefly, that as is common, this is a particularly hectic time of year here in the Sagiro household. As such, the next update will probably not occur until January sometime.  But I'm still chipping away.
> 
> Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all!



Don't worry Sagiro, take your time. You still have Sepulchrave beat... I think he's aiming for 2 years without updating before returning to us.


----------



## KidCthulhu

The terrible thing is that I was THERE for the resolution of this prophecy, and I can only remember a few of these now.


----------



## Everett

KidCthulhu said:


> The terrible thing is that I was THERE for the resolution of this prophecy, and I can only remember a few of these now.




Then you can find out along with the rest of us?

Just for the sake of some activity on the thread -- I was re-reading just now the massive battle with the Cleaners, where Step fulfilled his prophecy and sacrificed himself.  One thing that seems like an oversight -- they spent the night in the cavern after the battle, but I don't see that anything replaced the light of Step's soul after it finally went out.  How did they see anything, loot the place, not fall down into more pockets of insanity, etc?


----------



## KidCthulhu

Everett said:


> Then you can find out along with the rest of us?
> 
> Just for the sake of some activity on the thread -- I was re-reading just now the massive battle with the Cleaners, where Step fulfilled his prophecy and sacrificed himself.  One thing that seems like an oversight -- they spent the night in the cavern after the battle, but I don't see that anything replaced the light of Step's soul after it finally went out.  How did they see anything, loot the place, not fall down into more pockets of insanity, etc?




As I recall, once the big bad guy was dead, the magically impenetrable darkness lifted and we used the usual enchantments against regular darkness.  It became just a dark cave.


----------



## Quartz

Bump!


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 369*_
*Angry Dreamers*

The geyser of Earth Magic recedes into the ground, leaving the Croaking Oracle blinking rapidly in confusion. It clearly doesn’t understand why it spoke, and none in the Company, Kibi included, has any idea how or why a blast of Earth Magic goosed the toad into spouting extra prophecy. 

“Thank you,” says Kibi.

They spend a few minutes pondering the prophetic words of the amphibian. The “three” are obviously their antagonists: Meledien, Tarsos and Seven Dark Words.  But the rest is largely a mystery. They decide that “One for what is in his head,” is likely Dranko, and that all four lines of the penultimate verse refer to the same person, but beyond that the telling is opaque. They consider staying and summoning another insect tomorrow, but the Oracle speaks, annoyed.

“You are done. Leave.”

There’s also the matter of the feathered monster and its attendant elementals which only attacked Dranko.  The party forms a working theory that Meledien and Co. left them behind specifically to target the half-orc, because they have learned of, and greatly fear, the Far Realms whatever-it-is that lurks in his brain.

“I would more than happy,” says Dranko, “when it comes down to it, for Meledien to fight me. I hate that bitch.”

“Hey, did you hear that?”  Aravis looks around in alarm, but no one else has heard (or seen) anything unusual.  Pewter didn’t notice anything either, and they chalk it up to nerves or echoes.

“Before we leave,” says Morningstar, “I want to check out what Ava Dormo is like down here.”  

The others guard her body while she drops into a trance. 

She’s in a city.  The dream-version of the Croaking Oracle’s cave, and as far as she can tell the entirety of Pressing Lake, is packed with buildings. The low ceiling has been excavated upward to allow for taller structures, and there's no sign of the lake itself. All the ground she can see is solid. She is fortunate to find herself on a narrow street that threads its way through these buildings, which affords her a sense of both the immensity and density of this dream-metropolis.

There are also humanoid creatures here, many of them, heavily armed. They are short – between four and five feet tall – and look vaguely like kobolds. Most carry two-pronged spears and march in tight well-disciplined groups.  The ones nearest stop, stare, point their weapons at her and begin a furious chittering. 

She hastily drops out of the Dreamscape and reports. Morningstar has never seen such a densely populated section of Ava Dormo, and is keen to learn more.  This time she casts _dream anchor_ on Kibi and takes him with her, in case there are any Earth Magic-related phenomenon for him to observe.  

The little militant kobolds surround them in seconds, brandishing their spears and chittering madly.  

“We mean you no harm!” Kibi exclaims. 

One of the creatures pokes him lightly with its spear. Kibi activates _tongues_ just in time to hear one of them shouting “Disarm! Disarm!”

Every object on Kibi and Morningstar, save for their clothes, vanishes, which includes the _Ioun Stone_ Kibi was using for _tongues_. The closest creature jabs his spear into Kibi’s beard, curious as to why it too hasn’t been unmade.

“The beard stays!” he says crossly.

By now upward of fifty of these little humanoids – all of them wearing plate armor over their blue, knobbly skin –  have surrounded them, and prod them down the street with their spears.  Their high-pitched and agitated voices fill the air. After a few blocks Kibi and Morningstar are herded into a building, down a flight of stairs, and into a small prison cell.

Morningstar creates her holy symbol and manifests _true seeing_. There are a few magical wards on the cell, though she cannot tell their precise function.  She wakes, drawing herself and Kibi back to the waking world.

“Interesting!” she says. “They were using an entire army to manipulate reality.”

Kibi strokes his beard, relieved to find it undamaged. “Maybe they’re a race that lives _only_ in dreams.”

“Quiet!” says Aravis. “There it is again. Did you all really not hear that?”

The Company hushes up, straining their ears, but not even Grey Wolf, with _enhanced senses_ cast, hears anything unusual.  

“I’m sure I…” Aravis begins, and then his eyes go wide. Lines of glowing tracery sprout from his forehead and race across his face, then down his neck – the visual effect that used to manifest when Aravis was in possession of the Crosser’s Maze! Before he can speak another word, Aravis disappears. Pewter, who had been perched on his shoulder, drops to the ground.

Dranko looks down at the cat. “Are you panicking?” he asks. “One meow for yes, two for no.”

“Meow, meow.”

“Is Aravis in the Maze?” asks Morningstar.

“Meow meow meow.”

“What does that mean?” asks Dranko.

“Probably ‘I don’t know,’” says Ernie.

“Meow.”

In all the time Aravis possessed the Crosser’s Maze, he had never gone bodily into it. Just like dreamers in Ava Dormo, people in the Maze left their bodies behind in the real world while they minds went voyaging.  Aravis had given the Crosser’s Maze to Belshikun, the Avatar of the Drosh, God of Death, with the expectation that Drosh was going to use it to flee or hide from the Adversary.

Flicker looks thoughtful. “You know how everyone kept telling us there was no way out of the Underdark? Well, Aravis just went somewhere!”

"Will Aravis come back?" asks Ernie.

"Meow."

“Do we know _where _he’ll be when he comes back?” asks Grey Wolf.

Pewter meows and points to himself with a fore-paw.

“He’ll come back wherever you are?

“Meow.”  Pewter nods.

Morningstar convinces the others to go back one last time, hoping she can forestall their aggressive behavior long enough to have a bit of dialogue. She dons the _cloak of diplomacy_, and everyone in the party has either _tongues_ or _comprehend languages_ cast upon them.  She brings the entire Company into the dreamscape, at the same location as before.

They are surrounded by a wide ring of fifty spear-wielding dream-kobolds, all staring at them, as if they had simply been waiting there for the party to appear.  

“Throw!”

Thought-quick, Morningstar draws everyone back to the waking world, a split-second before the spears converge.

Dranko chuckles. “They’re all about to learn what happens when you throw projectiles while standing in a circle. Maybe we should go back with a mass heal?”

Morningstar brings them all back five seconds later, but the creatures had enough sense not to throw with enough force to impale their fellows on the far side of the circle. The party hears the tail end of the noise made by the spears’ clattering to the stone. With astonishing precision, the fifty throwers are stepping back, and a new ring of creatures steps forward to take their place, readying a second volley.

Morningstar shouts before they can throw. “I could do this all day, but all I’m here to do is communicate and see who you are. If you’d like to talk, great. If not, we’ll go away.”

“Hold fire!” shouts one of the creatures.

“We mean you no harm,” Morningstar assures them.

One of the dream-kobolds steps forward and shakes his spear at her.  “Who are you?

“My name is Morningstar.”

“Not what I mean,” says the creature angrily. “Who _are_ you?”

Morningstar isn’t sure how to answer. “Morningstar, defender of the church of Ell?  Humans?”

“I am not yet hearing something that will keep the hold on our fire,” says the kobold.

“We’re saving the world!” shouts Kibi. 

“And we’re not with the red-armored guys!” adds Ernie, in case they find this relevant.

The _cloak of diplomacy_ speaks into Morningstar’s mind. “The person to whom you speak is under extreme pressure to execute anyone who might be a spy for the Tegenti. He is convinced that is what you are.”

“We are from very far away,” says Morningstar, hoping this will allay their paranoia. “If we were here to attack, or be malicious to you in some way, would we be here to talk?”

“Yes!” shouts the kobold.  “Treachery!  That is exactly what you would say if you were attempting subterfuge or infiltration!  Three!  Two!  One…!”

Morningstar hastily returns everyone to the waking world.

“Do you think they know they’re in a dream?” asks Dranko.

Morningstar sighs in frustration. “I’d love to talk to them to find out.”

“Stupid pokey dream people,” Ernie mutters.

But Morningstar is still not willing to give up, and proposes one more avenue to pursue.  They ride their _phantom steeds_ across Pressing Lake to the mouth of the tunnel they used to get there from Kessedth. Once there, she takes them all into Ava Dormo again, and finds this part of it uninhabited.  In the Dreamscape, the tunnel has been widened and well-maintained; thick planks of hardened fungus reinforce the walls and ceiling. The party zips along the dream-tunnel until they see a guard post ahead, where six dream-kobolds stand guard at a pair of portcullises, but rather than stop to talk, Morningstar blinks the group far past the outpost.  They pass three more similar posts before nearing the end of the tunnel, where it empties out into Kessedth. Kibi casts _veil_ to make the entire Company look like dream-kobolds. 

They guess that dream-Kessedth is as overdeveloped as dream-Pressing Lake, and are not disappointed. Morningstar blinks them past the gate and into the cavern beyond, and once again the Company finds itself in a teeming city, packed with buildings and marching dream-kobolds. Morningstar quickly scans their surroundings and blinks the party up to a rooftop, where they all drop flat to avoid detection. Morningstar peeks over the edge of the roof and casts _brain spider_, a high-level spell designed to learn detailed information from its targets. She chooses eight dream-kobolds and gains access to the minds of seven.

The eighth begins to scream.  “Attack! My mind has been attacked!  It’s the Tegenti!  To arms!  To arms! Spread out and search!”

“I officially hate this place,” Ernie grumbles.

The creatures act with swift purpose, organizing into search groups which fan out to comb the town.  It seems inevitable that they will be discovered before too long, but Morningstar doesn’t need much time.  She chooses one of the minds caught in the web of her spell and chooses “the history and culture of these creatures” to learn.

The dream-kobolds are a race called the Keffet, and for years out of memory they have fought a war in the Dreaming against another race called the Tegenti. The Tegenti are intelligent bull-like quadrupeds who specialize in illusions and other mind-trickery; where the Keffet embrace physical military might, the Tegenti have refined their mentalist abilities. (Though the Keffet do have a basic form of group-mind coordination, finely honed to assist their physical warmongering.) This region – the dream reflections of Pressing Lake, Kessedth, and the surrounding areas – are all very close to the current front lines of the ongoing conflict. The war has not been going well for the Keffet; in recent months the Tegenti have pushed the border back quite far. But this Keffet is not terribly worried, as the war has ebbed and flowed for a century or more, and it’s only a matter of time before the Keffet rally and turn the tide. She has seen it get more dire than this.

On less militaristic topics, Morningstar learns that as far as the Keffet are concerned, their world is the real one. The one whose mind she is picking does not think she is in a dream.  As for the prophecy and possible end of the world, the Keffet do have a variant of that. Many think that the world is, in fact, fated to end.  Before that happens, though, one side will win the war, and whichever side that is will transition to some heaven-like state, while the losing race will be damned for all eternity in a freezing hell. There are spiritual leaders who claim that the end times are approaching, though there are no Keffet gods as such. Every Keffet population center has something not quite a temple or place of worship, but thought of as “spiritual commons.”  Some Keffet go there to pray – not to anything in particular – that the outcome of the war go in their favor.

That is all Morningstar is able to glean, before a searching party of Keffet can be heard climbing up to the rooftops near their hiding place. Morningstar drops them out of dream for a final time and shares all that she has learned. She is astounded to learn of a race of beings native to Ava Dormo.

“Two races, if you count the hyper-intelligent cows,” says Dranko.

But now the time has come for the Company to move forward in their pursuit of the Evil Trio. It takes them a day and a half to return _physically_ to Kessedth, where they find that Toq has departed, but not before leaving them a note tacked to the door of the tunnel entrance.

_“I have gone ahead to Ementh, to see what I can learn about the evil ones who came before you.  If you choose to go instead to Keshem or the Crystal Wood, heed the warnings signs on the Peshovar lairs. Do not go into them, or try to fight them.  If I do not see you again, go swiftly by the Hand of Yavin.”_

Ementh, they recall, is a large city of Toq’s people, the Zeraphin. And the Crystal Wood was where the red-skinned and curve-horned woman had headed two months earlier, the one whom Toq had described as arrogant and unpleasant. 

But the Company decides to go to Keshem, city of the insect-like Stribe, on account that there is a Leaping Circle there. They all agree that is the most likely way that Meledien, Tarsos and Seven Dark Words would have gone.  Dranko leaves a reply note for Toq.

_“Thank you.  Headed to Keshem and onward from there.  May Yavin bless you and keep you safe.”_

…to be continued…


----------



## Zelc

I love these updates .  Thanks for sharing your story with us!


----------



## Quartz

"You must spread some Experience Points around before giving it to Sagiro again."



Sheer awesomeness!


----------



## Piratecat

*Sagiro's Story Hour: The FINAL Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 1/2...*

Hey Sagiro, did we ever find out what the deal was with that tiefling? I've been wondering about her for years!

EDIT: Sagiro reminded me offline. Ohhhhhh, I remember her. Oh yes. Good lord, yes. Yikes.


----------



## Zelc

Did Aravis get pulled into the Maze primarily due to a story reason, or was it because the player wasn't able to make that session?


----------



## Sagiro

Zelc said:


> Did Aravis get pulled into the Maze primarily due to a story reason, or was it because the player wasn't able to make that session?




Yes to both!  A big Aravis-related plot point was coming, _and _Aravis's player had to miss that session, which (as you'll see in a later update), worked out quite well from a storytelling perspective.

And here, have another update.


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 370*_
*The Stribe*

The tunnel from Kessedth to the Stribe city of Keshem is far more twisty and vertical that the one to Pressing Lake.  There are so many vertical shafts and sharp oddly-vectored turns that the _phantom steeds_ don’t much improve their speed, particularly as there are thoughtfully-placed ladders and knotted ropes wherever the going is particularly tricky. Over the course of the day, as they steadily lose altitude, the party hears more frequently the sound of rushing water. One or more subterranean rivers thunder through this section of the Underdark, sometimes distant, and sometimes so close to the tunnel that they catch glimpses of its glimmering torrents through crevices and gaps in the rock, their relentless thunder so loud they cannot hear one another speak.

Near “sundown” (when the light motes grow dim) they find that the tunnel has a clear branch, large and round, with a glyph for “danger” clearly visible. Next to that is a second glyph that looks like a crudely-drawn lizard. There’s no sense of scale, but the tunnel itself is large enough that if this is indeed a peshovar lair, the creature or creatures could be quite large. A nasty smell comes from that tunnel, sharp and slightly acidic.

Dranko peers into the dim receding light of the tunnel branch. He cannot see or hear anything unusual from that direction. “Should we go in and kill it?”

The others vote unanimously against the idea, agreeing that they should heed the warnings about the peshovar.   They put some extra distance between themselves and the peshovar tunnel, marching until the light motes have gone almost completely dark before making camp.

The next day begins with a hundred foot vertical shaft, its descent made easy by a half-dozen well-anchored ropes hanging down from its lip. At its bottom is a new tunnel, of a different style than those above. Its stone is pockmarked, almost like stucco, and rather than planks or ropes at the difficult places, handholds have been carved directly into the stone. The new tunnels are flatter, winding and dipping less crazily; the party guesses they have passed some unmarked border into the territory of the mysterious Stribe.

An hour later, as they round a mild bend in a wide stretch of tunnel, Dranko spots something coming toward them, perhaps fifty yards ahead.  Five seconds later he revises his report; a _swarm_ of somethings is approaching, slowly, like a school of fish swimming lazily through the air.  The party quickly discusses defensive measures they could take, including such overkill methods as _firestorm_ or _prismatic sphere_. 

Closer, closer comes the swarm, and now they can see it comprises several dozen creatures that resemble large manta rays, each with a four-foot wingspan, slowly flapping their “wings.” Most oddly, they are leaving streaks of darkness behind them as they fly.  They must be moving magically, since the gentle undulations of their bodies could not be producing a real physical lift. 

The creatures show no signs of hostility, so the Company withholds their defensive measures and simply presses against the tunnel walls to let them pass. Closer they come, closer… and then the party is among them.  They don’t change their trajectories, or evince any sign of noticing the humanoids in their midst. Their bodies are a deep luminous purple, and their small mouths stretch wide to gulp down the light motes as they pass. These creatures are photovores, snapping up the floating bits of light as bats would eat insects out of the air.

Morningstar casts _detect thoughts_, but detects only an animal-level intelligence. One wing brushes against Morningstar’s arm, feeling like silk, but the creatures simply glides on, unconcerned.  And soon enough the swarm has drifted past them, leaving streaks of darkness in their wake that are already refilling as the light motes seek their natural diffusion.

After two more hours have passed, the party finds another branch in the tunnel, though this one bores straight up into the ceiling. Next to the hole, scratched into the ceiling, is the Danger glyph next to the dinosaur-figure that they all assume indicates peshovar.  The same acrid smell as before wafts downward.  But while Dranko takes the opportunity to yell up “Hey, monster! This is your chance to come down and get killed!” the party doesn't explore, or wait around for a peshovar to emerge.

By this time the main tunnel is quite wide – almost thirty feet across – and growing wider by the mile. Eventually they find that the tunnel has expanded into something more akin to a cavern, with its walls beautifully carved with intricate abstract designs. Large stone spheres the size of sheep lay scattered here and there on the smooth floor.  On the far side of the cavern, some two hundred feet distance, there is movement, and an enormous round door set in the wall.  Slowly they approach.

“Who?”  A voice sounds from ahead. “Goes who?  Who is go?  Who goes?”

It’s a voice that’s almost entirely telepathic; its verbal component is nearly undetectable.

“We are travelers!” Dranko returns.

“Repeat please,” says the voice. “Say one time over. One time other please, repeat!”

“Travelers,” says Ernie.

After ten more seconds they can clearly see the speaker. It’s a huge arachnid, bearing much similarity to the Vree encountered in Het Branoi.  But unlike the Vree they have three-segmented insect bodies, only two bulbous fly-eyes, and eight normal-looking spider legs. There are several of these arachnids standing near the huge circular door.  

“Are you the stribe?” asks Morningstar.

“Stribe yes we.  Stribe we.”  

“Your stonework is incredible!” says Kibi. “I’m really very impressed.”

“You are perspicacity excellent.  Good taste, you are very tasty.”  The stribe doing the talking clacks its mandibles as it talks, its soft click and hiss the only truly audible part of its speech.

Dranko talks very slowly, as if to a child. “We come from very far away.  And wish to travel into your city, if we may.”

“Speak more clearly!” says the stribe. “Be clear!  Clear speak!”

“We come from far away travel,” Ernie ventures. “We to city go.”

“I am not child,” says the stribe, sounding put out.

“Dammit!” Ernie grumbles.

“We come from the Temple of Arrival,” says Dranko, hoping this carries some cachet. 

“Yes. Bipedal. Arrivalness.” It raises one of its forelegs and counts them, stopping when it gets to six.  Aravis has still not returned from the Maze, or wherever it is he has gone.

“One of our number is… away,” says Morningstar.

“Which number?”

“Seven.”

“We are the seven who were prophesied to come,” says Dranko.

“Yes. We know seven.  You are Spected. Specexted. Expected.”

Parthol’s translator disks are struggling to work on the strange stribe language.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” says Morningstar. She casts _tongues._ But this doesn't make things any easier. The stribe language is alien enough to defy, at least in part, all magical attempts at clear translations.  Even _telepathic bond_ fails to elucidate the stribe tongue; she hears only hisses and chittering clicks mixed with garbled speech. Just as happened when she tried _detect thoughts_ on the Vree, she recalls.

“Did bipedals wearing red armor pass this way?” asks Dranko.

“We have seen bipedal reds,” says the stribe. “One, two, three.  Not nice.”

“Did they hurt you?” asks Morningstar.

“Threats, many threats.  Not nice.  Seven.  One two three four five six missing. Bipedal threats.”

“Did they tell you to attack us when we arrived?” asks Dranko.

“That instruction yes.  A’aatra.  A’aatra.”

“An archer?”

“A’aatra you speak.  Yes. Come.”

When the creature says this name, it emphasizes and draws out the second syllable for a good half-second. Ah-AAAAAAAAH-tra.

“We would really appreciate it if you wouldn’t attack us,” says Kibi.

“Peaceful.  Peaceful we. And you not.  You are not peaceful.”  It gestures with a leg to the multitudinous weapons carried by the Company.

“Yes we are,” says Dranko.

“No. Be good. Good little bipeds. Good little bipeds. Warning not try. Warning not try.”

Four of the nearby stone spheres rise up as the stribe effect a casual telekinesis.  “Good little biped. No harm.”   The implication is clear, as each of the spheres must way about three tons. 

A second stribe scuttles to stand in front of Kibi, reaches out a hook-ended arachnid leg, and tugs on Kibi’s beard.  “Fungus!  Cassew cassew yum yum.”

“Not fungus!” cries Kibi in alarm. “Hair! It’s a beard!”

“Bipedal chitin,” explains Dranko.

“Beard plates,” says the stribe. “Hair plates. Soft chitin. Purpose?”

“Some bipeds use beards to attract mates,” says Morningstar.

The stribe bobs its head.  To Morningstar it asks, “Queen? One you queen? You have queen?”

Everyone can’t help but look at Morningstar. The stribe clacks in mandibles. “Bipedal queen! All you will speak with A’aatra, who speaks for queen. Who your A’aatra?”

Kibi suggests Ernie, who’s happy to accept the role of party spokesman if it means Dranko doesn’t get the job.  “I am,” he says.

The several assembled Stribe now turn to the huge stone disc behind them in the wall. The stone around its left edge ripples, and the entire thing rumbles and rolls leftward, sliding into a slot in the wall.  The weight these creatures are able to move (in whatever non-physical manner that is) is truly staggering.  On the far side is what could best be described as a settlement, a huge cavern filled with buildings and scurrying stribe.  It is not so densely packed as the Keffet dream-cities, but there is motion everywhere. The buildings sit upon the floor, but also jut from the walls and some protrude downward from the ceiling high above. 

Most of the stribe are tending vertical fungus gardens, much like Toq was doing in Kessedth. Many of these feature a type of fungus that resembles coarse hair, quite similar to Kibi’s beard.  Stribe are massaging this fungus with their forelegs. Other stribe are adding to the intricate carvings that are everywhere on the stone of the walls, floor and ceiling. They do this by some combination of mentalism and _stone shape_, which brings to mind the effortless way in which Cranchus could mold stone at his whim.

“Follow follow, good little bipeds.”

The farmers and sculptors among the stribe pay little attention to the Company as they make their way through Keshem. Many large caverns are connected by short lengths of tunnels, and the architecture has a kind of drip-sandcastle look, with stribe scuttling in and out of large holes. It’s like being in a huge termite mound.

After three hours of travel through the caves and tunnels of Keshem, the party comes to the edge of a huge pit, whose walls are riddled with holes, its shadows and echoes hinting at a complex underground warren below them.

“This way. Bipeds into holes. A’aatra.”

“Say,” says Dranko. “Have you heard of a people called the Vree?”

“Vree? No Vree. No.”

“We encountered them very far from here,” explains Ernie.

“And you from where?” asks the stribe. 

“Charagan”

“Coreward?  Anticoreward up down?”

“Up,” says Morningstar. “Up, up, up. Beyond the… roof?”

“That is a place that is not,” says the stribe. “Where are you from?”

“We come from a place with no roof,” answers Morningstar. “I can show you with magic what it looks like.”

“You will show us.  Lights and magic to see.  Dangerous?”

“No, but very different, and maybe disturbing,” warns Morningstar.

“Show please.”

Morningstar creates her illusion of the night sky filled with stars. The stribe crouch down and look up in wonder.

“Imaginary,” says the lead stribe. “You are from imaginary.”

“Yes.”

“Good little imaginary bipeds.  Now… A’aatra.”

Down they descend, into the damp, murky pit of the stribe Queen.  As they pass through yet more spiraling tunnels, one of the stribe turns to Ernie. “You are hot dancers against the red? Against red chitin?”

Ernie thinks for a second. Hot dancers?  “Yes,” he decides. “We are enemies of red chitin.”

At last they are led into a large, moist cave.  They can hear a steady patter of drips in the darkness, plunking out their rhythm on the stony ground. A dozen stribe scuttle out from the darkness, surrounded by ten large stone spheres floating  beside them.  The leading stribe is different from the rest; it has four body segments instead of three, and its chitin is brown, not black.  It stands before the Company and counts them.

“Missing,” it says. “Sorry. Dead? Alive?”

“Alive,” says Ernie. “Just not here.”

“Names?”

One by one the group names themselves. 

“I am A’aatra, Speaker of the Queen.”

“We’re honored to meet you,” says Dranko.

“Thank you,” says A’aatra. Her speech is a bit more intelligible than that of the other stribe. “You are all travelers from undersky, yes? Above roof?”

“Yes,” says Dranko.  “And enemies of those of the red chitin.”

“And they are enemies of you,” says A’aatra. “And us. Threaten Queen, threaten eggs. We are set trap for you. They threaten us if we not set trap, so we set trap for you. Their description of you, very good.”

There follows an awkward moment of silence. Are the stribe, blackmailed by Seven Dark Words, about to strike, to crush them with their massive stone spheres? 

A’aatra clicks her mandibles. “We tell you about trap now!” she says, which brings a sigh of relief to the Company.

“Do you know where the red chitin people went?” asks Kibi.

“Used circle. Leaping, leaping.”

“May _we_ use the circle?” asks Dranko.

“And is that the trap?” adds Kibi.

“No! No ritual, leaping leaping, red chitin. Just used circle, disappeared. Very strange, no rituals. You leap after them?”

“If we can,” says Dranko.

A’aatra’s phrase “leaping, leaping,” brings to mind the first words of the Croaking Oracle. Morningstar steps forward. “Do you know the meaning of the phrase “five nine two?”

A’aatra considers. “Ah!” she says. “No, Circle Eight. Circle Eight.”

“The Croaking Oracle said five, nine, two,” says Kibi. “We’ll need to find some of the other Leaping Circles, eventually.”

At the mention of the Croaking Oracle, A’aatra clatters backward several paces and hisses through her mandibles. “Toad! Consuming Toad!  Did you kill Consuming Toad?”

“We did not,” Kibi admits. “But we didn’t give it any of your people, we promise.”

A’aatra bobs her head. “Filthy speaker! Turns life to truth. Filthy!”

Morningstar nods gravely. “We had enemies above the sky who also turned life to truth. Those in the red chitin.”

“They cause great blackness,” says A’aatra. “Great blackness coming, unless we let them through.”

“We seek to stop that,” says Morningstar.

“Then you must spring trap,” says A’aatra.

“And what is the trap?” asks Ernie.

“Monsters in temple.  You kill them please. Temple of Sisters, we cannot fight. Contaminated.”  

“Did they burn anyone’s heart out?” asks Ernie.

“Heart?  Internal parts?  No internal parts burned. What waits in temple are peshovar. Unfightable. Red chitin say, when you come, we tell you, ‘Go to Temple of Sisters and pray.’ Unfightable peshovar will kill you. But we offer leaping leaping you kill unfightable, yes?”

Kibi frowns at that. “Why are they unkillable?”

“Cannot move weapons.”  A’aatra gestures and several nearby stone spheres rise and whirl through the air. “Usually we kill peshovar  but these we cannot. Three of us dead.”

“I’m sorry,” says Ernie.

“So these are special peshovar?” asks Morningstar.

“They have been enchantabled.”

“How many are there?” asks Dranko.

“Not sure. At least two.”

“All right,” says Dranko. “We’ll spring your trap.”

A’aatra agitatedly waves her forelegs. “Should warn you. Trap may include me telling you this.”

It’s a possibility the Company cannot discount. The Evil Trio may have counted on A’aatra warning the party about the trap, and taken that into consideration somehow.  

At Morningstar’s request, A’aatra shows them a blueprint of the Temple of Sisters. The stribe queen-speaker does this by magically rearranging the stone of the nearest wall, using some high-level variant of _stone shape_ that molds the rock into a three-dimensional relief. The Temple is mostly a single chamber, tall and conical, with tunnels branching from it like spokes at a variety of heights. Next to the Temple she “draws” two figures, both Stribe, one a chalky white and the other a jet black.  (Kibi marvels that her ability lets her alter the color of the stone.) The two are clearly Yavin and Wlaqua, the Sister Gods, depicted as belonging to the local race.

Next to them she draws a peshovar, and it looks like a detailed version of the one the party has seen next to the danger glyphs. It’s a large lizard with a long tail, thick legs, sharp teeth and claws, and a belly that drags on the ground.

“How do they fight?” asks Ernie.

“Bite. Smash.  Gravity. Great strength updown.”

Morningstar considers scouting the Temple in dream.  “When you sleep,” she asks A’aatra, “do you dream? And do you go places when you do?”

“Yes. Pictures in sleeping, but not go places.”

“There is a whole populated world in the dreams here,” says Morningstar.

“You are crazy people,” says A’aatra. “Crazy people dreaming pictures of people in great war. We take care of crazy people, sleeping pictures of wars.”

“They are traveling,” says Morningstar. “They’re not crazy.”

A’aatra waves her forelegs, but it’s understandably difficult to read her body language.

“Sleep now then?” says the stribe. “Tomorrow spring trap? We defend you very well in sleep.”

“Thank y…” begins Ernie, but something odd happens then. A small patch of fire appears in the air between him and A’aatra.  It’s the size of an orange, and for five seconds it blazes away in midair, crackling softly and emanating heat. Then it vanishes.

A’aatra steps back.  “Do not bring fire!”

“We thought it was you!” says Ernie.

“Truth! Truth of fire!”

Ernie swears up and down that they had nothing to do with the flame, and A’aatra is convinced. 

“Maybe our red armored friends are scrying on us,” says Grey Wolf. 

“They did loot something from a fire god’s tomb, didn’t they?” asks Flicker. “Maybe that’s one of its powers.”

“I bet that fire was something they left behind,” says Dranko. “Something that would trigger to let them know we’ve arrived.”

Morningstar cannot help but think of the Croaking Oracle’s prophecy. “One brings many, flame’s design…”  But what does that _mean_?

It’s just one more mystery, piled with all the rest.

…to be continued…


----------



## Quartz

Moah!


----------



## Sagiro

Hi everyone!

Can you do me a big favor?

As I mentioned previously, I have finally bit the proverbial bullet and started the project of turning my campaign into Epic Fantasy Novels(tm).  (I'm actually done the initial draft of Book #1, and I'm guessing the entire thing will be 3-5 books total, depending on how long they are.)  At some point I'll be pitching my manuscript to agents, and it will help that pitch if I could say something like "7 gazillion people follow my fantasy fiction on a popular gaming website, and many of them will probably buy my book if it gets published." 

But I have no clear how idea how many people are reading this.  It's less than 7 gazillion, but probably more than, say, fifty.  As such, I'd like to measure you.  How, you ask?  By asking you to go to this Google Form:

Sagiro's Story Hour Reader Count

...and clicking the check-box followed by submit. It should take you about five seconds. (It doesn't matter if you're a registered ENWorld member or not, and no personal data is collected .)

One important request:  *ONLY CLICK ONCE!*  I can only get accurate data if each reader submits this form *ONLY ONCE.  PLEASE!*

Thank you much for your cooperation.

And now, an update in which I commit rat-bastardy-ness of epic proportions.


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 371*_
*Surface Tension*

A’aatra adds detail to the stone map of the peshovar-infested temple.  It has no doors; the only access is through a tunnel that comes up from below, angled to allow a gentle ingress that never places the visitor higher than the Sister Gods whose statues stand within.  In various places are something akin to pillars or mounds, but A’aatra cannot translate these properly.  Small alcoves in the walls, at varying heights, allow Stribe to meditate and worship.  A’aatra begs the Company to cause as little damage to the Temple interior as possible when they fight the peshovar.

With no fanfare, Aravis appears in the floor next to Pewter, curled up and asleep. He opens his eyes and wonders where he is and why he’s on the floor. He doesn't recall going to sleep.  Pewter meows joyously at his master’s return, while the others crowd around, spending an obligatory few seconds making sure he’s physically okay before pressing him with questions as to what happened.

“I…”  He tries to remember. His memories are fuzzy but becoming clearer by the second.  “I had a… a vision from inside the Maze.  I think I _was_ inside it.”

“How did you do that?” asks Ernie.

“I didn’t. Belshikun did. The Avatar of Drosh to whom we gave the Crosser’s Maze.”

Aravis stands up. The others can’t help but notice the grim expression on his face.

“Belshikun said they may need to call on me for help from time to time,” he tells them. “But… the Maze can reach across the Barrier, in a sense. In repayment for my help, Belshikun is going to give me visions of the world above.”

“Excellent,” says Dranko. The disconnectedness from the surface world had been weighing on him, on all of them, so any news, he thinks, is welcome.

“It’s not as nice as you might think.  He gave me a first vision.”

And Aravis shares what he saw.

_You are not in the inn. 

There is no stranger sitting across from you, wearing your face. 

But there is someone, a dark being, familiar – it is Belshikun, the Avatar of Drosh whom you encountered in the Shrine of Dralla, the being to whom you gave over the Crosser’s Maze. It is painful to look at him – painful just to be aware of someone here besides yourself. It suddenly becomes clear why your mysterious friend always appears to be you – it’s the only way that your fragment can make sense of other beings in the Maze. It’s just a tiny piece of you, after all.

But Belshikun is breaking that rule – you’re not sure how. His eyes glow hotly blue in his head, nearly impossible to look into.

“I am sorry not to have been free to offer you the help I promised,” he says. “Though what we have been doing instead, I hope you will be thankful for some day.  We may need to borrow you from time to time to further our work. But I also offer you something unheard of and unknown to those beneath the Iron Barrier.  I will give you visions of the world above.

“You may find them a curse, a blessing, a distraction, or only a curiosity, but I give them to you nonetheless. This is the first; I’m sorry that you will not find it pleasant. Attend.”

Belshikun touches your forehead, and you have a vision-within-a-vision.

There are two cloaked figures, furtive, sneaking, in a dark forest.  It is dusk, and a pallid light barely penetrates the high branches of the trees. Both of these figures are invisible, but not to you and the Maze.

One of the figures is Etria, Duke Nigel’s court wizardess, and confidante of Rosetta of the Silver Shell. The other is Rosetta herself, her hard face dark with worry.

“We should have seen something by now,” Rosetta mutters. “Heard something, at least.”

They are speaking telepathically, but the Maze hears them. Otherwise they are perfectly silent, wrapped in enchantments of stealth.

Etria instinctively steps over a pile of dry leaves anyway. “Maybe your calculations are off.”

“They are not,” Rosetta asserts.

“I wish you would have had Ozilinsh check them before…”

Rosetta stops short, and turns to Etria with a look both tired and angry. “No. It could be him, for all we know! We’ve been over this before. If I was willing to turn to others in the Spire for help, I’d have brought Attrius and Portia along, and had the whole damn lot of the archmagi checking my math.”

Etria lets out a long breath. “I still think you must be mistaken.  It makes no sense that someone in the Spire is actually a Black Circle spy. It’s not that I don’t trust the Shell, but just about everyone in the Spire has been in a position to sabotage all our efforts a dozen times before now. Why didn’t they do something when we stopped Mokad?  Why didn’t they sabotage Aravis at Verdshane? If there’s a traitor, what the hell are they waiting for?”

Rosetta shrugs, turns, and keeps moving. “The Black Circle takes the long view,” she says. “They’re diviners, remember? Maybe they foresaw that trying anything before now would have ultimately failed them? Or that waiting would eventually serve their ends better?  My personal theory is that whoever it is wanted to lay low until Ozilinsh’s band was out of the picture; they did have a way of screwing up the Black Circle’s best laid plans. I think the Circle’s timing for this is similarly motivated; they’ve been biding their time until our strongest pieces were no longer on the board.”

“And now they’re gone,” says Etria. 

“And now they’re gone,” Rosetta repeats. “Which is why, especially now, I’m not willing to trust the Spire. Anyway, given the nature of this mission, fewer is better. It’s not like we can fight all of them. The only reason you’re here is to escape with news if anything goes wrong. No, all we can do is hope our wards are strong enough, march into their midst, and read the scroll before they know we’re here.”

They walk in silence for another minute or two. Rosetta stops, concentrates upon the dead quiet in the forest, and swears. 

“We should be quite close now. We should be hearing the sound of a dozen dozen acolytes chanting.”

Etria cocks an ear. “Then your calculations must be off, like I said. If you had only…”

“What’s that?” Rosetta holds up a hand. With the other she points into the gloom of the darkening wood.

Slowly, slowly, they creep forward.  What they find, staked out to the forest floor, is the body of a man wearing the robes of a Black Circle adherent.  Rosetta frowns, and thinks, and…

“There’s another one over there,” whispers Etria. “And a third… and…”

“No!” Rosetta has nearly stopped breathing. Her eyes have gone wide. “No, no, no, no!”

She breaks into a run, no longer trying to stay quiet.

“What is it?” Etria gasps, sprinting to keep up.

But Rosetta doesn’t answer; she’s dashing through the woods at top speed, following a row of staked bodies, one every ten yards. Suddenly the two of them burst into a clearing, where twelve rows of bodies converge, a starburst of mutilated corpses radiating out from a central point. 

At that convergence, a shimmering portal hangs in the air, twelve feet high and twelve across.

Rosetta swears again. “We’ve been assuming that all 144 would be performing their Astral Tunneling ritual right up until the last moment. All of my calculations were based on that. But they must have discovered a tipping point where sacrificing the casters and channeling their life energy was more efficient than keeping them alive and casting.”

Etria looks down and notices that all of the bodies are staked five times, hands, feet and heart, except for one of the twelve next to the portal. That one has one hand still free… a hand holding a mallet.

“Then the Astral tunnel could open sooner than you thought?”

“We probably don’t have 12 hours, that’s for sure. Just keep a sharp eye out.  With luck, I still have time.”

Rosetta stands before the portal, its surface opaque like rushing water. She fishes out a string of beads and hastily drapes it around her neck, then unrolls a long scroll that extends from her eye level all the way to the ground. She begins to murmur words of power, and small yellow lights begin to play along the surface of the portal. These become increasingly numerous as Rosetta invokes her potent magics.

She is maybe three-quarters of the way through the scroll when a massive arm reaches through the shimmer and a thick, gauntleted hand grabs her throat.  Rosetta merely tenses her neck and continues reading, her face reddening as powerful fingers squeeze her gullet.  Tears roll from her eyes, and desperation conquers her features as she realizes how much she still has to read. Etria flinches, takes a step back, horrified, before drawing a dagger and hacking fruitlessly at the arm. She dares not cast any spells, lest they disrupt Rosetta’s own incantation.

It doesn’t matter. Seconds later the hand clenches, there is a sickening snap, and Rosetta’s body goes limp, the scroll dropping unfinished from her hands. Etria mumbles a quick spell and vanishes.

A towering, muscular figure, clad in steel mail, steps the rest of the way through the portal. You have seen this being before, as it looked helplessly through the Skysteel Hole in eastern Kivia, when you thwarted his previous attempt to make egress into Abernia. 

The figure takes off his helmet, revealing a cruel dark-blue face pocked with crawling black lesions.

Naradawk Skewn gazes upon at the bodies piled up around him, gives a satisfied grunt, and tosses Rosetta aside.

“It’s about time.”_


/*/


There is a shell-shocked silence. After all their many efforts to prevent Naradawk Skewn from gaining access to Abernia, the Emperor has at last succeeded, and the Company is helpless to do anything about it.

“I can’t believe Rosetta wasn’t a spy!” blurts Dranko.

Morningstar shakes her head. “So there’s an unknown traitor in the Spire, Rosetta is dead, and the Emperor is walking around on Charagan.”

“I thought we killed all the Black Circle people up there!” says Ernie, his voice more shrill than he probably intends.

“Only those at the top of the hierarchy,” says Grey Wolf. “They still had plenty of minions.”

“He was scared of us!” says Dranko. “He waited until we were gone before crossing.”

“Couldn’t Belshikun have only sent us happy visions?” Ernie complains. 

“He did say I might find them “a curse, a blessing, a distraction or a curiosity” says Aravis. “It’s possible he doesn’t even have control over the visions.”

Dranko seethes. “Gods, that makes me want to kill bad guys _right now_!

“Then let’s go disrupt the Black Circle’s plans,” says Aravis.

A’aatra scuttles over to regard Aravis. “Are you a good number?” she asks.

Aravis blinks.  “Yes. A very good one.”


/*/


The Temple of the Sisters is a day’s journey from the Queen’s Pit. A’aatra lends the Company an entourage of stribe escorts and offers her sincere thanks.

“We are in your debt,” says Grey Wolf, bowing to her.

En route, as the group winds through twisty tunnels and chambers that must be what the inside of a huge anthill would look like, they pass another flock of light-eating manta rays.  The stribe call them “vish,” and as the party did before, they stand aside to let the strange creatures pass. 

“They can be dangerous if provoked,” warns one of the stribe.

“Can they be cooked and eaten?” asks Ernie.

The stribe stops and stares at Ernie for a moment.  “Maybe,” it says. “But the vish wouldn’t like it.  Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” says Ernie.

“We are an hour from fungus. We will fungus you.”

Sure enough, they soon arrive at a huge subterranean farm, a cavern in which the stone has been shaped into parallel walls, arranged like library shelves. Each wall has fungus growing upon it, and an irrigation system is channeling water from a nearby river to sheet down the patches of crops.  Dozens of stribe tend to the fungus walls, collecting ripe (?) fungus into stone baskets that they keep aloft with telekinesis. (The stribe’s TK ability seems keenly attuned to stone; they can lift it with an almost careless ease. On the way to the farm, at certain difficult vertical stretches, the stribe TK-ed the _party_ to help them progress, and that they found more difficult, even though the members of the Company were much lighter than, for instance, the stone spheres.)

“What is your fungus preference?” asks the stribe.

“Surprise us,” says Ernie. “Pick something you think we’d find pleasant.”

“We will fungus you pleasantly,” says the stribe. “Come this way.”

Soon the Company is munching on a tasty (if a bit chewy) purple fungus, served on stone platters. Water is served in stone cups the party can barely lift.  After refreshing themselves, the group continues, past more farms, through some sizeable settlements, and along countless stretches of tunnel.

Seven hours out from the Queen’s Pit, they reach the wide tunnel that, according to the stribe, leads to the Temple of the Sisters. The stribe guides decline to go further, but convey the thanks of their people before retreating back the way they had come. The Company walks cautiously down the tunnel, and in a minute or two it ends at a wide opening onto an enormous cavern, easily a hundred feet on a side and two hundred high. They can’t simply walk out, as the tunnel mouth is about half-way up the height of the cavern.  Its walls, the party sees, are covered in intricate abstract carvings, in such prodigious quantity and exquisite detail, it must have taken dozens of stribe decades of labor. 

In the middle of the vast, dimly lit space  is the Temple of the Sisters, a tall conical structure, its surface mottled like a drip-sandcastle,  with a four-chambered clover-leaf-shaped base.  As A’aatra warned, the temple has no door, but some twenty feet out from it is a large hole which, they presume, leads to a tunnel that emerges up through the floor inside.

The air in the cavern carries the distinctively unpleasant tang of Adversary blood.

…to be continued…


----------



## StevenAC

Sagiro said:


> There is a shell-shocked silence.



Ouch.  Too soon, Sagiro, too soon.  RIP, Rosetta... 

That was indeed a true RBDM act.  I take it this was the plot development that had you worried you'd pissed off your players when you dropped it on them?  (See the discussion on page 230 and following of Part Three of the collected Story Hour.)

As an aside, it's great fun to finally see the events mentioned in those posts from you and the players around that time, when you were playing through the sessions we're only now getting to read about.  For instance, this is what should be coming up fairly soon:


			
				Piratecat said:
			
		

> We played tonight.  Sagiro is a giant rat bastard, roles are reversed, Dranko’s normal combat style has definitely been torn out of a rut, it is in fact possible to hate Meledien even more than I previously did, the term “meat-shield” can sometimes become quite terrifyingly literal, never throw out your old magic items, and – possibly for the first time in years – Dranko is looking at death.  Justifiably so.
> Rat.  Bastard.



Can't wait...


----------



## Sagiro

Since I posted last night, this thread has gotten over a 1000 views, but only 12 people have gone to my "do you read this story hour" Google Form.

In case you missed it at the start of the previous post, here's the link:

Do you read this Story Hour?

Remember, only go to this form once, so I can get an accurate-ish count!

Thanks!

-Sagiro


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> Since I posted last night, this thread has gotten over a 1000 views, but only 12 people have gone to my "do you read this story hour" Google Form.
> 
> In case you missed it at the start of the previous post, here's the link:
> 
> Do you read this Story Hour?




I do!  And I told the link so.  Y'all should do the same.

The Emperor sneaking in behind the party's back was RBastardy enough, I suppose, but it's FAR meaner of Sagiro to post three times in a week, thus getting my hopes up that updates will continue at a similar frequency...


----------



## Quartz

Form completed; update very much enjoyed.


----------



## Richards

Both my son and I added our numbers to the Google headcount.

Can't wait to see what happens next!

Johnathan


----------



## Piratecat

Sagiro will hopefully forgive my gratuitous plug; for those who haven't seen it, I have a new Kickstarter for an investigative time travel game through Pelgrane Press. Come look! The EN World thread can be found here.

Now, I happily return you to Sagiro beating on Dranko.


----------



## Kaodi

I used the form as well. I cannot say I would mind either if the updates keep coming at the current pace,  . But I have been reading this Story Hour for over twelve years, so I can probably survive a bit more waiting,  .


----------



## blargney the second

Sagiro, I think it's awesome that you're going to publish this story.  Your writing is extremely enjoyable, and I'll be encouraging my friends to buy your books.  

Keep it up!


----------



## carborundum

I am LOVING all these updates - thank you Sagiro, sir!

(Form filled in)


----------



## KidCthulhu

Now that's true Rat Bastardy.  Sagiro shows us one of our least favorite NPCs getting killed in a fashion caused by or at least aided by by her own ego and paranoia, and we can't even gloat and say "We told you so" because of the nature of what killed her.  There was a whole lot of cursing around the table that night.  I'm kind of surprised Sagiro escaped with his life.


----------



## Siuis

Oh man that was fun. Thanks for the read, Sagiro!

*

Google document signed and disseminated to my friends with a note to only click and submit if they remember reading and enjoyed.


*

Prophecy: spike to push through? Did no one think that they would heal the world by pushing the spike of Essence farther into the earth and removing it from the other side?

Fantastic, as always. Man. I am so excited for this, only like, forty more updates!
I basically remember my Enworld log in information for you, Sagiro. XD


----------



## Everett

Siuis said:


> Prophecy: spike to push through? Did no one think that they would heal the world by pushing the spike of Essence farther into the earth and removing it from the other side?




What "essence"?  Essence of the Adversary, you mean?  And how would such a thing be made possible?


----------



## Piratecat

Everett said:


> What "essence"?  Essence of the Adversary, you mean?  And how would such a thing be made possible?



Damned if we knew. We were making this up as we went along. My goal, at least, was to taunt things until they wanted to hit me, then hit them harder and earlier.

Note to self: that's sometimes a really stupid goal.


----------



## Everett

...Piratecat's need to mock things and then hit them aside, I guess that, since the Adversary is after all hundreds of feet tall, the company might "drive the spike through" him, and through the world itself.  But the Watcher's Kiss is just an ordinary-sized weapon (in fact it's a dagger, IIRC?), so I'm not sure where this theory can lead.


******************

One at last, but not yet known.
One forever dead as stone.
One to drive the spike clean through.
One to die, and hope renew.

******************

Heres my speculation, currently: this verse refers to two people.  One in the first two lines, one in the last 2 lines.  One of the party, the one who "drives the spike" will indeed die, and renew hope.  The spike will be driven through the Adversary; as before, it will wound him, not kill him, and the campaign will end with him in a similar position to where he's always been; imprisoned or incapacitated for another age.  "But in another time, in another place, his evil may rise again, and another band of heroes be called to meet him..." Ozilinsh intoned, somberly... cue credits and endgame music.

The "one forever dead as stone" is not one of the party; it is not someone the party has ever met.  It's someone they'll learn of down here in the core, someone who perhaps once challenged the Adversary or Emperor Skewn, was killed and made a gruesome example of.  Somehow this being imparts information to the company (a book in its tomb, perhaps, or speaking with its shade, what have you) that proves crucial in the final confrontation.


----------



## Anxe

If it's someone down in the Underdark, that doesn't sound like someone the Adversary made an example of. No one can get down to the Underdark and leave! It sounds more like someone the Adversary is scared of, imprisoned under the Earth so that the Adversary could return without interference. Have there been any other hints about such a person?

EDIT: I've also gotta say that doesn't really jive with what the Emperor's done in the past. He was digging all over the place to try and reach something in the Underdark. Now he's sent his dream team down to do or get whatever he was looking for. I think they're looking for his hand that fell through. It plummeted down into the Underdark, leaving that bloody evil mess on top.


----------



## Chronikoce

Well then, my email alerts from Enworld appear to be failing me. I checked back into find 3 updates and was quite surprised. Clicked your link Sagiro and enjoyed the read, can't wait to read what happens next!


----------



## Everett

Anxe said:


> If it's someone down in the Underdark, that doesn't sound like someone the Adversary made an example of. No one can get down to the Underdark and leave! It sounds more like someone the Adversary is scared of, imprisoned under the Earth so that the Adversary could return without interference. Have there been any other hints about such a person?




Maybe, but if they're only imprisoned, they're not "as dead as stone."  Hmmm.

"Dead as stone" can obviously be read two ways: literally or figuratively.  Someone who is actually dead, or someone who only seems to be dead, or is dead in a sense, permanently imprisoned within a _time stop_, something like that.  It could be the latter and if so, there haven't been any hints that I recall about such a person, but I don't think that discounts the theory, since until the descent into the Underdark nothing in the entire campaign had much if anything at all to do with the place.



			
				Anxe said:
			
		

> EDIT: I've also gotta say that doesn't really jive with what the Emperor's done in the past. He was digging all over the place to try and reach something in the Underdark. Now he's sent his dream team down to do or get whatever he was looking for. I think they're looking for his hand that fell through. It plummeted down into the Underdark, leaving that bloody evil mess on top.




Again, maybe.  The next update will probably tell us something about the Adversary, so we'll see what we'll see.


----------



## Anxe

Didn't Kibi have a way to talk to stones at some point. Maybe dead as stone isn't as dead as we think!


----------



## steeldragons

How 'bout...just a suggestion...we knock off the speculation and just wait for the next brilliant update from Sagiro? Cuz then, ya know, we will KNOW what happens instead of endlessly updating the thread with stuff and nonsense we individually think_ might _be correct.

That's a not-so-subtle nudge, Sagiro, that we need to hear the rest. 

Please and thank you.


----------



## Everett

Anxe said:


> Didn't Kibi have a way to talk to stones at some point. Maybe dead as stone isn't as dead as we think!




The simile "dead as stone" wouldn't be in the prophecy if it wasn't significant.  Prophecies don't mince words.


----------



## Everett

steeldragons said:


> How 'bout...just a suggestion...we knock off the speculation and just wait for the next brilliant update from Sagiro? Cuz then, ya know, we will KNOW what happens instead of endlessly updating the thread with stuff and nonsense we individually think_ might _be correct.




Because the prophecy's interesting to think about?  If Sagiro or Piratecat or another mod want a thread that's completely inactive except when updates appear, they can say so, but this thread was active with all sorts of reader comments for many years; it's only recently that people have stopped commenting in-between updates.


----------



## carborundum

What Everett said. 
I'm loving the speculation, it's reminding me of lots of bits to re-read in my Steven AC pdfs


----------



## Everett

carborundum said:


> What Everett said.
> I'm loving the speculation, it's reminding me of lots of bits to re-read in my Steven AC pdfs




Word!


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 372*_
*A Killing Machine*

Ernie casts _magic circle vs. evil_ in case the Essence is stronger inside the temple. For a moment after that the Company just stands there at the precipice, gazing down upon the huge cone that is Temple of the Sisters.

Dranko jumps off.  The others’ hearts skip a beat before they remember he always _feather falls_.  Ernie nearly shouts, but remembers they’re all mind-linked. “What are you doing!?” he asks.

“I was bored. I’m going to scout, to make sure all the peshovar are _inside_ the temple.”  Dranko lands softly on the cavern floor, and sees it is carved similarly to the walls and ceiling, textured with finely-crafted shapes and designs. The feeling of Essence has increased a small amount, but is still nothing tangibly dangerous.  He hears low, rumbling grunts from inside the temple, muffled by the stone walls. The hole in the ground that leads down and then up again inside has been shaped to be quite narrow. He guesses the stribe have done that to keep the peshovar trapped inside. Outside, he finds no tracks, no spoor, no sign of any lumbering beasts.

The rest of the party casts some personal long-term combat buffs, though they have to wait on party-wide enchantments now that Dranko is a hundred feet below them.  Aravis transforms via _shapechange_ into an enormous earth elemental, sinks into the ground, and sticks a giant stone hand out into the cavern. In this way he becomes a living elevator and shuttles his friends two at a time down to where Dranko waits.  As he loads up Ernie and Grey Wolf, four stribe return. 

“We are to here to wait outward,” one of them says. “In case you are need rescue.”

Now that the Company is again gathered together, they finish their battery of buffs, and then Kibi casts _prying eyes_, instructing them to go through the tunnel and explore the temple interior. A few minutes later they start to return, and provide Kibi a visual report. There are four peshovar inside, roaming around restlessly, black spots crawling over their rough gray lizardy hides. Each is about twelve feet long from nose to tail, seven feet high at the top of its ridged back, and true to the drawings of the stribe, resembles a cross between a lizard and a dinosaur.  The motes of light closest to them, within about a foot of their skins, swirl and dart with atypical energy. Kibi sighs at the predictably razor-sharp claws and teeth.

Ernie decides a _divination_ is in order. As he casts, he becomes acutely aware of the spiritual separation from Yondalla that comes from being on the wrong side of Yulan’s Barrier. In order to receive his guidance he will need to expend life-force, and this he is willing to do.  He finishes the spell and asks, “Will we do well if we enter the Temple to battle the peshovar?”

_*STAY GROUNDED*_

A’aatra had already hinted that the peshovar have some control over gravity, and this bit of divine wisdom puts any thought of flying out of their heads.  Taking Yondalla’s advice more literally, Kibi uses _wish_ to effect a _mass xorn movement_ on the entire party.

“Ready?” asks Dranko.  

Down they go, sinking into the stone and then moving beneath the temple floor. 

“This is weird,” thinks Ernie.  “I can’t see anything, but I can sense vibrations.”

Except for Kibi, this is their first time under the effects of _xorn movement_. While blind, they have acute senses of movement and gravity, and the tactile sensations are bizarre. It feels like swimming through gelatin.

“I’ll scout,” says Dranko. He makes use of his _robe of blending_ and pokes his head up through the floor, noting the positions of the four meandering peshovar.  There are many large pillars in the temple, ten feet around and thirty feet high, and atop these are various oddly shaped sculptures. Two at the front end each support a statue of a stribe, one white, one black – the representations of the Sister Gods, Yavin and Wlaqua. 

Hastily they work out a plan of attack over the mind link.  Aravis rises up directly beneath one of the pillars and then continues to “swim” up the pillar until he emerges at its zenith.  The others pop up in various places, staying out of “fireball formation” in case these creatures have any area attacks.  The peshovar, none too bright in the best of circumstances, are taken entirely by surprise. Flicker immediately moves to stab one of the startled creatures, but his blade is turned by its knobbly hide. Dranko has better luck, carving chunks out of the closest peshovar with his whip.

Aravis plays a hunch and drops a _disjunction_ on two of the peshovar far removed from any of his friends. A ripple of unstoppable abjuration spreads out and flows over the beasts, but it’s hard to say what effect it has, if any, because the spell also wipes out all of the light motes in its area.  The two peshovar are now hidden inside a hemisphere of blackness.

Ernie figures that if they had any magical defenses, he should strike before they have a chance to reestablish them.  He casts _ice flowers_ into the darkness, and is rewarded by saurian bellows of pain.

Kibi bisects the temple interior with a _wall of force_, figuring that can only work to their tactical advantage since everyone can burrow beneath it. Grey Wolf lobs an _acid orb_ at the nearest monster, while Flicker and Dranko flank and devastate another with their weapons.  The peshovar isn’t dead, but slumps to one side due to having one of its hind legs nearly removed. 

Morningstar casts _firestorm_. All of the peshovar are badly burned, and the one already brought close to death by Dranko and Flicker collapses in a heap of frozen flesh.

By now the lumbering beasties have worked out that something bad is happening.  The one closest to Grey Wolf casts its dull-eyed gaze at the spellsword, and its black lesions start to jitter on its skin. Grey Wolf winces, knowing what’s coming, and he’s right: painful black pustules form on his own skin and burst in pocks of stinging fire. Then the remaining peshovar also look that way, and the light motes around them start to pulse and squirm. Each peshovar becomes encased in a shimmering aura. The closest opens its mouth, bellows, and sonic ribbons radiate out through the light motes, setting them to a frantic vibration. This quickly builds to a crescendo, before the light motes fall inward onto Grey Wolf with an astounding sonic boom.  Grey Wolf is blasted from his feet, skin torn from his body, his bones bruised and teeth set to rattling in his mouth. Residual waves of sonic energy streak toward some of the others, but Flicker and Dranko dance out of the way, and Kibi is protected by one of the many silver discs of his _effulgent epuration._

The second of the nearby peshovar looks balefully at Aravis, and he too feels the sickening pain of black pustules popping all over his face.  Annoyed, Aravis responds with _maze_.  The peshovar vanishes.  Satisfied, Aravis sinks into the safety of the stone floor.

Ernie follows with _flame strike_ on the monster that instigated the sonic attack, but the peshovar are at least moderately resistant to magic and the spell has no effect.  Kibi suffers a similar failure with _hold monster_, but has better luck with a quickened _rainbow pattern_. The closest peshovar looks up at the sparkly lights, grunting with curiosity and snapping at them with its teeth.

Morningstar moves to heal Grey Wolf, then quickens _divine power_ on herself. Grey Wolf shakes his head and struggles to his feet before blasting the closest peshovar with another _acid orb_.

Dranko realizes that if he goes invisible, he can lay waste to these things with sneak attacks.  To buy himself more time, he reaches into the fragile recesses of madness deep within his mind and effects _time stop_. The battle freezes. Every light mote hangs suspended, grains of dust sheathed in tiny individual halos. The black spots of Essence stop squidging on the skins of the peshovar. And somewhere just out of view, tantalizingly close, lies the twinkling insanity of the Far Realms.  

He moves into attack position, casts _improved invisibility_ on himself, and waits to reappear.  Giggles of anticipation threaten to burst from his lips. 

What the others see is this:  Dranko _teleports_ across the battlefield to stand behind a peshovar, flanking it with Flicker. Immediately all the light motes within six inches of his body flock to his skin, coating him in a glowing membrane.  Though technically invisible, he shines like a bonfire.  He’s so startled that his whip strike goes wide.

“What did you do that for?” exclaims Flicker. 

“Note to self,” says Dranko. “Invisibility in the Underdark sucks.”

Just like conversations, battles occasionally have tiny periods of incongruous silence, when every combatant’s pauses align. Such a moment occurs, and everyone can hear a faint sound from somewhere outside the temple. It sounds familiar, though no one can place it exactly.  Some sort of machine?

Dranko looks accusingly at Kibi. “Not working as expected!” he shouts. “Your invisibility sash is broken!” His voice has taken on the slur of wisdom drain from the tentacle-powered _time stop_. Before Kibi can defend himself from this slander, the peshovar swivels to face Dranko, gives him the black-pustule treatment, and then savages him with the pointy ends of its claws and teeth.

Though the peshovar are physically imposing, Aravis hopes to get lucky with a _disintegrate_, and hits the jackpot. His spell overcomes all its resistance and resilience. For a moment it appears that nothing has happened, before the peshovar collapses into a powdery swirl on the floor.  That leaves two beasts dead, one trapped in a _maze_, and the last still playfully nipping at the _rainbow pattern_.  The various patches of darkness left behind by area spells are filling in as the light motes seek their natural spatial equilibrium.

The mysterious sound is much louder now, right outside the temple. Everyone thinks it familiar but none can place it – a rhythmic chopping sound mixed with metallic clanks. Echoes of metal colliding with stone come from the tunnel entrance in the floor; whatever it is, it’s on its way in!  Kibi quickly casts a wall of stone covering the hole, a granite plug nearly two feet thick that should buy them a few minutes at least. They then rush to the hypnotized peshovar, surround it, and commence smashing and slicing it to pieces. Though Kibi inflicts serious damage with a pair of _earthbolts_ and Aravis slams it with a _Bigby’s clenched fist_, the lion’s share of damage is done by Morningstar with _Ell’s Will_, which deals terrible damage to spell-resistant creatures.

From the tunnel comes a rising sound, as of something hydraulic powering up, followed by a tremendous boom. Kibi’s stone wall quivers and sprouts a latticework of small cracks.  The dwarf exhorts his familiar Scree to investigate – carefully! – what’s in the tunnel. 

“It’s… I don’t know what it is, Kibi. Some kind of machine is smashing through your wall, but it’s also alive. I think.  And it has an aquamarine glow, just like the…”

A volcano of rock shards erupts from the floor, and the whole Company is now afforded a good look at the thing as it emerges.  If a bored God had set out to make a war machine out of gleaming iron plates and assorted deadly weapons, and decided halfway through to just start bolting on any dangerous-looking object He could find, this is what his creation would look like. It’s very roughly humanoid, seven feet tall and extremely bulky.  Its surface bristles with jointed saws, hammers, spikes, spinning blades, bolted-on pipes, and dozens of little protuberances like insect antennae.  Tiny arcs of electricity spark and pop all over it, while it emits a ceaseless cacophony of buzzes, whirs, clicks, hisses and crackles. It smells of ozone and oil.

From its very top a large propeller unfolds, and the creature – called an “Anaxim,” though none of the Company have heard that word – rises a few feet into the air. Now they all recognize the sound. It’s the chop of propeller blades, which they have heard once in their lives, from the strange mechanical Screel in Het Branoi. 

As Scree had reported, the Anaxim is limned in aquamarine light, just as had the many-winged horror that had assaulted them near the Croaking Oracle.

In Dranko’s mind he hears a monotone voice.  _Primary target acquired. Dranko Blackhope. Kill, kill, kill._

“Meledien must _really_ be angry that I have her arm,” Dranko mutters.  Over the mind-link there’s a brief burst of chatter. Is this the real trap? Weaken the party with the peshovar and then spring this clanking death-machine on them?  Dranko dives into the ground, putting a few feet of earth between himself and the monster.  Flicker and Grey Wolf quickly follow.

Aravis regards this new threat and wonders if its various electrical components can be short-circuited. He casts _lightning ring_, then quickens a _cone of cold_. The Anaxim is coated with frost, but isn’t much slowed, and seems to have resisted much of the damage. Ernie slides through the stone beneath the _wall of force_ and casts _radiant assault_, but as the light of the spell bursts outward, most of the Anaxim’s iron plates flip on hidden gimbals to reveal brightly-polished mirrors. The spell energy is deflected, scattering harmlessly into the air, and the plates flip again to present their unyielding iron faces.

Kibi drops his _wall of force_ (since the metal creature can fly over it) and casts his own _cone of cold_, but again the panels flip and deflect the spell. Frustrated, the dwarf commands his _Bigby’s clenched fist_ to punch the thing, and that actually works. A tiny antenna snaps off and skitters across the floor. Morningstar calls down a _firestorm_ on the Anaxim, but once more its mirror-plates protect it entirely. She glares at it before retreating into the rock.  

A little dish pops out of a hidden panel on the Anaxim’s head and swivels about for a second or two. Scanning lights flicker to life and sweep an arc in front of it.  With most of his allies hiding in the rock, only Ernie falls within the Anaxim’s scan. A little clawed hand pops out of yet another hidden compartment, holding what looks like a tiny wand.  The wand flares, and four towering iron golems appear surrounding Ernie. They are ten feet tall, with featureless heads and enormous iron fists, and Ernie has a terrible flashback to his death-by-anvil, delivered by a golem not dissimilar to these. But he is a much more experienced combatant than he was all those years ago, and is almost smothered with defensive enchantments. He dodges, ducks, and lets his armor do its job. Though eight enormous fists come crashing down upon him, he weathers the storm entirely unscathed.

Flicker pops up next to the Anaxim and lunges at it with his _ice dagger_, but the machine bats the blade away with a length of iron pipe dangling from a short length of chain.  Dranko emerges as well and unleashes a full flurry of whip strikes, an assault of the sort that usually delivers horrific damage to his enemies.

The Anaxim deflects them all.  All of its scanning lights swing to shine upon him.  _Dranko Blackhope. Kill, kill, kill._

Aravis fires off two _lightning bolts_ from his _lightning ring_, but both are deflected by the flipping mirrors. The same happens to a _quickened disintegrate_. 

Even surrounded by iron golems, Ernie manages to cast _lion’s roar_, but none of the enemies even seems to notice. Dismayed, Ernie retreats into the floor. Kibi then gives the golems something to do, casting _summon monster IX_ and bringing forth five greater earth elementals.  These immediately move to grapple, thus instigating an epic golems-vs.-elementals melee the likes of which the world has likely never seen, though in current context it’s relegated to the undercard. 

While Kibi sinks into the floor, Morningstar moves to stand near Dranko, then quickens a _searing darkness_ which manages to strike a spot not protected by the mirrors. The damage is not great, but there’s a small cracking sound and a handful of springs pops out from the Anaxim’s busy interior to bounce crazily on the ground.

While the iron golems and earth elementals continue their scrum, the Anaxim rises swiftly into the air using its whirring propeller until it hovers forty feet above the ground. A panel on its underside flips around to reveal a metallic cone, and from this cone comes a deafening sonic boom.  Dranko rolls out of its area, but Grey Wolf and Morningstar are caught full in the blast.  Flicker avoids a portion of its nerve-crushing shock, but still feels his hair standing on end.

Dranko looks up.  “Is that the best you can do?  Who sent you, anyway?”

“_Information sharing criteria not met._”

Some of the more damaged of its plates flip around, and from deep within the Anaxim’s body there comes a furnace roar and a red glow that shines out from between its seams.  The plates flip back, and much of the damage has been repaired.

As Flicker fights down his fear and flies upward to engage the Anaxim, Grey Wolf notices Dranko fishing out his _bag of endless rope_, to which he has tied a grappling hook onto the end. His “Dranko is about to do something foolish” alarm goes off, and he casts _indomitability_ on his friend. Dranko swings the rope around a few times and hurls the grappling hook upward, hoping that the rope will tangle in the machine’s propellers and bring it down. Miraculously the hook does get caught on one of the blades instead of ricocheting off, but the rope ends up winding rapidly around the propeller shaft, hissing out of its enchanted bag at an alarming rate.  With only a few seconds before all the rope will be pulled up, Dranko runs twice around the nearest pillar and braces himself.

The rope runs out, and the force of the Anaxim’s propeller is tested against Dranko’s ability to hold his ground.  Dranko comes out of that contest rather badly.  Unwilling to release the bag, he is whipped around the pillar until he has become unwound, before being flung outward and reeled in like a fish biting down on a hook.  In under two seconds he has been brought right up against the Anaxim’s body, where he becomes impaled on several small spikes. This turns out to be a lucky break,  as he is not pulled into the propeller itself, which would surely have sliced him to ribbons.

The smell of fire and hot oil fills Dranko’s nose, and the sounds of ratcheting hammers and whirring saw blades are loud in his ears. Wind from the propeller blows his hair.

Aravis thinks to Dranko over the mind-link. “I’m going to try more lightning bolts, in case electricity is its weakness and I get them past its spell resistance. Can you dodge them?”

“I’m sure I can,” says Dranko, eager for anything that might solve his predicament.  Aravis fires his bolts, but it doesn’t work out very well. While they do get past the creature’s resistance this time, the electricity becomes diffuse and spreads into a crackling web around the Anaxim’s body, while dozens of tiny antenna jitter and like electrified cilia. Dranko gets burned, but the machine is unscarred.  Aravis curses and quickens an _anti-magic ray_, but this has no effect at all.

Things are starting to look desperate.  Weapons and spells are failing to have much effect, and now the thing has Dranko seemingly at its mercy.  Ernie flings an _energy drain_ at it, but discovers that the Anaxim has no life energy to drain. Kibi, with an angle on the side of the creature where Dranko isn’t, blasts the monster with an empowered maximized _coldfire_, but between the thing’s unnatural agility and natural resistance to elements, it’s hardly scratched.

_Dranko. Kill._

Two large saw blades swing downward on jointed arms and buzz toward Dranko’s head.  He manages to flip over to avoid the first (impaling himself on a new set of spikes) but the second slices deep into his arm, and then an iron trip hammer smashes him in the thigh. Finally, adding injury to injury, a small sparking arm scorches him with a jolt of electricity.

Astoundingly, he’s not dead, though his blood is now sheeting down both his body and the Anaxim’s and dripping onto the floor far below.  Morningstar looks up and comes to two conclusions. First, her reckless husband needs rescuing. Second, it’s going to be up to her to take down this metallic horror.  “Grey Wolf, can you make me fly?”  Grey Wolf obliges with a wand, and up Morningstar soars. When she’s close enough, she casts a _mass heal_ that encompasses herself, Dranko and Flicker.  Then she draws _Ell’s Will_.

Dranko, meanwhile, has  not stopped thinking about how he might foul up the flying apparatus of the Anaxim. From his haversack he calls up his _immovable rod_. The metal beast is swaying slightly as it hovers, oscillations caused in part by his own weight pinned to its spikes. He takes a couple of seconds to time its movement, and cringing from the danger to his fingers, reaches up and presses the button that fixes the rod relative to the world.

With a sound like a hyperactive titan banging on an anvil with a metal rod, every one of the Anaxim’s propeller blades is sheared off; they spray around the temple like a fan of throwing knives, each quivering at it sinks into the stone wall. And the Anaxim falls, though even bereft of flight it keeps focus on its goal, tipping its body so that it lands with Dranko underneath it.  Dranko does his best to avoid the longest of the spikes, but is still somewhat crushed and impaled beneath the Anaxim’s metal bulk. Now that he’s being pressed to the floor, he is able to slide from the spikes and sink into the ground, which he does.  He swims away through the stone and pops up well away from the Anaxim, his back to a wall.

Morningstar, recently arrived at the spot forty feet from the ground, looks downward and lets out an aggrieved sigh.  “Goddess, I really am _trying _to use my weapon in Your name.”  

Aravis tries _polymorph any object_, but the Anaxim will have none of it. It is a creature of a sort immune to a myriad of magical subtypes, including _polymorph_.  Ernie, realizing his spells are doing little good, draws _Honor of Nemmin_ even while swimming through the rock and uses its ability to transform himself into a pure fighter. His face glows gold and green, he seems to grow a few inches, and his armor takes on a faint pattern of green leaves. 

Kibi sets his _Bigby’s fist_ to keep punching the Anaxim, and sends the silver disks of his _effulgent epuration_ to protect Dranko. They streak across the battlefield like a swam of tiny gray meteors and form up around the beleaguered half-orc. Seeing that four of his elementals have effectively locked down the iron golems, Kibi sends the fifth one to harass the Anaxim, though it cannot find an opening for its rocky fists. Having done as much, the dwarf sinks into the stone.

_”Dranko Blackhope. Kill, kill, kill._

The Anaxim retracts the useless stub of its propeller and clanks swiftly to Dranko.  Circular spinning blades and iron sledge hammers come at Dranko from multiple angles and he cannot dodge them all. The one hammer-blow he _does_ manage to avoid knocks a chunk of stone out of the wall, a testament to its power. Once more Dranko’s blood is splattered everywhere.

After Flicker swoops down and once more fails to damage his enemy, Grey Wolf quickens an _acid orb_ and hurls it at the Anaxim.  Its resistance doesn’t extend to acid attacks, and small hissing holes appear on its iron plating. Threads of acrid smoke rise up, and Dranko is only barely able to contain his gorge. Morningstar lands and casts _heal_ upon Dranko, who then sinks backward into the wall until only his face and knees protrude.

Aravis, his spells continually foiled, changes into an enormous dragon and tries to grapple with the Anaxim. But the creature is built to repel such assaults.  Aravis finds it’s like trying to grab a fistful of naked knife blades, and falls back, gashed for his efforts.

Ernie pops up from the ground and swings _Honor of Nemmin_. The Anaxim’s vaunted resistance to damage cannot stop such an exalted blade, and he slices off several spikes and a section of plating. His final swing severs a thick rubber tube which sprays hot oil in all directions. Lights and dishes swivel to Ernie with a series of clicks.

“_Secondary target acquired_”

“No!” shouts Dranko. “You’re not giving up on me, are you?” 

The blades and hammers fall upon Ernie, making a wreck of his armor and leaving him battered and bloodied, near to death.

Grey Wolf splashes the Anaxim with another _acid orb_, and several of its pieces melt, some of them dropping off entirely into little puddles of slag.  There are several buzzes as a series of circuits shorts. A thicker plume of black smoke rises from a vent near its shoulder. And yet the blades continue to spin, and its primary sledgehammer cocks back for another swing.

Flicker has given up on trying to damage the Anaxim, but figures he can distract it while Morningstar makes her attacks.  Kibi instructs his extra elemental to do likewise. Focused on Ernie and Dranko, the Anaxim hardly notices that Morningstar has finally managed to close, _Ell’s Will_ raised to strike.

Down comes her weapon, once, twice, a third time. Infused with Ell’s power, her strikes fall like lightning blasts. The first hit knocks off its largest spinning blade. The second cracks the sledgehammer off at its base. And the third caves in its side completely.  Several internal belts snap and fly loose, springs and gears explode in all directions, and the Anaxim crumbles into a clanging heap of metal, grease and smoke.

As the Anaxim’s remains vanish with a flash of aquamarine light, and the iron golems wink out a second later, Morningstar stands triumphant. Holy fire flashes in her eyes.

She is a killing machine.

…to be continued…


----------



## The_Warlock

Someone with epic resources really, really, really doesn't like Dranko. 

But why? It's not like he's famous or something...


----------



## carborundum

Holy Cremoly! That was incredible! 
Incredibly awful for the pcs


----------



## RangerWickett

This is a beastly little monster. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/abomination.htm (scroll down just a bit)


----------



## Solarious

Morningstar is a killing machine? Nah, more like a machine killer.  I'm actually a little shocked no-one's made that pun yet.

So, how long is the bloody saga of Dranko the party tank going to last? It's a little funny, but it sorta feels sadistic to keep anticipating how badly shredded he's going to be by the next gribbly Sagiro sends out to have a butcher's pass at him.


----------



## Piratecat

The_Warlock said:


> Someone with epic resources really, really, really doesn't like Dranko.
> 
> But why? It's not like he's famous or something...



This is a FANTASTIC question. Dranko really, really should have spent more time asking himself the same thing. Clearly, it's personal. Who and why?

Also, ouch.


----------



## The_Warlock

Piratecat said:


> This is a FANTASTIC question. Dranko really, really should have spent more time asking himself the same thing. Clearly, it's personal. Who and why?
> 
> Also, ouch.




And I apologize, Dranko is my favorite, but it was such low hanging fruit, I just couldn't leave it unplucked. Mean and Funny is still Funny, as the saying goes.


----------



## Zelc

I've made my bet on who's sending these monsters earlier in this thread .  I don't think I'll change it yet!

I just hope the party doesn't end up facing the rest of the monsters on that d20srd page.


----------



## Piratecat

The_Warlock said:


> And I apologize, Dranko is my favorite, but it was such low hanging fruit, I just couldn't leave it unplucked. Mean and Funny is still Funny, as the saying goes.




No apology needed. Ribbing aside (and goodness knows that Dranko probably deserves it), the fact that he isn't and never can be famous means that it's possibly a personal grudge. But we're in the underdark, where the number of people with personal grudges against him is decidedly limited. One of the three red armored enemies? They're not summoners as far as we know, and who the hell can summon multiple epic level monsters? Also, why target just Dranko, the only person in the Company who never got mentioned in any prophecy?

I wish you guys could have seen the look on Sagiro's face when I told him I was trying the grappling hook trick, and then the look on my face when it backfired so spectacularly badly, and then the look on Sagiro's face when I pulled out the immovable rod. If I could, I would frame that gaming session and bring it out whenever I needed to grin ear-to-ear.


----------



## KidCthulhu

*Sagiro's Story Hour: The FINAL Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 2/1...*

Spare a thought for poor Ernie.  Surrounded by big metal fists again.  It's at least on his list of "Top 5 Nightmares".


----------



## coyote6

Piratecat said:


> No apology needed. Ribbing aside (and goodness knows that Dranko probably deserves it), the fact that he isn't and never can be famous means that it's possibly a personal grudge. But we're in the underdark, where the number of people with personal grudges against him is decidedly limited. One of the three red armored enemies? They're not summoners as far as we know, and who the hell can summon multiple epic level monsters? Also, why target just Dranko, the only person in the Company who never got mentioned in any prophecy?




My guess is that it has something to do with the tentacles in his mind. Let's see, a series of aquamarine-glowing abominations that seem to really want to kill Dranko. This one shows up shortly after Dranko draws on the squirming thing in his head to make time stop. Nothing says the Far Realms can't have factions and rivalries -- squamous, unknowable factions, and rugose, unspeakable rivalries, of course. So whatever is in Dranko's head is either being judged a threat by something else that's also spent some time in Far Realms, or is being recognized and loathed; either way, it makes Dranko a threat.

That, or Dranko just holds the secret way to defeat the Adversary. Yes, it's true --His one true weakness, His Achilles' Heel, His Kryptonite, is being licked.


----------



## Anxe

It's not obviously Tapheon to everyone? 

Who the Hell indeed, PirateKitty.


----------



## RangerWickett

If Dranko doesn't lick the Adversary now, I'll be terribly disappointed.


----------



## Enkhidu

Anxe said:


> It's not obviously Tapheon to everyone?




That was my thought ever since the "well at least we won't have to worry about Tapheon down here!" quote.


----------



## Anxe

Good. Glad I'm not going crazy.


----------



## Piratecat

Anxe said:


> It's not obviously Tapheon to everyone?
> 
> Who the Hell indeed, PirateKitty.




I am being completely honest when I (the player) say that it was far from obvious to us at the time. I'd completely discounted Tapheon at this point. He hasn't forgotten Dranko? Well, big whoopty doo. If we can't get to our own Gods easily down here, I (and therefore Dranko) was fairly secure that Tapheon wasn't ballsy and/or powerful enough to penetrate the underdark and do any particular damage to Our Tusky Torchbearer Hero. Remember, I'd been asking Sagiro why we were trapped down here forever, and it was made clear that planeshifting out wasn't an option. If that was true, then as far as I was concerned Tapheon couldn't do squat. Screw him and his rod of tongues. And anyways, Dranko is armored in self-righteousness and the ironclad belief that he acts (more or less) in his distant, paternal God's name. If Lord Tapheon got all shirty because Dranko offered him a chance to repent, well, that wasn't _Dranko's_ problem. 

It remains to be seen whether this attitude (both my own and Dranko's) was wise or really, truly, suicidally foolish. Any bets?


----------



## Tamlyn

Piratecat said:


> It remains to be seen whether this attitude (both my own and Dranko's) was wise or really, truly, suicidally foolish. Any bets?




I'm gonna go with the "not wise" option. 

~Tam


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> I am being completely honest when I (the player) say that it was far from obvious to us at the time. I'd completely discounted Tapheon at this point. He hasn't forgotten Dranko? Well, big whoopty doo. If we can't get to our own Gods easily down here, I (and therefore Dranko) was fairly secure that Tapheon wasn't ballsy and/or powerful enough to penetrate the underdark and do any particular damage to Our Tusky Torchbearer Hero. Remember, I'd been asking Sagiro why we were trapped down here forever, and it was made clear that planeshifting out wasn't an option. If that was true, then as far as I was concerned Tapheon couldn't do squat. Screw him and his rod of tongues. And anyways, Dranko is armored in self-righteousness and the ironclad belief that he acts (more or less) in his distant, paternal God's name. If Lord Tapheon got all shirty because Dranko offered him a chance to repent, well, that wasn't _Dranko's_ problem.
> 
> It remains to be seen whether this attitude (both my own and Dranko's) was wise or really, truly, suicidally foolish. Any bets?




No bets on the attitude, but I feel pretty sure that Piratecat just confirmed that Tapheon's behind it.


----------



## Piratecat

*Sagiro's Story Hour: The FINAL Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 2/1...*

I do not confirm it. I stick by my guns: this place has its own deities, and Tapheon sure as heck isn't one of them. Which is not to say he completely disappears from the campaign…


----------



## Kaodi

I do not suppose you have any thoughts on the closing of Irrational that you would be willing to share, Sagiro?


----------



## Piratecat

Super-gratuitous plug the last (and Sagiro, thank you! I'll delete this later!): TimeWatch has 6.5 hours left to go, and $7K to reach its $100K goal of full color books. Hollering here in case anyone is intrigued. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kevinkulp/timewatch-gumshoe-investigative-time-travel-rpg

What a great month! And now, back to story.


----------



## Sagiro

On the subject of Irrational Games' closing, I don't have much to say that hasn't already been written.  I had left almost four years to the day before they shut down, so I don't have any "inside scoop" juicy details about the business. I will say that I wish everyone there the best going forward, and that with the kind of talent the typical Irrational employee had, I doubt many will have trouble finding other industry jobs if they want them.

If you're interested in the topic, I suggest this excellent Polygon article.

Now, on with the Story!


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 373*_
*Leaping*

After defeating the Anaxim, annihilating the final peshovar when it finally emerges from Aravis’s _maze_ is practically an afterthought.  Once the beast is dead, Morningstar flies Dranko up so he can retrieve his _immovable rod_.

“I was wrong,” says Dranko. “I thought I couldn’t possibly hate Meledien more than I already did, but I was wrong.”

Like the others, he still considers her the most likely candidate for being responsible for the Dranko-obsessed monsters.

“Gods, I hate her,” says Ernie.

Dranko grunts. “And yes, I know it’s probably Seven Dark Words doing the actual summoning, but still.”

Before too long the temple is swarming with stribe, examining and repairing the damage done during the melee. One of them approaches the Company.

“What is the occurrence?”

“A powerful mechanical construct attacked us, in addition to the peshovar,” says Ernie.

“Are you in need of assistable heals?” asks the stribe.

“I need alcohol,” says Dranko wearily.

The stribe clacks its mandibles. “Fungus! We will get you fungus!”

Dranko smiles wanly. “Will it result in me getting inebriated?”

“Yes,” says the stribe. “Fungus for killing the brain.”

“That’s what I need,” says Dranko. “Brain-killing fungus.”

“I hope there’s no mistranslating going on here,” says Aravis.

“Do you still wish leaping? You have successed.  The Temple is clean. We will tidy it up. You have tidied, now we will tidy.”

The Company feels like they could do with a rest before Leaping, and it turns out they will have little choice, since the ritual to activate the Leaping Circle will take the stribe shamans four days to complete.  They give the stribe the go-ahead to begin.

The Leaping Circle itself is a huge ring of pure adamant, fifty feet across, sunk into the bedrock of a wide cavern.  A large flat stone just beyond its perimeter is etched with a large number “8.” It’s the party’s guess that there are at least nine Leaping Circles, each numbered. They’d like to find number “5,” after the Croaking Orcale’s initial proclamation of “hopping, hopping, five, nine, two,” but they have to start somewhere.

The stribe do warn that Leaping Circle #8 does not take one to any other such Circle. Its terminus is the khet forest by which the stribe harvest their wealth. There are ways to go beyond it, though each has its own dangers, and the Company will decided what to do next upon their arrival.


/*/


On the morning of the third day of the ritual, Aravis awakes having had another vision from the surface.

_The Greenhouse living room is packed. Salk, Fylnius, Alykeen and Ozilinsh are talking animatedly in a corner. There is Cornelia, the High Priestess of Pikon, and Dalesandro, Stormknight of Werthis, sitting quietly across from King Crunard and his advisor Yale. Royce is there, with Glade and Wellington, examining a map with Anhaya Sunblossom of Yondalla. More come down the stairs from the secret room: the Generals Anabrook and Largent; Duke Nigel; the diviner Belinda. Alone in a corner sits Etria, Duke Nigel’s court wizardess. Eddings hustles about, serving food and drinks.

None of them are smiling.

Salk clears his throat, and the crowd gives him its attention.

“Here is what we know,” he begins without preamble. “Some of this will be redundant for many of you, but I’ll start at the beginning. A little less than a week ago, Naradawk Skewn finally managed to make his escape from Volpos. He initiated something that was heretofore considered impossible – an Astral Tunnel connecting Volpos and Abernia. Prison Primes do not actually border the Astral, which is part of what makes it hard to escape them, but somehow Naradawk figured out a way to make it happen.   

“Rosetta and the Silver Shell had some inkling of this plan, and had instigated countermeasures, but those ultimately failed. Rosetta was killed. Etria here was able to escape and warn Duke Nigel, and we immediately sent scouts to the Valding Forest in northern Nahalm. We found that an area of approximately 50 square miles surrounding Naradawk’s entry point had already been enshrouded in an impenetrable fog – a fog shot through with what we’ve come to know as “Essence” – the blood of the Adversary. Needless to say, we have as yet sent no scouting party inside to investigate.

There is a ripple of murmurs through the assemblage at this news. General Anabrook stands up, anger all over her face.

“How is it that Rosetta didn’t see fit to tell us about this threat? Her ridiculous paranoia and bloated self-importance may have doomed the entire kingdom!”

Many heads turn to look at Etria, who holds up her hands, a gesture of frustrated helplessness. The old elf Fylnius stands up. “She had her reasons, and I’m sure they were sound,” he says, glancing at Etria.  “But that is not what we are here to discuss. Members of the Spire, Charagan is under attack, or soon will be -- an attack we may not be able to withstand. We are here to talk about our options.”

Royce leans forward in his chair. “What we need are your people, Ozilinsh. Is there no way to recall them?”

“None,” says Ozilinsh flatly.  “Whatever defense we can manage, we have to do it without them. And even if I knew a way to call them back, I wouldn’t do it. If they don’t succeed, it won’t matter if Naradawk tomorrow turns into a snail and you step on him.”

“What kind of forces does he have?” asks General Largent. “Hundreds? Thousands? Are they all in the fog?”

“We don’t know,” Salk sighs. “But I can tell you this. An Astral tunnel is inherently unstable, and there are only so many people that can cross through it every second, every minute. It is our opinion that Naradawk would have been lucky to keep his door open more than several hours. But if he had an army staged to come through it, 2 soldiers every second would add up to thousands, even tens of thousands in that time. And he would have chosen his most elite units.”

“Tens of thousands?” Largent is aghast. 

“A possibility,” answers Salk. “It’s also possible that his tunnel stayed open for only a few minutes, and it’s less than a thousand. We just don’t know.”

The halfling priestess Anyaha Sunblossom speaks. “Have we contacted allies in Kivia? If we make it known what’s at stake, they will send aid, surely? Maple Sunblade and I have already discussed what we might do for them if Appleseed was attacked by the Anlaki; I know they would commit troops if asked.”

“We have,” says Duke Nigel. “One Supreme Intellect is conferring with his court. Tev and Dir Tolia have already made verbal commitments, but it will take time for them to muster troops. Bederen cannot commit, being tied up with the Delfirians. Anhaya, we have not yet contacted Appleseed; we were hoping you could do that.”

“They could teleport out of the fog, right?”

Everyone turns to regard the young mage, Wellington. He continues. “Naradawk and his allies may simply be consolidating and getting organized in their fog, but they could also be teleporting agents anywhere on Abernia from in there. Is there any reason to think they haven’t?”

“No,” says Anabrook. “The plain fact is, we don’t know what they’re up to, only that in a week, they haven’t mounted any reported offensives.”

“And remember,” Salk adds,  “it may not be a ‘they.’ It’s possible that Naradawk Skewn was the only being to make it through the Astral tunnel.”

“What about Parthol Runecarver?” asks Yale with distaste. “Any word from him?”

Fylnius sighs. “We’ve neither seen nor heard from him since our last meeting here. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m not relying on his help. Honestly, the best we can hope for there is that he stays in his little hidden bunker and doesn’t get any ideas about allying with Naradawk.”

“It seems to me,” says Largent, “that until we know more, we simply have to be as prepared as possible to send strike teams anywhere in the Kingdom. That means lines of communication, teleports at the ready, and all of our best people mustered and ready at a moment’s notice. That means you…”  

He points at Royce, Glade and Wellington.

“…and where are Junaya and Jerzembeck? Why aren’t they here?”

“They’re already in the field,” says Nigel. “Scouting, mostly, in the vicinity of the Valding. And we have… other resources at our command.  Some resources and personnel not generally known, even to most of you.”

“What?” The Pikonish Priestess Cornelia looks surprised. “Everyone here is a member of the Spire, and we’re in the most protected sanctuary in the world. How can it hurt to share all possible  information about our defenses?”

Nigel flicks a look at Etria. “Remember what we’re dealing with,” he says. “Naradawk is an agent of the Black Circle, infused with the blood of a God whose portfolio focuses on divination. Our best protection against him is to keep specific information on a need-to-know basis. If you were captured, Cornelia, Naradawk could easily learn anything you know.”

“Fine,” she says, though she doesn’t like it one bit.  

Salk speaks again. “The plain truth is this. Naradawk could strike anywhere, at any time. His personal power is an unknown, but we should assume he’s the single most dangerous being on Abernia at the moment. If he does have a large force, and plans a conventional military assault, he’ll have to march out of the Valding Forest in some direction, unless he has some way of teleporting thousands of soldiers at once. In the meantime, we simply have to be ready, nimble, and opportunistic.”

They continue to speak, but here the vision fades.
_

The Company has a brief discussion about this, but can only agree that the Spire will have to weather the storm without them. If nothing else, it makes it all the more imperative that they make haste in their pursuit of Seven Dark Words, Meledien and Tarsos. It will be of little comfort if the Company succeeds, but with a surface world already conquered or destroyed by Naradawk Skewn. 

It also seems likely that Duke Nigel, at least, knows there’s a traitor in the Spire. The Company thinks perhaps it is Cornelia, but there’s really no way to know.


/*/


Leaping Circle #8 was already there when the first Stribe settled in the region, and the insect creatures do not know who built it.  Instructions for the ritual were helpfully left behind, and for centuries now they have used it to reach their khet forest. Aravis studies the ritual but it’s far beyond even his powers to puzzle through.  Somehow it overcomes the Underdark’s inherent stifling of teleportation magic, but he doesn’t know how. It’s a miracle that it works at all.

At last the ritual is nearly complete. Twenty-four stribe shamans are standing around the Leaping Circle’s perimeter, each levitating a heliotrope sphere above its head. The air above the circle is bright; it's either attracting additional light motes, or causing the ones already there to glow more strongly.

A few minutes before departure, a stribe named Ki’iilgin, sort of a foreman in charge of the casting shamans, approaches the waiting Company.

“The Circle goes to our vault,” he says. “Our source of money-khet.”

“We’ve heard that,” says Dranko.

“Yes, the Circle is full of cash.”

“Aren’t you afraid we’ll steal it?” asks Dranko.

“Should we be afraid of stealing?”

Dranko smiles. “No, we won’t steal anything, we promise.”

“You will not,” Ki’iilgin agrees. “There are always stribe stationed there, harvesting, guarding. And we find you very trust.”

“Tell us about khet,” says Ernie. “Where does it come from?”

“Khet crystals grow on trees.”  

Ernie laughs. “Mom always said money didn’t grow on trees.  She was wrong!”

“If there’s no Leaping Circle at the other end, how do you get back?” asks Morningstar.

“It is a long and difficult journey,” says Ki’iilgan. “The next shipment back is not due for many months.”

“If we wanted to find another Circle, where would we go?”

“We do not know of any other Circle. This is the only Circle of known. Only ours is known.”

“What is near your Khet forest, then?”

“Some ways lead to lava,” says Ki’iilgan. “Other ways lead to something dangerous. Not that lava is not also of danger.”

“We don’t know where we’re going, so anywhere’s okay,” says Dranko.

“And we know that Meledien came through this way,” adds Kibi.

It’s particularly galling that the Evil Trio activated the Leaping Circle in less than a minute, as opposed to the four days it’s taken the stribe. Grey Wolf offers that it’s the Circlet of Yavin that let them activate the Circle so quickly.

With only a minute remaining, a new stribe walks up to them.

“Greetings,” it says. “You are  Loo’oofin.”

“I’m what?” asks Dranko.

“I am Loo’oofin.”

“Oh,” says Dranko. “You are Loo’oofin.”

“No, I am Loo’oofin.”

“Right.”

“Nice to meet you,” says Kibi.

“I will be accompanying me on the trip,” says the stribe. 

“Parthol needs to fix the pronouns on his translators,” Kibi grumbles.

With a little flash, all of the motes in the circle change from white to deep blue.  “You may step into the middle now,” Ki’iilgan,” tells them.

Loo’oofin goes with them.  One second they are there, and the next, all of them appear in a smallish non-descript cave.  Dranko’s eyes are wide with fear and confusion.

Because for him, the journey was not so instantaneous. Where the others went straight to the arrival cavern, Dranko found himself suspended in a great blackness dotted with unrecognizable stars. Something at the periphery, just beyond where he could see, was something horrible, waiting, watching.

It was the Far Realms, and it was permeated with the nauseating wrongness of Cleaners. His name was whispered by a thousand horrible voices, mixing in a jarring almost-unison of varied tones and timbres, speeds and volumes. One voice spoke louder than the others:  

*“You are becoming, Dranko. But you must NOT become. Hold it close, hold it close.*. And the other voice whispered in agreement. *”(Close…)”*

And then he was with the others, staggering in a small circle, clutching his head.

…to be continued…


----------



## weiknarf

Poor What's His Name.  All sorts of unsavory blasphemous entities are interested in him.  It seems he traded his fame on the Prime for fame in the Outer and Beyond.


----------



## Everett

weiknarf said:


> Poor What's His Name.  All sorts of unsavory blasphemous entities are interested in him.  It seems he traded his fame on the Prime for fame in the Outer and Beyond.




Absolutely.  On another note, who were the Cleaners talking to?  I sort of lost interest at that part.


----------



## Piratecat

HA HA. I'll show you wiseguys! I'm TOTALLY going to Become, just to teach you people a lesson! HA! THAT'LL SHOW YOU!

Of course, that might be very bad. And Dranko just needs to figure out what that means.

Anyways, Everett, showing that you are a person of breeding and taste, you never liked Dranko to begin with.


----------



## Quartz

> You must spread some Experience Points around before giving it to Sagiro again.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> HA HA. I'll show you wiseguys! I'm TOTALLY going to Become, just to teach you people a lesson! HA! THAT'LL SHOW YOU!
> 
> Of course, that might be very bad. And Dranko just needs to figure out what that means.
> 
> Anyways, Everett, showing that you are a person of breeding and taste, you never liked Dranko to begin with.




I take great umbrage at that!  I appreciate ALL of the party members.  Even the -- um.  The half-breed... the one who likes to do the... jumping... and, uh, is sort of, kind of, a little bit of a cleric... and... uhm... hmmmm...

/goes to make a sandwich.


----------



## carborundum

You mean that ugly guy that moons around Morningstar? He's not a party member! He's just, I don't know, like the village idiot that everyone politely tolerates.

/looks away during the dribbling


----------



## steeldragons

No no, guys. PC's talking about that one who's kinda tall...He helps out Flicker sometimes. Pff! Not like he needs it. That halfling's a frickin' badass genius legend! But the one that holds the torch for Flick when he's pickin' all the locks...ya know...with the...that hair that's kinda...like...you know? 

Can I get anyone some more coffee? Flicker? Morningstar? Kibi, Aravis? 'Nuther scone, Ernie? Yes I know, Greywolf, two sugars. <wink> I remember. Back in a jiff.

/heads to the kitchen.


----------



## Piratecat

I'll turn this campaign around and Become RIGHT NOW, mister. See if I won't. Is that what you want? IS IT?


----------



## Neurotic

Piratecat said:


> I'll turn this campaign around and Become RIGHT NOW, mister. See if I won't. Is that what you want? IS IT?




OF course you will. Heroes already became, one is a god, two are their god champions, others are almost there. You will be like them...eventually...you know...when you are more like them, do some heroic deeds, BECOME FAMOUS, make contacts among right people, get noticed, save the world couple of times...things like that.

It just takes patience


----------



## Piratecat

Neurotic said:


> OF course you will. Heroes already became, one is a god, two are their god champions, others are almost there. You will be like them...eventually...you know...when you are more like them, do some heroic deeds, BECOME FAMOUS, make contacts among right people, get noticed, save the world couple of times...things like that.
> 
> It just takes patience



It struck me as interesting that Dranko is the only one without an intimate connection to his God. In fact, I don't think we have ever seen an adventuring champion or embodiment of Delioch, the hand of healing. Except for the ones seduced by the Black Circle, of course, but I'm not entirely sure that counts. Delioch always struck me as a distant God. I have no idea what my character would have been like if that weren't the case.

Probably excommunicated, honestly. Dranko's tendency to dislike people in authority never manifested against a faceless, serene deity. He has a much worse record against very powerful entities with strong personalities.


----------



## Everett

I think it's Neil Gaiman who said that all heroes become gods if you keep them going long enough.



Piratecat said:


> It struck me as interesting that Dranko is the only one without an intimate connection to his God.




The only one?  I don't recall that Grey Wolf has an intimate connection to any God.  Nor Kibi, though he has the discipline of Earth Mage, which is something similar..



			
				Piratecat said:
			
		

> In fact, I don't think we have ever seen an adventuring champion or embodiment of Delioch, the hand of healing. Except for the ones seduced by the Black Circle, of course, but I'm not entirely sure that counts. Delioch always struck me as a distant God. I have no idea what my character would have been like if that weren't the case.
> 
> Probably excommunicated, honestly. Dranko's tendency to dislike people in authority never manifested against a faceless, serene deity. He has a much worse record against very powerful entities with strong personalities.




Dranko does say, at times, in his (rare) more serious moments, that he loves Delioch -- either about Delioch or speaking to the God directly... but we have no conception at all of what the persona of Delioch is like.  We have a very strong conception of what Ell is like, gleaned hither and thither throughout the campaign... we have some idea of what Yulan is like, or at least what Yulan represents, because of the character of Ula... we have some idea of the halfling god that Ernie and Yoba follow (though the God's name escapes me right now)... but we have no idea whatsoever about Delioch, and we certainly never saw a champion of Delioch; THAT, pardon the irony, I'm sure I would have remembered.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 373*_
*Silhouettes*

“Are you okay?”

Ernie rushes over to Dranko’s side. The half-orc half sits and half falls to the stone floor.  “No… no…”

While the others crowd around in concern, Dranko relates his unusual experience.

“You understood the voices?” asks Kibi. “Doesn’t that mean you’re crazy?”

Morningstar glares at the dwarf. “What are you becoming?” she asks Dranko.

“I don’t know.” Dranko sounds miserable. “But I bet it’s something to do with tentacles.”

“Maybe you’re becoming famous!” Flicker offers brightly.

“They _were_ all whispering my name,” says Dranko.

“Maybe that’s where all your fame _went_,” says Kibi. 

Dranko shakes his head. “I’m thinking now that the person who plucks whatever-it-is out of my brain, is going to get transformed into a Far Realms entity himself.”

“And you’re not supposed to let it break out before it’s supposed to,” says Morningstar.

“I don’t know what’s happening!” Dranko bemoans. “So I don’t know how to stop it.”

“Maybe they’re warning you,” Ernie suggests. “In case you feel something… bubbling up inside you.”

Kibi walks to the cavern wall – the place they’re in is of modest size, roughly circular and twenty feet across – and concentrates. “I think we’re about a mile lower than the stribe Leaping Circle,” he says. He also feels a faint but unmistakable thrumminess, the comforting feeling of ambient Earth Magic.

Speaking of the stribe, a half dozen of the insectoid creatures approach rapidly from a tunnel mouth. The stone around the Company rises up and forms into a filigree of close-set bars, entrapping them quickly and efficiently. After all, the stribe here at the Leaping Circle’s arrival point have never seen humans, and this place _is_ the source of their people’s wealth. Fortunately Loo’oofin has accompanied them, and quickly explains to the other stribe that the Company’s presence here is sanctioned. 

The party is soon introduced to Ta’aabin, a stribe in some position of authority. They ask him about Meledien, Tarsos and Seven Dark Words.

“They did come this way,” says Ta’aabin. “They fled into where the… live.”  Here the translation becomes garbled; they think the ambiguous word is something between a shadow and a silhouette. (It’s an unusual concept for those living in the Underdark, where there generally are no shadows, due to the light being diffuse and even.)

“What are… they?” asks Ernie.

“We do not have a name for them.  We cannot see them clearly, but they are dangerous.”

Dranko immediately suspects Null Shadows. “Do they leave black scars on your body when they touch you?”

“They do not leave any marks.  When we went that way, we were not harmed, but were attacked. They dulled us, but we recovered. They made the thinking hard.”

That doesn’t _sound_ like Null Shadows, but the Company recalls that there were more than one variety of those cauldron-created monstrosities. Morningstar, remembering that Null Shadows prefer to target casters, asks if some of the stribe are more proficient at stone shaping magic.

“We are all shaping the stone. By practice one gets more shape.  Practice, practice.”

“Then the things target everyone equally?” asks Morningstar.

“Everyone who has gone into their territory. Which we no longer.”

Ta’aabin clacks its mandibles. “Perhaps you will find your three enemies… dulled.”

“That would be very nice,” Erie agrees.

“Could there be a Leaping Circle beyond… whatever it is?” asks Kibi.

“We do not know. We do not get that far. We become dulled by the silhouettes.”

“But you must get your khet chips back to the stribe somehow,” says Kibi. “Are there other ways out?”

“Beyond the khet forest, there are hot ways. Hot ways to hotness. Bubbling rock lava. We create stone bridges to cross, then continue on to home. It is a long journey, three months, very dangerous, on schedule. 200 stribe come through Circle, to guard Khet shipment back to homeland. ”

Dranko asks to see the Khet forest.  A hundred yard tunnel from the arrival cave empties into what looks like a forest of purple crystal trees, which rise up into the sea of light motes. They are not trees in the conventional sense, but they do have a rough correspondence; trunks and branches, leaves and roots, all made of crystal. The leaves are tiny khet chips, which are being harvested by dozens of stribe that swarm up and down the trunks.

There is little debate about which way to go. If Meledien & Co. braved the mind-dulling silhouettes, so must the Company. While the party conveys their thanks to Loo’oofin, a small orange flame appears in their midst, at head height. The stribe all take hasty steps away from it.

“Do you know what that is?” asks Loo’oofin. Not waiting for an answer, the stribe quickly cause a stone pillar to rise from the ground and surround the flame, but not before the party hears sounds coming from it, very faintly. Dranko thinks it might have been voices.

Ernie grumbles. “I bet anytime we go anywhere, they have some way to use that to know we’re here.”

“I wonder if we can do something about it,” Kibi muses. “Maybe dispelling it before it has time to send any information?”

After a few more seconds there is a soft whoosh, and when the stribe retract the stone, the flame is gone. 

“How are they _doing_ that?” asks Dranko angrily. If it was a glyph left behind by Seven Dark Words, Dranko didn’t see it beforehand with his always-on _detect magic_. The party does recall that Tarsos and Meledien stole the Spear of Cava from Naslund, an artifact of a God of Fire. It’s a weapon that can burn out the souls of those it kills; who knows what other abilities it could have?

The stribe take the Company to the tunnel which leads to where the intelligence-draining silhouettes live. Morningstar suggests having non-magical weapons ready, in case these things really are a form of Null Shadow.

Loo’oofin bids them farewell. “If you find those who preceded you, please dis-head them.”

“We will dis-headen them,” Dranko agrees.

“Works for me,” adds Grey Wolf.

At the last minute Dranko produces a spool of thread from his pack and offers it to Loo’oofin in return for khet chips. Gems may be worth little down here, but true wooden objects may have inflated value.

“What type of fungus is it?” asks Loo’oofin.

“It’s not,  It’s wood.”

“Ah, it is a surface world artifact. What does it do?”

“You, uh, you wind things around it.”

“Do you have enough to build something out of it? Like a house?”

Dranko admits that he does not.

“Then it is no more than a curiosity. But I am curious to give you ten khet chips.”

Dranko autographs it before handing it over. “From the saviors…”

This little transaction is interrupted by a sizzling noise from Aravis. His skin quickly becomes overdrawn with glowing lines, his eyes flash to star-fields, and he vanishes. Pewter meows resignedly and jumps up onto Dranko’s shoulder.  It seems that Belshikun has “borrowed” Aravis again.

Grey Wolf summons up a _mount_ for everyone, and they head off. It’s slow going; the tunnel meanders in all three dimensions, requiring slow-motion aerobatics to negotiate. Within a few minutes the party notices that the light motes are growing dim even though it’s not evening, and are taking on a greenish cast. What’s particularly strange is that as their bodies (and those of their steeds) move through the light-mote field, the motes turn back to white. Whatever has made them green, is undone by physical contact.

A shadow flickers on the wall, which is odd because there are no shadows down here. They see another a minute later.

“We’re just going to say this once!” Dranko calls out. “If you attack us unprovoked and try to eat our brains, we will completely and utterly destroy you!”

Even the movement of his lips turns the light motes around his mouth from green to white.

A few minutes later, having seen several more wall-shadows dart past, as might be cast by fast-flying bats in more conventional light, the Company arrives at a fork in the tunnel.  One way bends leftward and down, the other upward and right. Grey Wolf sniffs the air with his _enhanced senses_; it smells different than the tunnels elsewhere, rich and damp, though there’s no sight our sound of water.

Kibi tries to get a sense from the stone around him if one way is better than the other, but finds he’s having trouble concentrating. Dranko searches the openings of both branches in a more conventional method, and discovers that on one wall of the leftward tunnel, something has nicked the stone, disturbing a thin coat of lichen. Someone was here, and brushed the wall with an elbow or sword hilt.

They head that way, and soon the flickering silhouettes on the wall become faster and more numerous. Every person in the Company finds it harder and harder to stay mounted, as they forget the nuances of proper riding form. Grey Wolf, the best rider in the group, actually falls of his mount and can’t figure out how or why it happened. 

Dranko looks down and can’t remember the name of the creature he’s riding. He hopes it’s friendly.

Kibi wonders if he could cast _repulsion_ to repel the shadow-creatures, but when he thinks about it, it seems hopelessly complicated. Wouldn’t _create water_ or _spiritual hammer_ be better? But… are those even wizdrish spelgs?

“Morningstar,” says Dranko.  “Can you cast pristastic circle?”  

Morningstar can’t understand him.  What’s-his-name is speaking gibberish.

They are in a khet forest, surrounded by… creatures?  Oh, right, they’re called “stribe.” Each member of the Company feels as though they’ve just woken up, having had an unpleasant dream in which they forgot everything they ever knew.  Over the course of minutes they recover their lost intellect, and try to recall what happened.  The remember going down that tunnel, and finding a mark on the wall, and the light motes being green but changing to white as they moved through them. And then… something? Silhouettes on the walls? 

Dranko rubs his chin and finds an additional day’s growth of stubble. He hails the nearest stribe.

“What just happened?” he demands.

“You were dulled.”

“How did you find us?”

“You wandered back here.”

“How long ago did we leave?”

“Yesterday.  You wandered back, and you slept. Now you are unslept. How do you feel?”

Ernie stands and stretches. “I don’t like things messing around with my thoughts and memories. We deal with the Black Circle often enough.”

“I’m guessing it has something to do with the light,” says Dranko. “If we can stop the light from changing for us, maybe they’ll leave us alone?”

“Maybe we could wipe out the lights with magic first,” suggests Kibi. “Maybe that will prevent the silhouettes from dulling us.”

They discuss various options, ranging from _dimension door_ to _mass xorn movement_ to creating a _flaming sphere_ and letting it roll ahead of them, wiping out the lights. They wonder out loud how Meledien & Co. managed to get through.

The Flaming Sphere plan has a simple appeal.  Back into the tunnel they go, and when the motes begin to turn green, Grey Wolf casts his spell, using a magic item to extend its duration. As expected, the ball of fire wipes out the motes as it rolls along, but it’s not big enough to erase them all. Within a few steps the shadows start to flicker on the walls, faster and in greater numbers than before.  Bewilderment and befuddlement set in less than thirty seconds later, and then they’re back in the khet forest, waking in confusion. Another day has passed.

Plan B is more involved, but much more successful.

First, Morningstar takes the group into Ava Dormo, leaving Flicker behind to watch their bodies. (And with a warning not to try stealing any of the stribe’s khet chips.) Thankfully this region of the Dreamscape is uninhabited, lacking both crazed militaristic dream-kobolds, and intelligence-sapping wall shadows. The light motes are here (dreaming themselves?), and are green as in the waking world, but nothing here drains their minds.

The downside here is that there are no marks from the Evil Trio to follow, but that turns out to be only a minor nuisance. Though it takes several hours, they are able to map out the entirety of the tunnel maze that contains off-color motes.  There are many branches and odd subterranean topography, but ultimately the majority of the different routes double back on one another or join up later on. If the green-lit regions can be described as one extended complex, there turn out to be only three distinct tunnels leading out of it. Only one of these goes significantly downward, while the others are either level with the khet forest or at a slightly higher elevation. 

Having scouted the entire area, Grey Wolf and Kibi apply their superhuman intellects and near-eidetic memories to creating a 3D model of the tunnels, instructing some helpful stribe who stone-craft it to their specifications.  With this model, they plot a vector that will take them from the khet forest straight through the rock to meet the lowest of the three egresses, without once intersecting any of the silhouette-infested tunnels. 

When they’re ready to go, Kibi casts _mass xorn movement_ on the party, and uses his natural sense of subterranean location and direction to identify this vector in real life. The others will follow in his wake. If he goes 4100 feet, downward at approximate six degrees, and rightward 21 degrees from a true northward facing, they should emerge into the lowermost tunnel beyond the off-colored light motes.

Ernie casts a spell to increase their movement rate (thus minimizing the risk that the spell will run out too soon, which would be bad), and off they go, plunging into the stone, and wondering again how the Evil Trio bypassed this unusual obstacle*. It’s dark and warm, and the others find it disorienting, but Kibi burrows with confidence. Earth Magic surrounds him. Scree from time to time suggests tiny course corrections, as the elemental is particularly sensitive to his surroundings and can sense when they’re near the open tunnels. When Kibi thinks they should have arrived, they find they have missed their target after all, but Scree is not concerned. He goes on a quick scouting trip through the rock, and comes back a few minutes later announcing they’re only off course by forty feet or so, which is astoundingly accurate given they’ve come almost a full mile in a straight line. Following Scree, the Company soon pops into an wide and open tunnel, through its ceiling. The light motes are white, and no silhouettes are in evidence.

Dranko immediately makes another search of the area, and with his finely honed sleuthing skills discovers more subtle signs that other have passed this way – tiny scuffs in the floor, and old scratches in the lichen at elbow or shoulder height. That’s evidence enough for them that Meledien and her friends have come this way, albeit months ago.

They continue down the tunnel; it widens and narrows, dips and drops, sometimes taking them through small clusters of uneven caves or over precipitous plunges. Then, from somewhere ahead they hear… music? As they progress, the sound resolves into something like a woodwind instrument, still very faint, but playing a melody. After a final sharp bend in the tunnel the music grows louder, and some fifty feet down they see the tunnel opens into a wider space.  Slowly they creep forward to investigate.

The tunnel ends, high in the wall of the largest cavern they’ve yet seen in the Underdark.  Far below them stretches a vast and beautiful city of deep blue crystal, bristling with spires and minarets, dotted here and there with wide domes and rising towers. Even from hundreds of feet up they cannot see its entirety; it recedes into the distance, the whole of it illuminated by the motes.

In all that vastness, the only sign of life is the music, a beautiful, haunting  melody from something akin to an oboe, drifting upward to their ears.

…to be continued…

(*) The party’s puzzlement at how the bad guys bypassed this challenge led to the following exchange at the table:

Piratecat:  “I wonder how Meledien got past those things. Why didn’t they turn stupid, wander out, and get killed by the stribe?”
DM: “They’re Black Circle. Maybe they used their vast divinatory powers to learn about the nature of the challenge before tackling it.”
Piratecat:  “I thought you said Divinations don’t work well down here.”
DM:  “_Yours_ don’t.”
Piratecat:  “Let the record show I’m flipping off the DM”


----------



## Zelc

Do they eventually figure out what those shadows are and how Meledien and co. got around them?  If it's not a spoiler, can you tell us?  I assume the effect goes through stuff like Mind Blank or Protection from Evil?


----------



## StevenAC

For those interested...  The opening chapter for Part Four of _The Adventures of Abernathy's Company_ (or should that be _The Perils of What's-His-Name_? ) is now available on the Collected Story Hour site.  Enjoy!


----------



## StevenAC

Ignore... double posted.


----------



## Everett

StevenAC said:


> For those interested...  The opening chapter for Part Four of _The Adventures of Abernathy's Company_ (or should that be _The Perils of What's-His-Name_? ) is now available on the Collected Story Hour site.  Enjoy!





I always enjoy the way you rearrange the thread comments so that they really look like a running conversation.  Thanks, Steven.


----------



## Anxe

And the added graphics too! Looks great!

So the mystery from this update, why are there so many scuffs on the wall at elbow/shoulder height? Normally I'd think the markings were made to find their way back, but the Black Circle's divination probably means they don't need that. Something else then?


----------



## Everett

Anxe said:


> So the mystery from this update, why are there so many scuffs on the wall at elbow/shoulder height? Normally I'd think the markings were made to find their way back, but the Black Circle's divination probably means they don't need that. Something else then?




Don't know.  I'd have to read the update again.

Random thought -- when the party catches up to the evil trio, do you suppose we'll learn what the 7 words of Seven Dark Words actually _are_?


----------



## Sagiro

Thanks as always to *StevenAC* for the fantastic .PDF’s!

Regarding the silhouettes: I told the players about them after the fact, since they were unlikely to find out in-game. They were a peaceful race of semi-intelligent creatures who fed on the light motes, but needed to alter them somewhat to make the nutritionally viable. (Thus, turning them from white to green).  But any physical creature moving through their territory would disrupt that chemical change, and effectively destroy the creatures’ food source. Since the creatures needed to eat constantly, such disruption was deadly to them. But they didn’t want to kill people who were only accidentally killing them, so they’d sap their intelligence and gently herd them back to where they came from.  This was one of those challenges where I didn’t have a specific solution in mind, and was quite pleased (though not surprised) by my players’ ingenuity.

Regarding the scuffs on the wall: those scuffs were miniscule and left entirely unintentionally by the Evil Trio. That Dranko could spot them at all was because of his ludicrous spot checks, which often hit the high 40’s or low 50’s.

Finally, I’d like to mention that I hit a personal milestone that won’t mean much to you, but here it is anyway: I’ve gotten to my last shoe-box of game tapes. (I had accumulated so many tapes that I needed many, many boxes to house them, and for years now it has seemed I would never reach the last and smallest box.) But now I have!  

The events of this update were from run 251 out of 266.  So close!


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 374*_
*The Ghosts of Mehar-Bec*

As the Company stands on the precipice, looking down upon the blue crystalline city, there is a whoosh, a pop, and Aravis appears directly next to Pewter.

“Aravis!” Dranko exclaims. “We fought, and we won! We finally killed them all!  Meledien and Seven Dark Words and…”

“I don’t believe you,” says Aravis.

“Yeah, I’m lying,” Dranko admits.

Aravis feels like he’s just woken up from a restful nights’ sleep, but he’s also had another vision from the Maze, and like the ones before it, it is grim indeed.

_Naradawk Skewn stands at the edge of a crater, looking down.  Below him lie the devastated remains of a large stone edifice, perhaps once a fortress or small castle. Twenty figures in red armor pick through the rubble; every so often, one of these bends down low and jams a sword blade into something.

The Emperor himself looks relaxed and unhurt, which cannot be said for the woman standing beside him. Her crimson armor is rent in places and some of her brown hair has been burned. Blood seeps through a bandage around her head. The red helmet at her feet has a large dent.

“My lord,” she says. “We lost four. Four of the ninety-nine, in a single engagement. Are you certain it was worth it?”

Naradawk nods and smiles. His voice is sharp and commanding,  an icy wind over cold stone. “A small price. We have destroyed the largest remaining threat to us on Charagan. We had to make this our first and highest priority.”

Two of the warriors below struggle up the side of the crater, bearing a large wooden trunk retrieved from the ruin. They drop it at Naradawk’s feet. The Emperor looks down at it, his lip curling in a sneer. Emblazoned on the lid of the trunk is a silver shell.

After staring intently at the trunk for several seconds, Naradawk reaches down and, seemingly without effort, crushes the large steel padlock in his mailed fist, as easily as he snapped Rosetta’s neck. One of the red-armored warriors opens it, revealing a stack of small books, four candlesticks, and dozens of candles wrapped in leather.

“Destroy it all,” says Naradawk. “Destroy it, and anything else like it you find in this place. The Silver Shell’s counter-divinatories have been my only real worry; with their adherents slain and their tools burned, we’ll have a free hand to make our plans and gain control of this pitiful kingdom. “

The woman, standing almost six feet tall, looks up at the Emperor. “So you’re not worried about Fylnius and the rest? The Spire, that drove out and later killed your father?”

“No,” says the Emperor. “Yasper has confirmed it five times over. All of the vaunted Archmagi of the Spire have lost their powers. I don’t know how or why, but we know that their arcane abilities were not transferred or used for any lasting purpose; they’re just gone. Fylnius and Salk and the rest are just a cadre of old and brittle men. Alander’s Chosen have vanished off-plane and cannot return. All that the Spire can boast are a rag-tag assembly of second-rate heroes and cast-offs. Let them hide in Abernathy’s little sanctuary while we bring their world down around their ears.”

“But we have only the ninety-nine. Ninety-five, now, plus yourself,” says the woman.   

“More than enough,” laughs Naradawk. “Besides, we’re not without allies. Some we sent ahead at Kinnet Vulthani. Others have been here long, waiting for us. Time is on our side, Pieriel. We need not hasten. We should not hasten. We have the might to do as we will, as long as we do not give in to impatience and overconfidence. Those things destroyed my father, but as the Circle is my witness, they will not destroy me.”_

So, more bad news from the surface. Aravis notes that the Spire still has Cranchus and Parthol Runecarver up their sleeve, but there’s no denying that Naradawk’s confidence is troubling.

“It’s good that there are only 95 of them,” says Dranko, looking for the silver lining. “They don’t have thousands of soldiers at least.”  He leaves unsaid that from what they've experienced of Naradawk's red-armored champions, ninety-five of them are as potent as an army.

“What did I miss while I was gone?” asks Aravis. 

“You missed the opportunity to become stupid multiple times,” says Grey Wolf.

The oboe-like music drifts upward from the city.  With more time to look, they can see that somewhere among the densely-packed buildings is a light, changing colors and intensities, its source not in their direct line of sight. It cycles through blues, reds, yellows, greens, pulsing in time to the oboe music.

As seems to be his signature method of getting to the bottom of a cliff, Dranko jumps off and _feather falls_. He finds the others waiting at the bottom, having _dimension doored_ down directly. At ground level they can only see the closest buildings, and there is no sign of the coruscating lights. The music is hauntingly beautiful but doesn’t seem to be bewitching them in any way. Entirely of their own volition, they walk to find its source.

There are no people. The city could have housed tens of thousands, but aside from the source of the music, it feels like a sapphire graveyard. The buildings are all made of the same translucent blue crystal, though their shapes and sizes are organic and varied, as though it grew up from the ground like a forest. They are also enormously proportioned; whatever lived here were larger than humans. Some buildings have doors, and these are not locked. The Company ventures into a few buildings, and decides they were homes. There is furniture, mostly of crystal but occasionally constructed of a hard woody fungus, along with odd tools that could be kitchenware, and swirling crystal shapes on pedestals that look like artwork. Above ground such objects might have long since disintegrated, but the Underdark lacks the weather and the microorganisms that propel aged things to ruin. The city is a museum to a vanished people.

Dranko casts _know age_ on a fork. Though more powerful divinations are difficult to effect beneath Yulan’s Barrier, the small one works with little additional effort. The fork is nearly 3000 years old. 

Morningstar casts _though capture_ at the threshold of one of the buildings. She absorbs a thought of someone who is very sad, knowing they would be dead in less than two days. She drops into Ava Dormo to see if anything interesting can be learned there, but finds the cavern infested with the warmongering Keffet, and returns almost immediately.

Kibi casts _prying eyes_ and sends them out into the city to investigate, but the Company decides to walk on their own before waiting for the eyes to return.

They don’t get far before they are approached.  There’s no way to know if the arrival was triggered by the _prying eyes_ or their own physical presence, but when the party reaches a large intersection of three wide streets, giantish ghosts come streaming around corners from three different directions. They are twelve feet tall, and their indistinct limbs are unnaturally long compared to their torsos. All are wearing red uniforms that blur to translucent pink, and about half have small helmets atop smooth, hairless heads. The chill of undeath rolls off of them, though (thankfully) without the additional taint of Adversary blood.

Each ghostly soldier holds a strange weapon made of dark blue crystal, a jagged multi-edged club with a sharpened point. There are thirty all together in the regiment, and beyond the wind kicked up by their arrival, they are eerily silent. The wafting oboe music is an unlikely soundtrack to the encounter.

The Company pauses, unsure if they should attack or hold for the moment.

“We mean you no harm!” cries Ernie. “We don’t intend to disturb your rest. We came here by Leaping Circle and will pass through quickly.”

The ghost-soldiers glance at each other but do not halt their advance, and by some unspoken signal they surge to attack. Morningstar has to move quickly to deflect one of their crystal blades with _Ell’s Will_. Ernie’s armor absorbs one blow but another cuts his wrist. Where the weapon breaks his skin, tiny blue crystals sprout like a blooming azure flower, and Ernie feels his arm start to seize up. A chill floods his veins.

Flicker and Dranko are mobbed, and the ghost warriors were obviously well-trained in life. Between their shimmering ghostly bodies, and the unnatural physics of their attacks (their bodies don’t seem to account for the momentum of their swings), their blades are particularly difficult to avoid. And while their forms might be largely insubstantial, their weapons are plenty solid, landing numerous painful blows. Dranko and Flicker feel crystal growing on their skin like a freezing fungus, stiffening their muscles and hindering their movement.

Flicker tries a counterattack but misses all three times, even though Dranko has enchanted his weapon to ignore the insubstantial nature of his enemies. He still has the dexterity to tumble into the protected center of the group. 

Ernie presents his holy symbol, and in a commanding voice implores, “Go away!” Two of the ghosts listen, turning and fleeing down the street. Then he steps back and casts _cure critical wounds_ on Flicker. This repairs the damage, but has no effect on the crystal growth. Dranko lashes the closest ghost with his whip, but his damage is not impressive; there are crystals on his sword arm,  hampering his effectiveness. At least his _helm of brilliance_ is having some effect; it flares to life in the presence of undead, damaging them just by its proximity.

Enough fooling around. Aravis drops a _Mordenkainen’s disjunction_ in the center of one cluster of ghosts. There’s a quick sucking sound as magical energies are drawn in and annihilated, and nine of the ghost warriors are instantly obliterated.

The remaining ghosts are not daunted. Three slash Kibi with their crystal blades. The blotches of crystal that form on his skin feel like they’re sending tendrils deep into his flesh, and he shivers. A half dozen soldiers close in around Dranko, but the crystals are only on his arms, not his legs, and he’s able to weave, dodge, twirl and leap, over and under their attacks. Not one lands a hit. Morningstar isn’t so skilled, and suffers several crystal-infected cuts.

Kibi casts _wish_, spoofing a spell called _ghost trap_. Waves of positive energy emanate from his body, and all the ghosts become more solid, losing the benefits of insubstantiality.  Then he backs up a bit, putting the fighting types between him and his adversaries. Morningstar follows this with _undeath to death_; several more ghosts flash to vaporous ectoplasm. 

Grey Wolf quickens an _ironstorm_ and flings a _chain lightning_ into it. One more ghost explodes, and many others are badly scorched. Wisps of white ghostly steam waft from their shoulders and crystal swords. “Consider them softened up,” says Grey Wolf.

But even so softened, the ghosts fight at full effectiveness.  Three more land sword-blows on Dranko, and now he seems half-covered with crystal, a half-statue starting to blend in with the local architecture. 

Ernie drops a _flame strike_ on the enemies closest to Dranko; because of their height, he can avoid catching Dranko in its effect. Two of the four ghosts erupt into puffs of smoke. Then Ernie turns and casts _earth reaver_ beneath the other cluster of ghosts. Fiery spikes thrust upward from the ground beneath them, ripping their legs.

From there it’s just a matter of attrition. Though Dranko and Flicker are both reduced nearly to crystalline statues by the end of the melee, the wizards pile on the area-of-effect spells – _chain lightning_, _cone of cold_ a maximized empowered _coldfire_  -- and finally Grey Wolf dissolves the final ghost with an _acid orb_.

Throughout the combat, the oboe music has not stopped or changed its beautiful melody. 

Morningstar and Ernie heal their friends of their injuries, but the rocky growths still remain. “Very painful!” Flicker manages, though his mouth is nearly fused shut, his lips hard and jagged. On close examination, Ernie thinks the blue stuff actually is a kind of fungus, which gives Morningstar an idea.

“Close your eyes,” she warns. She casts _darkbeam_, a spell usually reserved for scorching and blinding bad guys, but in this case she makes use of one of its secondary properties, namely the efficient eradication of fungus. It mostly works beautifully; the crystal shrivels and flakes away, and after a couple of mass cures to soothe the burns, everyone is soon healed back to perfect health.  (She makes sure no one notices that she accidentally blinded herself, and quickly heals herself with _cure blindness_.)

While the party is healing up, some of Kibi’s _prying eyes_ return.  Most saw nothing but abandoned buildings and lifeless streets, but two were able to observe scenes of interest, and deposit those observations into Kibi’s memory.

One came across a large one-story building with a symbol like an upside-down “A” over its main door. The door was ajar, and so the eye had slipped inside and seen that the building was mostly all one large room, and it was full of skeletal remains. Giantish skeletons, their bones dusty but mostly intact, were stacked into neat piles so numerous that only a few narrow aisles were left through which one might navigate the room. 

A single ghost wafted up and down these aisles; she was wearing a blue robe with the same inverted “A” as appeared above the door. The eye watched as the ghost removed a bone from one of the hundreds of stacks, examined it, shook her head, returned it with painstaking care, and moved on.

The second eye came across an enormous pentagonal amphitheater, whose floor was natural rock but whose tiered seats were crystal. In the center of the stage was a pedestal, and standing there was a giantish ghost playing a large horned instrument. This musician is the source of the oboe music; he plays with his eyes closed, his expression one of intense concentration. As the music spills from his instrument, lights flash colors above his head, then stream out to where an audience might have sat, dancing blobs of varied hue and brightness. The movement of the colors is perfectly synchronized to the rhythm of his melody.

The building with the bones is slightly closer than the amphitheater, so the Company investigates that first. As they walk the streets, Kibi takes the time to examine the crystalline buildings more closely. The stone itself is most curious, seeming more like a fusion of quartz and some mysterious organic substance. Many of the buildings are warped and bent, and by all accounts should be cracked, but instead they rise up in elegant twists and curves like lithic bonsai trees.

“I cannot move through it,” says Scree. “It’s not entirely rock.”

The sounds of the horn music echo through the city, and the light motes float and sway like incandescent dust on a breath of breeze. The walk takes them half an hour, during which time the last of Kibi’s divinatory scouts come back with nothing new to report.

Ernie puts on the _cloak of diplomacy_, and they all go into the building. It smells dusty, but not rich or rotting. The skeletons, stacked with a startling attention to neatness and detail, are clean as fresh chalk. The ceiling is high, but the bone towers nearly reach it.

Ernie calls into the dry gloom.  “Hello? Yondalla’s blessings on this place!  We are but travelers, here on a mission of no ill will.”

There is a rustle, and the female ghost with the blue robe comes whispering around one of corners. She is nine feet tall.

“Are you the keeper of this place?” asks Ernie.

“Yes.” 

The ghost’s voice is almost entirely telepathic; its vocal component is hardly audible. And even the mental aspect is quiet, serene.

“Who are you?” asks the ghost.

“My name is Ernest Roundhill. I am a traveler from a very distant land.”

The woman nods. “I am Pettim.”

“What has happened here?” asks Ernie, his own voice somber. “All the people are… it must have been a terrible tragedy.”

Pettim nods again. “I try so hard to understand,” she says. “Sometimes I feel like I am close… but I don’t understand. I have collected them all, and examined them all, and still I am baffled by the cause. And yet I will not rest, until I know.”

“Was there a disease?” asks Ernie.

“We were never certain.  Centuries ago, we lived and thrived here. Traded, danced, loved.  And one day there was a tremor.  We felt it with our minds, in our thoughts, our thoughts.  It shook this place, and we started to die. In three days, only three days, there were none left alive. But I swore as I lay dying, that I would find out what happened.  When all my brothers and sisters had passed, I remained to carry out my work.”

“I think I know what caused it,” says Dranko, and the other realize the same thing. The tremor was the hand of the Adversary smashing into Abernia.

“You do?” asks the ghost, her voice a bit louder than before. 

“How much do you know about the Gods?” asks Dranko.

“I know them well. We revere Yavin, and do not agree with Wlaqua’s philosophy.”

“In the place that is beyond this place, where there is no ceiling overhead…” begins Dranko.

“There is no such place,” Pettim  interrupts.

“It’s a faraway place,” says Dranko. “We have traveled from there. At the time your people died so quickly, a piece of a god fell to the ground. Not a god you worship, but a very evil god.”

“You mean Wlaqua.”

“No,” says Ernie. “More evil than Wlaqua.”

“But there are no other gods,” says Pettim. “The Sister Gods would not allow it.” 

“Where we come from, there _are_ other gods,” says Ernie.

“Part of that evil god struck all the world,” says Dranko. “Imagine a ceiling collapsing, and a huge boulder smashing through it, and causing an earthquake rippling out from there. Only it was an evil boulder, and an evil earthquake.”

Pettim considers. “We… the Mehar… we are psychically sensitive, or were when we were alive. There was a tremor, and with it was… an earthquake of the spirit.”

“We are here to stop that god, the one that caused it,” says Ernie.

“We’re going to fix what is broken,” adds Dranko.

“You can bring my people back to life?”

“We don’t know,” says Ernie. “But we can avenge them.”

“I am not looking for vengeance.  I was a physician in life. I am in death as well.  You have given me… a new line of inquiry, though the psychic emanations will be weak after so many centuries. I don’t disbelieve what you say, but I need proof. I need to understand from within myself.”

Morningstar asks Pettim about the symptoms that had manifested. 

“It was a slow descent into a torpor, a despondency,” Pettim explains. “We lacked the will to live, and so we perished.”

“In our world,” says Morningstar, “there was a city where the people all went mad and killed one another, due to the effect of this evil god.”

“So it sends out the evil of his psyche where you come from as well. Are all races destroyed as we were?”

“Not yet,” says Ernie. “But if we don’t stop this, they will be.”

“I have collected and examined the bodies of everyone who lived in Mehar-Bec, looking for anything that might yield a clue. There was nothing. Nothing.  Until now. You have brought me a line of inquiry. I thank you.”

“Who is playing the music?” asks Ernie. “It’s beautiful.”

“That is Nellig, a musician. He was the greatest of our generation. He was rehearsing for a grand performance when we were… destroyed.  Nellig never got to perform his Prism Symphony,  but still he practices, and believes that one day he will have his concert. It breaks my heart, but I have my own duties to fulfill.” 

“Do you still?” asks Dranko. “Now that we’ve told you what happened?”

“When I am satisfied, I will move on, and be in Yavin’s peace.  You give me hope that that day is soon.”

“What about the soldiers who attacked us?” asks Kibi. “Were they simply doing their last living duty?”

“You encountered the honor guard of Mehar-Bec, sworn to defend the city from all invaders, no matter the cost. They also endured, and remained to fulfill their function.”

“We, uh, had to kill them, when they attacked us,” says Dranko.

“You sent them on to Yavin’s peace. It was their destiny. Their souls will thank you.”

“Have you seen anyone else come through here?” asks Kibi.

“I have not.”

“Is there a way to leave the city?” asks the dwarf.

“There are tunnels leading out in many ways, to many lands.  And of course, there is the circle in the center.”

The Company obviously asks more about that! 

“It is next to the university,” Pettim explains. “I have not visited there in many centuries, as I collected those bodies among the earliest. But perhaps Corriv is still there. He was a scholar.  He was the only other one of us to endure beyond the fall. He was working on some grand project, and works on it still if he has not completed it.”

“Do we have your permission to use the circle?” asks Ernie.

“I don’t know that it _can _be used, but it is not for me to allow or deny it to you.”

“Does it have a number?”

Pettim thinks for a moment. “Yes, the Circle is inscribed with a ‘1.’”

The Company tries to hide their disappointment. They were hoping for a 5, 9 or 2.

“Do you still feel any evil vibes around?” Kibi presses. “Anything more recently?” He desperately wants to know if the Evil Trio passed this way.

“There was a shadow, some months ago,” says Pettim “It flitted across my mind, but passed in an instant. I did not know what to make of it, and it was soon gone. I did not let it interfere with my work.”

Kibi frowns. That certainly could have been Meledien and Co. passing through Mehar-Bec, probably on the way to the Leaping Circle.

“I would like to visit the world you come from. Some day. But if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

She turns back to one of the stacks of bones, and stares intently at it.

Ernie’s heart wells with pity for the poor medic, shackled to the mortal world by her own commitment. He has an idea, and receives the party’s blessing.

“Pettim, we believe we can help you,” he says.

“You already have.”

“But not enough.”

He and Morningstar jointly cast _miracle_. “By the power of our Goddesses,” Ernie murmurs, “we implore that this woman be given the knowledge she needs to find peace.”

There is a ripple in the air, and all the bones shift, sending up clouds of ancient dust. Pettim picks one of them up, and her ghostly eyes grow wide. “The fall of an Adversary’s hand,” she whispers. “I know… I know…”  

She closes her eyes, smiles, and gently fades away

Ernie sighs his thanks to Yondalla, that he was able to give the dead medic the peac...

Shhhhhhhhhhh-ing!  There is a sound like a fast rush of air, followed by a dull ringing sound like a heavy bronze bell. A tall humanoid being like a metallic statue has teleported, or somehow appeared, directly in front of Ernie and Morningstar.  It is both black and white, with one hand open and one hand closed. 

“You are not authorized to use power of that magnitude,” it intones. “You will desist, or you will face punishment.”

Shhhhhhhhhhh-oop. This time there is no bell-sound, just a staccato noise of a blast of air, and then silence. The figure vanishes.

Ernie’s jaw hangs open.  “Uh, remember when they told us their Gods walk around down here, and we should tread carefully? Er… oops?”

…to be continued…


----------



## carborundum

OOPS!


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

I'm going to have to wait until the Story is finished before I go back into the pdf version. I can't face the idea of reading all through it again, knowing that I'll finish it before it's done.

But I am going to have one SERIOUS binge read when we're done. Terrific stuff as ever, and I'm looking forward to the idea that I'll finally get to see the ending soon!

Any chance we'll get a "What They Did Next?" post-credits scene?


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> “You are not authorized to use power of that magnitude,” it intones. “You will desist, or you will face punishment.”




Anyone else picture some underworld Robocop when that guy appeared?


----------



## Quartz

And now a powerful ally has appeared. If only they can persuade it.


----------



## Everett

Quartz said:


> And now a powerful ally has appeared. If only they can persuade it.




How do you know the god is a potential ally?


----------



## Quartz

Everett said:


> How do you know the god is a potential ally?




I'm guessing it's an agent of a god rather than a god itself.


----------



## carborundum

These guys will take help from anyone and anything. Even Flicker had some sort of cohort. I think. Maybe that was a while ago?


----------



## KerlanRayne

Everett said:


> How do you know the god is a potential ally?



1. He didn't immediately attack when he appeared. Always a good sign.
2. He talked about authorization so he's at least lawful and that's something they can work with.
3. He didn't seem particularly nice, which in their world means that he's probably a good guy.


----------



## coyote6

Quartz said:


> I'm guessing it's an agent of a god rather than a god itself.




From the description of the entity, I'd say your guess is probably inevitably correct.


----------



## Piratecat

carborundum said:


> These guys will take help from anyone and anything. Even Flicker had some sort of cohort. I think. Maybe that was a while ago?



And yet, Dranko STILL doesn't have a fulltime torchbearer. How is that even fair?


----------



## carborundum

We still have a whole box of tapes to go. Maybe Sagiro will see sense


----------



## Everett

Normally I wouldn't bump until at least two weeks out from the last update, but in the spirit of optimism and Sagiro being on his last box...

Bump.


----------



## Sagiro

Hope springs eternal!

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 375*_
*The Musician and the Scholar*

The general opinion among the Company is that the black-and-white being is an agent working on behalf of both the Sister Gods, who appears when someone uses power that neither of Them wish wielded by others. 

Dranko looks on the bright side. “Now if we want to get the Gods’ attention, we know how to do it!”

“Why would we want to…” begins Flicker, but he’s interrupted by a sizzling sound from Aravis. Crosser’s Maze tracery erupts and spreads across his skin, and he vanishes.

“Not again,” says Grey Wolf tiredly. 

But Aravis’s absence is short this time. Less than two minutes later he reappears, lying peacefully on the floor of the Mehar-Bec morgue. He stands, yawns and stretches, feeling like he’s just woken from a sound night’s sleep. His memory holds another vision of the surface: 

_There are three of them – two woman and a man, each bedecked in the gold and white of Heros, the Kivian Goddess of Healing and Mercy. They stand inside a vast room shaped like a pyramid, the man and one woman pouring flasks of herb-scented oils into an inset pool at the room’s center. The other woman reads aloud from a scroll, chanting unknown syllables, worry clear on her face. After some minutes of this they cease these activities, look at one another, and sit down on the stone floor of the chamber.

“They should be back any moment,” says one of the women. She is tall, bulky, with long blonde hair down to her waist.  

“Assuming enough survived to bring him here, Pelory,” says the man. He scratches his white beard with an old and gnarled hand.

“Stone, we sent fifty,” says the second woman. Her face holds both the blush of youth and the careworn lines of many years, making her age a mystery.

The man, Stone, shifts his weight on the hard floor. “If our intelligence was wrong, and he wasn’t alone, fifty wouldn’t have been enough. Not nearly enough. I’m not so sure of things as it is. Kaddrial said this warlord is so powerful, he can change the course of the war in a single moment, and we’re supposed to subdue him and haul his butt all this way? Just to dunk him in a cleansing pool?”

Pelory laughs. “Kaddrial knows what he’s talking about. He won’t say outright – says the enemy can hear everything anyone says on Kivia and Charagan both – but I’m guessing this warlord is under a curse, and he’ll be grateful enough when we lift it to fight on our side.”

The smaller woman looks up, no smile on her face. “If Kaddrial is right, maybe you should keep your mouth shut.”

“Watch yourself, Iris. I still outrank you.”

“Ladies,” Stone says with a croaking laugh. “If this Naradawk fellow hears everything anyone says, he’d long ago have been driven mad by the endless chatter of womenfolk. So don’t worry yourselves.”

Pelory smiles. “Stone, if you weren’t  eighty years old, I’d dunk your head in the cleansing pool until you begged for Heros’ mercy. If you can’t…

“Quiet!” Iris shouts. “I think they’re back.”

Nine men, armed and armored, walk into the room, carrying a large wooden box like a coffin. Their boots clatter loudly on the stone floor. All of the men are wounded, some badly. One has lost an eye; another, his left arm below the elbow.

Pelory and Iris leap to their feet. Stone stands stiffly.

“Where are the rest?” asks Iris, her face pale. She knows the answer already.

“Dead,” says one of the soldiers.  

“Then he wasn’t alone?” says Pelory. “Our divinations were wrong?”

“They weren’t wrong. It was just him. And he killed forty of us, including the sergeant. I’ve never seen a warrior like him.   We had him outnumbered fifty to one, and by the end I was sure we were still outclassed. Cassik got in a lucky shot before he died; otherwise the rest of us would be dead too.”

“Well, bring him over here,” says Stone. “Assuming that’s him in the box. We’ve been preparing the cleansing pool for three days now, and that’s after the months it took months for Kaddrial’s priests to find all the ingredients, or hire adventurers to find them.  No point in wasting any more time.”

The men stagger forward and drop the box heavily next to the pool. The soldier grimaces and clutches his shoulder.

“I hope he was worth it.”

The soldiers pry the lid from the box, and tilt the unconscious body of Darien Firemount into the cleansing pool._

The rest of the party cheer when they hear this news. Tor! Good old Tor, the boy warrior who long ago left to become a double agent to help the war against the Delfirians, but who was found out and magically converted into an _actual_ Delfirian war chief. For years now Tor has been leading armies of Delfirians against their enemies in the neighboring kingdom of Bederen, commanded by his ancestor Davarian Firemount inhabiting the body of Abernathy’s former apprentice Thewana. 

At last something good is happening up on the surface, though they’d have preferred him to have been “cleansed” in time to join them in the Underdark.

So, where to next? The scholar (and the Leaping Circle near the university) are of more relevance to their quest, but they decide upon a short side-trip to the amphitheater.  Kibi knows the way thanks to his earlier _prying eyes_. They march quickly through the abandoned streets of Mehar-Bec, crystal buildings growing up all around them.  

Three blocks from the amphitheater, a small red ball of flame flares to life in the air before them.  This elicits curses from all present.

“I guess they knew we’d be coming through here,” Kibi laments.

As before, Dranko saw no kind of sensor or magical effect ahead of time. He winces, thinking that some horrific ultramarine-tinged monster is about to come eat him.

The fiery ball is a little bit larger than last time, and from it comes a voice, tinny, distorted, muffled. The words are nearly impossible to make out, but the Company thinks they catch parts of a phrase.  _”There! We’ve almost… dammit!”_

With an air-sucking pop, the fire vanishes. 

Parhol’s translator beads had let them understand the language, even though it wasn’t Undercommon. In fact, they have no idea what language it was. But it makes them reconsider. Maybe the little fireball is being conjured up by someone trying to help them? Or at least to communicate with them?  

Or it could just be Meledien and Seven Dark Words, trying to cast some terrible spell using the fire as a conduit. There’s no way to know.

They continue on to the amphitheater, a wide five-sided bowl dug downward into the rock. At the bottom, in the center, is a tall ghostly figure, the musician Nellig, playing a long, dark instrument, like an oboe sized for a giant. Above his head is a miasma of pulsing lights, an umbrella-shaped aura of swirling hues that from time to time fires out a colored tendril that makes morphing abstract shapes over the heads of a purely theoretical audience.

Dranko starts clapping, and the music stops. The ghost lowers his instrument and stares at them.

“We are here for the concert,” says Dranko.

Nellig nods. “I suggest the seats directly across, five rows up.  You’ll get the best acoustic effect, as well as the visuals from the mote-phone."  (That’s not actually the name of the instrument, but it’s the best translation Parthol’s beads can come up with. It transmits both its lights and part of its sound through the ubiquitous light motes.)

The Company sits, and Nellig plays.

The music is exquisite, a soaring melody, sometimes exuberant and other times heartbreaking. They are hearing a master of his musical craft, performing a complex piece which he’s been practicing for centuries. The lights wash over them, pulsing in time to the music. Nellig is waving the end of his mote-phone at them, directing the lights specifically to them. He is literally playing to his audience.

The concert goes on for almost an hour and a half without pause. His music rises into the cavernous heights above Mehar-Bec. At the end he holds one final note for ten seconds, and as it does a final strand of blue light breaks  into smaller bits and drifts away. 

The Company stands and applauds.

“That was the most incredible music I’ve ever heard,” says Aravis, and the other murmur in agreement.

“I hope now you can move on to your eternal rest,” says Dranko.

“I could,” says Nellig. “I wonder if they have mote-phones in the beyond?  There’s so much repertoire still to explore.”

He peers at them, as if really seeing them for the first time. “Where did you come from?   I’ve never seen your type of folk before. Are you here to avenge us?”

“Yes,” says Dranko. “In fact we are. We know why you died, and we have come to avenge you.”  He explains the fall of the Adversary’s hand.

“Interesting,” he says. “Though it’s too late now for anything to be done, too late by far.” He hands his giant oboe to Morningstar. “Keep it,” he says. “I won’t need it where I’m going.”  He smiles, bows, and fades away.  

Now, if the medic Pettim was right, there is only one more ghost, the scholar Corriv, still haunting Mehar-Bec. It’s almost a half-hour from the amphitheater to the university, and the walk is stunningly quiet, bereft of its music. Dranko can’t help but think that somewhere in the city is the treasury, full of loot that the Mehar are no longer using, but the others discourage him from spending time on such a project.

The buildings thin out a bit as they approach the University Square. At one end of an open plaza is the largest building they’ve yet seen, a towering edifice of blue crystal topped with a rising tower of concentric domes, rising three hundred feet into the air. Above the huge front doors (which are open) is a symbol like an inverted trident. And now they hear a new sound, coming from inside the building. It sounds like a rhythmic ratcheting, and a clattering of gears.

The doors lead into an anteroom, attached to the main university building itself. Its walls are lined with empty trophy cases, and at the far end is a smaller set of double doors, also thrown open. From beyond comes the ratcheting sound again, along with a creaking like a ship straining at its ropes.

“Hello?” calls Morningstar. “We mean you no harm!”

“Corriv, are you there?” adds Kibi.

From beyond the door, and sounding like it’s coming from very high up, someone shouts back.  “Don’t touch anything!”

Dranko slips forward and looks through the inner doors. The center of the university is one enormous room, and he’s looking at … a scaffolding? It takes up nearly the entire floor, a hundred feet on a side. It’s very slightly reminiscent of the Vree’s machine in Het Branoi, but only in that’s a latticework frame on an exaggerated scale. 

The others come forward too, and gape. With time to examine it, they see that the scaffolding is made of blue crystal and generally in the shape of a great cube, divided into twenty-seven smaller cubes. But the cube is not perfect; it’s twisted, torqued, and were it made of ordinary rock, would have cracked in several places by now. 

Tied to various parts of the scaffolding are several dozen thick rope cables, snaking through the multi-cubed skeleton and terminating at an array of spools. The spools are enormous – six feet long and three feet around – and set into a niche about half way up one of the walls, and so outside the scaffolding.

Floating up by the spools is a ghost. He grabs a large crank protruding from the end of one spool and turns it.  There is a ratcheting sound as the spool turns and the ropes pull and the crystal groans. A section of cubes twists a few inches around.

The final detail of the bizarre tableaux is that in ten different places, short lengths of rope dangle off the crystal scaffold, each suspending a two-foot-diameter crystal hoop.

“What are you doing?” calls Dranko.

“I said don’t touch anything!” returns the ghost.

“We won’t!” Aravis assures him. “But we are fascinated by all this.”

“It _is_ fascinating, isn’t it?” the ghost agrees.

“What is it?” asks Kibi.

“Hold on, hold, on, I’ll be right down.” The ghost – Corriv, they presume – turns the crank of another spool, stretching his cubes another inch or two.   As he floats down to meet them, the party sees that a number of papers are orbiting his head, but in a controlled fashion, so that he can read any of them at need.  Corriv lands, gathers up the papers, and sets them down.

“Aren’t you a fascinating set of folk.”

“We are visitors from very far away,” says Aravis.

“Ah, you must be.”

“Have you seen other visitors come through?” asks Kibi. “Others like us?”

“There’d have been three of them,” adds Morningstar.

“Oh yes, I saw them,” says Corriv.

“Were they mean to you?” asks Dranko.

“They ignored me,” says the ghost. “Though I guess in some sense their actions mocked me, since I have no idea how they did what they did. They took the Leaping Circle in about ten seconds.”

“That was rude,” Dranko agrees.

“It was! I don’t know if they understood where it was going to take them, since it’s impossible to know, but I also would have said it was impossible to activate it in less than 144 hours. There were three of them, yes, dressed in black. I did try to warn them. I told them it wasn't going to work. But then it did, so it shows you what _I_ know.”

“But you know how to activate the Leaping Circle in 144 hours?” asks Kibi.

“I could, if I had an assistant. I could do it. Couldn't tell you where it was going to take you, though.”

“Does it always go to one place, or could it go to different places?” asks Kibi.

“This one has two possible destinations… either to Circle 5 or Circle 3, depending.

Oooooh!  Circle 5! That would get them on the path indicated by the Croaking Oracle!

“Depending on what?” asks Kibi.

“Depending on…”  Here he utters a word that has no meaning. “Quanta,” it sounds like.  “It’s random,” explains Corriv. “It will either send you near to Circle 3, or to Circle 5, but there’s no way to know which until you’ve gone.”

Aravis gestures to the huge cubic framework. “What is this you’re working on?”

Corriv brightens. “Finally, someone who’s interested in it!  Pettim didn’t care at all; she just wanted the bodies of all my assistants.”

“We spoke to the her, and to the musician,” says Dranko. “We were his audience, and then he passed on.”

“Really?  He decided that you were enough?”

“His performance was amazing,” says Kibi.

“Pettim has also passed on,” says Aravis. “We assisted her in determining what happened to your people.”

“I can guess well enough what happened,” said Corriv. “There was a massive psychically resonant event.  Must have occurred nearby.”

“It was a piece of an Evil God falling to earth,” says Aravis.

“Wlaqua?”

“No, another God. An outsider.”

“There are no other Gods.”

“We come from a place… beyond this world, where there are other Gods.”

Corriv gives them a sly look.  “You’re from the surface, aren’t you!”

That brings the party up short. Thus far no one they’ve met understands the notion of the surface.

“You know about it?” asks Aravis.

“I don’t _know_ about the surface, but I’ve developed theories. I’ve postulated that the surface must exist, but no one bought my theories.”

“They’re true,” says Dranko.

“I knew it! Ha!  Too bad there’s no one left for me to gloat over.”

“Everyone else we’ve met down here seems to think it’s not possible,” says Morningstar.

“It _has_ to be possible,” says Corriv.  He starts pacing, in a floaty kind of way. “If you properly analyze magnetic shifts and tectonics and heat signatures, there’s no other conclusion one can reach!  What’s it like up there? Tell me? Is there really no ceiling, as far you can see?”

“Would you like to see?” asks Morningstar. 

“You can take me there?”

“No, but I can create an illusion of it.”

She shows him the night sky, and explains about the moon, and then the sun vis-à-vis the light motes.

Corriv just stares upward at the illusion, ghostly eyes wide, a huge smile on his face. 

“It must be very hot,” he says, not looking away. “Your sun, I mean. It must be a source of moveable heat that rotates around and above the world.”

“Very impressive,” says Aravis.

“You’re extremely smart,” adds Kibi.

“Yes I am.  Thank you for noticing. I’m glad to know my guesses are correct, but I've long given up on surface theory, and devoted my time to a more interesting and potentially relevant study.”

He motions to the scaffolding.

“Yeah, what is all that?” asks Dranko.

“That, my friends, is a map of the Leaping Circles!”

…to be continued…


----------



## Everett

A few typos:



Sagiro said:


> As he floats down to meet them, the party sees that a number of papers are floating around his head, but in a controlled fashion, so that he read any of them at need.
> 
> “It was! I don’t know if they understand where it was going to take them, since it’s impossible to know, but I also would have said it was impossible to activate it in less than 144 hours.


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> A few typos:




I fixed the first one, but I must be too dense to see where the typo is in the second.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> I fixed the first one, but I must be too dense to see where the typo is in the second.




"understand" should be past tense.


----------



## carborundum

So, the Underdark is... a giant Rubik's cube?


----------



## Teflonknight

*Sagiro's Story Hour: The FINAL Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 3/2...*

Sagiro,
I'm curious as to your publishing plans for the book adaptation. Are you planning to self publish, PDF publish, kick starter or submit it to a publishing company?


----------



## Sagiro

Teflonknight said:


> Sagiro,
> I'm curious as to your publishing plans for the book adaptation. Are you planning to self publish, PDF publish, kick starter or submit it to a publishing company?



Assuming I ever get my draft of Book One whipped into shape, I hope to find an agent willing to take me on.  If that fails (which is likely, just going by the numbers), I'll look more seriously into self-publishing options.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 376*_
*Quantum Leap*

A map of the Leaping Circles? The entire Company lets out a long “oooooooohhhhh” in unison, just as if they were still watching Nellig’s performance on the mote-phone.

Corriv gives a ghostly chuckle. “That sounds like you have some interest in the Leaping Circles.”

“Up on the surface,” says Dranko, “we have magics that let you jump all around in the world in the blink of an eye. You don’t have that down here.” 

“You have your own Leaping Circles?”

“We can transport ourselves without Leaping Circles,” says Aravis.

“Not everyone,” adds Dranko. “Just very powerful wizards.”

Corriv looks thoughtful. “Ah, and if you get far enough anti-coreward, that would work, yes… it makes perfect sense. But down here you need to use the Circles.

“A prophetic toad told us, ‘five, nine, two,'" says Morningstar. 

“Well, if you want to go to Leaping Circle Five from here, you have a fifty-fifty shot,” says Corriv. “And Five does go to Nine, and Nine to Two… in a manner of speaking.”

“But there must be a way of influencing which one we go to from here,” says Aravis.

“I know better than anyone how this one works,” says Corriv. “Trust me, there isn’t.”

“Can’t you explain it to us?” asks Dranko. “We’re pretty smart.”

“I’m sure you are, and that you know much about those topics you’ve chosen to study. But tell me, for how many centuries have _you _been studying the Leaping Circles?”

“There is that,” murmurs Grey Wolf.

“It is possible that the Leaping Circles are similar to something we _have_ studied,” says Aravis. He’s not used to the possibility of something arcane in nature being beyond his understanding.

“I am more than happy to discuss my work at great length,” says Corriv. “I’ve been working a long, long time with no one to talk to.”

Kibi gestures at the enormous cubic scaffold. “So, this map, how does it work exactly?”

Corriv is eager to explain. “Before my city died, I devoted myself to the project of mapping the Leaping Circles. They were created before any historic record of the Mehar, and their interconnections were byzantine, to say the least. Indecipherable. There was _some_ way of getting from any Circle to any other, at any time, but where you went was a function of so many variables, that no one to my knowledge had ever worked them all out. I decided that I would. I wanted to learn what rituals would get a traveler from where to where, what the temperature had to be at both locations, any local seismic activity that was either required or prohibited at the moment of translation, of Leaping… there are so many variables. Time of day, time of year, sometimes even what a traveler had recently eaten, could affect where one Leapt.

“I was about two thirds of the way to figuring it all out, and that’s when… the Event occurred. The one that wiped out my people. But it also, to my great frustration, displaced the Leaping Circles, and largely dissociated them from one other.  And so I began my work again, posthumously, and it has been much more difficult. I may someday finish, and I’ve made great progress, but it’s possible that I will _never_ finish, because the connections are _still_ changing, very slowly, as they have been for a thousand years.  It is no longer the case that one can go from any Circle to any other Circle.  It is now the case that every Circle takes one out of the center, which is where we are. There are three arms, going coreward  only. Every Circle now goes only to one other Circle, which in turn will take you one Circle coreward from there. There are thus three branches, terminating at three points.” 

Corriv flips through his papers.

“There is a terminus at Seven, at Two and at Ten.”  

“What happens after you end up at one of those?” asks Kibi.

“You cannot take any Leaping Circles from there. You’d have to walk anywhere you wanted to go after that.”

“What’s between here and Number Ten?” asks Dranko.

“Circles Three and Six,” says Corriv. “There are two chains out from Mehar. If you end up going to Circle Three, you can from there go to Circle Six, and from there to Circle Ten. Or you may end up at Five, from which you can go to Nine, and then on to Two. The third branch goes from Eight to Four to Seven, but Eight has been severed from One, the Circle here, and the hub of all the others. Though Circle Four is not far from here; only a week’s journey, assuming there are still connecting tunnels.”

Kibi exhales.  “Hopping, hopping, Five, Nine, Two.”

“Now understand,” continues Corriv, “That because of the displacement, none of the Circles are _directly_ connected. All of the arrival points are somewhat removed from their destination Circles. So, for example, if our Circle One here takes you to Circle Three, it will actually take you to a place _near_ to Circle Three. You’ll have to walk to it. And after you take it, you’ll be somewhere _near_ Circle Six. And so on.”

Dranko ponders this. “So, if we end up at Circle Three, could we walk from Three to Five to get back on track?”

“Given enough time, and assuming there are sufficient tunnels, yes. But it would take you a very long time.”

Papers bloom around Corriv’s head and he consults a chart of figures. “You would have to travel anti-coreward 14.3 miles, and a lateral distance of… 873 miles, according to my calculations.”

“That’s a long way to _xorm move_," says Kibi. “And there’s really no way to know, just before jumping, which one we’ll be going to?”

“No, there is not.”

“I wish we could use a _miracle_,” Morningstar sighs.

“Oh, that wouldn’t work,” says Corriv. “The magics inherent in even the most potent spells are trivial compared to the forces at work on the Leaping Circles.”

“It’s just a _teleportation circle_!” Dranko objects.

“You do not understand quantum effects.”

“Sure I do,” says Dranko. “One effect, two effects, three effects… I can quantum all day long.”

Aravis gives Corriv a sympathetic look. “Don’t get into these conversations with him. They’re very frustrating.”


/*/


Corriv shows the party to the Leaping Circle, which is behind the university building in a large courtyard. Like Circle Eight at the Stribe city, this one is fifty feet in diameter, an adamant ring sunk into the stone floor. Runes are scrawled on it around its entire circumference, and on a nearby stone slab has been carved a large numeral “1.” 

Morningstar walks to the center (where according to Corriv, the Evil Trio enacted their ten second ritual to activate it) and blankets the area with _thought captures_. Most of them reveal thoughts of someone concentrating very hard on getting a short but complex ritual correct. One thought is of someone hoping that the local ghost guard won’t catch up to them until they’re done. The final thought is “_Damn, but that music is making it hard to concentrate. If this doesn’t work the first time, we should go back and annihilate that thing._”

Corriv and the party wizards talk well into the night on a number of arcane topics. The old ghost is pleased as punch to have intellectual peers for company.  Kibi can’t help but ask him about Earth Magic, and how it’s stronger as one goes coreward. 

“Well of course it is,” says Corriv. ‘Earth Magic _is_ magic. It comes from the core. I imagine any magic you have up on the surface is just runoff.”

Kibi feels indisputably smug about that!  “It’s harder to use, though,” he admits.

“Interesting,” says Corriv. “I would imagine that trying to make use of the magic dissipating into the air would be more difficult. Abernia is Abernia! You tap directly in! Not that I’m an accomplished wizard.  I’m more of a scholar, I only dabble.”

Morningstar asks if Corriv knows about the local Dreamscape. 

“Ah, yes,” says Corriv. “But no one in their right minds ever went there. It’s crawling with those… creatures. They’re all around us right now, probably eating lunch and practicing killing one another.”

On the topic of the Sister Gods, Corriv confirms Morningstar’s suspicion that as they travel coreward, they will be heading into Wlaqua’s territory. “Yes. The Sister Gods have divided creation between them, and coreward you find a greater concentration of those who venerate Wlaqua. The Sister Gods don’t take much interest in scholarly pursuits, and so I don’t much care about them. I don’t like talking about them , though; you never know when they might be listening.”

When the wizards’ talk grows more esoteric and technical, the others grow bored. Morningstar, Flicker, Dranko and Ernie take a quick trip into Ava Dormo to see if it’s still infested with Keffet, and to see if the Leaping Circle exists there. Not only are there Keffet, but Corriv’s words turn out to be unintentionally prophetic. There is no Leaping Circle – if it ever was there, it’s been paved over – and the four of them arrive in a huge mess all.  Three hundred Keffet are eating at long tables. At the intruders’ arrival, most of the nearest ones jump to their feet and start scrambling for weapons.  Dranko yanks one of their mugs with a deft snap of his whip, and it flies to his waiting hand. He takes a drink, and finds it both sweet and alcoholic.

“Drop your weapons!” shouts one of the Keffet.  Twenty more have spears pointed at them.

“We just came by to say ‘hi’,” says Dranko affably.

“Take them prisoners, you foo…”

But they don’t hear the end of that, as Morningstar returns them to the waking world. Dranko is sad that his Keffet beer doesn’t come with them.

The wizards converse for hours. Corriv manages to convey a basic groundwork of the magical theory behind the “quantum” Leaping Circle, and by the time the party mages go to bed, they are convinced that there’s truly no way to predict or influence where the Leaping Circle will take them.

Kibi looks for the silver lining. “Maybe the Croaking Oracle said ‘Five, Nine, Two’ because it _knew_ this Circle would take us to number five.”

Corriv shrugs, not putting much stock in oracular amphibians. “If you’re going to take Leaping Circle One,” the ghostly scholar tells them, “you’re just going to have to roll the dice.”


/*/


Nothing attacks them overnight, which is a pleasant surprise. The next morning, before they get started on the six-day-long ritual, Corriv gives them all the figures for the distances and locations of the Leaping Circles and their destinations.  He also confirms that the Evil Trio went through themselves 143 days ago, meaning the bad guys are still about five months ahead of them. 

They begin the ritual, which is time consuming but not difficult. It’s just a long recitation involving a typical combination of gestures and syllables, in which the three living wizards take turns participating. The days go by. Dranko wanders Mehar-Bec looking for the elusive treasury, and manages to stumble across an old shop containing about 1200 khet chips in a back room. Flicker scavenges another 800. Khet chips don’t stack neatly like coins, but are much lighter on a per-unit basis.

One morning, Aravis wakes up to find Flicker standing over him.

“You vanished again, while I was on watch,” the halfling tells him. “You were gone about four hours.”

And indeed, Aravis has been given another vision of what’s transpiring on the surface.

_Two beings in matching blood-red armor stand facing one another.  

The taller of the two is a man, heavily muscled, bald-headed, his face crosshatched with scars.

The other is an orc, fat and familiar. It is the Bloodseer, wearing Restimar’s old armor.

They are sitting in the Bloodseer’s den, at ease. They have been talking for some time. “Naradawk Skewn will grant you any lands in Nahalm that you can take and hold,” says the human. “Kallor, Hae Kalkas, Kynder Hold. Dimres. Sand’s Edge. I advise you stay away from Sentinel, but otherwise you may choose your own objectives. All Naradawk asks is that you act aggressively, give no quarter, choose high-population targets, and kill as many of your enemy as possible. How soon will your armies be ready?”

The Bloodseer takes a long sip of wine from an ornate cup before answering. “Two days,” he says, his smile growing wider and showing sharpened teeth.  

“Two days?” The man is unable to hide his surprise. “How many orcs can you possibly muster in two days?”

“Fifty thousand at least,” says the Bloodseer, obviously enjoying this.

The man splutters. “Fifty… with all due respect, I don’t see how you could…”

“I knew this day was coming,” says the Bloodseer. “And I knew it would be today.” He casually reaches over to a table with dwarf-bones for legs, picks up a copy of Prophecies of the Orcish Crusades, and quotes from its pages. “And from a prison that is all the world, a great warrior will fall upon this land, and your conquests will be as his sword of fury. His messenger comes in crimson, on Grolsh’ ninth day in the Year of Vermin. Be ready in your thousands; you are the storm.”

The man blinks, but quickly gains his composure.

“Naradawk has brought formidable strength into this world, but you will be his soldiers on the ground.   And you are confident that you can not only lead your orcs, but control them?”

“Control orcs?” The Bloodseer snorts. “ As well as anyone, for what that’s worth. But I am the Chun Aggrat reborn, whom any orc would follow to the ends of Abernia and be thankful for the honor.    Give me two days, and your massacre will begin.”_

Ugh.

Dranko spits. “I hate that guy!” 

The vision certainly fills the party with regret at not having killed the Bloodseer during their previous encounter, and reminds them that they never did get their hands on a copy of _Prophecies of the Orcish Crusades_

“It will make me so happy if Tor kills him,” says Grey Wolf.

“Fifty thousand orcs!” Dranko is aghast. “They’re going to devastate the kingdom!”

“I guess we shouldn’t have hoped you were going to have happy visions from now on,” says Grey Wolf to Aravis.

At last the final minute of the ritual arrives, and they all hold their breaths, waiting to see if they’ll be put on the Toad-ordained path to stop the Evil Trio, or be sent hundreds of miles in the wrong direction.  In the final seconds, Morningstar becomes aware of something warm in her pocket, quickly growing hot.  It’s _Laramon’s Jade Clover_, a magic item they found in the hoard of the dragon Azhant the Ancient. It’s a minor luck item, and heretofore she hasn’t thought much about it, but now she can feel it heating her skin through the fabric of her pocket.

They Leap.

As before, most of the Company experiences an instant translation, but Dranko does not. He finds himself hanging in a nauseating nothingness, stars of madness twinkling just beyond his peripheral vision. There are things, regarding him. He should not exist here, but he does, having something in common with the denizens of the Far Realms. 

The voice sounds from the darkling depths. _*You are called, Dranko, and you are as you are called. Let not your delusions be of grandeur. DO NOT BECOME!*_

And then they are all there, standing in a low-ceilinged store room that smells of fungus, dried fruit and spices. The _Jade Clover_ is rapidly cooling now, and Morningstar holds it in her palm.

“Impossible to affect, indeed,” she says with a smile, and returns it to her pocket.

…to be continued…


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> “You do not understand quantum effects.”
> 
> “Sure I do,” says Dranko. “One effect, two effects, three effects… I can quantum all day long.”




That was so dumb I had to stare at it a minute before I got it.

Who is the Bloodseer?  Don't remember him.  Something to do with the Orc-Champion who switched bodies when the party killed him?

And what's with the Jade Clover, and Morningstar's comment on it?

So -- it seems that if Dranko has delusions of grandeur -- tries to gain fame in some way -- then he will Become, which presumably means that he'll grow lots of eyes where he shouldn't have eyes, and a giant tongue, and become radioactive, and anyone who looks at him drops dead of fright?  That's my guess.


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> That was so dumb I had to stare at it a minute before I got it.
> 
> Who is the Bloodseer?  Don't remember him.  Something to do with the Orc-Champion who switched bodies when the party killed him?




The Bloodseer was an orcish leader who helped the party kill Restimar -- a red-armored servant of the Emperor who was impersonating various humanoid figures-of-legend. After Restimar (masquerading as the Chun Aggrat, a legendary orcish war-leader) was killed, the Bloodseer turned on the Company and had his orcs chase them away. It seems that the Bloodseer kept Restimar's red armor, and now HE is pretending to be the Chun Aggrat.



> And what's with the Jade Clover, and Morningstar's comment on it?




Morningstar was guessing that after all of Corriv's insistence that the random nature of Leaping Circle One couldn't be influenced, the luck magic inherent in _Laramon's Jade Clover_ must have done exactly that, presumably to make sure they ended up nearer to Leaping Circle Five than to Leaping Circle Three.



> So -- it seems that if Dranko has delusions of grandeur -- tries to gain fame in some way -- then he will Become, which presumably means that he'll grow lots of eyes where he shouldn't have eyes, and a giant tongue, and become radioactive, and anyone who looks at him drops dead of fright?  That's my guess.




No comment.


----------



## Piratecat

Sagiro said:


> No comment.



Jerk.


----------



## steeldragons

I'm just thinking, or starting to think, "Hopping. Hopping. Five. Nine. two." is supposed to mean, "DON'T GO TO FIVE NINE TWO!!!!! Hop somewhere else! Hop somewhere else! Five-Nine-Two is utter and complete death and destruction! You can't win that way!"

Don't go to FIVE! Five is in the Far Realms! Typheon and a hundred tentacled and hundred-eyed "things" waiting for you at five!

All that said, the whole "minor magic item 'luck charm' from some former adventure" playing a decisive role in the current adventure is yet one more example of the DMing _GENIUS _[GENIUS, I say!] on Sagiro's part. Just gorgeous. I can only hope that some day I might achieve some level of_ brilliance_ in DM story-telling as you.

I can not tell you how many campaigns I've had or been a part of that have really cool magic items that are simply forgotten [by us all!]. Not in Sagiro's campaign. No sirree.

Well done, sir. Well done. A pure thing of DMing beauty. Hat's off.


----------



## Everett

steeldragons said:


> I'm just thinking, or starting to think, "Hopping. Hopping. Five. Nine. two." is supposed to mean, "DON'T GO TO FIVE NINE TWO!!!!! Hop somewhere else! Hop somewhere else! Five-Nine-Two is utter and complete death and destruction! You can't win that way!"
> 
> Don't go to FIVE! Five is in the Far Realms! Typheon and a hundred tentacled and hundred-eyed "things" waiting for you at five!




Um, no.


----------



## Anxe

Well that answers part of the previous prophecy.

*Seven haste, and roll the dice,
Spun by fortune’s sacrifice.*


----------



## Everett

Anxe said:


> Well that answers part of the previous prophecy.
> 
> *Seven haste, and roll the dice,
> Spun by fortune’s sacrifice.*




Nice catch.


----------



## Anxe

*One brings many, flame's design*

That might have something to do with those flames popping up everywhere for the party too.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 377*_
*Scuttle*

The storeroom in which the Company has arrived is uninteresting, but the same came cannot be said for their location in general. From outside the room come shouts, screams, and other familiar sounds of battle.  Weapons clank, men grunt, and in the background, ceaseless, is a clicking sound as though thousands of tiny feet are scurrying along stone floors.

Parthol’s beads translate some of the shouting.

“There’s another seven of them, north hall, go!”
“Huge wave of Scuttle reported from the southeast corner breach. No Spotties!”
“Get them off of me! Get them off of me!”

There is a door leading out of this glorified closet, halfway open.  Something scampers past the doorway, something like a dog-sized scorpion, but it moves too quickly for the party to get a decent look.  In close pursuit are two short humanoids, stocky, with beards and hammers.

Dwarves!

“What do we do?” asks Dranko.

Kibi is affronted that he even asked the question. “We go out and help them!”

“Who? The dwarves or the scorpions?”

“The dwarves!”

Dranko holds up his hands. “Well, we don’t _know_ that the dwarves are good and the scorpions are evil.”

Kibi glares at him, and Dranko shrinks back a bit. “Uh, let’s find out.”

They move out into the hallway, which has a low seven-foot ceiling but is very wide. It stretches off in both directions for twenty feet or more before bending out of sight. The architecture is reminiscent of dwarven buildings from the surface, which enforces the notion that it is the dwarves who are under attack. Sounds of scuttling feet and rattling chitin echo all around .

Another dwarf comes racing around the nearer corner, looking worriedly over his shoulder. He’s fully armored in a chain suit, and his beard is impressively voluminous. He practically runs into the Company before he notices them and pulls up short.

“Do you need help?” asks Ernie. “We came through a Leaping Circle.”

The dwarf blinks. “Help? Yes! Please!”

Six huge scorpions come crashing around the corner in pursuit of the dwarf. They pile up almost comically as they make the turn but immediately gain their footing and charge forward.  Dranko steps in front of the dwarf and fires off a _prismatic spray_ from his _helm of brilliance_, damaging five of the monsters and exploding the sixth. But the survivors swarm upon Dranko, crawling up his legs and onto his back, looking for openings and whipping their barbed tails to and fro. They’re very conventional looking scorpions, save for their size, and that they have short prehensile tentacles surrounding their mouths. Ew. Dranko flails about and manages to avoid any damage from them, but he’s still a grim sight.

Aravis’s _prismatic spray_ is more effective, and he uses the _Battlestone of St. Jenniver_ to avoid affecting Dranko. Three of the five scorpions die immediately, fried or baked  or dissolved. One of the remaining two would normally be sent to another plane by the ray with which it’s struck, but in the Underdark the spell has a different effect; the scorpion is flung backward with great force. It crunches into the wall and is still. Only one of the half-dozen scorpions survives, and that one but briefly; Flicker runs up and stabs it to death.

Dranko turns to the slack-jawed dwarf. “You got any more of these?”

The dwarf looks pointedly over Dranko’s shoulder.  “Uh… yes?”

Those six had been a small advanced party.  Dranko turns in time to see a veritable flood of the creatures spill around the corner, dozens of them climbing over one another in a nightmare heap of pincer claws and stinger tails.

Ernie drops a _blade barrier_ across the hallway, then calls down a _flame strike_ on the far side. Grey Wolf follows up with his _ironstorm_ and _chain lightning_ combination.  The scorpions shriek as they explode in the deadly electrical storm, and half the bits are propelled into the _blade barrier_ to be smashed up into even finer pieces.

The dwarf’s eyes bug out of his head.

“Are there many more?” asks Dranko casually.

“Y… yes,” stammers the dwarf. “Many more on the right side where the wall was breached. At least a hundred Scuttle, plus a handful of Spotties.”

“What are Spotties?” asks Morningstar. “Something worse than these?”  She gestures to the chitinous fragments now scattered along the stone floor.

“Much worse,” says the dwarf. “They’re like these ones, but there’s somethin’ wrong with ‘em.”

Ernie guesses first. “Black spots?”

“Yeah, black spots.  The Spotties can kill ya from a distance, just by lookin’ atcha.” 

“Damn,” says Dranko. “How did the Blood of the Adversary get down here?”

Ernie asks the dwarf, “Did three really nasty people in red armor come through here in the past few months?”

The dwarf nods. “You’re not with ‘em, are ya?”

“No!”

“Good.”

“Had you ever seen Spotties before they arrived?” asks Morningstar. 

“No,” says the dwarf. “We suspected they may have had somethin’ t’ do with ‘em.”

“Great,” says Grey Wolf. “They left us another gift.”

Even worse, it means the Evil Trio was not sent off to Leaping Circle Three as the Company had hoped.

“Are the Spotties mixed in with the other ones?” asks Dranko.

“Yep. They’re out with the rest assaulting the wall, but them black-spotted buggers can tunnel like nobody’s business. They managed a breach on the south bulwark and a bunch poured in before we could seal ‘em out again.”

“You should lead us to the wall,” says Aravis.

“And who are ya, if ya don’t mind me askin’?”

“We are the ones prophesied,” says Dranko gravely.

“Abernathy’s Company,” adds Morningstar.

“Who’s that?”

“Long story,” says Ernie.

“Then you can tell me later, when we’re not in the midst of battle.”

Dranko hops through the _blade barrier_ to peek around the corner, in case any scorpions survived their magical battering. There’s only one, and it’s nearly dead. He slays it with its whip. But from around yet another bend he can hear another wave approaching.  For the moment he stays on the far side of the _blade barrier_, as bait.  “Help!” he cries in his best imitation of the dwarf. “I’m injured! Someone help!”

The next wave of Scuttle surges around the far corner and boils toward Dranko. This group brings with it the barest whiff of Essence; two Spotties are in the with the rank-and-file scorpions. Their carapaces are a mottled bronze and black; their eyes and tentacles are entirely black.

Just as Dranko takes this in, the others hear a tearing sound from the wall not far down the hall in the other direction. A hole appears in  the wall, bored through from the other side, and four more Spotties drop down to the floor.  Now there are six of the Essence-tainted Scuttle, and these make the same attack that similar creatures have been making since the party first encountered them. Dranko, Ernie and Morningstar all feel the horrid burn of black pustules appearing and then bursting out of their faces.  The two Spotties on the far side of the _blade barrier_, with Dranko, have stopped short of the area filled with Grey Wolf’s iron filings, but the rest of the Scuttle push forward, filling the hall and swarming over Dranko. Though he avoids their attacks, they are numerous enough to bear him to the ground. For every one he knocks aside, a new one climbs onto him. Soon only one hand is sticking out of a nearly solid mass of scorpions.

“Pewter, I have a job for you.”

The cat thinks back to his master, “Boss, you can’t be serious.” But Aravis is not joking.  He _shapechanges_ into a xorn to skirt the wall of blades, then releases Pewter to dart in among the scorpions to deliver a _teleport_ to Dranko’s thrashing hand. “You owe me big time for this, Boss!” But Pewter evades the clacking claws and barbed stingers, leaps onto Dranko’s arm, and _teleports_ the two of them back to the more populated side of the _blade barrier_.

Aravis isn’t finished yet. He steps up to the _blade barrier_ and casts another _prismatic spray_ through it. It’s mass carnage, as the amassed Scuttle are variously petrified, crisped, poisoned, or (if they’re lucky) only heavily damaged. A few are flung hard away from Aravis, again those being the ones that would ordinarily have been sent plane-hopping.  Of the two Spotties caught in the cone, one resists being turned to stone, but the second goes insane.

Even as the energies of his spell still crackle, Aravis feels Crosser’s Maze lines draw themselves across his forehead.  “No, not now!  Not…”   He vanishes.  The others curse the ill-timing.

There are still four Spotties on the near side of the blades. Morningstar quickens _divine power_, moves to one of the black-spotted scorpions, and brings down _Ell’s Will_ hard upon it. As she hoped, the creature is spell resistant, making it highly vulnerable to her Epic weapon.  The morningstar cracks the thing’s chitin like it was eggshell, but it survives the attack.

Ernie casts _destruction_ on the closest Spotty, crying out “Yondalla does not want you here!” His Goddess would seem to concur; the blood-touched scorpion glows brightly and puffs into dust, leaving no trace of Essence behind. Grey Wolf steps up to another one, quickens a _true strike_, and channels a maximized _acid orb_ through a hard swing with _Bostock_.  The sword cleaves it down to its center, and the acid dissolves the creature into a foul puddle of liquefied organs. 

There are still two Spotties and a number of injured Scuttle on the other side of the _blade barrier_; Kibi, seeing that _prismatic sprays_ are the order of the day, casts the spell upon the cluster of enemies. His magic item the _Pulse of Abernia_ empowers the spell, and both the Spotties take tremendous damage despite evading the direct beams of light. The remaining Scuttle are killed in the typical variety of ways. He then quickens a _rainbow pattern_ and mesmerizes the not-insane Spotty, hoping to entice it into the wall of whirling knives. 

The remaining two Spotties on the near side go after Dranko and Morningstar. They are faster and stronger than their untainted brethren, and in addition to the horrible Blood attack, they tear into their targets with razor-sharp claws. Both also deliver perfectly-placed tail-snaps, sinking their poisoned barbs precisely into the necks of their victims. The pain and damage are intense, but not fatal, largely because both Morningstar and Dranko are still under the poison-nullifying effects of the morning’s regular _heroes’ feast_. 

None of the remaining four Spotties survive to attack again. Morningstar crushes one with _Ell’s Will_. Flicker lops of the tail of a second.  And Kibi smashes a third with an empowered, maximized _earth bolt_ before luring the final one, still insane, into the _blade barrier_. 

Ernie caps off the melee with a _mass heal_.

Dranko turns to the dwarf.  “You have any _tough_ monsters?”

The dwarf laughs. “That was amazin’! There are thousands more Scuttle, but nothin’ tougher than Spotties, thank Yavin.”

His speech is refreshingly vocal. Unlike that of the Stribe and the Mehar, the telepathic component of the dwarf’s language is almost vestigial, providing the tiniest extra nuance of meaning.

“What’s your name?” asks Dranko.

“Gehentas,” says the dwarf. “And let me welcome you to Kehentohantas, though what yer seein’ is only the border outpost nearest the region controlled by the Scuttle. Somethin’ has driven them things into a frenzy!”

“When did it start?” asks Kibi.

Gehentas looks closely at Kibi while he answers.  “They’ve been assaultin’ the wall for nine days now.”

“So the scuttle don’t usually attack like this?” asks Morningstar.

“No, the cavern is typically a neutral buffer zone, which they’ve not violated in decades.”

“Are they intelligent?”

“Yes. Well, sort of. They have a kind of hive mind.  They build things, you know…”  He’s interrupted by a distant boom. “…and that includes siege towers, sorry to say.”

He stares at Kibi again.  “You look somethin’ like a drevin, but not exactly,” he says.

Kibi returns the stare. “And you look something like a dwarf.”

Gehentas looks shocked.  “A dwarb? You’re a dwarb?!”

“It’s ‘dwarf’” says Kibi.

“Are you…  are you from the _surface_?”

He drops to one knee in front of Kibi, head bowed.  But before Kibi can properly appreciate this, Aravis reappears next to him with a faint sizzling sound.  As with his previous returns from the Crosser’s Maze, he appears to be just waking up from a sound sleep. This time there is a smile on his lips, and has a very satisfying vision to share.

_Shreen the Fair, hunchbacked and snarling, paces back and forth in front of a line of monsters. There are a dozen of the things, sinuous and malign, acidic drool oozing from mouths full of fangs. Behind them, in the vast courtyard of the Shrine of Dralla, hundreds of other abominations of every stripe stand restlessly at attention, filling the air with soft, unnatural sounds.  

“This is our moment,” cackles Shreen. “Long have we suffered, and let others dictate our fate. We have been robbed, and tricked, and stepped upon, but no longer! The time of our revenge is at hand. Even now, our new allies are mounting an assault against the worms of Charagan, laying waste to their lands and slaughtering their people. We have been invited to join in the fun.”

Shreen stops pacing for a moment, and inclines his misshapen head toward a figure standing nearby – a stocky, bearded man in blood-red plate mail. “Carren here is an emissary from Emperor Naradawk, the new ruler of Charagan. His people have prepared a teleportation circle for us, and within the hour, Strug will complete the ritual that will allow us easy passage across the sea. Do not fear that the sun is rising here in Djaw; it is the middle of the night in the land of our enemies, and we go to be their nightmares. Once there, we have but one mission: to kill. And my friends, we are so good at killing.”

Shreen raises his arms, and a cacophony of hoots and screeches fills every archway and shadow inside the Shrine. It takes a full minute for the din to subside.

“Before we leave,” shouts Shreen, “ there are some final preparations.  We need to…”

He is interrupted by a sound even louder than the roars and barks of his menagerie. It is an awful sound to Shreen’s ears, like the blaring of hundreds of golden trumpets, their notes clear and piercing. But worse, the sound is followed immediately by another – the grinding crash of stone walls collapsing. The entire east wall of the shrine falls into rubble, sending up plumes of thick dust. Shreen and his monsters fall silent, confused. Then a magical wind banishes the dust, and reveals a terrible sight.

Thousands of brightly-armored soldiers stand in rows behind the ruined wall, filling the courtyard with the cracked angel statue and every street and alleyway beyond. Their polished mail glitters in the rising sun. They are Knights of Kemma, mingled with hundreds of city guard Falcons. But four figures stand at the head of the army, who are more familiar. One is the diviner Belinda. Another is the High Priest of Kemma, One Shining Mirror. The other two are the Ellish Daywalkers, Evenstar and Scola.

“Got it in one,” mutters Belinda with a smile.  

Someone shouts a command in the back of the soldiers’ ranks, and a thick hail of arrows rises into the sky, gleaming in the sun.  The ranks of monsters in the courtyard squint upward as death rains down upon them.  A dozen clerics cast daylight as the soldiers then stream past and around Evenstar and Scola, swords shining, advancing into the Shrine of Dralla and bringing with them a cleansing light that is long overdue. With Drosh’s influence gone, the divine politics of Kivia have shifted, and some things will no longer be tolerated.

The battle lasts the morning, and hundreds of Knights fall to tooth and claw, but in the end the monsters are scoured out of every hole and crevice. Paladins root out dozens of horrid creatures from the myriad small chambers beneath the shrine. Shreen the Fair is found cringing in the bottommost pit, and dragged up and out to stand, face twisted with bitterness, before Evenstar on a field littered with hacked-apart monsters.   

“Lady Evenstar,” says One Shining Mirror, “here is the one you wanted.  But we cannot remove him from this place, physically or by magic. And while he’s here, he cannot be killed. Dralla still protects him.”

Evenstar looks down upon Shreen, who seems shrunken and pathetic in the light shining down over the smashed wall. “Drosh has departed the world,” she says, “and Dralla is thereby diminished. I can put an end to this one, and for Morningstar and for Ell, I will.”

“Shreen!” she barks. “For your crimes and treachery, and for all that you are an affront to Ell’s darkness, I condemn you to death.”

“You cannot,” spits Shreen. “You may have defiled this place with your sunlight, but I will endure. I will always endure.  And when Naradawk has chewed you up and spit out your bones, I will be at his side, laughing at your pitiful memory.”

“I don’t think so,” says Evenstar.  She sits down before Shreen, concentrates, and drops into Ava Dormo.

And  she takes Shreen with her.

Shreen looks around, terrified.  This place looks like his shrine, but it is empty, save for himself, Evenstar and Scola.  The two Ellish sisters are fulminant with a hot, dark energy.

“We have stood with Morningstar against a greater threat than you,” Evenstar says, her voice echoing in the Dreamscape. “And for her, and her kingdom, and for Ell, we now deliver you from this world.”

Scola steps forward, and with a mace like a black star, she sends Shreen the Fair to oblivion.
_

...to be continued…


----------



## Everett

Great way to dispose of Shreen.  

Typos:



Sagiro said:


> Dranko turns to dwarf.  “You have any _tough_ monsters?”
> 
> **********************
> 
> “No, the cavern is typically a neutral buffer zone, which they’ve not violated it in decades.”


----------



## Piratecat

We cheered. Not killing Shreen before we left was our biggest regret.


----------



## carborundum

Fantastic! The party get to have a blast (literally) and generally be all heroic after a few rough epic encounters. Plus Shreen gets his.


----------



## SolitonMan

Sagiro said:


> _
> “We have stood with Morningstar against a greater threat than you,” Evenstar says, her voice echoing in the Dreamscape. “And for her, and her kingdom, and for Ell, we now deliver you from this world.”
> 
> Scola steps forward, and with a mace like a black star, she sends Shreen the Fair to oblivion.
> _




That was so awesome


----------



## carborundum

Did Sagiro do the Shreen voice for this Maze vision? 
(Any chance of an mp3? ;-) )


----------



## Everett

Scola was the one who should've died in the battle against Octesian, but didn't due to oversight and took Morningstar's old blade, didn't she?

Also, I'm wondering -- when Aravis had visions from the Maze, did Sagiro just write them up beforehand and read them aloud at the table?


----------



## Quartz

Concentrated awesomeness!


----------



## Piratecat

Everett said:


> Also, I'm wondering -- when Aravis had visions from the Maze, did Sagiro just write them up beforehand and read them aloud at the table?



Printed them out and handed them to Aravis's player, who read them to himself and then aloud.


----------



## Everett

Wow.  I feel like I just read the last update, with the scorpion battle and the death of Shreen, but it's actually been three weeks.

*bump*

The end is near... sort of...


----------



## Sagiro

(duplicate post)


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 378*_
*The Attention of Higher Powers*

Kibi looks down with pride mingled with embarrassment – though mostly the former – at Gehentas kneeling at his feet.  “You’re right, I _am_ a dwarb… dwarf, actually. You’re one of the first people we’ve met down here who believes in the world above!”

Gehentas nods. “’Course I do.”  He stands and gestures at the huge piles of remains. “You just annihilated the Scuttle, and even the Spotties.  Can you do that to the rest?”

“Maybe,” answers Kibi. “Where are they?”

“All over the place.  And there are a lot of them!”

“I could kill a lot at once,” says Kibi, stroking his beard, “but it would require collapsing part of the cavern where they are.  Is that okay?”

“Part of the cavern?  We don’ t go in that direction, so sure, as long as you can guarantee the ceiling doesn’t collapse on the fort.”

“I’ll have to take a look.”

“We can help, with our magic,” says Gehentas, “A little bit. Reshaping stone, helping build buildings. That sort of thing.”

Kibi finds the notion delightful. “Where I come from, very few Dwarves can cast magic.”

“We all do Earth Magic here,” says Gehentas. “You know, the magic that just comes up out of the ground.”

“We’ll talk more about that after we’ve dealt with the Scuttle.”

Gehentas leads them through the hallways of the fort, and up to the top of the wall. “Weapons out, and look sharp,” he warns the Company. “They primarily use their catapults to fire themselves over the wall, but they also hurl rocks.”

They are challenged in places by other Drevin, but all of them are awed by Gehentas’s brief pronouncements about Kibi. “He’s a dwarb! A dwarb has come to resuce us!”

“What about his friends?” asks one of the guards.

“We’re companions of Kibi,” says Ernie. “We’re here to take care of your Scuttle problem.”

“It’s true!” Gehentas exclaims. “I’ve seen it! They just blasted the Scuttle into ashes!”

“Great!  Send ‘em up!”

Gehentas keeps talking as they ascend a twisting staircase. “We haven’t worried about the Scuttle in decades. We’ve had an uneven truce, and had agreed that the cavern out there would stay empty.  We weren’t prepared for this; nine days ago they came out of the nowhere.  And those Spotties… I’m sure it’s related to how Yavin has been diminished these past few months.”

“What does that mean?” asks Kibi, alarmed.

“Yavin helps us with our diplomacy,” says Gehentas.  “Have you heard of the Sister Gods?  Yavin is the peacemaker, and Wlaqua is the war-monger.  There’s a border on the far side of our kingdom, about a hundred miles from here, with the fungus people, the Myconids.  We’ve had our issues with them, sure, but our shared veneration of Yavin has helped us keep the peace.  But even over there, things are starting to break down. Like her influence is waning, and Wlaqua’s is waxing. We thought that might have something to do with why the Scuttle have decided to attack.”

Ernie winces. “I think something deeper and darker is waking up, and is making all deep and dark things stronger.”

“It’s possible that Wlaqua has been infected with Black Goo,” says Kibi.

The Company is brought out to the top of a wide wall.  On one side of this wall is the settlement of Kehentohantas, built both above and below the “ground.” On the other side is a cavern so large it may as well be out of doors, illuminated by millions of light motes.  The Wall rises eighty feet above the cavern floor and extends laterally several hundred feet in both directions. The ceiling is another hundred feet above the top of the wall. The back wall of the cavern is out of sight. 

“There’s no door in the wall,” says Gehentas. “As part of the truce, we took it out. The Spotties can burrow to get in, but their tunnels collapse behind them, so the Scuttle can’t follow, thank Yavin.”

The cavern floor is a seething sea of Scuttle, climbing over one another, milling about, swarming over boulders. There are essence-infused Spotties  mixed in with the rank-and-file scorpions. A few Scuttle are trying to scale the wall, but the Drevin are employing standard siege-breaking tactics: crossbows, boiling oil, boulders dropped downward. The wall itself has been coated with something slick, making it difficult for the Scuttle to find purchase. 

Three Scuttle go flying overhead and land _behind_ the wall. Several Drevin go rushing over with weapons drawn. In the haze of distant light motes, the Company sees that a couple dozen tall catapults loom behind the Scuttle ranks, some of which are flinging boulders, but most of which are firing the Scuttle themselves over the wall.

The Company forms a quick plan.  Since Dranko and Flicker aren’t part of it, they head down into the city to help the Drevin fight the Scuttle hand-to-hand.

Kibi, he’s a big part of the plan.  He can feel the Earth Magic here, seeping into his bones, suffusing him. He points at the cavern ceiling high above the masses of Scuttle and casts _earthquake_.  The _Pulse of Abernia_ empowers it further.  The Drevin lower their crossbows and stand amazed, as far out above the line of catapults a huge chunk of ceiling collapses. Carriage-sized boulders rain down upon the Scuttle and their siege engines; at least two catapults are smashed to splinters. The Scuttle screech and flee the epicenter, but hundreds are crushed by a rain of stony death.

“That was incredible,” breathes Gehentas. 

Stage two of the plan:  Morningstar and Ernie each cast _firestorm_, blanketing huge swaths of the cavern floor. Terrible conflagrations of flames, golden and black, sweep across the stone.  Five thousand square feet of Scuttle are crisped, and after a terrible shrieking sound, the sounds of the scorpions is clearly lessened.  Smoke rises from the scorched bodies. 

Between the _earthquake_ and _firestorms_ party estimates that between fifteen and twenty percent of the Scuttle have been annihilated, along with over half their catapults. 

Flicker comes running up, his arm nearly severed. Ernie heals him and sends him back into the fray. “Flicker!” Dranko calls. “Hurry up! I need my flanking buddy back!”

Grey Wolf changes into his draconic form, grabs a couple of boulders in his claws, and flies out above the cavern, figuring he can help clean up the Scuttle near the wall that survived the _firestorms_.  But as he launches himself outward, Gehentas becomes panicked.  “No, you have to stop him!  Don’t let him…”

Grey Wolf is slammed hard to the ground by an invisible force, eighty feet down to the cavern floor.  He is immediately swarmed by Scuttle.

“The Scuttle can control gravity around flyers,” says Gehentas. 

“So can I,” says Aravis.  He leans out and casts _reverse gravity_ around Grey Wolf, and his friend starts to rise, quickly at first, then more slowly, until he comes to a stop twenty feet off the ground, caught in a gravitational tug-of-war.  Several Scuttle still cling to him, gouging his scales with their claws and stingers.

Grey Wolf _teleports_ himself to the top of the wall, leaving the Scuttle to drop back down to the ground.  Gehentas is distraught.  “If I’d known you’d try flyin’ I’d a warned you!  Just didn’t occur to me it was thing you could do.”

“We know now,” groans Grey Wolf.  Morningstar heals him, while Ernie casts another _firestorm_ down by the base of the wall. There is more screaming and the Scuttle are roasted, but by clearing them out, Ernie has revealed two of the Essence-infused Spotties starting to dig through the wall. Dozens of bowmen lean out over the wall and fire, but their bolts clank off the creatures’ plates.

Aravia quickens and maximizes a _fireball_. One Spotty is roasted on the spot but the other keeps digging.

“We’ve spent time hardening the very outer layer,” says Gehentas. “Takes ‘em a bit longer to get through than it might. But once it gets deeper in, it’ll chew through the stone like it’s bread.”

Aravis doesn’t let it get that far; he blasts it with a _lightning bolt_, and the Spotty explodes with the faintest whiff of Essence.

Kibi still feels the resonance of his _earthquake_ humming in his bones. He casts a second, spoofing it with _wish_. This time he feels an even larger surge of Earth Magic welling up, similar to what erupted beneath the Croaking Oracle. The entire cavern shakes, and the Drevin shrink back.  Out over the masses of Scuttle comes another hailstorm of boulders, some as large as houses.  Siege engines are snapped like matchsticks. For a moment it seems as though the force of the spell might be too great, might extend the destruction to the ceiling above Kehentohantas.  But the earthshaking fades, and the city is spared.  Not so for the Scuttle, who are crushed by the hundreds. 

Kibi smiles and tries to look like this is normal.  

“I didn’t know you could cast ‘Armageddon,’” says Grey Wolf appreciatively. “Good thing you targeted it so far out!”

As the rumbling fades, it is replaced by a new, strange sound. It’s the Scuttle, but their collective sound has changed.  They are screeching at the same precise pitch. Then, at once, they become silent and seethe away from the wall like a receding tide. Even the few remaining Spotties are fleeing. In less than a minute only a few stragglers are visible, the wounded, crawling over the rubble.

An eerie quiet settles over the cavern.  Because of its size and the sheer numbers of light motes, the dark patches left by the _firestorms_ have already filled back in.  It seems they have repelled the attack.  A ragged cheer goes up among the Drevin, but this peters out as something new appears, a while glow far back in the cavern, hundreds of yards away but moving forward, closer.

A figure comes into view.  It is a white marble statue, standing with its arms extended, hands balled into fists. It has no features on its face; its head is a smooth white ovoid on its shoulders. It floats five feet above the ground, and none of its limbs move.  White light shines out from it. The Drevin all shield their eyes.

“What _is_ that?” breathes Kibi.

A voice sounds in all their heads at once – pure telepathy.  The Drevin look around as if they hear it too.  

*“I am Ylerba, servant of the Goddess Wlaqua. Wlaqua has sent me to turn you back.  Swear upon the my Holy visage that you will abandon your quest, and I will not hinder you. Otherwise, I will destroy you, and any who attempt to shield you. Do you acquiesce?”*

The voice is unnaturally calm and even.

“No,” answer both Aravis and Ernie.

*“Will you come out to face me then, or must I come in after you?”*

“We will come out to face you,” says Aravis.

“We seek something foreign to your Underdark,” says Morningstar. “It does not belong here.”

*“I know what you seek,”* says the statue. *“There is a new power beneath the Barrier, and we have come to an understanding with that power. Yavin has become irrelevant in the new order. You are making an unwise decision. I am unlike anything you have ever faced.  Come down now, or I will take apart this wall.”*

“Do not harm these people,” warns Ernie. “We will come down.  But Yavin is not irrelevant, and never will be.”

“I think your new friend won’t prove to be the ally you think,” says Kibi.

*“I have a deeper understanding of these things than you.  Turn back, or come down and face your destruction.”*

Kibi shrugs and turns to his friends. “I guess the local Gods are already mad at us, so what’s the harm in killing their emissary?  Ready?”

He _teleports_ the party down to the cavern floor below the wall, twenty feet in front of the white marble statue. Up close they see it is much larger than they, nearly fifteen feet from its feet to the top of its head. It holds no weapon and presents no obvious threat.

Flicker moves around to the far side of the creature, waiting to strike until Dranko is also in position. He watches it carefully, but it has no eyes to read. He can’t even be sure if he’s looking at its front or back.

A blade extends from the end of one marble arm, a blade coruscating with rainbow hues. The statue shifts toward Flicker with preternatural speed and hacks at him, and though he tries to dodge, the rainbow blade is too quick. Twice it strikes him, and a flash of white light bursts from the last point of impact. Flicker is hurled up and away as if thrown by a giant; the others hear his scream recede into the darkness.

Without turning, she extends her other hand toward the rest of the Company and casts _prismatic spray_.  Morningstar is burned badly by acid, and Kibi is scorched even worse with electricity.  Ernie and Aravis are flung backward into the wall with a pair of painful crunches. Grey Wolf suffers no damage, but is affected as if by _dispel magic_. He loses the effects of both _heroes feast_ and _righteous wraith of the faithful_. 

Only Dranko is unharmed by the statue’s spell, leaping and evading a blast of lightning.

Ernie, gets to his feet and casts _energy drain_ on Ylerba, but the marble statue is immune. 

Ylerba’s speaks into their minds. *“If at any time you would like to surrender, and swear to me that you will abandon your quest, no further harm will come to you.”*

“If at any time you’d like to stop serving evil,” says Ernie, “that would be fine too.”

Aravis stands up, dusts himself off, and drops a _Mordenkainen’s disjunction_ on Ylerba. There is a ripple of power from the spell, and the statue is engulfed in darkness as the motes around her are annihilated  (though the Company can still see her thanks to Aravis’s _mass darkvision_). Morningstar casts _mass heal_, then quickens _divine power_ before moving into melee range with Dranko.  Dranko takes a crack with his whip, and his attack knocks a tiny chip of marble from Ylerba’s shoulder.

“That was most unwise,” Ylerba admonishes. 

Kibi summons up an Elder Earth Elemental to keep Ylerba occupied.  Ylerba slashes at it as it grapples her, but the huge elemental grabs Ylerba is a huge stony fist and holds her up.

“I am honored to serve, and to sacrifice myself for you,” rumbles the elemental.

“And I am honored to fight by your side,” says Kibi.

Ylerba, whose arms are still free, slashes three times at the elemental holding her, knocking loose bits of its rocky bulk. The sword flashes blue with the last hit, but nothing untoward happens to the elemental. Kibi recognizes that blue is the color of petrification in a _prismatic spray_, and smiles to think how little that would bother an elder earth elemental.

With her other hand Ylerba again flashes the entire party with _prismatic spray_, but the Company fares much better this time around. Morningstar resists petrification and Aravis is immune to its poison thanks to the morning’s _heroes feast_.  Ernie and Grey Wolf suffer only minor damage, and neither Dranko nor Flicker are in the area of the spell.

Flicker appears next to Ernie in a puff of smoke; he looks terrible. “Medic!”  Ernie casts _heal_ on Flicker, then moves himself out of easy cone-formation.

Aravis quickens _true strike_ and strikes Ylerba with _disintegrate_. He expects that it will resist, but luck is with him. The beam punches a hole right through where a normal humanoid’s kidney would be, though he can see now that Ylerba is solid marble all the way through.

Morningstar stands tall before the statue and hacks at it with _Ell’s Will_, striking its legs which dangle below the elemental’s enclosing fist.  Where it connects, cracks appear in the marble of Ylerba’s body like lines in a broken windowpane. 

“I am Morningstar, Champion of Ell,” she intones. “I am instructed by my Goddess to defeat your ally. You may stand aside, or _you_ will be destroyed.”

*“Your God is absent,”* says Ylerba. *“My God is extremely present.  In some sense, you are looking at Her now.  I will not stand aside, Morningstar, Champion of Ell. But I will continue to extend my offer that you may surrender.”*

Ylerba finishes smashing the elemental into rubble and floats free, shrugging off attacks as it positions itself for another _prismatic spray_.  Lights flash.  Kibi takes massive electrical damage, while Ernie is flung backward and smashed into the ground a hundred feet away.  But both Grey Wolf and Dranko resist being driven insane, Aravis is not poisoned, and Morningstar is not petrified. Flicker leaps out of harm’s way entirely.

Dranko makes another whip-strike and knocks free another small chunk of marble. Kibi strikes Ylerba with _ray of enfeeblement_ but his spell is thwarted by her resistance. Grey Wolf summons an enormous wolf, providing another speed bump.

Ernie activates his armor and flies back to the battle (a safe maneuver, now that the gravity-manipulating Scuttle have fled). He casts _lion’s roar_, bolstering the courage of his allies and knocking the top of one ear from Ylerba’s increasingly-damaged body. Aravis casts _polymorph any object_ but Ylerba is not affected.

“Dranko!” thinks Kibi over the mind-link.  “I’m going to cast _cone of cold_ but you’re in the way.”

“Don’t worry,” replies Dranko. “I’ll dodge it.”

“Those will be your last words,” says Grey Wolf.

“No,” says Dranko. “That’ll be something like ‘ouch!’”

Kibi casts his spell maximized, and Dranko does manage to evade the damage. Frost coats Ylerba’s white marble, and the pinky of one hand snaps off.  Grey Wolf follows up with an _acid orb_ that leaves her skin steaming and pitted with holes. 

“You can surrender any time, if you want,” says Dranko.

Morningstar again charges Ylerba, and knocks away a fist-sized chunk of the statue’s shoulder. Ylerba floats away from her and blasts yet another _prismatic spray_.  Morningstar is flung up and away, smashing into the base of the city wall. Aravis takes a massive amount of electricity damage.  And Kibi is turned to stone on the spot.  But the others all resist the spell’s various effects, and this is the final discouraging straw for Ylerba. She flees into the darkness, back in the direction from which she arrived, accompanied by loud clucking noises from Dranko.

Ernie lines up his shot, and drops a _flame strike_ on Ylerba. The Champion of Wlaqua stops as the column of flames roars down upon her. Has she decided to return and press the attack?  

No. Her marble body collapses into a hundred different pieces, clattering to the stone ground.


/*/


Kibi feels quite comfortable.  Ylerba’s spell has merely changed him from one natural form to another.  True, he can’t move, and he feels his consciousness slowly fading, but there is something _right_ about him being made of nothing but pure rock.

*“I AM ABERNIA”*

The world is speaking to him. He recognizes its voice from his dreams.

“What can I do to help you?” he offers. “I’ve been dreaming that you are in pain, from a thorn in your side.”

*“IT IS TRUE. I NEED YOUR HELP.”*

“Is our quest going to help you?”

*“IT IS THE ONLY THING THAT CAN. I AM INJURED. I AM FESTERING INSIDE.”*

“The black goo?”

*“THE SOURCE OF ALL ESSENCE. THE ADVERSARY AWAKENS WITHIN ME. DO NOT ALLOW IT. IT MUST BE YOU WHO BREAKS ITS SHELL.  THE SPLINTER… THE SPLINTER…”*

And the voice fades.


…to be continued…


----------



## Piratecat

Sagiro, did I miss part of this fight? I think I did. 

And I am so glad I made clucking noises as Ylerba fled.


----------



## Zelc

Well, we now know who has to take the shell and rend.  We know who has the thing in his head.  We're still not quite sure who channels what makes dead.  The last one is also still unknown -- I'm not sure we've even met that one.



> One at last, but not yet known.
> One forever dead as stone.
> One to drive the spike clean through.
> One to die, and hope renew.




(I still think this might be Cranchus, but that might contradict the "not yet known")

Sagiro, was there a reason why Corilayna had to sacrifice herself so Laramon could take over as the god of luck?  I understand the charm's effect on the leaping circle, but why couldn't Corilayna have done something for that?


----------



## Sagiro

Piratecat said:


> Sagiro, did I miss part of this fight? I think I did.
> 
> And I am so glad I made clucking noises as Ylerba fled.




You missed the first 90% of the fight, but we finished it up in a second run for which you were present.  You made the clucking noises yourself!


----------



## Sagiro

Zelc said:


> Sagiro, was there a reason why Corilayna had to sacrifice herself so Laramon could take over as the god of luck?  I understand the charm's effect on the leaping circle, but why couldn't Corilayna have done something for that?




All of those questions will be answered, but not yet!


----------



## Chronikoce

Woo an update! I would be having serious withdrawals but I stumbled across Spyscribe's Halmae story hour and have been reading through the PDF's done by StevenAC. Between you two I am inspired to start taking better notes of the sessions I DM on the off chance I ever decide to try writing it all up.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 379*_
*Rock Star*

Dranko retrieves one of the fragments of Ylerba’s head as a souvenir, but there’s nothing else to loot unless one wants to start a collection of Scuttle chitin. The Drevin on the walls let out a whoop and cheer.

Kibi is soon restored from his petrified state via _break enchantment_ and he shares the dire warnings that the earth spoke.

“You talked to the _planet_?”  asks Grey Wolf.

“Well, _it_ talked to _me_, but yeah, I guess you could say I chatted with Abernia.”  Kibi can’t keep a smug look from his face.

“You are such a name-dropper!” says Dranko.

Some of the Drevin throw rope ladders over the wall and come to the cavern floor, collecting the remaining bits of Ylerba.  Ernie thinks they shouldn’t be so overtly gleeful about the demise of a Goddess’s avatar, but Aravis disagrees. “Wlaqua has declared war on Yavin,” he says. “It’s good for the Drevin to pick a side.”

The Drevin invite the Company to stay as long as they wish, and insist that they take part in a celebratory victory feast that evening.  Tired and spent, the party happily agrees.  The Drevin crowd around them, paying particular attention to Kibi, the “Dwarb” from the surface.

Dranko sniffs.  “Maybe someday we’ll find a race of ‘half-erks’ down here, and they’ll want to hang around _me_.”

Flicker grins. “I doubt it. They won’t know who you are.”

Dranko glares. “I hate you so very, very much.”

“Don’t feel badly,” says Aravis. “I’m happy to hang around with you.”


/*/


The Drevin don’t have a formal clergy, but Gehentas introduces the Company to a cleric named Folant at the celebration feast. Dozens of Drevin are packed into a low-ceilinged banquet hall, drinking, laughing and gorging themselves.

Folant, like all the Drevin, recognize that the Sister Gods, Yavin and Wlaqua, are the most powerful beings in the world, but he doesn’t hold them in quite the same regard as surface dwellers do with their Gods.  He refers to Wlaqua as the “White Witch,” and that’s when he’s being polite.

Someone has set the largest chunk of Ylerba as a centerpiece. Folant gestures to it. “So what did you do to get _that_ thing on your bad side?”

“Wlaqua has allied herself with our enemy,” says Aravis.

Folant tugs his beard. “Huh. She’s a God. I’d expect that other beings would ally with _her_.”

Morningstar gives a short laugh. “Our enemy is a ‘destroy the world’ type enemy.”

“Literally,” adds Dranko. “Like killing every being on the planet and starting over.”

“Huh,” says Folant again. “You’d think the Sisters would put aside their differences and try to put a stop to that.”

“The Adversary is violent, like Wlaqua,” says Morningstar. “And has a very corrupting power.”

Most of the Drevin are drawn to Kibi, and want to hear about how his devastating _earthquakes_ laid waste to the Scuttle, but all of the Company are treated as celebrities. Only Dranko is left mostly alone; his abdication of fame to the Cleaners seems to extend even into the Underdark.  He broods a bit, hanging on to the edge of conversations, but perks up when cigars are passed around. He pulls out a Blacktallow, lights it on Ernie’s armor, and blows out a stream of smoke.

It forms into words that everyone can see.  _One more before she comes herself._ His table grows quiet as Dranko explains how his cigars sometimes produce prophecy. Everyone is thinking the same thing.  Wlaqua will send one more avatar to stop the Company’s quest, and if it fails, Wlaqua Herself will make an appearance. It’s a disturbing notion.  

One of the Drevin looks sidelong at Dranko. “Er, is there any chance you could, uh, move onward with your quest before that happens?”

The Company assures the collected Drevin that yes, they won’t be staying long enough for an eventual showdown with Wlaqua to occur in Drevin territory. This restores the feast to its previous levels of merriment, and the party continues uninterrupted for another hour or more. The Drevin tell Kibi about the ancient stone tablets that speak of Dwarbs and the surface world; Kibi talks in hushed tones of the horrors of oceans (“like subterranean lakes that take weeks to cross!”); and Morningstar uses an Ellish power to show them what the night sky looks like, the demonstration of which causing some Drevin to stare in amazement, and others to run fleeing in terror from the feast hall.

In the center of the table at which the Company is seated, a being appears, pop, and falls into a large pudding.  It sits up, splutters, and shakes itself off.  It’s one of the militant kobold-ish creatures from the Dreamscape.  A Keffet! 

The Drevin have weapons out in seconds, pointed at the confused-looking creature.  Morningstar motions them not to attack; unlike every other Keffet they’ve seen this one isn’t armed, and it has a manic look in its eyes.

“Are you looking for me?” asks Morningstar.

“And are you insane, or asleep?” adds Dranko.

“I’m awake… mostly,” says the Keffet.  The Drevin look at it without comprehension, but the Company can understand it, thanks to the translator beads.

The creature looks at Morningstar.  “Yes, I’m awake! My name is Checkle. It’s nice to see you in the… the waking sleep?  Or the sleeping world?  I… I can’t tell… anymore.”

“This is the waking world,” Morningstar assures him.

“For you, yes!” Checkle agrees. “But  I have fallen asleep at last, and woken up here.  I’m trying hard not to fall asleep again.”

“Do you need help?” asks Morningstar.

“No, not yet, but you need mine!  Or you will.  Soon.  I think.  Does it work that way in dreams, when you can’t tell?”

“You are one crazy little monkey,” says Dranko.

“No! I’m a Keffet!  You’ll need my help.  And I’ll make you a bargain, because I will be awake and you will be asleep, but you will be awake and I will be asleep. Then we all will be awake and they will all be asleep.  Don’t you see?”

Morningstar doesn’t see, but nods politely. “Interesting.  I’ll have to think on that.”

“I think I’m waking up!” says Checkle in a panic. “No!  I have to stay asleep! No, I have to stay awake!  What’s the difference?  Will you tell me the difference?”  He looks pleadingly at Morningstar.

“They are both states of mind,” says Morningstar calmly.

“But they’re the _same_.”

“Not really,” says Dranko.

Checkle gives Dranko a sly look. “No?  I _am_ awake, but soon I will fall back asleep.  But when I wake again, I will give you something that you need, and you will do something for me.  For all of us!  Then we will all be asleep, and _all be awake_. Or maybe the other way around. And then it will all be over.” 

“Uh, very well,” says Morningstar, unsure of the point of all this.

“Because you will want to fly!” says Checkle. “Though the rock, I mean.  And I’m almost there. I’ve almost learned it all. And when I do, I will have what you want , and then you can give me what I want, what we all want. You will fly through the rock.”  

Now _that_ is intriguing. “To reach the surface, or the core?” she asks.

“The what?  What was that first one?  I don’t know that one.  It must be the other one.”

“And what do _you_ want?” asks Dranko.

“An end to it all!  And victory!”  

“For whom?” asks Morningstar. 

“For us!  For the Keffet!  Wait.  I’m waking asleep.  Or am I falling awake?  I am…”

Checkle vanishes, and after a heartbeat pause the Drevin all start babbling, demanding to know what that exchange had been about, and what sort of creature Checkle was.  Morningstar takes a few minutes to explain about Ava Dormo and the Keffet civilization that’s taken up residence there.

“Are they all batsh*t crazy?” asks Gehentas.

“No, but they’re at war.”

Once the excitement from Checkle’s unexpected visit has died down, the party turns the conversation to their pursuit of the Evil Trio.  It turns out that Seven Dark Words and his friends _had_ appeared in Kehentohantas several months earlier, and had fled over the wall before anyone could stop or challenge them.  They were headed toward the back of the buffer cavern which this morning had been swarming with Scuttle.

Morningstar explains the Leaping Circles to the Drevin, and while most of the dwarfish people aren’t familiar with them, one fellow with a long beard pipes up.  “I heard of ‘em!” he says. “One of the Myconids told me ‘bout ‘em once. Said there were magic circles here and there, that let people travel all around in the world in an instant.”

He doesn't have specific knowledge of Leaping Circle 5, but the party has coordinates from the Mehar scholar Corriv. 

“0.7 miles anti-coreward, 6 miles lateral, 37% east 63% north,” says Aravis.  He explains that as best he can to the Drevin, who figure that’s on the far side of Scuttle territory.

“We’ll just have to…” begins Dranko, when a little ball of orange flame appears hovering over the table, not far from where Checkle had appeared.

“Oh, Hello!” says Dranko. “We see you!  Can you hear me?”

The Drevin are starting to take this sort of thing in stride; they watch, calmly.

“Someone’s trying to contact us,” Dranko explains. “We don’t know if they’re trying to kill us or not.”

Unlike the previous time the ball of flame appeared, no voices emerge from it, and it’s short lived, guttering a bit like someone was pouring water over it. It winks out in less than ten seconds.


/*/


The party spends the night in a _Mordenkainen’s Mansion_.  (And many of the Drevin come in for a tour, amazed at the spacious rooms and the table heaped with exotic surface food.  One enterprising Drevin takes a bite from an apple, warns his fellows off of them by loudly proclaiming it disgusting, and is caught a short while later piling them into his shirt.)  The next morning the Company makes final preparations for departure.  The Drevin give them plenty of fresh supplies, and hundreds of them stand on the Wall to see them off.

“Stop back after saving the world,” says Gehentas, speaking gravely to Kibi. Kibi bows low to his hosts, and then the party is off, flying on their _phantom steeds_ toward the far side of the great cavern.  The Scuttle have not come back to clear their dead, and the ground below them is still littered with bodies crushed and burned, and the shattered remnants of siege towers.  

In a few minutes they reach the back wall of the cavern, and find it riddled with dozens, no, hundreds of holes.  Each is the mouth of a tunnel, just wide enough for a Scuttle to pass, and the tunnels worm their way off into the darkness.  Meledien & Co. must have traveled through one of them, but which one? Flicker reluctantly crawls into a few closest to ground level; each spirals away in a different direction.

Morningstar peers into one.  “How are we going to fight Wlaqua?” she asks nervously. 

“Same way we fight everything else,” says Dranko.

Morningstar thinks she might learn something from some _thought captures_, but only picks up the vague and alien thoughts of the Scuttle. She senses from these thoughts that the scorpions were being driven to wage war, driven against their will.

“Should we just pick one at random?” asks Flicker.

“No,” says Kibi.  “I have an idea.”

He casts _stone tell_, and approaches the stone around the mouth of the closest tunnel opening.

“Hello, Kibilhathur,” says the stone.

“You know my name.”

“All the stones know your name.”

“Even down here? I’m a long way from home.  I am trying to save Abernia, and we need to find our enemies, who are trying to destroy it. They went through one of these tunnels, but we don’t know which one.”

“Ah,” says the stone. “You are asking about creatures more like you, and less like the large insects?”

“Yes!  Have you seen them?”

“No. But there are many stones here.  Was it you?”

This last question is not directed at Kibi, but at some of the rocks in the wall farther up.

“No!” comes the voice of a different section stone, from higher up on the wall.  “Was it you?”

Twenty or thirty lugubrious stony voices call out from around the various tunnel mouths, each repeating the question to the nearby rock.  Kibi grins at the sound.  They’re so helpful!

“I think it was me!” calls the stone from near one of the highest tunnels.  “Were there three of them?”

Kibi flies his Phantom Steed up to where the stone had spoken.

“Hello, Kibilhathur.  I saw the three you’re looking for.  But they were in an awful, awful state, like they hardly existed!”

“Oh, were they misty?” 

“Yes.  I don’t know how they survived!  But they traveled this way, a long way, out of the range of my consciousness.  I don’t know where the tunnel ends.”

“Thank you!” says Kibi.

“I’m very happy to have been of service.”

“I’m going to have to go misty too, to follow them.”

The stone is horrified.  “No! Kibilhathur, don’t!  Is there no other way?  I wouldn’t do it.”

“Neither would I” shouts a nearby piece of granite jutting from the wall.  “Me neither!” cries another.

But the Company has little choice.  Ernie casts _wind walk_, they leave their _phantom steeds_ behind , and into the tunnel they go.  It’s slow going; the serpentine nature of the tunnel precludes the “fast travel” mode of the spell.  Hours go by. There are no signs of living Scuttle, but here and there are little sections of snapped-off chitin, and the insect smell is dismayingly strong.

Eventually the tunnel opens into a large cave, though one not nearly so large as the Drevin buffer cavern.  Only six smaller tunnels exit from this one, and of these, only one is headed in the right direction.  With no better options, they take it, enduring several more hours of slow, misty, claustrophobic creeping.  Though the smell only gets worse, there are no sounds of Scuttle.  It’s eerily quiet.

After nearly a day of this gaseous travel, the party pours out the end of the tunnel and into another enormous cavern, this one nearly as big as the one in which they fought the Scuttle.  The ceiling is barely in sight, and like the walls, is riddled with holes. There are hundreds of Scuttle-sized tunnels leading out of the cavern, and it occurs to each member of the Company that this is a pretty obvious place for an ambush.

“Better here than in the tunnels, though,” says Aravis.

The cavern has one significant curiosity: a collection of siege towers, maybe eight or nine, in various stages of construction.  Boulders are piled up next to them. At first this is a head-scratcher, as none of the machines would come close to fitting through the tunnels.  But as the party wafts slowly out to investigate, they see that each engine is of a different design, and that the more primitive ones are more incompletely built.  The only fully intact catapult is identical to the model the Scuttle were using to assault Kehentohantas. 

“It’s a catapult laboratory,” says Grey Wolf. 

Kibi looks around nervously.  At least, if this _is_ a Scuttle ambush, they’ll hear the clattering of scorpion feet well in advance. The smell is musty and foul, like the inside of a cage of snakes. The only sounds are those of their own footsteps, their own breath.

“I guess it’s not an ambush,” says Flicker.

He’s wrong. It’s an ambush. 

Mostly from the ceiling, but somewhat from the holes high on the walls, comes… something strange.  They look like thin blankets, some three feet on a side, flapping in an unseen wind as though loosed from a drying line. They make no sound as they emerge, but as they get closer the noise of their fluttering grows louder. They easily number in the hundreds. 

Each one is glowing aquamarine, and heading in a mostly straight line for Dranko.

“See?” says Kibi to Dranko.  “You get attention too!”

…to be continued…


----------



## Piratecat

Oh, lord. This fight. THIS FIGHT. 

This terrible, terrible fight.

I wonder if it's as messy as I remember it being?


----------



## coyote6

Swarms of cloakers?


----------



## jmucchiello

Did the Drevin read the smoke from Dranko's cigar or did they react only after he read it aloud? What language is the pipe smoke written in?


----------



## Sagiro

jmucchiello said:


> Did the Drevin read the smoke from Dranko's cigar or did they react only after he read it aloud? What language is the pipe smoke written in?




The party had to translate for the Drevin, since the smoke writes itself in common.


----------



## Eridanis

Now that I'm commuting on the train again, it's well past time to catch up on this SH. Thanks heaven for StevenAC's pdfs... Time to start from the beginning, methinks!


----------



## Quartz

More!


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 380*_
*The Thousandfold*

The Company has a few seconds to react before the swarm of flapping aquamarine sheets  -- a legendary creature called the Thousandfold – will reach Dranko, and they make the most of them.  Dranko himself tosses out the _Lucent Tower_ and activates it, though it will be a full round before it finishes unfolding.  Ernie casts a mass buff spell of his own design (_mass doughy folk_ that gives everyone a morale bonus to AC and saves).  Grey Wolf casts _indomitability_ on Dranko as a precautionary measure. Flicker prepares the _flask of body pouring_ for Dranko, just in case.

The other three unleash destruction. It’s as target-rich an environment as the party has ever seen; the air above them is filled with hundreds upon hundreds of living blankets, making the sound of the world’s largest flock of pigeons.  Kibi fires off a _prismatic spray_ into the air, and about ten sheets turn to stone and plummet out of the sky. More are turned to ash from flame or electricity. Then he turns his body and quickens _cone of cold_ up into a different sector, and a few dozen sheets are flash-frozen, dropping to the stone floor with their edges curled and rimed with blue-white crystals.

Morningstar fills the air with the roaring black flames of a _firestorm_, roasting dozens more.  Aravis follows Kibi’s lead, casting his own _prismatic spray_ followed by a quickened _cone of cold_ that goes off as the closest sheets are almost near enough to touch. 

And then the swarm, diminished but still filling the air in every direction, converges on Dranko. In an instant he’s wrapped up by dozens of the sheets, plastering themselves over him.  Within a second there is no part of him visible; he’s an aquamarine sort-of-human shaped mannequin. Dranko feels stinging pains all over his body, like little sharp shocks of electricity. Each one leaves him weakened in a way he has not felt before. 

The damage he takes is enormous, but fortunately he’s extremely hard to kill.  The others can hear him over the _telepathic bond_.  “Not good! They’re sucking the life out of me!”

The remaining hundreds are still flapping around Dranko in a frenzy, a flock of deadly creatures waiting for their turn to enfold their pray.  They buffet the others as an incidental consequence of their frenzied proximity, but they do not attack anyone but Dranko.  Dranko himself can’t see, is bewildered and in terrible pain, and has been knocked to the ground. Over the mind link the Company forms a desperate plan.

The _Lucent Tower_ finishes its unfolding, and thank the Gods, Dranko’s muffled voice and panicked intent are enough to open its door.  Morningstar dashes inside and casts _prismatic sphere_, which takes up about two-thirds of the tower’s interior. Flicker and Grey Wolf wrestle Dranko to his feet, and he stumbles into the tower… and right through the curving wall of Morningstar’s shimmering sphere.  He can see its brightness even through his closed eyelids and the dozen or more horrible creatures draped over his head.

Almost every blanket attached to him is peeled away, destroyed by fire, electricity, or other magical energies. A few still cling, mostly around his head. He activates his _helm of brilliance_ and fires off a _prismatic spray_ straight up, and this clears off all but one of attacking sheets. The only one left is wrapped around his thigh; it delivers a relatively small “sting,” then turns gray and falls off, dead. Its withered husk vanishes.  Now that Morningstar can see her husband, she sees that he is much the same gray color.  But whether the blankets ended up protecting him, or his own natural toughness saw him through, he has personally suffered no ill-effects from passing through the _prismatic sphere._

Outside, Ernie casts another _firestorm_, Kibi another _prismatic spray_, and Grey Wolf an _ironstorm_.  Then Kibi and Grey Wolf nip inside the tower, avoiding the nearby hemisphere of colored death.  Dranko orders tower door to close.

Aravis then casts _lightning ring_, and the electricity is drawn into the cloud of iron filings, filling the air with crackling heat. They have killed hundreds of the blankets, and still they swarm, though now the density of blankets, along with the sound of their flapping, has diminished.

It seems for a moment that Dranko is out of the woods.  He’s inside a _prismatic sphere_ which is itself inside a closed _Daern’s Instant Fortress_, while outside his allies are systematically eradicating this strange collective with area-of-effect spells.  But the party has forgotten that the tower has arrow slits up near its ceiling!  The swarming sheets start to pour in through the slits, as surely and quickly as water.  Over a hundred get through before Kibi grabs one of the reconfiguration knobs and seals the tower up.  These hundred come cascading down from  above, but stop short of the top of _prismatic sphere_. It’s clear they sense their prey hiding inside of it. They start to swirl around in an odd formation, that of a tall cylindrical tube spinning rapidly around its long axis, its bottom hovering inches above the top of the _sphere_.

Meanwhile the remaining parts of the Thousandfold, shut out of the tower, form into their own rigid circular shape, spinning around the tower-top. Those inside the _Lucent Tower_ can feel the whole thing shudder.

Ernie, still outside, unleashes yet _another_ firestorm, engulfing the sheets up by the roof.  The flames clear out dozens more, but still there are many, continuing to swirl around like a rigid whirlpool. Morningstar steps out of the _prismatic sphere_ and casts her own second _firestorm_ – the fourth of the battle – and crisps about half of the ones forming the tube above the _sphere_. But the tube maintains its integrity, and then two things happen almost simultaneously.

One of those is that the spinning funnel of the Thousandfold drops down about two feet, and its lower edge _punctures the top of the prismatic sphere_!  Dranko and Morningstar can now look straight up to the tower’s ceiling thirty feet away, through the whirling aquamarine sheets. Somehow the blankets have penetrated Morningstar’s spell, and the topmost of them start to fall away and inward, heading downward through the new ingress. Dranko looks up, eyes wide with fear.

The second thing is that Grey Wolf flies downward into the tube from above.  He has cast _flight of the dragon_ to acquire wings, and lowered himself down inside the wide pipe formed by the bodies of the Thousandfold just as they were breaking through.  Even as the first of the sheets drops to the level of the _prismatic sphere_, Grey Wolf casts _greater fireburst_.  Fire rips through the Thousandfold, incinerating every single remaining sheet inside the tower. Some of their ashes drift down to settle on Dranko and Morningstar’s shoulders, before the _prismatic sphere_ reasserts itself.

Outside the tower, Aravis fires off a couple of ineffective _lightning bolts_ at the circular swarm of Thousandfold spinning around the roof. He follows this up with a _fireball_ that dusts about three dozen, but still over a hundred remain. And those hundred contract their circle, tearing the roof of the _Lucent Tower_ clean off.  Then they pour into the tower, find their prey protected by the _prismatic sphere_, and take up the same narrow-cylinder formation as the previous set. Ernie flies up to the top of the tower and casts _lion’s roar_ down into it, blasting about half the remaining Thousandfold to shreds.  He follows it up with a quickened _flame strike_ (as the Thousandfold, now reduced to something more like the Fiftyfold, have arranged themselves conveniently into the shape of a column). All of the sheets are consumed in Yondalla’s holy fire.  

Grey Wolf is also caught in the flames, but is apt not to complain. And so passes the legendary Thousandfold, killed off by a mere four _firestorms_, four _prismatic sprays_, two _cones of cold_, a _flame strike_, a _prismatic sphere_, an _ironstorm_, a _lightning ring_, a _greater fireburst_, a _fireball_ and a _lion’s roar_. 

The _Lucent Tower_ isn’t permanently damaged; it’s made of a pseudo-illusionary substance that regenerates its ceiling over the next ten minutes.

Dranko, on the other hand, has suffered permanent hit point loss – not much, thanks to the party’s efforts to protect him, but the Thousandfold leeched away a small portion of his vitality.

*>>Dranko lost seven hit points off his maximum, and was lucky to get away with so little!* 

As the last ashes of the Thousandfold scatter and vanish with little puffs of aquamarine light, Kibi feels a surge of Earth Magic coming up from the stone beneath his feet, like he’s standing above of volcano that’s itching to erupt.

“Do you feel that?” he asks the others.

“No… no, wait, yes!” says Flicker. “It feels like my whole body’s been plucked like a guitar string.”

The others feel it too, emanating from the ground like the subsonic vibrations of an earthquake.

“Kibi?” asks Grey Wolf. “Is this a good thing?”

“Of course it’s a good thing!” says the dwarf. 

There is an upwelling of power, and each member of the Company feels as though they stand in a geyser, shaking them, infusing them. Pebbles on the ground rattle and dance. For a full minute this continues, and as it dies down, Kibi hears a voice in his head, the Voice of the World.  

_*Reality will bend for you.*_

And then all is quiet. 

*>>The practical upshot of this was that the Company achieved 21st level.  I didn’t go Full Epic Handbook for this; the benefits were:

-	+1 BAB
-	+1 to all saves
-	1 new Feat
-       Hit points as though they had rolled maximally for their current class
-	Skill points as normal
-	Arcane casters got to add 2 new spells as if they had leveled normally
-	Ernie and Morningstar each added a 6th and a 10th level spell slot, the latter useful for use with Metamagic feats
-	Aravis added a new 10th level spell slot
-	Kibi added a new 8th and 9th level spell slot.

As for the earth’s promise to Kibi, he was granted the ability, three times, to nudge reality, to tweak the state of the world or to “rewind” events in some way.  He was not sure of exactly how this ability would work, but knew that it was similar to wish, and that in order to use it he would have to be in close proximity to all of his companions.
*

Dranko feels a bit better after this outpouring of Earth Magic, but has trouble shaking the horror of being wrapped up in the Thousandfold.  “Someone down here really doesn’t want me using my tentacular power, whatever it is.”

Once more, Kibi uses _stone tell_ to query the local stone about which tunnel the Evil Trio took, and off they go for the final hour before the motes will fade. They leave the Scuttle tunnels behind, and enter a network of natural caves, full of small pools, blind fish, and dripping stalactites. Kibi has an innate sense of their direction and location, and so keeps them on a course toward the promised coordinates of Leaping Circle Five.  Once during this stretch the little ball of orange flame pops up in front of them, but it persists only a second before vanishing.

They sleep in a _magnificent mansion_ that night, and Aravis is granted another vision of the surface.



_King Crunard IV, accompanied by Yale and two stoic bodyguards, strides down a richly-appointed hallway in the palace in Hae Charagan.

“My mind is all but gone,” says Crunard sadly, “and the irony is bitter.  So many years of fighting the Masking, struggling to rule and understand, while ancient magics destroyed my brain bit by bit.  And now that the Masking is ending, and everything should be clear, I don’t have the wit left to absorb what I see and hear.  These moments of clarity I still have are almost through; I have decided to open the Vault of Scrolls while I still remember how.”

“Your Highness,” says Yale, pity showing in her eyes,  “we value every minute that you give us, and honor your sacrifice every day.  The Kingdom has been stronger for your efforts, difficult though they have been.”

“And without you,” says the King, “those days would have been over long ago.  Your wisdom and strength have sustained me for so long.  Ah, here we are.”

Crunard stops before a portrait of a different King – King Daltric II, who ruled Charagan some 350 years earlier.   He pushes inward against the old king’s face, and the entire section of wall swings in effortlessly.   “It’s this way.”

Crunard takes an ever-burning torch from the wall and leads Yale and his bodyguards down a narrow, winding stair.  At the bottom is a door, which he opens using a silver key strung around his neck.

“I was never certain that the Vault of Scrolls was a real place,” Yale admits.  

“It is indeed… and known only to the Kings.  It’s one of the few things I never shared with you, and for that I’m sorry, but by law and custom only the Kings know of it.”

“There are other things?” asks Yale, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, yes, of course,” says Crunard, smirking.   “I’ve also never told you that I can’t stand the smell of that black tea you always drink.   What would have been the point?”

Yale laughs.  The bodyguards manage not to, but barely.  “I’ll have you know, Your Highness,” says Yale archly, “that bitterbark tea is excellent for the constitution.  And being your advisor for so long, Pikon knows I’ve needed it!”

The four of them walk through a long underground passage, lit only by Crunard’s torch.   He’s the first person to have walked this hall in centuries, though for a moment he thinks he catches a whiff of something… odd.   He stops, and peers forward.  

“Sire?”  Yale also looks around, confused.   Besides herself and the King, there are only the two bodyguards, standing alert and silent in their armor.

The King sniffs the air.  “I thought I…  well, no matter.  My mind is apt to play tricks.”

Yale frowns.  “Perhaps we should go back, your Highness.”

“No.  It was nothing.  Let us keep on.”

They walk for another minute before King Crunard speaks again.  “The Vault of Scrolls was created by the first of the Archmagi, a store of powerful spells left for just this sort of emergency.    There are none left who could scribe them, but it is said that they were specially inked such that anyone with the basest knowledge of the arcane can make use of them.   If we are to mount a defense against Naradawk and his agents, we’ll likely need them all.”

“This would be a good time, then,” agrees Yale.  “How many scrolls are in there?”

“I don’t know,” Crunard admits.  “I’ve never been inside.  But look ahead, there’s the door.”

They reach a small iron door, and one more time Crunard uses his silver key.  

“There are enchantments on this door such that only the true King can open it,” he says, turning the key.  “And the Vault itself will annihilate any evil creature who steps across the threshold.  That’s what I was told by my father, and he by his father.   Now, would you like to see what’s inside?”

Crunard pushes open the door, then turns around to see that his two bodyguards are slumped on the ground, unconscious, one on either side of Yale.  

“There’s a problem,” says Yale.

Crunard blinks, confused.  “What…?”

Yale reaches out and grabs Crunard around the face with a huge claw.   The king becomes enveloped in a green glow.

“I’m afraid I have some regrettable news, Your Highness.  Yale was killed almost a year ago and replaced by something else.   Fortunately for me, the Greenhouse has always considered your polite “after you’s” to be a formal invitation.  And your meetings have been so interesting!  A shame your heroes will find everyone dead when they return from the Abyss.  Really, you people should have been more thorough after the battle at Verdshane; all sorts of nasty things slipped through that weren’t subsequently killed in the fighting.  You were so caught up with Naradawk and his dragon!”

Crunard kicks futilely at the scaly monstrosity that, moments ago, was Yale.  His flailing hand reaches for his pocket.

“Don’t bother,” says the creature.  “Your refuge token won’t work.  I’ve got you anchored.   But there’s good news, too.  Wherever the real Yale is now, you get to join her.”

The monster squeezes, and the King’s face crumples like tin.  The thing that was Yale tosses Crunard’s body into the Vault, a small stone room lined with shelves of ancient scrolls.  Then, methodically, it sends fireball after fireball into the room until the Vault blazes like a furnace, papers crackling and falling into ash.   When nothing inside is left intact, the scaly horror throws in the unconscious bodyguards, closes the door with telekinesis, and snaps the silver key off in the lock before teleporting away._

…to be continued…


----------



## Zelc

Sagiro, thanks for the update, but you are such a rat bastard 

P.S.: Please update again soon, you can't leave us hanging with this!!!


----------



## carborundum

I don't know what to say.


----------



## steeldragons

carborundum said:


> I don't know what to say.




I concur. "Wow." is all that comes to my mind...and my mind is usually fairly good with words...It is utterly inadequate for this magnitude of awesomeness but, just, "wow."

One question. So...from the permanent loss of 7 hit points, but then receiving the "wishy earth magic" auto-max for his class(es) which I am assuming was averaged for his Thief and Cleric classes [or is he considered some other special/paragon/epic class now or since his interactions with the Cleaners?] did Dranko actually lose_ any_ hit points?


----------



## Sagiro

steeldragons said:


> I concur. "Wow." is all that comes to my mind...and my mind is usually fairly good with words...It is utterly inadequate for this magnitude of awesomeness but, just, "wow."
> 
> One question. So...from the permanent loss of 7 hit points, but then receiving the "wishy earth magic" auto-max for his class(es) which I am assuming was averaged for his Thief and Cleric classes [or is he considered some other special/paragon/epic class now or since his interactions with the Cleaners?] did Dranko actually lose_ any_ hit points?




I think the result was a net gain of hit points.

Going into that battle, I was guessing Dranko would lose somewhere in the 30-40 HP range (assuming he survived), but I underestimated the party's cleverness; obviously I should have designed the Tenthousandfold instead!


----------



## carborundum

Is there still a thread where you share monster stats, Sagiro? I'm darned curious about the Thousandfold ( and a few other things)


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 381*_
*Leaping Circle Five*

Everyone is disturbed by Aravis’s latest vision.

“Does this mean the bad guys know about the Archmagi having no powers?” asks Morningstar.  They can’t exactly recall the timing of when that revelation was made, but it seems likely.

“And now that… thing… can impersonate the King!” says Ernie.

“On the plus side, Rosetta was right about there being a traitor,” says Dranko.  (Though that is not technically true, it’s not a very meaningful distinction.)

Aravis doesn’t bother to hide his priorities  “And the ancient scrolls are destroyed! I feel badly about the king, but he was on his way out, and there’ll be another king after him. But the scrolls were irreplaceable!”

They note one interesting detail about the vision.  The monster said “A shame your heroes will find everyone dead when they return from the Abyss.”  So, the monster, at least, expects the Company will return to the surface one day.  And the Abyss?  That could be a metaphor for the Underdark, or an indication that the party is destined to wind up in the actual Abyss somehow.  Dranko is terrified by the thought of meeting Tapheon again, even though it carries the implication of escape from beneath Yulan’s Barrier.  “I don’t want to die by being turned into an inside-out fish!” he wails.

They march on in the direction of the next Leaping Circle, but the caves and tunnels don’t cooperate, and eventually Kibi can find no passage that’s heading the way they need to go.

“Time to make a shortcut,” says Aravis.  He casts _shapechange_, turns into a void-mouthed Digger, and starts eating a tunnel in the direction Kibi indicates.  (There’s a bit of worry beforehand; where does the stone go when a Digger eats it? If it gets teleported away somewhere, and that teleportation is prevented by the nature of the Underdark…?  He takes a bite, and the rock goes… somewhere, at least.  Maybe it’s simply annihilated, a possibility Kibi finds quite disturbing. In the future, when they have some time, they should have Aravis eat some specific piece of rock and then cast _discern location_ to see where it went.

Aravis can only move at a slow walking speed while he digs, but the distance is not great, perhaps two miles in a straight line, albeit at an upward angle. For a time the party is quiet, listening to the sound of Aravis tearing a path for them.  Sometime after an hour has passed, Aravis realizes he had tuned out of the party’s _telepathic bond_ for a good thirty seconds, and only regained his focus because Pewter has been batting the side of his head and thinking “Boss, come on, snap out of it!”

Kibi corrects their course; Aravis is coming in low.  After twenty more minutes he breaks into a huge cave, and it’s clear right away they’ve come to the right place. The cave is filled with long-abandoned ruins, old crumbled facades built right into the walls, and in its center is an enormous circle of adamant set into the floor.  The Leaping Circle!

Aravis stops, then starts to dig another tunnel through the floor for no apparent reason.

“Aravis, stop!” Kibi shouts mentally at him.  It takes all of the others shouting into his mind to bring Aravis back.  This time he had zoned out for over five minutes, thinking of nothing but the satisfaction of eating the stone and clearing a path.  

He changes back to human form.  “Perhaps that’s not something I should do for long periods of time.”

The gentle sound of running water sounds from all around, dripping down the walls and into small pools.  Most of the natural stone is blooming with brightly-colored fungus, and the place has a rich, damp, earthy smell.

Unfortunately, that smell is mingled with the rank odor of corpses.  Staked to the walls in twenty different places are dead Lizardman bodies. From the state of their decay, the party estimates they’ve been there at least a month or two.  Each one has a huge incinerated hole where their heart once was.

“I hate them so much!” Ernie shrieks.  “Now they’re just doing this for fun.”

It gets worse. On the ground at the feet of one of them, scrawled in the creatures’ own blood, are the words:  “Morningstar, think here.”

“Soooo much!” says Ernie, in case anyone missed the sentiment the first time.

As a final kick in the teeth, a stone tablet at the north-facing point of the Leaping Circle, a tablet that once held the instructions for activating it, has mostly been pulverized.  Little piles of dust lay around it.

Dranko walks to one of the creatures pinned to the wall.  “You probably don’t have souls anymore, but if you do, I commend them to whatever Gods you worship.  And, uh, sorry about all this.”

Morningstar casts multiple _thought captures_, but none in the place indicated by the blood.  Many come up blank, but she does get three distinct thoughts.

The first is:  “I hope Yavin is wrong.”

The second is:  “Stop!  What are you….augh!”  It’s the thought of someone being killed, and not understanding why.

The third is: “Don’t bother with that; you know they’ll figure out _something_.”  She guesses that’s Meledien, referring to the destruction of the tablet.

So… should Morningstar take the bait, and cast _thought capture_ where the Evil Trio wants?  It’s certainly a trap. There’s a faint aura of magic around the bloody words.

Aravis looks at the area with _greater arcane sight_.  There’s a spell effect there, but something is masking exactly what it is.  He believes it to be a combination of transmutation and necromancy, but not evil _per se_.  Morningstar remembers the Null Shadow trap that was triggered by her casting _thought capture_, and remains highly skeptical.

Ernie is dead-set against it. “What could they possibly have to tell us?  This is either a neener neener, or a trap, or both.  They think our curiosity is so great, we can’t resist, but what could we possibly gain?”

Aravis disagrees.  “I can’t deny, I’m keen to find out.  Maybe they’ll be giving something  away without realizing or intending it.”

Ernie shakes his head, but offers up an idea.  Morningstar could use _miracle_ to spoof a _thought capture_ cast at range, so she could hear the thoughts there without standing on top of the magical trap.  She’s not sure this would work, but decides it’s worth a try.

They buff Morningstar with protective spells first:  _fortune’s fate_ in case she takes physical damage, and _protection from evil_ in case something assaults her mind.  Dranko holds on to _Ell’s Will_ for her while she casts her spell from thirty feet away.

The thought is from Meledien:  _*You’re so predictable, you pathetic Ellish witch.*_ 

Aravis watches the spot intently with his _greater arcane sight_.  The strength of the necromancy and transmutation magics grow a hundredfold, filling the area, and then dissipate.  

“Can we take a moment to think about what we just  learned?” says Ernie, voice a-drip with “I told you so.”

“Sure,” says Aravis. “We learned they can leave _thought capture_ traps.”  He’s staring intently at where the trap went off, mentally sifting through the dispersing magical energies.  “I think I know what it would have done,” he says.  “If Morningstar had been standing there, she’d have been permanently afflicted with a condition that would have caused damaging backlash to her whenever she healed someone.  I’ve never seen anything like it before.  Probably something Seven Dark Words cooked up.”

Dranko takes out a cigar and lights it on Ernie’s armor.  He blows out a stream of smoke that forms into the words “Kibi reigns supreme.”  The dwarf grins.  “Ooh, do it again!”  Dranko obliges, but this time the prophetic smoke spells out “He will send you back.”

Hm. That’s mysterious.  He tries one more time, and gets “Kibi is a genius.”

Dranko looks thoughtful. “Maybe someone will send us back to the surface!  I hope it’s after we finish our quest. That means we have hope!”

“I’ve always had hope,” says Aravis.

“We _have_ to get back,” says Morningstar. “Yoba and Ernie have to get married, and she’ll never forgive him if he doesn’t show up.  She’ll smite us all.”

“And you don’t want to miss a halfling wedding!” says Ernie. 

Dranko gives a lascivious grin and adds, “…and you haven’t been to a bachelor party until you’ve…”

Flicker interrupts, uncharacteristically surly.  “Can we talk about something else, please!”

Dranko gives Flicker a look of mock pity.  “I’m sorry, are you lonely?”

Flicker’s not laughing.  “I’m sorry, did you misunderstand what I asked?”  He looks pointedly at the Leaping Circle. “How about the tablet?  Why don’t we get to work on that?”

“You okay, Flick?” asks Ernie.

“Yes, I’m fine!”

“You don’t sound fine,” says Dranko.

“I’m fine!”  Flicker is practically shouting.  “Stop it!  Argh!”

The others drop it for the time being, and talk does in fact turn to how they’re going to learn the activation ritual now that the Evil Trio have destroyed the instructions.  They decide that some of the deceased lizard-folk may know, and by their robes identify the two who seemed most senior.  Ernie starts with one of these.  The Lizardman priest, despite having had his soul burned out, can still answer the call of _speak with dead_, which uses an imprint left on the body when it was last alive.

“How do you operate the Leaping Circle?” Ernie asks the corpse.

“Cast the ritual on the tablet.”  The dead Lizardman sucks in a raspy mockery of breath.

“Given the tablet is broken,” says Ernie, “what would you do to activate the Leaping Circle?”

“Find someone who had memorized it.”

“Have _you_ memorized it?”

“I could recite some of it.”

“What is the part of the ritual that you know?”

“Stand… equilateral… facing north point…"  The Lizardman starts to recite all the details he can remember, and it’s quite a bit, but not everything.  “That’s all I know,” it finishes.

“What portion of the ritual was that, and where did it fall chronologically?” asks Ernie.

“First part.  More than half, less than three-quarters.”

“Who among you might have known the rest?”

“Gemigiss.  Tall, with prominent eye ridges. The other shaman.”

At Dranko’s urging, Ernie asks a few more questions.

“What would you like done with your remains?”

“Fertilizer. For the fungus gardens.”

“What’s the funniest joke you know.”

“What’s the difference between gray fungus and riven fungus?  Riven fungus hangs upside down all day long!”  The Lizardman wheezes out something like a laugh.

They locate the second shaman and ask the same questions about the ritual.  Gemigiss knows the back half, and explains it in detail, but they’re still missing about a tenth of the ritual, the part right after an 8-hour pause in the middle.  Aravis and Kibi think they could figure out the missing bit themselves, given what they’ve witnessed in the preceding two rituals, and what they now know of this one. 

Morningstar casts a _speak with dead_ on a third Lizardman.

“One of your number hoped that Yavin wasn’t right about something,” she tells it. “Do you know what that was?”

“Yes,” groans the corpse. “Yavin prophesied our deaths.  We would die by the sharp fire, to our enemies’ gain, but we should have faith in the greater arc of time. She told us our souls would also die.”

“Is there anything that can be done for your souls?”

“I don’t know.”

“The woman who wielded the spear that burned out your hearts.  Did she have one arm or two?”

“Two.  One of flesh, one of silver.”

So, Meledien has acquired a prosthesis.

“Thank you,” bows Morningstar.

Dranko gets Flicker roaring drunk and tries to draw the little halfling out, but Flicker refuses to talk about what’s bothering him.  He has unusually solid defenses on the subject of Ernie’s wedding. Dranko assures him that if they get back to the surface, he’ll be so famous, he’ll be fighting off halfling women with a stick.  And if they’re stuck down here, he’s bound to find some cute lizard-folk woman or something.

“Dranko,” slurs Flicker. “You know I love you like a brother, but shut up before I stab you to death.“

“You couldn’t hit me right now.  You’re drunk.”

“I’ll wait ‘til I’m sober, and kill you then.”

The ritual is fairly simple, but long.  It will last for almost three full days – 25 continuous hours casting by three ritualists, then an eight hour pause, then 25 more hours.  Kibi, Grey Wolf and Aravis first have a heated discussion about the details of the missing section.  They agree on almost all of it, but there is some dissent about the somatic component for a particular 20-second stretch. Aravis is certain that component needs two hands; one hand alone would not be capable of the complex gestures necessary.  Kibi, on the other hand, is certain that a second hand would disturb the built-up aetheric substance, and that there must be a one-handed solution.  It’s Grey Wolf who realizes that they are both right in a sense; two of them have to perform that section in perfect mirrored synchronicity, each with one hand only, and standing at least ten feet apart.

Morningstar asks the wizards about failure cases; what if they’re wrong?  There isn’t one answer to that; all sorts of different things could happen, depending on the precise nature of the failure.  Most likely the whole thing would fizzle harmlessly (save for the time lost), but there are worse possibilities. They could be sent somewhere else entirely from their intended destination.  Or they could all be sent to _different_ places.  Even worse, they could be sent to someplace occupied by solid rock and killed instantly.  Similarly, their bodies could be broken apart and the pieces teleported severally to any number of locations.

“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” says Kibi, right before donning his _helmet of water breathing._

The first half of the ritual goes off without a hitch.  The three wizards then go immediately to sleep, having exactly eight hours before the next stage of the procedure must be performed.  They sleep for seven, and Aravis reports he had another dream of the surface from the Crosser’s Maze.

_ Upon the vast fields outside the city of Djaw, armies are massing. Formations of armored soldiers march in crisp rows, reacting to the barked orders of their commanders. Almost a third of them are mounted cavalry. The soldiers’ insignia are varied, as is their armament, but they all move with well-ordered purpose into an enormous square, five hundred feet on a side, marked upon the grass with stone pylons at the corners and ropes upon the ground. Over the course of an hour these regiments shift into place, until almost the entire square is full. Mingled with the warriors are dozens of supply wagons, and here and there are clerics of Kemma, Goddess of the Sun.  

Standing at each corner of the square, and at the center of each edge, are eight figures in wizard garb.  One of these is Five Silent Crow, his golden head in perfect synchronicity with his illusionary body. At some pre-arranged signal, the eight wizards begin to cast a complex spell; their chanting goes on for almost half an hour, while the several thousand soldiers stand silent. Only the occasional whicker from a warhorse intrudes upon the rhythmic intonations of the casters.  

Then, with a whoosh and a pop, every animal and object within the square vanishes at once, as do the wizards themselves._

They are glad of the good news; it seems help is being sent to Charagan from allies in Kivia, to combat the Emperor and his forces.  But will it be enough?

Ernie spends an hour mixing various herbal brews meant to keep the wizards awake and alert by their scents.  During the next phase of the ritual he keeps a close eye on Kibi, Aravis and Grey Wolf, looking for signs of fatigue.  Sure enough, with about an hour remaining, he notices that Aravis’s left arm isn’t going up as high as it had been on some oft-repeated gestures.  He doesn’t want to interrupt, but he slides a jar of an invigorating concoction close to the edge of the circle, and the vapors cause Aravis to perk up.  

At the conclusion of the ritual, they have two minutes before it powers down.  The Company crowds into the center of the Leaping Circle.  Kibi, ever cautious, casts _mass xorn movement_ on the party, and then speaks the final word of the ritual.

They leap.

…to be continued…


----------



## Piratecat

Surviving the thousand-fold was step 1 in "Dranko learns about humility."

I was of mixed mind about the mechanics involved with permanent hit point loss. On one side, it's so far from common that it's virtually unheard of, permanent con loss aside. Nuking Dranko's hit points stabs into the heart of his character. On the other side, Dranko had a high con and better than average rolls, and I enjoy character optimization so long as the character is personality-driven as well. I know that Sagiro was finding it trickier to balance encounters when Dranko's hp and defenses are high; I trust him, and if he thought the game would be more fun with a less durable Dranko, I'm not the one to gainsay him. I did, however, pretty much crap a brick in surprise and post-dated fear when I found out about the permanent loss and what _could_ have happened. 

EDIT: Dranko at 20th level had a 20 con and 202 hp. That's from 5d8, 11d6 and 4d10, which averages out (including max hp for 1st level) to 187. 

I seem to remember offering to lower his hit points or Con voluntarily after the fact, and Sagiro graciously declining.  I may be imagining this. Considering the rest of this campaign, I'm even more grateful in retrospect.


----------



## Quartz

Wow. Just wow.

And 202 HP wasn't that far above average - only 15 HP.


----------



## Everett

You know, the Evil Trio probably had a trigger on their Thought Capture-trap that let them know when it was sprung.  So, they'll now think that Morningstar has been booby-trapped as a healer.  Which the party could use to their advantage.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 382*_
*“What happens if you cast knock on a sphincter?”*

Dranko’s detour into the Far Realms is shorter this time, and his memory of it is sparse – lurking madness, shimmering stars, _things_.  Then that is replaced by a nostril-puckering fume of acid and a stinging prickle on his skin.  He and the others are standing knee deep in some kind of cloudy liquid, in a dark, damp space surrounded by organic looking walls. There are no light motes; the Company can only see because Aravis has been diligently casting _mass darkvision_ every morning.

The water-walking function of Dranko’s _ring of elemental command_ kicks in; he rises to the surface.  Everyone else is starting, slowly, to dissolve. The acrid odor is strong enough to bring tears to their eyes.  Floating in the water with them are hundreds of fish bones, the flesh dissolved from them.  The “roof” above them is glistening, a thick liquid dripping from it. Some forty feet away, in that ceiling, a tunnel leads up and out.  Another tunnel, off in the other direction, snakes away and downward.

“We’re in something’s stomach,” Ernie observes.

Flicker’s eyes grow wide. “Even a Ventifact Colossus wouldn’t have a stomach this big… uh, would it?”

He’s right; a creature with a stomach this size would dwarf one of the Great Sand Turtles from the Mouth of Nahalm.  Dranko shakes his head in disbelief, then uses his ring to cast _control water_, lowering the level of the acid so that his friends are no longer melting.

The room shakes, and there’s a sudden sound like thunder.  A huge slurry-fall comes gushing out of the tunnel above, disgorging a pungent effluvia mixed with rocks, fishbones, clumps of something organic but unidentifiable, and half an old rowboat.  

“Yup,” says Dranko. “We’re in a giant monster.”

On their clothes and skin, a film of something like dust is accreting. Whorls of it are drifting around them, settling on them, pulled in as though each member of the Company is exerting a local gravity.

“We should get out of here,” says Aravis.  Ernie casts _wind walk_ on them, and they float up toward the ceiling tunnel, figuring it’s better to try exiting the monster’s mouth than its nether regions.  As they float, the dust tries to mix in with their airy forms.  It stings.

The tube – which they assume is the esophagus – bends this way and that but goes more or less straight upward, its walls covered with undulating cilia the size of human forearms. Dranko takes the time to resolidify, since he can climb as fast as the others can waft, and now he can spray away the stinging dust with his _decanter of endless water_.  The only trouble comes when something plummets down the shaft toward him – it’s the half-digested body of a huge shark. He squeezes himself into the repulsively slimy wall of the tube as it falls past him.

Wait… it was already half-digested?

“We arrived in its _second_ stomach,” he says.  “There must be another one up there.”

Sure enough, they emerge into second stomach-like chamber, larger than the first, filled knee-deep with sludgy acid.  An extruded fleshy lip prevents the liquid from draining constantly into the lower stomach. This place is full of chum, mostly sharks and other large fish in various stages of digestion. These remains are pushed gently along by cilia poking up from the acid, and when enough stuff is ready to the make the journey, the lip retracts and a gout of material gets flushed.

Then _more_ stuff comes down from yet another tube in the ceiling.  Eight or nine grayish green blobs, roughly man-sized, drop to the floor with loud plopping sounds. They rise up amorphously, and fire off blobs of goo at Dranko, who is the only physically solid member of the Company.  He is entirely enveloped in a thick jelly-like substance.  He feels his flesh start to dissolve, and his muscles freeze up.  His _decanter_ is gummed up and won’t activate.

Dranko fights down a flashback to the time he was similarly paralyzed in the center of a gelatinous cube.

“I can’t move, and I’m being digested,” Dranko thinks to the others over the mind-link. 

Ernie dismisses the _wind walk_ so they can free Dranko.  Grey Wolf quickens a _sound lance_, firing it at Dranko’s gelatinous cocoon.  It bursts in a splattery explosion, and (as a bonus) buffers Dranko from the damage.  Dranko topples onto his side, but doesn’t sink into the acid because he’s still _water walking_.

Grey Wolf follows up with a _chain lightning_, fired into the cluster of huge antibodies.  All are damaged, but none are destroyed. Kibi follows with a maximized _cone of cold_, but the antibodies seem immune to cold. His spell does precipitate a rumbling shake of the entire stomach.  Kibi follows up with a quickened _wall of force_, the placement of which is calculated to give them partial cover from the jelly-blasting blobs.

Dranko reminds the others over the mind-link that even paralyzed he can activate the _prismatic spray_ function of his _helm of brilliance_. The only problem is, he’s lying down with his back to the enemy.  Flicker runs up and flips Dranko around, the half-orc's body rolling slickly on the surface of the acid.  Dranko fires his spell.

Most of the antibodies are struck with beams of either acid or fire, both of which they are immune to. They cannot be sent to another plane, nor can they be poisoned. As such, only two of the things are neutralized, one turned to stone and sinking beneath the  surface, and another blasted to bits by electricity.  Seven still remain.

Ernie activates the flight power of his shield, flies up and out of the acid, and casts a quickened _mass cure moderate wounds_.  Then Aravis finishes the fight with a maximized _chain lightning_ that rips through all seven remaining antibodies.  The threat taken care of, Morningstar wades to Dranko, takes off one of the magic rings he wears, and replaces it with a _ring of freedom of movement._

Ernie recasts _wind walk_ on the party, though Dranko stays solid so he continue spraying the acid-dust off the others before it can do its damage.  Morningstar casts _water breathing_ on everyone, figuring that eventually, if all goes well, they’ll be emerging into a body of water.

Up they waft, though yet another organic tube.  The smell continues to be nearly overpowering, a potent reek of acid and rotting fish.  Sixty feet up, and the tunnel narrows and ends abruptly.  The Company has reached a fleshy ceiling with spiraling creases arranged in an iris. 

“It’s a sphincter,” says Dranko.  He activates his _immovable rod_, perches, and examines the obstruction, prodding and poking it to see if it will open.  It does not.

“On the other side of the sphincter is a magical land of sunshine and honey,” he says.  “No, just kidding, it’s probably seawater.”

“Should we be worried about getting chewed up once we reach its mouth?” asks Flicker, worried.

“I doubt it,” says Ernie. “All the sharks here are whole, just dissolving. This creature probably just swallows its food whole.”

Without warning the sphincter irises open and a powerful gush of liquid, fish and detritus comes blasting downward like a water-cannon.  Dranko just barely manages to hold on to the _immovable rod_, which prevents him from getting knocked back down to the upper stomach, though some large chunk of soggy fungus-wood bruises his shoulder.  The others, in gaseous form, are buffeted downward somewhat but manage to stay in the general vicinity.  After ten seconds of this, the sphincter slams shut, leaving only a gurgling sound beneath them.

“Hmm,” muses Aravis. “What happens if you cast knock on a sphincter?”  He solidifies long enough to try it, but it doesn’t work.  In fact, this proves to be an extremely difficult puzzle to solve. The nature of the Underdark precludes casting _dimension door_ or _teleport_ to any location you cannot currently see.  But while the sphincter is open, the tunnel is filled entirely with liquid, and there’s no line of effect to the far side of it.  And the sheer power of the water blasting downward prevents them from swimming upward during the ten-second windows while the sphincter is open.  

Dranko tries casting a _wall of ice_ in the opening, and manages the split-second timing to get it set, but the sphincter merely seals around it, eventually crushing and dissolving it.  During the next flushing of stuff Dranko is nearly knocked away from the _immovable rod_ by, of all things, a large fungus-wood door that accompanies the fish and seawater.

“I officially hate this place more than Mouth of Nahalm,” he says.

“We’re expected to fight a God,” says Morningstar. “And yet we can’t get out of the stomach of a giant monster.”

The sphincter is opening like clockwork, spiraling open every seventy-one seconds, and staying open for nine.  Dranko is protected from acid, but soon grows weary of  being sprayed with a sludge of dead fish and sundry debris.  The Company wracks their collective brains, wondering how they’ll get past this obstruction.  (They have considered simply hacking their way out, but there is some worry about drawing more of the creature’s natural defenses toward them.)

When the lightbulb goes off, it’s over Aravis’s head.  He explains his plan, and the others agree to try it.

Kibi comes out of gaseous form and clings to the _immovable rod_.  Dranko helps to brace him. With timing that only someone with a superhuman intelligence could muster, Kibi casts a solid-walled _forcecage_ as the sphincter opens, such that half of its interior is below the sphincter and half above.  He gets his spell off just as the blasting inverted geyser smashes him downward. He tumbles, but like Dranko he is saved from a plunge to the stomach by the bottom of the _forcecage_.  

One small difficulty: when the spell went off, almost all of its area was filled with liquid.  As such, the entire company is now encased in a _forcecage_ filled almost completely with acid. Breaths are held. 

The good news is, the sphincter cannot close around the middle of the box of force, and they can swim to the top of the enclosure, which is on the far side of the sphincter.  Partial success! Aravis enacts stage two, casting _rope trick_ in the six-inch sliver of air at the top of the _forcecage_.  One by one they rise up into it, until everyone is safe in the extradimensional pocket space.

Finally, Kibi sticks his head back out into the box of acid, long enough to dismiss the _forcecage_.  Now, when they depart the _rope trick_, they’ll be in the space _above_ the sphincter.  Kibi reports that wherever they are now, it’s (unsurprisingly) underwater.

Dranko wants to scout, but needs to time things so he doesn’t end up getting sucked back down through the sphincter. He ties a long length of thick rope around his waist and dives out. The liquid is still acidic enough to prevent water-breathing, so he holds his breath.

He goes shooting upward through opaque liquid and pops out on its surface some forty feet higher. He’s in a cavernous space, so wide he cannot see any walls, but above him, near the outer range of his _darkvision_, is the ceiling of yet _another_ stomach, with a wide tube snaking away upward.

“How many stomachs does this thing _have?_”

Around him, the surface of the “water” is clogged with remains. Dozens of shark carcasses float with him, bobbing in a surface layer of dead fish, wads of fungus, and shells of giant tortoises.  Dranko thinks he sees a skeletal humanoid leg poking up fifteen feet to his left.  The place stinks like a devil’s bait-house.

The water level drops a bit as far below him the sphincter opens and sucks down a few thousand gallons of flotsam.  Concurrently, a hail of objects comes from above – it’s a hail of sharks, many of which are thrashing in the air. Surprisingly little water comes  with them. 

The sharks are alive! (At least, before the acid kills them.) The Company must be close to escaping.  

Dranko dives and swims back down, returning to the _rope trick_.  “This is the best dungeon ever!  How many places have we ever been where sharks rain from the sky?”

Everyone returns to mist-form, leaves the pocket-dimension, and bubbles up to the latest “surface.”  In the first ten seconds after they emerge, three discrete loads of stuff get dumped in with them.  One consists only of small grey fish, over a thousand of them.  Another is tons of crumbly fungus.  The final looks like a combination of green moss and pebbly rocks.

“It has three mouths?” guesses Morningstar.  “Two land mouths and a sea mouth?”

“Maybe it’s an extradimensional monster?” adds Dranko.

Onward and upward!  They race through one last esophageal tube, and finally, high above them, they can see light motes.  All at once they emerge into the bowl of a two-hundred-yard wide mouth.  Something like a fine-meshed fishing net, thirty yards across, looms over them.  Is it trying to catch them?  No, they can see the net is full of fish of varying sizes.  A fleshy tentacle serves as the handle of the net, a tentacle that snakes off into the darkness where, one presumes, it’s connected to the body somewhere.  The net flips over and dumps tons of fish into the impossibly-wide mouth.

Thirty long tongues slither through the bottom of the mouth, shoveling the masses of fish, fungus, and everything else the nets have scooped, toward dozens of gaping esophagi. More of the organic nets are coming in from every direction, each unloading its cargo of foodstuffs into the world’s largest mouth.

The Company rises high above the Underdark Leviathan, the single largest creature on Abernia, the scourge of the Hidden Sea and all the surrounding regions.  Its head rises from the sea, but its enormous body, which must stretch for miles, is hidden beneath the dark waters.

Dranko can’t help himself.  He comes out of wind-form and activates the _immovable rod_.  Perched there near the ceiling above the Hidden Sea, he calls pen and parchment from his haversack and scribbles out a note.  “Dranko was here.”  He pops the note into a vial and lets it fall into the Leviathan’s mouth.

Now that Kibi is near to the solid stone of the Underdark, he regains his perfect sense of where they are.  They are almost four miles deeper than Leaping Circle Five, but to reach the location of Leaping Circle Nine, they’ll need to go down even further, another four miles, and sixteen miles generally southwest.

Dranko frowns.  “We should have gone out its butt.”

…to be continued…


----------



## carborundum

Yuck-o! That sounded like fun


----------



## Neurotic

> Dranko frowns. “We should have gone out its butt.”




This way, there wouldn't be any problem with stuff coming in preventing them from going out


----------



## Piratecat

carborundum said:


> Yuck-o! That sounded like fun




It was horrifyingly epic. I can't believe we were nearly defeated by a sphincter. SO EMBARRASSING.


----------



## carborundum

Sounds like one of Sagiro's situations where he had NO IDEA how to get out and left it up to you guys.
Forcecage and Rope Trick in the sphincter - genius!


----------



## Solarious

Piratecat said:


> It was horrifyingly epic. I can't believe we were nearly defeated by a sphincter. SO EMBARRASSING.



Hey, don't knock yourselves. You were nearly defeated by the sphincter of unguessable and spatially indeterminate tentacle monster that is at least large enough to be it's own geographical feature. It counts for something.

I would only shame you if the Underdark Leviathan came after the Company looking for Dranko lined in aquamarine light.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro, how many more posts from here 'till the finale?  Around a dozen perhaps?


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> Sagiro, how many more posts from here 'till the finale?  Around a dozen perhaps?




Something in that range, yes.  The run where the Company teleported into the Leviathan was #257, and there were 266 runs altogether.  On average, my posts cover a bit less than one full run, but it varies significantly depending on the length and content of that run, so with nine runs left to write up, a dozen posts is a pretty good guess.


----------



## Piratecat

Sagiro said:


> Something in that range, yes.  The run where the Company teleported into the Leviathan was #257, and there were 266 runs altogether.  On average, my posts cover a bit less than one full run, but it varies significantly depending on the length and content of that run, so with nine runs left to write up, a dozen posts is a pretty good guess.



Oh, great. I'm mourning the impending end of the campaign _again_!


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 383*_
*He Will Send You Back*

They fly south-southwest, and it feels like it could be outdoors.  The ceiling rises up and out of sight, no walls are visible, and beneath them stretches the calm waters of a vast underground ocean.

The motes begin to dim soon after they head away from the Leviathan’s mouth, and as they’re moving at the fast _wind walk_ speed of a mile per minute, it takes less than five minutes before Kibi thinks they’re directly above Leaping Circle Nine.  The trouble, of course, is that directly beneath them is water, and the Leaping Circle is miles beneath the surface.  (And almost certainly below the ocean floor.)

They’re fairly well exhausted after completing the Leaping Ritual and then escaping the innards of the Leviathan, and as the motes are fading anyway, they decide to rest for the night.  Aravis creates the door to a _magnificent mansion_ high above the water.

They stink like fish and acid, so everyone has a bath.  They dine on most of the mansion’s conjured delicacies but leave the fish untouched.  When everyone is full and clean and contented, they go to sleep, intending to solve their navigational problems the next day.

Even in the depths of slumber, Dranko’s senses are keen.  He senses a tiny whisper out of place, a stirring of the air, a presence nearby that is not Morningstar.  Part of his brain, the sleepy part, tells him he’s just on edge, that the _magnificent mansion_ cannot be breached.  But the paranoid part takes control; Dranko rolls off the bed in a smooth motion and he grabs his whip even as he surges to his feet.

There is a woman standing in the room, who is not Morningstar.  She is short, just above five feet tall, wearing scarlet robes and clutching a tall wooden staff.  Small curving horns peek out from her short red hair, and a strange brand or tattoo covers her left cheek.   She is staring at Dranko, tears rolling down her face.

“Uh… hi,” says Dranko.

The woman rushes him, clumsily raising her staff.  “Just die!” she wails. “Dranko, please, why won’t you die?”  She tries to strike him, but he easily sidesteps her inept attacks. 

“Who are you, exactly?” he asks, as the woman flails around.  Morningstar’s eyes are fluttering open.

The woman swings again, missing badly.  “I beg you, please, just die!”

“Look,” says Dranko, still a bit confused. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m really good at not dying.  Should I know who you are?”

Morningstar comes fully awake, senses that Dranko is no immediate danger, and casts _mind read_ on the woman.  It fails.

“I’m not entirely sure you’re real,” Dranko says to the horned woman.  “But if you _are_ real, you’re being really stupid about this.  I’ve been hit with a lot worse things than the end of a stick. Who are you, and why do you want me to die?”

The woman is hysterical, and her tears continue to flow.  

“Want a hankie?” Dranko offers.

This only renews her fury.  She swings wildly again, several times, but Dranko ducks or dodges each one.  Her spirit breaks and she slumps to the ground, weeping.  Her staff clatters beside her.

Morningstar frowns.  “Do you need anyone else to die, or just Dranko?”

The woman answers between sobs.  “Just…  Dranko…  please, I need him to die…”

Morningstar tries to pry out some context. “Are your people in danger?” 

“Is the world in danger?” adds Dranko.

“N…no.  It’s nothing like that.”

“Are _you_ in danger?” asks Dranko.

The woman nods.

“From what?”

“You can’t imagine…” she says, then pauses before continuing in a hoarse whisper.  “He said it would be worse.  Worse than thirteen hundred years impaled on a stake.”

“Did you spend thirteen hundred years impaled on a stake?” asks Dranko.

The woman shudders and nods again.  Truth dawns.

“You’re from Lord Tapheon!” he exclaims. “Gods, I hate that bastard. He’s such a dink!”

“He let me go,” says the woman.  “He sent me to kill you.  He said I _had_ to kill you, even though I atoned.  I atoned!  Centuries ago!”  She looks at Dranko accusingly.  “And yet you are not dead.  He said if I did not kill you, I would return to him and soon I would be begging for my stake.”  

She is panting now, her tenuous sanity slipping.  “I can’t go back there!  I can’t go back, Dranko, I can’t!  So you… have… to die!”

“There’s another option,” says Dranko.  “Morningstar, can you hit her with a dimensional anchor?”

His wife obliges.

“That’s not going to work,” says the woman.  “It’s my soul that will return.”

Dranko considers, then decides he’s going to need more input on this one.  At his behest, Morningstar wakes the others. When everyone is gathered around, staring at the woman like an unusual specimen at a zoo, Dranko speaks again.

“You are woefully  incapable of killing me, and Tapheon must have known that.  I think sending you was just another part of your punishment.  What’s your name?”

“I am Galdifain,” she says. “And you do not understand!  I… was… an assassin.”

Dranko finds this hard to believe.  “Really?”

“I was the greatest assassin of my age. That’s why I ended up where I did. My crimes were countless.”

Dranko guffaws.  “With respect, Galdifain, if you’re a really good assassin, what happened?  ‘Cause I’m still here.”

“I was a summoner.  When Tapheon brought me back, there were… conditions.  I could only take with me what I had when I was dead.  I only had three scrolls, but any one of them should have been able to kill anyone, easily.  A Chichimec!  An Anaxim!  I, Galdifain, tracked and found and bound the Thousandfold, _and you’re not dead_! 

That draws an collective “Oooooooooh,” from the Company.

“Ah,” says Dranko.  “Well, that explains it.”

“Tapheon said your name was a changing thing.  You’ve been Melendiel, you’ve been Brightmirror, you’ve been the Oracle,  but now you are Dranko Brightshield.  Dranko Brightshield. I could not go back and suffer another eternity of that!”

Aravis asks the next obvious question.  “How did Tapheon get you down here?”

Galdifain brings her fingers to the tattoo on her cheek.  “Tapheon granted me the Mark of Pursuit.  I can find you anywhere, Dranko.  I always know where you are, and I can appear as close or far from you as I wish.”

“And how is Tapheon going to get you back?” asks Dranko.

“If I die here, or if he senses I have not succeeded, or have given up, my soul will return to his domain, there to suffer endless torments.”

Dranko feels little pity for the assassin.  “You know that Anaxim you sent?  I pretty much defeated that thing with a magic item I found in my first month of adventuring.” 

Ernie is appalled. “Dranko! The poor woman is suffering.”

“I’m aware of that,” says Dranko dryly. “But she did try to kill us horribly, several times.”

Galdifain regards him with a hungry, haunted look.  “And if succeed, if I kill you, I won’t go back.  He’ll keep your soul instead of mine. He said you were one fish he would never throw back.”

“Yeah, well, he’s a big dork.  We got him out of prison, and this is the thanks we get.”

“What choice did I have?”

Dranko turns to Morningstar, whose eyes have gone wide.

“The smoke,” she whispers.  “The smoke from your cigar.  It said ‘He will send you back.’”

Dranko opens his mouth to speak, says nothing, considers.  

“Huh,” he says at last.  “Well.  Okay.”

“I don’t have very long,” Galdifain presses. “When Tapheon senses I have failed, he will reclaim my soul.  It could happen at any moment.”

“They were good monsters,” says Dranko, trying to sound appreciative.

“It doesn’t matter.  I’m going to suffer forever. I have been impaled on a stake for 800 years, but he has promised me worse.  I have atoned!  I know in my heart I have done wrong.  I feel guilt and regret in such measures I wonder my soul has not burst.  I know I deserve my punishment.  I have apologized to everyone I have ever killed, every child, every man and woman.  A thousand times  I have begged their forgiveness.  And yet, when Tapheon brought me before him, and I told him I could not kill again, that I would not, that I had atoned… he just laughed at me.  He didn’t care for my atonement. He didn’t care.”

“I could shift reality for her,” thinks Kibi over the mind-link.  “I could make it so that her soul was protected.”

Dranko looks at Morningstar.  “We have another choice.  I could return to Tapheon.”  He takes out a cigar and waves it through the air. “He’s going to send me back.”

“That’s a lot to risk on cigar smoke,” says Ernie.

“I have faith in Delioch, and in Cranchus.  Also, I’m worried that if I don’t go, he’ll just send someone else after me.  And, I would really like to flip off Tapheon.” 

He’s becoming more and more certain of this decision by the second.  He lights the cigar on Ernie’s armor and blows out puffs of smoke.  The first three show nothing, but the fourth spells out, once again, “He will send you back.”

“See?”

“We don’t know who ‘he’ is,” says Aravis.  “It could be anyone.  And if Tapheon wants you so badly, _why_ would he send you back?”

Dranko knows at once.  “The thing in my head!  I I have a sneaking suspicion that Tapheon is going to peel me from the inside out…”  

“…and he’s going to get half way down, and decide he doesn’t want it?”  Ernie sounds supremely skeptical.

“Exactly,” says Dranko. “He won’t want anything to do with me.”

The others just stare at him, mostly in disbelief that he’s contemplating this at all.

“Look,” he says.  “here are our options. Option one: we do nothing, Galdifain gets sucked back to Hell, suffers forever, and Tapheon sends another assassin after me.  Option two:  I let her kill me, Tapehon takes me, I’m wrong about all of this, and Kibi alters reality to get me back.  Option three:  like option two, but when I go to Tapheon and he does his song and dance, then glorious things happen, and I get sent back.”

Ernie’s eyebrow practically rises off his face.  “Glorious things?”

“Involving the thing in my head,” says Dranko.

“I have a better idea,” says Ernie, his voice rising.  “What about, we hide Galdifain from Tapheon long enough for us to finish our quest, and _then_ you take this kind of stupid risk.”

But Dranko will not be swayed. “Did you ever feel  like something was just absolutely the right thing to do?”

“Yeeeeah?” answers Ernie, slowly.

“I kind of have that feeling right now.”

“I think it’s a great idea!” says Flicker. “You get to flip Tapheon off!”

Kibi also sides with Dranko.  “I have faith in Cranchus, too.”

“We’re betting Dranko’s life on a smoky pronoun!” Ernie shrieks.

“But if it goes wrong, I can change reality to get him back again,” says Kibi.

Dranko smiles and turns to Morningstar.  “I may not be the best cleric in the world, but I have been true to my God all of these years, and I love Him more than anything… except you.  There’s no power that will be able to keep me there, away from you.”  

“No!”  Ernie stamps his foot.  “Dranko, you’re being selfish!  You want to mock Taphon to his face, so you’re willing to take a stupid risk!  Just… stop it!  Think about the rest of us here, trying to save the world. This is not the time for your personal “I really want to give Taphon the finger one more time” quest.”

“Ernie,  I wouldn’t be considering this if I didn’t know I’d be sent back.”

“You don’t _know_,” says Grey Wolf.  “You don’t know _who_ is going you send you back, or from _where_.”

Dranko turns to Galdifain.  “What happens to you if you kill me, and my soul goes to Tapheon?”

“He forgets about me.  My soul stays with me, and I live out my life here.”

“Ok.  If I let you kill me, are you willing to help us afterward?”

Galdifain raises her hands.  “I am useless. I have no more scrolls. I don’t have my equipment or my laboratory, and I don’t have time.”

“We can fix a lot of those things,” says Dranko. “If she’s willing to help against Meledien and Tarsos and Seven Dark Words, that could be quite valuable.  Galdifain, this is a raw deal for you. We’re on a quest to stop an evil God from coming, and he’ll destroy the world if we fail.  That’s why you’re inconvenient right now.”

Galdifain looks back at him.  “Sorry I didn’t time this better for you.  But… I might be able to do something, if I had the time and resources, and knowledge of creatures who live in this place.”

“How much time would you need?”

“Depends on the circumstances.  I need time.  Time to feel the ambient space, for miles around me.  I need to be taken to where my subject is, so I can perform the rituals that bind the creature into a scroll.  When all of that is done, it is mine, and when I release it, it will kill whomever I name.  Or try to.”

“And we can name Seven Dark Words,” says Aravis. “I doubt they can succeed without him.”

In the end, it’s Kibi’s reality-altering failsafe that sways Aravis and Morningstar.  Ernie and Grey Wolf think it’s utter madness, but they leave it up to Dranko, and the half-orc’s mind is made up.
“I’m sorry, Ernie,” says Dranko.  “I always value your advice.  It matters.  It has always mattered.”

Ernie glowers.  “I’m not resurrecting you.”

Morningstar gives her husband a long kiss. “Whatever happens, I have faith that you are following your path.”

Dranko smiles at her.  “I’ll see you soon.”

He hands Galdifain his knife, and lifts his chin. “It’s your lucky day.”

Eagerly, she slits Dranko’s throat.


/*/


The pain is terrible, and afflicts every nerve.

Dranko is standing on the serrated metal grating that serves as the floor to Lord Tapheon’s throne room.  The evil reek  of the Abyss settles on Dranko like an iron cloak. Memories, terrible ones, come flooding back. 

He cannot move.  He is aware of his own body, but isn’t sure if he has been transported corporeally to the Abyss, or if only his soul has traveled.  He’s not entirely sure how this works.

Lord Tapheon is there, on his metal throne, talking quietly to cadre of demons.  He notices Dranko’s arrival and quickly shoos his servants away.  The Demon Lord is just as Dranko remembers: bronze skin; a smooth face with four symmetrically-placed eyes and no other features; four curved horns rising from his head. 

The Demon’s voice sounds in his mind.  “Ah.  So she finally did the job.  Well done, assassin.”  The voice is deep and commanding, rich with wisdom and malice. “Galdifain, wherever you are, you can stay there as long as you wish.  You are no longer relevant.”

He locks all four eyes on Dranko, and the fiery pain increases.  “Now, I have what I want.  My little fish.”

Dranko cannot move his lips to speak, but he can speak telepathically to this creature.  “That’s what you want?” he says, keeping his own voice level despite his agony.  “I thought for sure it would be some medicine for your hemorrhoids.”

At their last meeting, Tapheon would have been enraged at the insult, but now he only laughs.  “Go ahead, Dranko.  Make all the jokes at my expense that you want. Because after a few centuries of torment, you will have forgotten that you ever had a sense of humor.”

“I know a _lot_ of jokes,” says Dranko.

“You don’t know enough.”

Lord Tapheon rises from his throne and walks towards his catch.  “I have made all the preparations,” he says. “Your stake is prepared. I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t bother sharpening it.”

As he walks, the human tongues on his rod _Despoiler of Flesh_ start to flap and wiggle obscenely. Beneath the fiery pain, Dranko feels a worse sensation, as though his body is starting to pull itself apart.

Tapheon stops a few feet short of Dranko.  “Your mind will invent new ways of measuring pain,” he says, glee seeping into his voice.  “I will enjoy every…”

He stops, and tilts his head. Dranko can feel a wave of sudden discomfiture from Tapheon.

“What…?”

“I’ve brought you a little present,” says Dranko.

Tapheon takes a step back.  “No…”

Dranko could swear all four of the demon’s eyes grow wide.

“Get out!”  Tapheon’s voice is suddenly not so measured.

“Are you sure?  I thought you said you have a stake ready for me.”  

Tapheon takes another step back.  “Dranko Brightshield, I make you the following offer.  Promise that you will never come back here, or attempt to meddle in my affairs in any way, and I will return you to where you were.  Promise me!”

Dranko cannot help himself.  “I’m not quite sure I want to,” he says.  “I think I’d like an apology first.  An apology for turning me inside-out would be good. That’s all I want. Or, I can stay.”

Dranko can feel Tapheon’s rage like the heat from an open furnace. 

“Maybe,” says Tapheon.  “Tell me what it is, specifically, and perhaps I will apologize.”

“Can’t you see for yourself what it is?”

Tapheon takes a tentative step forward, and Dranko feels him prodding at his mind, poking, searching.  Dranko is still paralyzed, which only bothers him because it prevents him from presenting Tapheon with a _digitus impudicus_, but then he realizes he has a solution.

He wills his mind to embrace the madness, and a tentacle pops from his forehead.  Slowly, deliberately, he bends the tip of the tentacle upward in an unmistakable gesture of rudeness.   Tapheon flinches, then peers just a bit deeper into Dranko’s mind…

“I apologize!”  Tapheon’s voice is nearly frantic.  “I apologize for every slight I have visited upon you.  Now agree to my terms and depart!”

Dranko feels his paralysis lift, allowing him a smug smile.  “Your apology is accepted, and I agree to your terms.”


/*/


Dranko is dead. He has been dead for some minutes now. 

His chest rises. A raspy, bubbling breath escapes his lips. Morningstar, who has not left his side, immediately heals him.

“See!” says Kibi.  “My grandfather was right!”

Grey Wolf shakes his head.  “Madness.  I still say this is madness.”

Dranko sits up and embraces his wife.  Then, to Galdifain, he says “You’re free. Do whatever you want. And I got an apology out of him, which was nice.  If you have someone where you want them, never take the first offer.”

Galdifain collapses, sobbing, at Dranko’s feet, while he tells the tale of his visit to Tapheon’s throne room.  

“So,” says Morningstar.  “He wanted so badly for what is in your head to be out of his proximity, he sent you back here after all the trouble he went through to get you.”

And a thought comes to Dranko, a troubling one.  If he dies before he’ s done his job, if he dies with his head still polluted with whatever Far Realms horror has been placed there, Heaven may not accept him either.

…to be continued…


----------



## carborundum

Mother of pancakes, that was just the the best thing ever!


----------



## Everett

I would've sided with Ernie and Grey Wolf.  I didn't understand how Dranko could know that the cigar-smoke referred to Tapheon -- my first thought was that "he will send you back" referred to someone sending all of them back to the surface -- nor, for that matter, do I really get why Tapheon couldn't bear to have creatures from the Far Realms in his presence.  It doesn't bother anyone else; why does it disturb a near-omnipotent demon?


----------



## Piratecat

Everett said:


> I would've sided with Ernie and Grey Wolf.  I didn't understand how Dranko could know that the cigar-smoke referred to Tapheon -- nor, for that matter, do I really get why Tapheon couldn't bear to have creatures from the Far Realms in his presence.  It doesn't bother anyone else; why does it disturb a near-omnipotent demon?




That is a fabulous question. The likely answer is that what's inside Dranko isn't a Far Realms creature. It's some swollen, putrescent nugget of information too horrible to touch with his brain. Even brushing up against it erodes his sanity. The fact that it's too horrible for a demon lord is... _troubling._

And how did I know? I dunno. But I knew it with utter certainty, the same way that I once realized beyond doubt that we were stuck in a city inside a bottle, even if we had no particular proof. I'd have felt pretty stupid if I was wrong, but I was literally willing to bet my character's life on it. Sometimes you have to have faith, in the story and the DM as much as in your character's convictions.

This was, I think, my favorite session (out of so many amazing games) in the entire campaign. Incredibly satisfying, and asking as many questions as it answered. It also brought up some really emotional discussion with the group at the meta-level as to what was appropriate and what wasn't. I value that even more than the game itself.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> That is a fabulous question. The likely answer is that what's inside Dranko isn't a Far Realms creature. It's some swollen, putrescent nugget of information too horrible to touch with his brain. Even brushing up against it erodes his sanity. The fact that it's too horrible for a demon lord is... _troubling._
> 
> This was, I think, my favorite session (out of so many amazing games) in the entire campaign. Incredibly satisfying, and asking as many questions as it answered. It also brought up some really fascinating, emotional discussion with the group at the meta-level as to what was appropriate and what wasn't. I value that even more than the game itself.




Interesting.  Perhaps we need to see, if not that OOC discussion, some facsimile of it in the Story Hour.  Reading this update, I felt that I needed more context the entire time.

Also -- how did this Summoner, who's out of scrolls, get inside an MMM cast by Aravis, an epic-level Wizard?  Forced entry is outside of her forte.


----------



## Piratecat

Everett said:


> Also -- how did this Summoner, who's out of scrolls, get inside an MMM cast by Aravis, an epic-level Wizard?  Forced entry is outside of her forte.




She tells us how, although I missed it at the time: the mark of pursuit on her face.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> That is a fabulous question. The likely answer is that what's inside Dranko isn't a Far Realms creature. It's some swollen, putrescent nugget of information too horrible to touch with his brain. Even brushing up against it erodes his sanity. The fact that it's too horrible for a demon lord is... _troubling._




While that _is_ fascinating, it also begs the question of how and why this infinitely horrible nugget of information never affects Dranko adversely in any way. (I've never seen it erode his sanity somehow in the SH.) The tentacles never manifest unless he wants them to.  I hope the last 11 posts will reveal more about it...


----------



## Piratecat

Everett said:


> While that _is_ fascinating, it also begs the question of how and why this infinitely horrible nugget of information never affects Dranko adversely in any way. (I've never seen it erode his sanity somehow in the SH.) The tentacles never manifest unless he wants them to.  I hope the last 11 posts will reveal more about it...



I think it's just the nature of serial storytelling. I can remember more than a half dozen mentions here in the storyhour of his sanity (wisdom) taking a hit, nearly every time he draws on the power, but there's no reason to remember it unless you were looking for it. 

Mechanically, his wisdom dropped every time he called on its power. Starting at an 13 wisdom or so, one or two uses meant no more clerical spellcasting for a day. I was careful not to use it too often. I guarantee we learn more about it, even if I wish we didn't. But no spoilers from me!


----------



## Kaodi

I must admit I am a bit wary of where all this is going in the home stretch. Twelve sessions does not seem like a lot to cover the remaining ground unless everything sort of happens all at once or something unfortunate happens...


----------



## Sagiro

Kaodi said:


> I must admit I am a bit wary of where all this is going in the home stretch. Twelve sessions does not seem like a lot to cover the remaining ground unless everything sort of happens all at once or something unfortunate happens...




This comment makes me curious.  What remaining ground do you think there is still to cover?  I mean, beyond the obvious "race to stop Seven Dark Words & Co. from causing the Adversary to arrive/wake up/whatever it is they have planned?"


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> This comment makes me curious.  What remaining ground do you think there is still to cover?  I mean, beyond the obvious "race to stop Seven Dark Words & Co. from causing the Adversary to arrive/wake up/whatever it is they have planned?"




Yeah, thanks to the narrative device of Crosser's Maze visions, everything on the surface takes care of itself.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> I think it's just the nature of serial storytelling. I can remember more than a half dozen mentions here in the storyhour of his sanity (wisdom) taking a hit, nearly every time he draws on the power, but there's no reason to remember it unless you were looking for it.
> 
> Mechanically, his wisdom dropped every time he called on its power. Starting at an 13 wisdom or so, one or two uses meant no more clerical spellcasting for a day. I was careful not to use it too often.




Right -- I'm aware that he took a Wisdom hit every time he drew on the power.  That's clear in the SH.

But to have this unspeakable knowledge of... something... in his brain all the time, and for it not to affect him at intervals even if he doesn't draw on Time Stop or the other powers granted by it -- I'd think it would be sort of like having some magical brain disease, unless the Far Realms creatures were extra-careful to package magical bubble-wrap around it inside Dranko's brain.  That's what's bugging me.  I have no idea if the Cleaners put the Horrible Nugget there for a purpose, or if it's just a totally impartial thing on their part due to the nature of the deal that was struck.


----------



## Kaodi

Sagiro said:


> This comment makes me curious.  What remaining ground do you think there is still to cover?  I mean, beyond the obvious "race to stop Seven Dark Words & Co. from causing the Adversary to arrive/wake up/whatever it is they have planned?"




I am not as good at keeping track of all the details as some of the others, so maybe I am just overestimating. I might have mixed up too that catching SDW&Co. was the same as stopping the Adversary. I kind of thought we still had chase + interludes + fight w/ SDW&Co. + fight with Adversary left. And this campaign has not lacked for interludes,  .


----------



## Everett

Kaodi said:


> I am not as good at keeping track of all the details as some of the others, so maybe I am just overestimating. I might have mixed up too that catching SDW&Co. was the same as stopping the Adversary. I kind of thought we still had chase + interludes + fight w/ SDW&Co. + fight with Adversary left. And this campaign has not lacked for interludes,  .




I'm not at all sure that the Company can fight the Adversary, if it comes to that.  They'd have to ascend to Godhood status, wouldn't they?  The finale may be about stopping the Adversary from gaining freedom.


----------



## Kaodi

Well, not necessarily the whole Adversary. But the chunk of him that fell into the earth, or the power contained therein. I mean, it does not necessarily have to be a fight in the usually D&D sense of the term. Just some kind of confrontation separate from that with his servants.


----------



## Enkhidu

Everett said:


> I'm not at all sure that the Company can fight the Adversary, if it comes to that.  They'd have to ascend to Godhood status, wouldn't they?  The finale may be about stopping the Adversary from gaining freedom.




I think it's deeper than that - the thing in Dranko's head may very well be the key here. I think that will happen is that the Adversary will basically "win" and when it does it will tap into Dranko's noggin, whereupon the Cleaners will get the piece of the Adversary that got away in the first place.

I don't expect the bulk of the party to live through it, though.


----------



## Everett

Enkhidu said:


> I think it's deeper than that - the thing in Dranko's head may very well be the key here. I think that will happen is that the Adversary will basically "win" and when it does it will tap into Dranko's noggin, whereupon the Cleaners will get the piece of the Adversary that got away in the first place.
> 
> I don't expect the bulk of the party to live through it, though.




One for what is in his head.
One to channel what makes dead
One to take the shell and rend.


It's eluding me at the moment -- the difficulty of reading a story in serial form, I do envy those who'll read Sagiro's story in the future -- but who is to take the shell and rend?  We've learned that much; it's Kibi, right?

Having as of yet no idea what the Horrible Nugget is, except that it's knowledge of *something*, I guess we could say that the Nugget will reveal something about how to destroy the piece of the Adversary that was left behind ages ago, and then the channeler of "what makes dead" will take the action of destroying it.

But, you know, there's a larger issue here.  Why would the Cleaners care who prevails in an epic battle between good and evil?


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> But, you know, there's a larger issue here.  Why would the Cleaners care who prevails in an epic battle between good and evil?




I'll tell you this for free:  they don't.  But some of them do like making deals with mortals who contact them, and this one gave Dranko the thing-in-his-head, in exchange for Dranko's fame.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> I'll tell you this for free:  they don't.  But some of them do like making deals with mortals who contact them, and this one gave Dranko the thing-in-his-head, in exchange for Dranko's fame.




And the thing-in-his-head will prove crucial... somehow...

Sagiro, pondering the unrevealed twists of your story is very much like waiting for the last two Game of Thrones books.  Though you do update more frequently than Martin does.


----------



## Sagiro

A timely write-up, given some of the recent discussion. 


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 384*_
*The Thing Dranko Becomes*

“What sorts of food do you like?” 

Ernie asks the question of Galdifain, who stares at the mansion’s magical banquet as though she’s never see food before.

“I haven’t eaten in over eight hundred years,” she says quietly.  “It all looks delicious.”

Before bed, the Company reviews the prophecy of the Croaking Oracle.  They think they understand quite a bit of it now.  

_“One brings many, flame’s design”_ seems like it could refer to Galdifain, sent from the Abyss, to bring forth horrible creatures to kill Dranko.  And “…one hates one” certainly sounds like Galdifain’s (or perhaps Tapheon’s) hatred for Dranko.

_“One trip started, one trip done.”_  They’re pretty sure about that one:  they themselves have started the trip downward through the Underdark, while the Evil Trio has finished theirs.

_“Three are bringing, now in place, Three have won the downward race.”_  That would be the Evil Trio again.

_“Seven haste, and roll the dice, Spun by fortune’s sacrifice.”_  The Company numbers seven, and “fortune’s sacrifice,” while unclear, could be related to Morningstar’s magic item, _Laramon’s Jade Clover_. (Laramon is the Kivian God of Luck, counterpart to Corilayna, who the party has surmised fled into the Crosser’s Maze with Drosh.)

_“Four are needed, ‘fore the end. One to take the shell and rend.”_

They’re certain it will be Kibi who will “take the shell and rend.”  Years ago, Kibi had a dream in which the earth itself spoke to him.  It said:  “Kibilhathur Bimson, child of Gela, child of Cranchus.  You are still the Opener.  The splinter has encased itself, I and it crying out together. It must be you who cracks its shell. Bless it with its lover’s kiss, the watcher’s hour come, and together we will cleanse Abernia.”

They believe the splinter is the Hand of the Adversary, and so it seems that Kibi will need to break through some sort of protective shell around it, using the Watcher’s Kiss.

_“One for what is in his head.”_

Certainly a reference to Dranko.

_“One to channel what makes dead.”_

They still have no good guesses about what this refers to.

_“One at last, but not yet known.
One forever dead as stone.
One to drive the spike clean through.
One to die, and hope renew.”_

Nor this, though it sounds like one of them is destined to die.

_“One last journey then to make.
One last prison bar to break.
One last thread of fate to pull.
One last circle to come full.”_

They assume the “prison bar” refers to the prison in which the Adversary is confined, and that the whole verse refers to the end of their quest, one way or another.


/*/


The next morning, with no good leads as to how best reach the next Leaping Circle, Ernie casts _find the path_.  It’s difficult to pick up the proper divinatory threads, and it costs him life-force to cast the spell at all, but Yondalla can answer his prayers even beneath the Iron Barrier. He senses the best way to go, and they go – westward, over the ocean, wind-walking a mile every minute.  Galdifain assents to travel in the _flask of body pouring_, a measure taken largely for her own safety.

“It will be boring,” says Aravis.

“That sounds perfect,” answers Galdifain. 

They reach the western shore of the ocean about twenty minutes later, and concurrently the end of the cavern itself.  Ernie’s spell indicates the leftmost of three similar tunnels bored into the wall, and in they go. It narrows and grows twisty, making it faster to become solid and travel on foot.  The tunnel has no branches, so they keep following it after the _find the path_ runs out.  It’s rough going; this is a natural formation, its uneven meanderings requiring many four-limb scrambles.  The motes grow dim, and they continue on for another hour by  dint of their darkvision, before weariness brings an end to the day’s journey.  Aravis casts another _magnificent mansion_ for them to sleep in.

That night, Dranko dreams.  He is back in the place between Leaping Circles, suspended in a place of madness. There are whispers all around him.  “Dranko… you are failing.  You are failing…”

He turns to see the whisperers, but they are always behind him, like mischievous children darting out of sight.  “You are failing, Dranko.  Failing!”

The _thing_ in his head seems to grow heavy.  It sloshes in his mind like mercury in a bottle being tilted back and forth.  It roils, hot and foul.

Then one voice, louder than the rest, sounds in his ear.  “Dranko, you have failed!”

He snaps out of sleep, covered in sweat.  Morningstar is beside him, sleeping peacefully.  But his relief at waking is short-lived; something still churns in his head… and it is breaking free.  He looks down to see his body receding from his head, then realizes his neck is stretching, his vision graying.  Slimy, sinewy limbs are extruding themselves from his body, even as his head becomes long and narrow, losing its features, until it is nothing but a thick gray tentacle ending in a sharp black spike.

He has Become, and he has become something horrible.  His blackened spike drips with Essence.

Morningstar is bodily shoved out of bed by Dranko’s metamorphosis.  He looks upon his wife, and sees only prey.  The Thing He Has Become has a mind of its own, and it seeks to shove Dranko’s consciousness downward where he can only watch its predations.   The Thing is intelligent, malign, and absurdly powerful.  Dranko’s mind fights desperately against it.  The thing wants to tear Morningstar apart right there, but Dranko manages to nudge its strategy.  It casts _maze_ upon her instead, and she vanishes, cutting off her screams.  But they had gone off long enough for her to have woken the others. No matter. He can kill them too.

He casts _time stop_, and prepares himself.  _Haste_. _Stoneskin_. _Displacement_.  _Shield_.  He knocks the bedroom door free and charges into the common room, just as Flicker arrives from the opposite side.

The little halfling screams.  It’s a pleasing sound.

The others spill into the room, bleary-eyed, having grabbed their equipment and rushed to the sound of danger.  They stop short when they see Dranko in his new body. He sees them cast their meaningless spells:  _mass doughy folk_ from Ernie, _xorn movement_ from Kibi, _shapechange_ from Aravis.

Flicker calls out.  “Dranko, are you okay in there?  Come out so I have someone to flank with!”

Silly little person. He doesn’t understand. No matter.  Soon he will be dead.  Dranko quickens a _disintegrate_ aimed at Flicker, but the old Dranko is still struggling, and the distraction causes the beam to go wide, neatly removing a round section of wall.  

His tentacle-head is stretchy.  He whips it toward Grey Wolf, intending to spear him through the chest, but once more the half-orc Dranko screams in frustration within him, and Grey Wolf is able to dodge.  But that uses up the last of Dranko’s will; the monster he has become takes full control.  He spears again with his black-spiked head, and it pierces Grey Wolf’s side.  He knows that in addition to the searing pain and terrible damage, his enemy’s wisdom has been badly drained.

“When you are dead,” he tells Grey Wolf.  “I will plant Bostock in your body.”

Flicker tumbles and tries to strike him with his dagger, but is fooled by the _displacement_.  Grey Wolf hits him with an _acid orb_, and the acid stings a bit.  He shakes it off like a dog drying itself.  Ernie casts both _bolt of glory_ (which he easily dodges) and _energy drain_ (to which he is immune).  He laughs, a terrible gurgling laugh.  He knows the capabilities of these pathetic mortal creatures.  They cannot best him. 

Against logic, Morningstar appears in the doorway of her room.  She has escaped the _maze_ unexpectedly soon.

“Where’s Dranko?” calls Ernie.

“_That’s_ Dranko,”  answers Morningstar, pointing at him.  “He turned into that, and put me in a _maze._"

He delights in the horror on the faces of his former friends.

Kibi announces that he’s put Dranko into a _forcecage_. How cute.  He sees the others readying spells for when he inevitably escapes, but hardly cares.  What’s the worst they can do?  He gurgles and once more casts _time stop_.  First he casts _dimension door_, arriving near to Grey Wolf.  Of all the enemy’s spells, he knows that Grey Wolf’s _acid orbs_ pose the greatest threat to him, as they bypass his various resistances. Then he places a floor-to-ceiling _wall of force_ that divides the mansion interior into two subsections, one containing himself and Grey Wolf, the other holding everyone else.  Finally he casts _true strike_, then readies a spell.

Time returns to normal, and he casts _disintegrate_.  Annoyingly, Grey Wolf saves, taking only incidental damage.  Morningstar casts some kind of mind-spell that fails.  Flicker charges straight into the _wall of force_. Pathetic.  Grey Wolf casts _xorn movement_ from a scroll and sinks into the ground.  (Aravis always creates his _magnificent mansions_ with a thick stone border around its surface perimeter, for just this sort of emergency, but Dranko knows it won’t help.)

Ernie and Kibi choose to wait out the _wall of force_, but Aravis does not.  He quickens a _teleport_ over to Dranko’s side, then has the gall to cast _Disjunction_ on him.  This not only strips him of his various protections and buffs, but it dispels the _magnificent mansion_ in its entirety. Everyone is ejected into the uneven stone cavern where they had finished the day’s march.  

Before he can kill Aravis, the wizard shapechanges into a xorn and vanishes into the rock.  Dranko can’t blame him.  Hiding is their best option.

Ernie casts _destruction_ on him, which barely scratches his skin.  The little halfling quickens something else, something meant to lower his magical resistance, but of course that fails. Kibi casts his favorite spell – _Otto’s Irresistible Dance_ – and risks getting close enough to touch him.  The spell has no effect; Dranko’s new mind is inviolate.  Kibi quickens a _teleport_ to escape.

Morningstar heals Grey Wolf, but it’s a futile gesture.  Viper-quick, Dranko scuttles over to where Grey Wolf is struggling to his feet after the dissolution of the mansion.  He plunges his head spike twice into Grey Wolf’s chest.  The first hit nearly kills his target.  The second one blasts a hole all the way through Grey Wolf’s torso, leaving a hole as big around as a frying pan. The rim of the hole drips with Essence.  The others gape as Grey Wolf’s dead body slumps to the ground, but Dranko's not finished.  He whips around to face Morningstar, and casts _energy drain_ upon her.  It’s a good one, and he knows that he’s forced her best spells out of her head – her _mass heals_, her _miracles_, her _prismatic sphere_, her _firestorms_.  

The halfling Flicker starts to babble at the sight of Grey Wolf.  “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.”

Aravis pops out of the ground and casts  _reality maelstrom_ behind Dranko, a spell which briefly opens a sucking void that in theory could suck him into and eject him to another plane.  Dranko ignores its childlike tug on his body.

Ernie uses _miracle_ to spoof _bolt of glory_, which Dranko evades entirely.  Ernie then quickens _flame strike_, which damages him a little, but he’s nearly back to full health as it is.  His new body regenerates very quickly.

Dranko can see the despair of inevitable defeat start to settle onto the faces of his former friends, but they’re not ready yet to give up.  Kibi quickens an empowered _earthbolt_ that is maximized by his _Pulse of Abernia_.  By dumb luck it bypasses all of his natural and supernatural defenses, and for the first time since Becoming, Dranko feels significant pain.  Then Kibi summons an elder earth elemental that towers over him, but Dranko is unusually strong; he bats it away as it tries to grapple him.  Finally, Kibi sinks again into the ground.  Coward!

Morningstar tries to _revivify_ the fallen Grey Wolf, but the wound in his chest already festers with Adversary blood.  The spell fails.  Grey Wolf is gone for good.  Dranko gurgles out another hideous laugh and sends a massive _chain lightning_ crackling through the Company.  Then for good measure he drives his head spike into Aravis, severly wounding him and draining away a goodly portion of wisdom.

Flicker activates the _fly_ spell from his armor, and charges at him.  Not smart.  He swats the halfling away, again dealing massive damage and draining away wisdom.  Flicker’s none too wise as it is; the little fellow is lucky to still be conscious.

Aravis casts a spell on him, and everything vanishes.  He’s in a magical labyrinth with shifting walls.  Adorable. Aravis has put him in a  _maze_.  He sees the way out immediately. 

When he emerges, he can see new magical auras on his friends; they were not idle while he was gone.  Morningstar has a protective spell upon her, something from Ernie.  Kibi is surrounded by the protective gray discs of _effulgent epuration_.  Morningstar and Ernie have healed themselves, and Morningstar has moved into a flanking position with Flicker.

They had also readied some spells.  Aravis casts _disintegrate_ on him, but its damage is minimal.  Kibi tries another _earthbolt_, but this one is much weaker than the last.  A fleabite. 

The elemental grabs him in a powerful grip, obliging Dranko to waste time killing it – which he does, easily, plunging his head-spike until the thing goes comatose from wisdom drain.  Then he leaps atop a nearby boulder and unleashes a _prismatic spray_ upon his foes.

Aravis and Kibi take severe damage from acid and electricity, respectively.  Ernie and Morningstar take smaller amounts of damage.  Flicker is lifted bodily in the air and flung backward; his body strikes the stone wall with a sickening crunch.  Another one dead.  The others, he knows, are running out of spells, running out of healing.  He continues to regenerate from the little damage they’ve been able to do.  

Now he senses their despair, a palpable thing.  They know they’ve lost.  He has Become their deaths.


/*/


Dranko is thrashing wildly in his sleep.  Morningstar watches with concern for a few seconds, then decides she should wake her husband from whatever nightmare afflicts him.  She gives him a gentle shake.

He wakes up, screaming.

“Dranko, you look really pale.  Are you okay?”

…to be continued…


----------



## Kaodi

Rat Bastard,  .


----------



## Everett

Hang on just one moment here.

You actually played out Dranko's dream-combat _at the table_?  Like, let them think he was going to slaughter them all and then "whoops, just a dream?"  

Because that's definitely the coolest thing I've ever heard of.


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> Hang on just one moment here.
> 
> You actually played out Dranko's dream-combat _at the table_?  Like, let them think he was going to slaughter them all and then "whoops, just a dream?"
> 
> Because that's definitely the coolest thing I've ever heard of.



It wasn't quite that cool.

We did play out the combat at the table, but I had warned all the _other_ players ahead of time that it was fake.  I trusted them to keep the secret, and play it straight.  They did a great job.

But Piratecat, playing Dranko, thought it was real.  He thought he was really killing the other PC's.  He was pretty... vocal... about it when he learned the truth.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> It wasn't quite that cool.
> 
> We did play out the combat at the table, but I had warned all the _other_ players ahead of time that it was fake.  I trusted them to keep the secret, and play it straight.  They did a great job.
> 
> But Piratecat, playing Dranko, thought it was real.  He thought he was really killing the other PC's.  He was pretty... vocal... about it when he learned the truth.




Ah, that's cool enough.  Did you also make Piratecat do all the rolls and "decide" what he was going to cast and who he was going to spike each round?  Or did you just take control of the Becoming Dranko yourself?

(What's the pluperfect of "Become"?  Becombed?)


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> Ah, that's cool enough.  Did you also make Piratecat do all the rolls and "decide" what he was going to cast and who he was going to spike each round?  Or did you just take control of the Becoming Dranko yourself?
> 
> (What's the pluperfect of "Become"?  Becombed?)




I let Piratecat play the monster straight up.  Handed him the character sheet (a somewhat modified Uvuudaum from the Epic Handbook) and told him to do his best to kill the party.  I trusted that he wouldn't pull his punches, and he didn't.  It was quite a session!


----------



## StevenAC

Wow, the updates are coming thick and fast with the climax of the story rapidly approaching! 

I'm happy to announce that the Collected Story Hour site has now been updated with a second chapter for Part Four, taking the action up to the Company's encounter with the Leviathan.  (There have also been small tweaks to about a dozen of the earlier chapters, to fix little formatting glitches and typos that somehow managed to still be around after all this time...)

I'm loving the twists in the last couple of updates, in particular the revelation of what was behind the epic monsters targetting Dranko, and the ambiguous clue of the cigar smoke ("He will send you back") -- really ingenious stuff.  And I was amused to see Everett's comment...


Everett said:


> I would've sided with Ernie and Grey Wolf.  I didn't understand how Dranko could know that the cigar-smoke referred to Tapheon...



...which was _exactly_ the reaction Piratecat predicted over a year ago:


Piratecat (March 2013) said:


> Everett, in about 20 sessions there's going to be a knock-down, drag-out argument about this very subject. When it occurs, I think we'll preemptively put you on Team Ernie and NOT Team Dranko. No one is going to blame you. And if it makes you feel any better, a different session (not for a while) should be entitled "Dranko Learns a Horrible Lesson About Humility," aka "Sagiro is a Very Large Rat Bastard." Stay tuned.



I, too, would love to hear some more details about the "knock-down, drag-out argument"...


----------



## RangerWickett

I think I love you, Sagiro.


----------



## Solarious

Wow. Rodent of Uncertain Parentage indeed. I guess we don't need to worry about Dranko being killed by aquamarine-glowing epic monsters out to kill him. Now he just has to worry about Becoming.

I'll take a very safe stab in the dark and say that a flurry of divinations to figure out what he'll need to do to... not Become follows.


----------



## Everett

Solarious said:


> Wow. Rodent of Uncertain Parentage indeed. I guess we don't need to worry about Dranko being killed by aquamarine-glowing epic monsters out to kill him. Now he just has to worry about Becoming.
> 
> I'll take a very safe stab in the dark and say that a flurry of divinations to figure out what he'll need to do to... not Become follows.




The Cleaners were clear enough.  He has to avoid "delusions of grandeur."  And the Company's divinations don't work below the surface.


----------



## Everett

StevenAC said:


> And I was amused to see Everett's comment...
> 
> ...which was _exactly_ the reaction Piratecat predicted over a year ago...
> 
> I, too, would love to hear some more details about the "knock-down, drag-out argument"...




Yeah -- I'd been wondering when it would show up.  I guess on first read that argument didn't strike me as knock-down drag-out enough.  When I think knock-down drag-out I think of my ex-girlfriend.


----------



## Quartz

Hmm... I've just been reading the ELH entry for the Uvuudaum. Very nasty, but if Dranko could contrtol what he Becomes, then he'd be a great asset. I noted two things in particular: 'Advancement: As character class' and 'Alignment: *Usually* neutral evil' (bolding mine). A Good Uvuudaum is not beyond the bounds of possibility.


----------



## Everett

Quartz said:


> Hmm... I've just been reading the ELH entry for the Uvuudaum. Very nasty, but if Dranko could contrtol what he Becomes, then he'd be a great asset. I noted two things in particular: 'Advancement: As character class' and 'Alignment: *Usually* neutral evil' (bolding mine). A Good Uvuudaum is not beyond the bounds of possibility.




That was Dranko's dream of what Becoming would be like.  Neither he nor we have any idea what would _really_ happen.  But it would certainly be different.



			
				Sagiro said:
			
		

> “Four are needed, ‘fore the end. One to take the shell and rend.”
> 
> They’re certain it will be Kibi who will “take the shell and rend.” Years ago, Kibi had a dream in which the earth itself spoke to him. It said: “Kibilhathur Bimson, child of Gela, child of Cranchus. You are still the Opener. The splinter has encased itself, I and it crying out together. It must be you who cracks its shell. Bless it with its lover’s kiss, the watcher’s hour come, and together we will cleanse Abernia.”




Maybe the "one" who "loves all" is Abernia itself?  When Kibi removes the splinter, Abernia will return them to the surface in gratitude?  That's possible.


----------



## Everett

Typo.  "seen," not "see."



Sagiro said:


> Ernie asks the question of Galdifain, who stares at the mansion’s magical banquet as though she’s never see food before.


----------



## Quartz

Ooh, I missed this:



> Morningstar tries to revivify the fallen Grey Wolf, but the wound in his chest already festers with Adversary blood.




Adversary blood eh?


----------



## Everett

Everett said:


> That was Dranko's dream of what Becoming would be like.  Neither he nor we have any idea what would _really_ happen.  But it would certainly be different.




How can I be sure of this?  Consider that Good-aligned Uvuudaum-Dranko would solo massacre everyone and anyone the company might come up against while the rest of the party stood around filing their fingernails.  I don't think Sagiro is going to take the challenge out of the campaign's endgame.


----------



## Quartz

Everett said:


> How can I be sure of this?  Consider that Good-aligned Uvuudaum-Dranko would solo massacre everyone and anyone the company might come up against while the rest of the party stood around filing their fingernails.  I don't think Sagiro is going to take the challenge out of the campaign's endgame.




An Uvuudaum of which Dranko was only intermittently in control might well be interesting. Kind of like the final encounter of the Shackled City adventure path.  But the Uvuudaum in the ELH is far worse than CR 27.


----------



## Solarious

Everett said:


> The Cleaners were clear enough.  He has to avoid "delusions of grandeur."  And the Company's divinations don't work below the surface.



What the heck does "delusions of grandeur" mean from something beyond the pale of sanity? And sure the Company's divinations work beyond the barrier; they just require extra effort to reach, and thus burn life force which could otherwise be used to power other abilities they might need in the future. It's a balancing act.


----------



## Everett

Solarious said:


> What the heck does "delusions of grandeur" mean from something beyond the pale of sanity?




Well, they understood mortal desires well enough to trade Dranko's life for his fame in the first place.  So I think we can take them at their word.


----------



## Everett

Quartz said:


> An Uvuudaum of which Dranko was only intermittently in control might well be interesting. Kind of like the final encounter of the Shackled City adventure path.  But the Uvuudaum in the ELH is far worse than CR 27.




The killer is the Wisdom drain, and the fact that it's permanent.  It's pretty much designed to murder anything that's *sentient*, good, evil or otherwise.


----------



## Enkhidu

Solarious said:


> What the heck does "delusions of grandeur" mean from something beyond the pale of sanity?




If Dranko does develop delusions on grandeur, I'm pretty sure that will be grounds for _breaking the deal_, which would be very bad for the whole company.


----------



## Quartz

I'm sure Sagiro has more RBDMness up his sleeve; I know I'm going to enjoy reading about it.


----------



## Quartz

Everett said:


> The killer is the Wisdom drain, and the fact that it's permanent.  It's pretty much designed to murder anything that's *sentient*, good, evil or otherwise.




Yes, and the save DCs are far too high for CR 27 at DC 47.


----------



## Everett

Enkhidu said:


> If Dranko does develop delusions on grandeur, I'm pretty sure that will be grounds for _breaking the deal_, which would be very bad for the whole company.




I think that after the visions he had while they were leaping and the slaughter-happy dream, Dranko has _got the message_.  I don't expect that Dranko will have to Become.  But it's quite clear now that the Nugget of Madness(tm) inside his brain will prove crucial to the endgame.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 385*_
*Psychoanalysis*

Dranko spends a few minutes babbling to Morningstar about his dream.  “I think I failed. I haven’t done anything to Become, but I haven’t done anything _not_ to Become, either.  I don’t know what to do. All I know is that right when I woke up, I was about to kill you.”

“Do you think it was an attack?” Morningstar asks.  “Do you think someone _forced_ you to have that dream?”

Dranko shrugs helplessly.  Almost in a panic he lights a cigar, hoping for guidance, answers.  The smoke forms the words “two parents.”

What?

Morningstar caresses Dranko’s brow, murmuring reassurances until he drops back into sleep.  She then goes into a trance and examines her husband’s sleeping mind, to see if he’s been meddled with.  After a few minutes she is satisfied that there has been no immediate attack, but obviously the _thing_ has been affecting Dranko since the day it was placed there.

She cannot look at _it_ too closely; it will drive her insane if she looks too carefully at it, just as it would do to Dranko.  Whatever it is, it’s not taking Dranko over, or altering his conscious mind. 

“It’s not time yet,” she tells it.  “Be still.”

It seethes, quietly.

Three hours later everyone has woken up.  They meet in the common area of the _mansion_ for breakfast.  Dranko walks to Grey Wolf and pats his chest. “No sucking hole filled with Adversary blood. Good!”

“Uh… no,” says Grey Wolf. “Why would there be?”

He explains his dream to the others.  “These voices kept saying “you are failing, you are failing,” and I didn’t think I was, and blah, blah, blah, and then it happened…”  He becomes more and more upset as he describes the gleeful violence of his attacks, and the awesome power he possessed. 

“There’s a good chance I’m going to fail, or maybe have already failed,” he tells them miserably. “I couldn’t talk my way out of it, and I Became, and did my level best to kill everyone. And I was well on my way to doing it.”

Ernie doesn’t show much pity for him. “Did you ever to stop to think, that maybe the answer to how not to Become is “try harder” and not “blah blah blah?”

“Um… no.”

“Then think about it!”

Dranko slumps in his chair. “I tried my hardest to kill you, and I didn’t even do a very good job.”

“That’s comforting,” says Kibi. “Maybe it was just an ordinary bad dream?”

“We’re hard to kill,” says Aravis.

“I suppose I should look at the bright side,” says Dranko.  “I got a demon lord to apologize to me.  That’s gotta count for something!”

This comment only makes Ernie more furious.

“Dranko, how can you…”

“No, you’re right, Ernie,” says Dranko.  “I have to do some thinking about this. About how not to Become, whatever that turns out to mean.”

“I think to Become is to become like the Adversary in some way,” says Grey Wolf. “And that would be bad.”

Dranko looks at Ernie.  “Do you have any ideas?  About how not to Become?”

“No. I don’t know.  I don’t have a horrible thing in my head as the result of the foolishness of my own actions.

Dranko grins as he sticks his finger in Ernie’s ear, but his friend is in no mood for silliness.  Ernie swats the finger away.  “No, that’s just you being annoying… though still as a result of your own foolish actions. I’d like you to _think_ before you act foolish, at least.”

“I’m not foolish,” Dranko protests. “I’m adventurous.  Foolish is totally different.”

“You need to concentrate!” says Ernie.  “You need self-discipline.  You want to not Become? Then don’t do idiotic things like pissing off a demon lord.”  A bit more quietly, he adds, “I think part of you still feels unloved. You take stupid, reckless risks because somewhere deep down you feel unworthy.”

“Nah,” says Dranko. “I do crazy things because it’s fun.   You may have been right once, but thanks to you, I’m a lot better adjusted.  Those old wounds have healed.”

“Then think about that,” says Ernie. “Think about the scar tissue. Think about what we did to heal you, when you think about Becoming, when you think about doing something foolish.  Think about the scar tissue.  It doesn’t stretch the way healthy tissue does.  It’s not as strong.  You need to focus on what healed you, and not on keeping on doing stupid things.”

That gives Dranko pause. “Huh. I think I’ll go meditate on that for a little while.”  He winks at Morningstar. “It’ll be four minutes before I fall asleep.”

“Someone should smack you if you start to fall asleep!” says Ernie, angered all over again by Dranko’s flippant attitude. “The pain will remind you of what’s important.  That’s what going to teach you self-control.”  

“Ernie,” says Morningstar.  “Dranko spent his childhood in the hands of the Scarbearers.”

“And you know what I learned from them?” says Dranko.  “I learned that hurting other people is a poor way to bring someone closer to God.  That bullheadedness and stubbornness in the face of righteous piety is a great way to piss people off.”

“And yet you still did that exact thing to Tapheon!” says Ernie.   

“Well, yeah. And it worked.  It pissed him off.  Really well. I mean, I didn’t _try_ to piss Tapheon off.  But I thought, here’s a Demon Lord, and it would be nice to give him the opportunity to repent… uh… okay, maybe you’re right.  I was trying to get under his skin a little. But think about the cleric I’d have become, if I had been the one to make him see the error of his ways.”

Ernie is not mollified. “So it was all about you becoming famous?”

“Part of it, yeah.  Maybe.”

“And he turned you into an inside-out fish,” Grey Wolf observes.

“I was totally getting away with it, being righteous to his face, in the name of my religion!” says Dranko. “Look, he’s evil, he’s _really_ evil.  You don’t tolerate evil, you don’t pretend he’s too evil, he’s too powerful, you shouldn’t bother.  You have to stop it.  And if you can’t stop it, you annoy it.”

Morningstar shakes her head. “You lost me at the end there.”  

Aravis also fails to see the logic.  “So if something is so hideously powerful that you can’t defeat it, you annoy it instead?”

“Look at it this way,” says Dranko.  “Consider Ernie here. Ernie is happiest when his soul is at peace, and he is serene.  When something annoys Ernie, and he’s upset, he is not at his best.  He’s pissed and he’s distracted. Not on his “A” game.  If I can’t defeat evil, I want to make it unhappy.  I’d like to think Taphon was so focused on me, he wasn’t on his “A” game either.  He wasn’t doing horrible things to other people.”

“It led him to send an assassin who summoned horrible things to kill you,” Aravis points out.

Ernie is still not convinced.  “But he wasn’t focused on killing anyone outside the Abyss, except maybe the Lord of the Roses, until you made him angry.”

“You can’t know that,” says Dranko. “He doesn’t just sit there in his evil castle thinking evil thoughts when we’re not around. He does evil stuff.  It makes me happy to think that every time he thinks of me, it angers him.”

“And when he can’t take it out on you, you don’t think he tortures things even more?” asks Aravis.

“Dranko,” says Morningstar. “I hear what you’re saying, and there’s some… bravery to it. But we’re already trying pretty darn hard to get rid of the Adversary. You caused a pretty unnecessary distraction. We had to save you from three pretty horrible monsters. We’d be a day or two closer to Seven Dark Words and Meledien, if we hadn’t needed to keep recovering.” 

Dranko throws up his hands. “I can’t predict the future.  I can’t _not_ act, because it might cause us some problems down the line.”

“No one’s suggesting you not act,” says Aravis. “Just that you act in a way that’s more productive.”

Morningstar agrees. “Tapheon was a situation you had very little chance to affect.”

“You taunted him _in his house_,” says Grey Wolf.

“That was the action of a little half-orc boy who had no power in the world,” says Morningstar.  “If you thought Tapheon was a force to be dealt with, you shouldn’t have taunted him for no good purpose in his home.  We could have put him our list of enemies and dealt with him in our own time, instead of you doing the first thing that popped into your head.”

“Sometimes you’re a little boy throwing rocks at a bad man’s house,” says Ernie.  “A boy throwing rocks at the windows of a man he hates.”

“I think you’re jealous,” says Dranko.  “Not necessarily wrong, but jealous.  Look at how things have worked out with Tapheon!”

“_Of course I’m jealous, Dranko!_”  Ernie’s anger and frustration boil over. “Do you ever stop to think about the fact that everything you do that’s selfish, stupid, foolish, thoughtless and petty, works out for you?  I’ve spent my entire life being a good halfling, and making sacrifices, and dying twice over, and yet I can’t kill my foes as well as you, or absorb injuries as well as you. You threw a stupid bottle into the Far Realms and it gave you magical powers and some kind of super-weapon.  I’m good _all the time_ and it _never_ works for me, and you’re bad all the time and things _always_ work for you.   So yes, I am jealous.  And it makes me angry that you don’t think about how it makes the rest of us feel.

Ernie stalks away, leaving Dranko with his mouth hanging open.  Then Dranko too leaves the banquet room, in a different direction.

“Someday,” says Grey Wolf, “it’s going to _stop_ working out for him. That’s going to be a sad day.  Based on his dream, I think that time is coming real soon…”


/*/

After breakfast they pack up for another day’s travel.  Chatter is minimal.

“I had another vision from the Maze last night,” says Aravis.  “There wasn’t a good time to mention it before now.”  

He shares it with the others.

_Morningstar’s parents, Domira and Rodvin, stand on the deck of a ship, while huge plumes of smoke rise behind them. The ship -- a small passenger schooner called the Bay Breeze –  is crowded, passengers crammed into every spare space. Each face is heavy with grief. Children cry and tug their mothers’ skirts.  

Around the Bay Breeze are dozens of other ships – small craft, large shipping barges, light warships – all packed with refugees. They are leaving the harbor in a chaotic procession.   Closest to the shore, several ships have been torched and sunk.   Dozens of figures are in the water, swimming desperately, and those on the last ships are throwing tow-ropes.  

The city of Kynder Hold behind them is in flames, and orcs run rampant through the streets.  The air is filled with their triumphant shouts._

Tears spring to Morningstar’s eyes; tears of grief at the destruction of her childhood home, mixed with tears of relief that her parents made it out alive.

“This has been a delightful morning,” says Grey Wolf.


/*/


Ernie casts a new _find the path_ once they have exited the _mansion_.  The tunnels and connected caves beyond this point are too uneven for foot travel, and too serpentine for fast _wind walking_.  They opt for _phantom steeds_, which offer the best combination of maneuverability and speed.

Halfway through the day, hours after the _find the path_ has run out, Ernie is obliged to cast it a second time when they reach a new cavern with seven different ways out.  (Morningstar first tries concentrating on _Laramon’s Jade Clover_, the little luck item that seemed to have played a part in their successful leap away from Leaping Circle One. She is momentarily encouraged when it grows warm as she focuses on one of the exit tunnels, but then she realizes it’s reacting the same way for all of them.  Kibi also tries _stone tell_, but none of the stone has memory of humans passing this way in the past ten years.)

So Ernie casts his spell, forcing a divination from beyond the Iron Barrier and costing him more life force. Knowledge of the correct tunnel springs to his mind, and off again they all go. The day passes without incident, as does the following evening in Aravis’s _mansion_.  No one’s dreams are haunted, and Morningstar checks Dranko’s mind overnight. All is well.

The next day proceeds much as the previous, though sometime around midafternoon they are forced to abandon their _phantom steeds_.   For almost half a mile they crawl on hands and knees, as the ceiling drops to height of just over three feet.  A few short stretches require them to slide on their bellies, packs scraping the rock above them.

Once they are able to stand again, the way is altogether easier, with the ground, while not exactly flat, at least offering a walkable footing.  Then, slowly, the wide tunnel slopes downward for another mile, before pitching steeply and emptying into a vertical shaft over a hundred feet across.  The Company can see that other tunnels also end at this shaft at other heights and compass points, like pipes terminating at an enormous drain.

The shaft is not empty. It is clogged with enormous crystals, criss-crossing the space like a giant’s pick-up-sticks.  If one of the Company were to jump, they would not fall thousands of feet unimpeded, but would rather bounce painfully from crystal to crystal like a child falling from the highest branches of a dense climbing tree.

_Find the Path_ indicates downward.  _Wind walk_ is the travel method of choice, though Kibi allows Scree to gleefully leap and tumble from crystal to crystal. The little earth elemental thinks this is the most fantastic place he’s ever seen.  Long ago this formation was dubbed the Crystal Plunge by Underdark explorers, though there are few living who have seen it.

The Company wends its way down, through a latticework of crystal girders glittering in the light motes. At first they are dirty white, but over time they transition to a deep violet and then to a black-flecked orange.  Two miles down, the light motes start to fade.  Aravis sets up the _mansion_ as usual, but Kibi wants to sleep outside, nestled in a formation of crystal. Dranko and Flicker offer to join him, so that no one is left to sleep unguarded.  Dranko teaches Scree to play chess, thinking that after losing so often to Pewter, perhaps he can best a pile of rocks.  But Scree win his inaugural game in a close-fought contest, then wins the second game on a four-move fool’s mate. Dranko grumbles and goes to sleep.

Another night passes peacefully, though Aravis has had another vision from the Maze, and it’s as troubling as any they’ve had so far.

_“It’s a shame I can only do this once.”

Emperor Naradawk turns something over in his hand, feeling its weight.  It is a broken-off piece of a large fang.

“I think you will be pleased,” says the man standing behind the Emperor.  He is thin, and shifts awkwardly from foot to foot in his ill-fitting red plate.  “There is nothing else here to rival it.”

Naradawk smiles – a horrible sight.  “Yasper, you know I have complete faith in your abilities. Now, whom have you chosen to be the sacrifice?”

The man Yasper shakes his head.  “It was a difficult thing, my Lord. Many of your men and women volunteered, but we are so few, I was unwilling to give up our best. Eldegin was one of the first, but I told him his worth was too great. I decided that Asbaq would be the one. He was the last one chosen before we left Chinniphath, and though he is brave and enthusiastic, we will not miss his sword as much.   And he wishes to die for you as much as any of them.”

Naradawk smiles. “Good,” he says. “Then let’s waste no more time. Bring Asbaq forward.”

A young fresh-faced man, barely in his twenties, strides forward, the sun glinting off his crimson armor. He stops before the towering figure of the Emperor.

“My Lord!” he says, almost shouting. “I am here to offer myself, to die in your service, if you will afford me that honor!”

“I will,” says Naradawk, with a slight bow of his head. “Stand in the center of the circle, and do not close your eyes.”

“My Lord!”

Asbaq walks briskly to the center of the large ring of obsidian bricks sunk into the earth. Naradawk closes his own eyes before speaking.

“Blood calls to blood, and it sings within me.   Blood restores blood, spilled and reformed. The sleeping will wake, and the waking will sleep forever in the cold beyond. I call upon he that was, and will be again, to arise and serve me. From the remains, a whole. From the ashes, fire. From the memory of bitter defeat, to the promise of gleaming vengeance. Blood calls to blood.”

The last thing Asbaq sees is Naradawk tossing the broken fang into the circle, almost to his feet. Then the circle fills with white flames, and Asbaq is consumed, quickly, in the unholy inferno. For several minutes the flames grow brighter, until the entire circle is filled with a roaring pillar of pale fire. 

Abruptly it ceases. Nothing is left of Asbaq; even his red armor has been incinerated to a fine ash. But the circle is not empty. When Naradawk opens his eyes, he is looking up at the serpentine neck and smoldering eyes of Azhant the Ancient.

“I want my vengeance,” snarls the dragon.  “Where are they?”

“Beyond your reach,” says Naradawk. “They have abandoned this world.”

“Then what would you have me do?”

“I would have you destroy everything they held so dear. Serve me until my war is over, and you will choose your own domain.”

Azhant the Ancient shows his fangs.  Only one is missing.

“I will.  Let me begin.”_

…to be continued…

*>> Here’s a page with some images that should give you an idea of the nature and scale of the Crystal Plunge:*

http://thesavoia.com/2011/11/22/crystal-cave-of-giants/


----------



## Anxe

For anyone who forgot, Azhant is the dragon-father of that Ogre champion, The Great One. When the Company were looking for the orc Messiah (or something like that) they got trapped with Ogres between them and the way to the surface world. The Ogres agreed to let them by in exchange for a later service. That service was killing Azhant the Ancient, an indigo dragon. Whatever happened to his head after they decapitated Azhant? Seemed like the Company was going to deliver it to the Great One, but Steven's logs seem to be missing that part.


----------



## StevenAC

Anxe said:


> For anyone who forgot, Azhant is the dragon-father of that Ogre champion, The Great One. When the Company were looking for the orc Messiah (or something like that) they got trapped with Ogres between them and the way to the surface world. The Ogres agreed to let them by in exchange for a later service. That service was killing Azhant the Ancient, an indigo dragon. Whatever happened to his head after they decapitated Azhant? Seemed like the Company was going to deliver it to the Great One, but Steven's logs seem to be missing that part.



Actually, the encounter with the ogre tribe was during the Company's first journey through Kivia, when they were on the trail of the Crosser's Maze.  It was in session #103, which can be found on page 157 of Part One of the collected Story Hour.  Their run-in with the Chun Aggrat (alias Restimar), took place somewhat later, in session #113 and following.

I've just checked back, and there's nothing missing from the posted Story Hour after the fight with Azhant.  The Company did indeed collect his head as proof that they'd killed him, but Sagiro skipped over what they ultimately did with it...


----------



## Everett

StevenAC said:


> I've just checked back, and there's nothing missing from the posted Story Hour after the fight with Azhant.  The Company did indeed collect his head as proof that they'd killed him, but Sagiro skipped over what they ultimately did with it...




Well, it's not like collecting a dragon's head is supposed to be somehow proof against calling it back through necromantic arts, is it?

Actually, I wonder -- did Azhant simply appear, whole and inviolate, when Naradawk called him?  Getting a whole dragon from a fragment of a fang?


----------



## Quartz

An update! Squee!


----------



## Quartz

Everett said:


> Getting a whole dragon from a fragment of a fang?




That's all you need for Resurrection.



			
				SRD said:
			
		

> So long as some small portion of the creature’s body still exists, it can be resurrected, but the portion receiving the spell must have been part of the creature’s body at the time of death.


----------



## Piratecat

And there's your argument. It was a doozy, and a long time coming.

Sagiro had me _entirely _suckered. It never even occurred to me that that was a dream. Humility, indeed.


----------



## Innocent Bystander

Did Dranko actually have some indication of what he would actually turn into?

Or was him turning into something so powerful supposed to be a manifestation/representation of his delusions of grandeur?


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 386*_
*No Question About The Smoke This Time*

“You should have more jolly visions,” says Dranko.  Like everyone else, he finds it depressing that Azhant The Ancient has been resurrected after all the trouble they went through killing it.

“Why did we even bother?” groans Morningstar.

“Think of all the people Azhant would have killed between then and now,” says Ernie. 

“Starting with every last dwarf,” adds Kibi.


/*/


Down the Plunge they fly, weaving between the long crystals.  Scree feels great pity for Kibi, who is obliged to travel in mistform while he gets to revel in the glory of this geologic paradise.  At half a mile down, there cease to be side tunnels, though the earth elemental tells Kibi he can sense open spaces beyond the Plunge.  If one were to bore a tunnel sideways, they could emerge into one of those spaces, but the _find the path_ still indicates downward, and the need for haste overcomes any desire for exploration.

Another two miles down, and the Company can feel their misty bodies growing a bit heavier, a bit more solid.  The _wind walk_ is still holding, but its effects are weakening.  They descend further.

At last Kibi is certain that they have reached the proper altitude, almost four and a half miles below the stomach of the Leviathan.  The _find the path_ would have them keep flying downward, but Scree reports that less than fifty yards to the west is a large tunnel, heading more-or-less in the direction they need to go.

“_Find the path_ wouldn’t know we can just tunnel through rock,” says Ernie.  Kibi casts _mass xorn movement_ on the party, and they slide through the rock.  

“Doesn’t it feel amazing down here?” thinks Kibi over the mind-link. It’s like a warm swimming pool without the awful water.  He exults in it, though everyone else still finds it unnerving. 

They pop out into a large tube-shaped tunnel, thirty feet in diameter, corkscrewing away to both the north and south.  Immediately Ernie’s _find the path_ changes its mind, now directing them to march southward.  Their altitude is nearly perfect, but they’ve overshot laterally by several miles.  But assuming this tunnel goes where they want, they’re now only a few hours' travel from Leaping Circle Nine.

The tunnel is filled with a rich, earthy, organic smell, but mixed with less pleasant odors.  One of these is a faint stink of acid, and the other, weaker but more troubling, is the awful tang of Adversary blood.

“Something wicked this way came,” mutters Ernie.

It’s obvious that some very large creature created this tunnel, though not recently.  It charts a spiraling path into the dim mote-illuminated distance. The sense of Essence grows stronger as they progress, though not greatly.  After a half-mile of this they pass an opening into a small side-tunnel, this one only fifteen feet across instead of thirty.  The smell coming from that direction is particularly foul – a mixture of rotting fungus and earthy excrement – though the sense of Essence is no stronger.  A faint sound of slurping and squirming comes from there, punctuated with a sporadic high-pitched whining. 

Kibi casts _greater prying eyes_ and sends them to investigate in all directions.  While most report only ongoing tunnel, the one sent down the side passage shows Kibi a disturbing image:  it ends some 500’ down in a pill-shaped chamber with a large pit, and that pit is full of worms. But not ordinary worms; these are four feet around and twenty feet long, with dark violet half-formed chitin. They writhe in a restless mass, occasionally stretching their bodies to scrape fungus off the high walls of the pit with their toothy maws.

“It’s a nest,” says Dranko.  “Which means there’s a mommy somewhere nearby.”

“Hmmm,” says Kibi. “Maybe ‘mommy’ would make a good monster for Galdifain to…”

The tremor grows quickly, from a distant rumble to thundering roar in less than five seconds.  An enormous purple worm crashes through the tunnel wall, spraying the Company with a shower of rock. It’s fifteen feet around and indeterminately long.  Worse, its purple chitin is speckled with huge black patches, and strong waves of Adversary blood roll off of it.  It’s mouth is a gaping hole lined with hundreds of sharp teeth.

Dranko tumbles to the side and whips it several times, while Flicker does likewise on its opposite flank. Grey Wolf quickens _true strike_ and slashes with _Bostock_, channeling a maximized _acid orb_ into the monster.  Ernie casts _firestorm_ upon it, then quickens a _blade barrier_ in the center of its massing coils.

When all of this is done, its blood pools thickly on the ground, and huge swaths of its hard plates are sheared or burned off.  

And it keeps coming, pouring out of the tunnel breach like a river, filling up the available space, crowding the Company to the edges.  It looks at Dranko, who feels the hot skin-bursting pain he has come to associate with Essence-tainted monsters.  And the infected purple worm is whip-quick for its size; its huge mouth comes swooping in, gulping down Dranko and Grey Wolf in a swift, practiced motion.  It chews them a bit, then swallows them.  Inexorably powerful muscles force them down its gullet, into the depths of its digestive system.  There are no light motes down here, but with _darkvision_ they can see its fleshy muscles undulating, squeezing.  They are crushed, burned by acid, and bombarded with the horror of Essence. 

“And to think,” says Dranko.  “This isn’t even the largest stomach we’ve been in recently.”

The creature’s tail finally trails into the tunnel, tipped with a wicked-looking stinger.  It whips the stinger into Morningstar’s side, and the damage is severe, but thanks to the daily _heroes’ feast_ she is spared the brutal effects of its poison.

Kibi blasts the worm with a maximized _cone of cold_ followed by a quickened, empowered _earthbolt_. Morningstar cast another _firestorm_ and quickens _divine power_.  It’s heavily damaged, but keeps on thrashing, looking for its next targets.  Aravis strikes it with _energy drain_, sapping it of lifeforce.  The worm sags and slows down; though it's holding on, the Company seems to have weathered the…

Straight down from the ceiling, a _second_ purple worm emerges, this one also infused with Adversary blood.  It seems the worm babies in the pit have _two_ parents.  This second worm comes down directly over Ernie and Kibi, swallowing them easily, forcing them down into its hellish guts. Then it too whips its stinger into Morningstar, piercing her calf.

Dranko feels his skin burned by acid, his bones bruised by the sheer power of the worm’s interior muscles.  He can’t see Grey Wolf.  Over the mind-link, he says, “Cut your own way out.  I’m going to take shelter in here.”

In here?  What?

Dranko’s whip is useless; he has limited motion with his arms, but no way to cut himself out. But he has just enough wiggle room to call the Lucent Tower from his haversack.  He speaks the command phrase.  “Crystal Rise.”

Aravis, Flicker and Morningstar, now the only ones not inside a purple worm, are treated to an unusual sight.  The Lucent Tower bursts out of the worm in two different places, its base and its apex blasting out of the monster’s body. Normally the door would appear next to Dranko, but with no solid base, the tower has expanded in both directions at once.  Dranko grabs the bottom edge of the tower and rides it out, enduring a painful bludgeoning as he and the tower exit the worm.  He pops out looking as though he’s been smeared all over with green-black tar.

Somehow the worm still isn’t dead.  Flicker stabs it again, and it thrashes spasmodically, but stubbornly clings to life.  Grey Wolf continues to become digested in its stomach.  He doesn’t have room to properly swing _Bostock_, but with a heroic burst of strength he digs his elbow into the fleshy wall of the worm’s stomach and levers the point of his sword against its flesh.  He channels another maximized _acid orb_.

Having just seen Dranko and the Lucent Tower emerge from the body of the worm, Morningstar and Aravis now see a volcano of acid erupt from it some fifteen feet farther along its length.  It gives one last crazed thrash, and Dranko realizes he's going to be crushed between the Lucent Tower and the tunnel wall.  But the door to the tower is open!  He scrambles up and dives into the tower just before being mashed against its exterior.

But there’s still the other worm to deal with, and it’s at full health, with Ernie and Kibi trapped in its innards.  Ernie endures the massive damage of its triple-attack of burning, crushing and Essence, and manages to concentrate just enough to fire off an _energy drain_.  Then he tries to quicken a _heal_ on himself but can’t get the gestures right.  The spell fails, and his skin continues to burn.

Kibi has similarly few options.  He can’t _dimension door_ out because he cannot see his destination, and _xorn movement_ won’t work for obvious reasons.  He’ll have to blast his way out.  He casts a maximized _coldfire_, enduring some of the damage himself in such close quarters.  But what choice does he have?  He quickens a maximized _ray of enfeeblement_, dropping the worm from “monstrously strong” to merely “amazingly strong.”  

Morningstar casts yet another _firestorm_.  Thanks to the _energy drain_, the worm doesn’t resist any of the damage.  Aravis maximizes a single-target _chain lightning_ with similar good results. He quickens a second _chain lightning_.  The collected damage is huge, but so is the monster’s capacity to absorb it.  Annoyed, it turns on Aravis, inflicting him with the skin-bursting Essence lesions, before swooping its head down and swallowing both Morningstar and Aravis in a single gulp.  Inexorable peristalsis forces them stomachward.

Flicker looks around in a panic.  Dranko is still inside the tower. Grey Wolf hasn’t yet crawled out of corpse of the first giant worm.  The other four have all been swallowed.  For a panicky moment he can’t see any other member of the Company.  Too late he notices the huge stinger swooping down; it gouges his shoulder.  Ouch!

Dranko crawls out of the tower, and sees only Flicker squaring off against the huge purple worm.  At least the mind-link is still active.

“I’m sorry I can’t heal you,” thinks Morningstar.  “I’ve been swallowed.”

Dranko reaches down toward the scary thing in his head, and draws on its power. 

“Do not Become!” something whispers.

“I don’t intend to,” he says back.  

He stops time.  While the world hangs in stillness, he retracts the Lucent Tower, moves over to flank with Flicker, heals himself with a wand, then readies to attack the moment time resumes.

Time resumes. He strikes the purple worm with his whip.  Flicker is finally in position to make a full round of sneak attacks, and essentially carves himself a tunnel through its body.

Grey Wolf wades out of the sludgy acidic gore of the first worm, and uses _Bostock_ to heal himself.  Ernie, meanwhile, continues to dissolve.  He can feel his skin sloughing off, and that he is near to death. He tries to cast _iron body_ but cannot concentrate well enough.  With a desperate prayer to Yondalla he quickens a _cure critical wounds_ upon himself, and that succeeds, staving off his death a few more seconds. 

Kibi is also taking massive damage inside the worm, but at least his _energy buffer_ triggered off the acid, so he’s in slightly less dire straits than Ernie.  Nevertheless, his straits are dire. He casts _time stop_, giving him time to gulp down a couple of old healing potions, cast _lucubration_ to get back his _cone of cold_, and ready himself to cast it.  Time kicks in, and he casts his spell, empowered.  The insides of the worm are coated with frost.  The monster grumbles its displeasure.

It’s unhappiness is about to grow exponentially. Aravis, dissolving like the others, focuses well enough to cast a maximized _cone of cold_ followed by a quickened maximized _lightning bolt_.  The latter blasts a gaping hole in the side of the worm, sending out a spray of gore.  The worm thrashes once, twice, and flops to the ground, dead.  

The others struggle free from the corpse of the worm, and are gratefully healed.  There they stand, huffing and panting, in an expanding sea of blood and viscera.

“No more stomachs, please,” says Grey Wolf.

…to be continued…


----------



## coyote6

I guess Grey Wolf found that fight...
<sunglasses>
...hard to swallow.


So, how many people prepared _freedom of movement_ the next day?


----------



## carborundum

Yikes, and Yucks!


----------



## HavokReaker

"two parents" indeed!


----------



## Quartz

When an earthworm is cut in two both parts survive; why should a purple worm be any different?


----------



## steeldragons

Everett said:


> for that matter, do I really get why Tapheon couldn't bear to have creatures from the Far Realms in his presence.  It doesn't bother anyone else; why does it disturb a near-omnipotent demon?




NOTE: I am not caught up on the thread, so I'm sure this has been answered/talked about already...but for my two coppers:

My understanding of the "what's in Dranko's head"_ is_ a Far Realms being...but isn't it what was referred to in previous adventures as a "Cleaner"?

Tapheon is near-omnipotent...on his home plane...but the "what's in Dranko's head" can erase that plane (and everything/one in it) from existence. I would have been right on Tapheon's side, namely, "Get that _thing_ the FRAG OUTTA HERE! Go back to your plane -or ANY other plane, for that matter!"

I think it was brilliantly done/played (by both Sagiro and PC. Not surprising, in the least, for any of us loyal readers, I'm sure.) But I didn't question Tapheon's reaction in the slightest. That said, my entire interpretation could be wrong. I have 4 pages of posts to get through to find out. [YAY! ]


----------



## Everett

Typo: "went," not "want."



Sagiro said:


> Like everyone else, he finds it depressing that Azhant The Ancient has been resurrected after all the trouble they want through killing it.




Coolest line Ernie's ever had:



			
				Sagiro said:
			
		

> “Something wicked this way came,” mutters Ernie.




Just out of curiosity --



			
				Sagiro said:
			
		

> Dranko tumbles to the side and whips it several times, while Flicker does likewise on its opposite flank.




-- what is Flicker's weapon?  The other night I was re-reading the Collected at the part where he gets a pair of +5 returning daggers from the hoarde of Azhant the Ancient.  Does he still use those?


----------



## Everett

steeldragons said:


> My understanding of the "what's in Dranko's head"_ is_ a Far Realms being...but isn't it what was referred to in previous adventures as a "Cleaner"?




Same thing.  But what's in his head is not a Cleaner.  It's some piece of knowledge or information.



			
				steeldragons said:
			
		

> Tapheon is near-omnipotent...on his home plane...but the "what's in Dranko's head" can erase that plane (and everything/one in it) from existence.




I find it very unlikely that something like the erasal of a plane of existence would or could come into play here.  This is a campaign in which the gods, their spheres and their portfolios are clearly delineated. (When the god of death was no longer taking souls, people couldn't move on; when Aravis died, cats mourned for him; if we erase a hell dimension, completely irrelevant strands of story would have to be mentioned or dealt with, i.e.,  Abernia becomes overcrowded with evil souls who now can't go to hell -- it's nothing to do with the endgame of the campaign.) Paradoxes would quickly multiply, leaving you with only a poor storytelling device.  Nor do we know that the thing in Dranko's brain could effect such a thing.  We don't know _what_ it does: nor did Tapheon.  He was terrified of something he couldn't comprehend.  That's the point.


----------



## Piratecat

"Inexorable peristalsis" is the name of my new metal band.


----------



## Everett

Kevin Kulp and the Inexorable Peristalsis: opening for Blue Oyster Cult in downtown Oslo, Norway THIS SUNDAY AFTERNOON!!!


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 387*_
*Journey to the Center of the Earth*

The area-of-effect spells have left their usual swaths of darkness where the light-motes have been wiped out.  Before they can redistribute themselves, Dranko asks Grey Wolf to cast _invisibility_ on him, while he stands in an area of darkness.  Sure enough, Dranko gets about thirty seconds of useful invisibility before the motes drift close enough to swarm and illuminate him.  Good to know.

The baby worms are not Essence-tainted like their parents, but the Company kills them anyway, to make sure they don’t become a threat to anyone later on.  

Kibi can sense that they are very close to Leaping Circle Nine; maybe a couple more hours, if the tunnel doesn’t veer.  It remains smooth and wide, and wider than the purple worms they just fought. Are there bigger worms?  Or do they chew themselves larger tunnels over time? They hope it’s that second one.

The repellant heat of Essence recedes behind them, though the tunnel still stinks of purple worm.  Just over two hours later the tunnel rises, bends, and there’s a small hole in the elbow, the size of a grapefruit.  _Find the path_ indicates they should go through that hole.  Dranko peers through it, and sees a constructed hemispherical chamber with a hundred-foot-diameter metal Leaping Circle set into the floor.  The purple worms must have clipped the very edge of the chamber with their own tunnel.

Dranko goes in first, _wind walking_, to scout for traps. The ring is magical, but that’s no surprise.  This one has a large instruction plaque that, unlike the last one, is whole and mostly undamaged.  It’s made of adamantium, and there are some light scratches over the first couple of words, as though the Evil Trio thought about trying to obscure the rituals but quickly gave up. Dranko licks the plaque, and it tastes like cold metal.  Ever suspicious, he casts _know age_ upon it, and it’s hundreds of years old.  

Once he’s satisfied there are no nasty surprises waiting, the others waft into the room.  The wizards inspect the instruction plaque.  It’s simpler and more straightforward than the others, and the ritual should only take a day and half, with a single 10-hour gap in the middle when the circle must remain vacant. The second half of the ritual is identical to the first half. It all seems so easy!

“There’s clearly a trap here,” says Aravis.  Kibi nods agreement, unwilling to accept any stroke of luck at face value. Flicker spends a few minutes combing over every square inch of everything, and finds nothing.  

Aravis performs the ritual, though perhaps burdened by overconfidence, has a little trouble at the beginning.  Kibi and Grey Wolf notice he’s speeding up a bit, and motion for him to slow down.  Once settled, he aces the remainder of the first day’s casting.  

That leaves them with ten hours of downtime.  They decide instead to take two months, activating the timeless demiplane of Cayyat and nipping inside for a few weeks of R&R.  (The practical reason they choose this course, is so that Galdifain can have the time to prep her spells, to bind the next powerful monster they encounter.)

The little goblinoid creature Gibbil is there, pleasant as ever, and entirely incognizant that he had previously turned into a hostile dragon.  They ask him to cook something without mushrooms.

“I can prepare you a steak,” he says.

Dranko glances at Galdifain.  “Don’t mention ‘steak’ around her,” he whispers.  


/*/


The Company spends a relaxing couple of months, crafting some magic items but also enjoying dips in the lake and sunlit naps on the lodge’s long wooden deck.  Galdifain commandeers half of Cayyat’s lab equipment on day one, moves it to a private workshop, and is seldom seen afterward except during meals.  

Over dinner one night, Drano asks her how she bound the Thousandfold.

“I studied it for eight years,” she says. “I didn’t see it until the moment I bound it, but by then I had read every historical record of the creature, studied everything ever written about it.  Eight years.”

“You know we killed it in about two minutes.”

“Yes, I know.”

“How does something like that even get born?” Dranko asks.

“It wasn’t,” says Galdifain.  “It was, ironically, created to be a tool of assassination, by the greatest wizard of a world different from yours.  You would not have heard of her, but her name was Mannix. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work.  I am doing experimental research and fear I will run out of time.”

By the time their two-month hiatus is over, Galdifain is guardedly optimistic. She has altered the wording on her binding scroll such that she can bind a monster with much less study that is usual, though it won’t work on anything so powerful as an Anaxim or the Thousandfold.  She’s not certain it will work at all, but shrugs her shoulders.  “I’ve done my best.”

They exit Cayyat just before bedtime.  The Leaping Circle chamber is as they left it, which is not surprising since they’ve been gone for about a second.  As the ritual needs a ten-hour gap, Aravis makes them a _mansion _ and they sleep.

Aravis awakes the next morning having had a vision from Belshikun in the Maze.



_“I’m not going first.  Skulg, you go first.”

One orc turns to another.  “Like hell!  Braygle should go first.  I’ve got rank!”

A smaller, trembling orc shakes his head.  “No way.   Gezz, you’re the sergeant.  And Lord Rekkeret gave you the order, not me.  ‘Wait ten minutes, then follow.  Or come sooner if you hear the sounds of battle.’  We’ll follow.  We’ll follow you.”

Gezz snarls at his task force:  a hundred orcs, crouching, hiding in a half-assed way in the trees surrounding a clearing in the woods, waiting for a signal.   “Look, you miserable maggots. Rekkeret’s one of the boss’s boys, and he could personally kill every last one of those louse-ridden bandits without breaking a sweat.   Chances are, we’ll be mopping up women and children and eating their sheep before the sun goes down.  But they’ve proven more resilient that anyone thought, and they’ve been harassing our forces for a week, so Mr. Bloody Plate Mail picked us to be his backup.   If it comes to it, and we have to fight, anyone who I think isn’t eagerly hitting the front line is going to have his ears handed to him tonight.”

Skulg, a misshapen orc with a scarred snout, shakes his head.  “But what about the rumors?   You know, that they’ve got the…”

“Shut up!” yells Gezz.  “That’s just a rumor.   Any of you utters his name where I can hear it, and I’ll have your tongues on a spit.  Do you unders…”

He is interrupted by the sound of someone approaching through the dense forest.

“You see?” says Gezz.  “Rekkeret’s already back.   He and his men probably killed a few dozen of them, and he wants us to get some sport in so we don’t get bored.  Skulg!  Get your orcs ready!  Klagg!  Tell your…”

Something flies into their clearing and lands with a clanging thud on the ground.   All of the orcs grow quiet, and stare, horrified.  It’s a severed human head, still wearing its blood-red helmet.

“Rekkeret,” breathes Gezz.   His hundred orcs are now straining to see through the trees on the far side of the clearing, and most of them are backing up nervously.  Then one orc near the front points a shaking finger at a humanoid form emerging on the opposite edge.

“It’s him!” he shouts, heedless of the fate of his tongue.  “It’s the Uktul Kan!”

Soon the panicked shout of “Uktul Kan!”  is ripping through the orcs, and Gezz is helpless to stop their frenzied retreat._



The others have to explain to Aravis that “Uktul Kan” is orcish for “Pale Giant,” and was a nickname given to Tor after he nearly single-handedly wiped out a squad of orcs in one of their earliest adventures.  It seems his legend never stopped growing, and that Tor’s skill as a warrior kept pace with it.

Aravis completes the second half of the ritual, and as he nears its conclusion, the others join him in the circle. In the final second before they hop, Morningstar feels _Laramon’s Jade Clover_ heat rapidly in her pocket, just as it had before going through Leaping Circle One.

She has little time to ponder this. They Leap.

For each member of the Company, there is an immediate sensation of being squeezed, followed by varying amounts of pain. Morningstar feels the _Jade Clover_ emit a final burst of heat, and then finds she is wedged into a space barely big enough to contain her, arms pinned to her side, rock pressing against her face. Her enclosure is keeping her mostly upright, though her left foot is not touching the ground. She tilts her head down and sees the top of Grey Wolf’s head just grazing her right foot.

There is a hurried conference over the mind-link.  All of them are in similar straits, arranged in a vertical stack, jammed into a single long crevice, a gruesome human totem-pole.  Grey Wolf’s elbow is broken; there wasn’t enough space for his body to arrive safely, and his arm ended up bent back, snapped like a stick. He can’t reach _Bostock’s_ hilt to heal himself; he can’t move at all.

Flicker is not responding to the others’ thoughts.  Dranko thinks he sees Flicker beneath his own feet; the little halfling arrived at the bottom of the stack, and from what Dranko can see with his _darkvision_, there wasn’t enough room for Flicker’s body.  His legs must either be embedded into the rock, or compressed into a space the size of loaf of bread.  Dranko has one healing spell he can cast without moving:  _close wounds_, which should keep Flicker alive, briefly, while they figure out what to do.

Kibi knows where they were supposed to arrive, and this isn’t it. They aren’t anywhere close. He casts about with his earth-attuned senses, and his best guess is that there is nothing but solid stone for at least fifty miles in every direction.  Scree sinks into the rock to scout and agrees with Kibi’s assessment. But by an amazing stroke of luck, they have arrived in the one tiny fissure where they wouldn’t all be instantly killed. 

“How did we end up here?” thinks Ernie.  “What happened to the ritual?”

“Seven Dark Words must have sabotaged it somehow,” says Aravis.

“Right now we need to figure out how we’re getting out of this,” thinks Dranko.  “Flicker’s not going to live much longer.”

Kibi has an old magic item in his pocket – a _bead of stillness_ that allows him to cast any spell, once, without moving.  Unable to move his arms enough to cast, he uses that bead to effect _stone shape_, hollowing out the stone around him and his proximate friends enough to give them a little more range of motion.  Aravis, near the top of the stack, uses this extra freedom to cast _magnificent mansion_. With great difficulty over fifteen minutes they wriggle upward, one by own falling into the magical doorway.  Flicker has to be hauled in unconscious; his legs are indeed a gruesome sight.  Morningstar heals him at once while Ernie tends to Grey Wolf’s arm.

They collapse in the foyer, each lying on the ground, panting from exertion and recovering from the claustrophobic horror of the moment.

“Son of a bitch!” says Dranko.

Ernie sits up.  “Just when I thought I couldn’t hate them more, I hate them even more.  I want to kill them, resurrect them, and kill them again!”

Grey Wolf ponders the ritual itself.  “It’s possible that Seven Dark Words altered the ritual just enough that it sent us someplace random.”

“But how?” complains Dranko. “The instruction plaque was made of adamant, and it was the original plaque; I cast _know age_, remember?”

“You also licked it,” says Flicker, rubbing his legs.  “Did it taste tampered with?”

The main difficulty they face, of course, is that they’re hundreds of miles from anywhere, deep in the center of Abernia, effectively buried alive.  After a brief discussion, they decide they have but one option.  Kibi will reset reality, using the power granted him by Abernia.  The only logistical hurdle is that his power will work best if all his friends are in contact with him, and the narrow crevice would preclude such a formation.  But that is a hurdle easily cleared; Kibi exits the _mansion_ and immediately casts another couple of _stone shapes_, reforming the fissure into a space more comfortable for standing in a group.

Unlike the others, he quite likes it here, in this little pocket of stony solitude. It’s like being folded into a warm, comfortable blanket. He almost fancies he can hear the whispers of the world.

The others follow once he’s ready.  Everyone puts their hands on his broad shoulders.

“Abernia,” he says quietly. “I’m here.  I have a request. We didn’t mean to end up here.  Can you please take us back to where we came from? Oh, and if you have some way of getting a message to Tor, saying ‘thank you,’ we’d appreciate it.”

There is a tremor in the earth, and small flakes of rock break off of the walls around them. Energy wells up around Kibi, supplying him with power, or perhaps he is supplying the power himself, he cannot tell. His sense of time distorts, wonderfully. For a heartbeat, all times are the same to him, past, present and future blending into one. He almost feels as though he could move freely through time, as easily as he now can slide through the earth.

But not yet. Time yanks on all of them, rewinding itself.  Each member of the Company experiences the last few minutes of their lives, lived in reverse. They are back in the mansion, then out of it, squeezed, crushed, then the Leap backward into the ritual chamber, Aravis speaking nonsense, accelerated.  Just as he reaches the beginning of the ritual, time snaps back to normal.  The room is shaking, as if a small temblor is fading out.

They have not yet travelled, yet somehow they retain memories of their ill-fated journey. 

“Thank you,” Kibi whispers.

“That was… kind of… neat,” says Dranko, disoriented. 

Aravis is furious at being tricked by Seven Dark Words.  Whatever magics they used to sabotage the Leaping Circle, he’s going to sweep them away.  He casts _disjunction_, brushing aside worries that he might destroy the Leaping Circle itself with the knowledge that Kibi could simply rewind time again.  His spell blasts outward from the instruction plaque, and he watches it carefully, to see what spells get stripped away.

There were only two.  One was a minor dweomer of _undetectable aura_, that prevented the second spell from showing up to _detect magic_.  The second was a simple illusion, paper thin, exactly the size and shape of the instruction tablet, covering it with a false set of instructions for the ritual. It had only a visual component, and so went undetected both by Dranko’s tongue and his _know age_ spell.

“That was very clever,” says Kibi with a sigh.

Aravis approaches the tablet. The actual instructions are lengthy and complicated; it will take four days to enact, and require all three wizards.

“It seemed too easy because it _was_ too easy,” he sighs.

“Hooray!” says Dranko.  “We sprung the trap!”


/*/


The ritual is designed to allow the casters to sleep in shifts over its four-day duration.    During Aravis’s first rest break, he sleeps, and he dreams.



_“Fire!”

A volley of three-hundred seventy-six arrows soars upward.  

Two hundred fifty-five miss their target.  One hundred twenty-one strike and rebound harmlessly away.  None have made a whit of difference.

Azhant the Ancient sweeps down over the city of Hydra, the last major city before the Balani Peninsula.   He grabs two archers from the top of the northeast tower and idly shatters one of the few remaining ballistae with a contemptuous flick of his tail.  

Fires burn here and there throughout the city, where the dragon’s breath has set it alight.  The great garden park in the city’s center is rimed over with frost and icicles, and dotted with the frozen corpses of passersby who had been taken unaware by the dragon’s initial assault.  Everywhere, men and women are running in terror, ducking into buildings or shrieking in the streets.

Four nervous looking wizards stand on the north-west tower.  When Azhant’s next pass takes him close, the wizards fire off the best of their meager arcane arsenal:  two lightning bolts, a fireball, and a cone of cold.  All of them are negated by the dragon’s anti-magic.   Seeing their failure the wizards try to retreat back into the tower interior; two make it, but the remaining pair are roasted by another gout of hellfire from the dragon’s jaws.

“Where are your heroes!” roars Azhant.   “This is child’s play!  Is there no one here to challenge me?  Will I be obliged to leave twenty cities in ruins before someone worthy decides to peek out from beneath his bed?”

In Hydra, at least, there is no one.  An hour later the city is largely destroyed or aflame, its walls and towers laid low by the might of the Azhant the Ancient.  Satisfied, he takes high to the air and heads northward, following the Saph River toward his next target, the city of Storin._



So much for pleasant visions.

“When we get home,” says Ernie angrily, “we’re going to kick your ass again.” He shakes his fist at the ceiling.

“If we get out of here,” adds Morningstar, “I’m going to Slay Again.”


/*/


After four days the wizards finish the ritual, confident that they are not triggering any new traps.  As the dust motes fade at the end of the day, the Company gathers in the circle, and they Leap.

In the dark, dizzying star-space, the voices whisper to Dranko.  “Do not become!”

“I’m not going to!” answers Dranko. “I know what it’s like.  It’s a pain in the ass!”

“Try harder!” snarls one of the unseen creatures, its voice close in his ear.

“Is there a particular way to Not Become?” he asks it.

“Stay your ambition.”

“Dammit!”

They arrive.  It is the dust-mote equivalent of dusk. They stand in something akin to a field, the stone floor a gentle ramp that slopes both upward and downward out of their range of vision. The walls and ceiling are far enough away to also be out of view, though the ceiling is supported here and there by natural stone pillars. 

The ground is covered with artistically-arranged rows of fungus. A thin film of water coats the ground, slowly sluicing downward, watering the crops. 

“It’s a farm,” says Ernie.  He takes care not to tread on the fungus.

Morningstar casts _true seeing_, and all is as it seems. Kibi takes a moment to gather his bearings, and decides they are where Corriv’s equations predicted:  0.8 miles coreward and 97 miles removed laterally from Leaping Circle Nine.  The next (and final?) Leaping Circle is another mile below them, and fifty miles away nearly due south.

Aravis creates a _mansion_ for them to sleep in, though before they retire, they enjoy the magical feast of entirely non-fungus-based foods.  That night he dreams once again, but though this is another vision granted by Belshikun, it is not from the surface of Abernia.  He is seeing into someplace else, someplace unique.



_The two of them, a man and a woman side by side, watch an enormous red moon rise over a strange sea.   They sit on a beach of smooth blue stones, stones that might be solid and might not be, and listen to the slow susurrus of the waves, waves that both are and are not water, waves that both are, and are not.

“I think I’m ready to go back,” says the woman.   

For a long time, the man says nothing.  Then:  “I wonder how long we’ve been here.  Time isn’t passing, the way we remember it. It’s like someone had to invent time for us, and wasn’t quite sure how it worked.”

“I guess,” says the woman.  “But I don’t think that matters. We fell out of the universe, and here we are, waiting, doing nothing.   I think we’ve been watching the ocean for years now.  Haven’t we had this conversation hundreds of times?”

“I think so,” says the man.  “But how can we be sure?  Have we always known, or did we figure it out over centuries?   That sometimes things come loose?.   It probably happens in many ways, all unique.   The universe didn’t have a way to deal with paradoxes, so it created this place, for us wayward bits of flotsam to find purchase, instead of puncturing holes in reality.”

“But something has changed,” says the woman.  “Can you feel it?  I think it’s time to leave.  The universe will let us back in.  It wants us to go back.  All we have to do is ask.”

Again the man is quiet for a time.  “I’m not sure I want to go back,” he says.  “I think terrible things happened to me there, and will probably happen again.  It’s not so bad here.   Here, I can think my own thoughts.”

“We can’t stay here forever,” says the woman.

“Why not?” asks the man, calmly.

“Because we’re meant to go back,” says the woman.  “I know it sounds silly, but after all this time, why do we only now feel it’s even possible to go back?  I think it’s because the universe is kicking us out.   Like we’ve overstayed our welcome, or that this place is going to disappear, and we’ll be destroyed if we’re still here.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad, either,” says the man.

“Grow up!” says the woman with sudden vehemence.  “You can go back and make a difference!  You can help those who helped you.  And if you get destroyed in the process, you’ll be no worse off, and maybe you’ll have done some good in the end.   I saw all of my friends die you know, over and over again, and each time I knew at the end that we’d failed, at that the whole world – whichever world it was – was screwed.   So don’t play the ‘terrible things,’ card with me.”

The man gives her a wry smile.  “I suppose you’re right.   I should go back.  We should go back.”

“Good,” says the woman.  “And all we have to do is make the decision, and the universe will put us where we belong, wherever that is.   It’s time for time to start passing for us again.”

And beneath a night sky made of nothing, in the light of a moon that will soon cease to be, Kay and Sagiro get to their feet._

…to be continued…


----------



## Tamlyn

Awesome! I was hoping we'd see the mustachio'd one again before the end!

~Tam


----------



## RangerWickett

Kay. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time. A long time.


----------



## Tamlyn

Now we're just missing Mrs. Horn and the old gang will all be back together.


----------



## Everett

I don't suppose their players came back for the last few sessions?


----------



## Everett

I've no idea if Sagiro is going to give us multiple climactic fights, but I suppose we could have: showdown with the Evil Trio, followed by a final bid to prevent the Adversary from escaping, FOLLOWED by a return to the surface and a second reckoning with Azhant AND the creature that killed King Crunard and Yale AND God knows what else...


----------



## Quartz

I'm guessing that defeating the Evil Trio will release the Adversary, who will break Yulan's Barrier, allowing the heroes to escape topside, there will then be a fight with Azhant, then the Emperor, and then the Adversary.

Naturally, Sagiro will not follow this course.


----------



## Everett

Quartz said:


> I'm guessing that defeating the Evil Trio will release the Adversary, who will break Yulan's Barrier, allowing the heroes to escape topside, there will then be a fight with Azhant, then the Emperor, and then the Adversary.
> 
> Naturally, Sagiro will not follow this course.




Yeah, I feel pretty sure that the way they'll get back to the surface will not be through any mechanism we already know (Yulan's barrier) - it'll stem from the prophecy.

I remain skeptical as to how the Company could actually have melee combat with the Adversary.


----------



## Everett

Odd to think that if updates continue at this rate, the Story Hour will come to an end in a couple weeks.  There actually won't be ANY MORE Sagiro updates to look forward to, ever again?  I'll never log into EnWorld again?  Weird.


----------



## RangerWickett

Nah, it'll just be like the classic days when Sagiro was busier. Every month or so I'd think, "Hey, remember that awesome story hour? I wonder if there are any updates!" And I'd check, and there shouldn't be, but it'd be okay, because the stuff that was already there was great.

It'll be like that, except less guilt for Sagiro.


----------



## carborundum

What are you guys playing now, Sagiro?  Are you...ahem...recording it?


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 388*_
*Mind Cows*


Everyone agrees that the vision of Sagiro and Kay is promising, if also confusing.

“First Tor, now Kay!” says Ernie with a big smile.

“Hooray for allies,” says Dranko. “Next thing you know, we’ll find out Mrs. Horn is an archmage!”

“Maybe the three of them will start an adventuring team,” says Morningstar.

“That will kill the dragon!” adds Dranko.

Cheered up by their optimistic banter, they pack up and exit the mansion, back to the fungus farm. This time they find it being worked, by dozens of small gnome-like creatures with pale yellow skin and bushy black hair. They wear simple clothing and wield metal tools. The tallest among cannot be more than four feet tall. 

As each notices the Company stepping out of the doorway of the _mansion_, they drop their tools and stare in shock, then inch toward one another.  The nearest of these creatures huddle and start whispering.

Morningstar is the last to exit.  When the little gnomes see her, they stop their whispering and drop to their knees, eyes bulging wide.

“Uh… hello?” she says to them.

“H… hello,” one says back, voice trembling.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” Morningstar assures her.

“We know,” says the gnome. “You don’t look like a Great One, but you are.  We can all see it.”

“I’m sorry,” says Morningstar, “but I am confused.”

“You are a Dream Lord, are you not?”

Oh!

“Yes, I do walk in Dream,” she says.

“Of course you do.  But you are unlike the others.  You are… small.  And you don’t have horns.”

The whole party has the same idea at once.  Mind cows! The purported enemies of the Keffet who crowd Ava Dormo. 

“I have heard that there are mind cows,” says Morningstar.  “Dream cows, I mean.”

The gnome is puzzled. “Cows?”

“With horns,” says Morningstar.

“Yes, the Egannic. The Dream Lords!”

“How large are they?”

The gnome regards Morningstar.  “Two of you high,” she decides.

“Those are big cows,” says Ernie.

“Can you see into Ava Dormo?” asks Morningstar. “Into the Dreamworld?”

Again the gnome looks confused.  “You… live there, don’t you?”

“I spend time there,” says Morningstar. 

“She lives in our world, this world,” explains Dranko.  “She just visits Ava Dormo.”

“We’ve never seen you there when we sleep,” says the gnome. 

Morningstar tries again to explain what she is.  “I worship a Goddess of the Time of Sleep,” she says.

“You… worship?  No, no, no! We worship you!”

“I’d just go with it,” says Kibi with a grin.  He’s been here before.  “See where it goes.”

“You worship the Dream Lords?” asks Morningstar. “The Egannic?”

“Yes!  They are so good to us. They teach us. They put in our heads the ways of the fungus. They give us peace and rest.  Safety.  Everything.  They are all around us, but we only see them in sleep.”  The gnome’s voice is reverent, almost a chant as she enumerates the blessings of the Egannic.

“Let’s try to get out of here doing as little damage to their theology as possible,” Ernie murmurs.

Curious, Morningstar asks, “What do they protect you from?”

The gnome thinks.  “We… don’t know.  No danger comes, because they protect us. Our land is one of peace and happiness. We farm our fungus, and build great statues to the Dream Lords.”

“Say,” says Dranko, “Did three people with red armor and black robes come through here a few months ago?”

“We did not see anyone like that.”

“They would have been mean,” Ernie prompts. 

“Oh, no, the Dream Lords would have protected us from anyone like that!”

The gnome looks at Ernie, then back to Morningstar.  “Are these your servants?”

Morningstar smiles. “These are my companions.”

“They are very lucky.”

“We are on a very important mission,” says Morningstar. “Together.”

“Can we assist you?”

At Aravis’s urging, Morningstar asks, “Do you know of the Leaping Circles?  One of them brought us to here, to your farm. Have others appeared here?”

“No. We have not seen anyone but you and your ser… your companions.”

The Company decides that the Evil Trio would most likely have ignored these people entirely, which is all for the best. 

“When we sleep,” asks the gnome, "will we see you?  In the land of the Dream Lords?  That is your home, isn’t it?”

Morningstar shakes her head.  “No, that is not my home.”

“But you have been there, surely!  It is a paradise of fungus, and clear pools, and jeweled caverns, and peaceful worship. We go there every night, to bask in the warmth of the Dream Lords.”

“And do you provide anything to the Dream Lords by worshipping them?” asks Ernie.

“What could they possible need from us?  We pray to them, and sometimes we sing hymns of adoration.  We pray to them for guidance, knowledge and protection, all of which they grant.”

“We have heard there is another race at war with your Dream Lords,” says Morningstar, thinking of the Keffet, particularly the little insane one, Checkle.

The gnome is shocked.  “Who would dare such a thing? Surely you have heard incorrectly!”

“I must have.”

Dranko clears his throat. “The Dream Lord is passing through, and requires a guide.  We would like to say hello to your leader, so she can properly bestow her blessings.”

The gnome nods gravely and speaks to Morningstar.  “Is this acceptable to you?”

Morningstar throws a glare at her husband. “ Of course.”

“She will be honored to meet you.”

They start walking downslope.  The gnome says, “Please be careful not to tread upon the fungus,” then realizes that may have been presumptuous, and so adds, “Is it pleasing to you?”

“It’s the most beautiful fungus I’ve ever seen,” Morningstar assures her.

“With the Dream Lords’ help, we have perfected the ways of fungus farming. It serves all of our needs, from subsistence to architecture to art.”

“Can you take messages to the Dream Lords while you sleep?” Morningstar asks.

“We would not speak directly to them, no!  Not even our leader would presume so much.”

They are led down the slope of the farm, through a series of caves filled with a variety of fungus farms.  One cavern has images of “dream cows,” statues twenty feet high, grown out of a fungus that has been engineered  to resemble orange marble.  The Dream Lords are not actually cows; the statues are of huge robed minotaurs.  They remind the Company of Horny, the bouncer employed at the Eye of the Storm in Het Branoi.

The gnomish creatures, called the Navni, live in small individual caves. The leader, a woman named Epp, lives in one hardly larger than most. They find her facing the back of the cave, kneeling before an idol of a Dream Lord, a statuette grown of carefully tended fungus.  Their guide clears her throat.

“We have visitors who would like to meet you.”

Epp turns around.

“I’m sorry to disturb you…” Morningstar begins, but Epp falls again to her knees.

“A Dream Lord in the waking world!” she cries.  “Have I displeased you in some way?”

“No! No, I’m…”

“You are different,” says Epp.  “Are you an enforcer?”  Her mouth quivers.

“No, I am a protector.”

“You have shown proper deference,” says Dranko. “You may now stand.”

Epp doesn’t’ stand.  She looks questioningly at Morningstar, who nods. “Please stand up.”

“The Dream Lord has come to accept your blessings,” says Dranko, “and to tell you they please her.  But also, that we need a guide to a thing called a Leaping Circle.”

“What is a Leaping Circle?” asks Epp.

“A large circle that allows one to travel a long distance, instantly,” says Morningstar.

“Is it made of fungus?”

“No, it’s made of metal,” says Aravis. “They are thousands of years old.”

But Epp has no knowledge of the Leaping Circles, and, when asked, has not seen or heard anything about the Evil Trio passing through the Navni territory.

“They are my enemies,” says Morningstar, speaking of the Black Circle adherents. “And enemies of the Dream Lords.”

“The why have you not annihilated them already?” asks Epp.

“Because we haven’t caught up with them yet,” explains Aravis.

“But when we do,” Dranko assures her, “Morningstar will smite them.”

“It’s hard to contemplate that the Dream Lords _have_ any enemies,” says Epp, frowning.  “But perhaps the Dream Lords can tell you about them, or about your Leaping Circle.  Tonight you should visit them.”

“Couldn’t we do it now?” asks Dranko.

“No!” Epp is horrified at the thought.  “You may only visit them in your sleep, after dark-dust.”

Morningstar and her companions talk with Epp for another hour.  They learn that the Navni have no immediate neighbors; their territory only comprises a hundred square miles or so, but no other races border their lands.  The Dream Lords have warned the Navni not to venture too far afield, lest they be unable to protect them properly.  

Dranko asks unabashedly if the Navni have a store of gemstones he might have.  When his friends protest, he declaims that when they regain the surface, the gems will help rebuild whatever remains of Charagan. He and Flicker are allowed to scavenge from the Navni’s collections of emeralds, which they use to adorn the statues of the Egannic. 

At lunchtime a number of Navni bring in a feast of fungus for Morningstar to sample, and they have truly performed some culinary miracles. The fungus is of a wonderful variety of tastes and textures, and the Company chows down appreciatively.  

They spend the rest of the day walking with Epp through the Navni territory, heading southward, as that is the general direction of the next Leaping Circle.  As they travel, Morningstar asks Epp if she knows about the Sister Gods, Yavin and Wlaqua. 

“Yes,” says Epp gravely. “They are the False Gods. The Dream Lords have warned us about them.  We do not venerate them, and we have never seen them here.  Yes. we know that they are very powerful beings, and we are wise to fear them, but they are not worthy of worship.  They are merely powerful mortals.”

“The mission we have been sent on is very dire,” Morningstar explains. “And as part of it, the balance between Yavin and Wlaqua has become unbalanced.  Wlaqua has become far more powerful.”

“That is no concern of ours,” says Epp. “The Dream Lords clearly can protect us from them, keeping any harm from us.”  

“Maybe they can,” thinks Aravis over the mind-link. “We don’t know how powerful these Dream Lords really are.”

The pass through dozens of caverns and tunnels, many adorned with statues of Dream Lords, including four different temples dedicated to them.

“The Dream Lords are very lucky to have you as worshipers,” says Morningstar.

“And you really do have a way with fungus,” says Dranko.

“It sustains us,” says Epp serenely, “so we sustain it.”

“You’re fungamancers!” says Dranko.

At dark-dust, all of the Navni all scuttle off to bed at once, eager to enjoy the paradise of the Dream Lords that they experience each night.  Morningstar speculates that they don’t actually go to Ava Dormo, but that the Dream Lords grant them pleasant, if ordinary, dreams. She’ll know soon enough if she’s right.  When all the Navni have gone to sleep, they backtrack to the nearest shrine, and Morningstar brings the entire Company with her into Ava Dormo.

The place they find themselves in is spacious and pleasantly lit. This is not the densely-packed territory of the Keffet. They are in a large temple, though one without any images of minotaurs.  The walls are carved with rows of abstract shapes of varying hues.  There is a domed glass ceiling, and light shines down through it, not the dust-mote light, but something more like true sunlight. 

The temple is also under construction, being expanded by twenty-odd hard-working Navni, sweating as they labor with picks and shovels, chisels and trowels.  And several tall shirtless minotaurs, male and female, lounge about on the steps and in chairs, eating fruit. Two Navni are carefully painting artistic patterns on the backs of one of the minotaurs.

The Dream Lords note the Company’s arrival, but none of them stir to offer any greetings.  One of them does nod respectfully to Morningstar, then raises an eyebrow at her companions.

“You are new,” that one thinks to her. Its voice is entirely telepathic; there is no vocal component at all.

“My name is Morningstar, and I am from very far away.”

The minotaur makes a face. “Your name is… coarse.  Why is that?”

“Define ‘coarse.’”

“It is not constructed properly,” says the Dream Lord. “My name is… “  It does not utter a name, but projects a pattern into Morningstar’s mind, connected with an abstract thought construction, partially a red diamond, partially the idea of a musical note.

“That is very lovely,” says Morningstar.

“Thank you.”

“As I said, I am from very far away.”

“I would like to hear more,” says Red Diamond.  “But before we continue, how would you like your slaves put to work?”  It motions pointedly to the others.

“I would like my companions to stay with me,” says Morningstar.

“That is uncouth.”

“Dranko, don’t say anything,” thinks Ernie quietly.

“Is it disrespectful to you that they stay?” asks Morningstar.

“That they remain here, standing in our presence, as equals?  Do you even need to ask such a question?”

“I so want to kick its ass,” thinks Dranko.

One of the other Dream Lords takes a bite out of a piece of fruit, then lazily waves a huge hand.  A freestanding stone wall appears next to Morningstar.  “Perhaps you could ask them to stand behind that, so we don’t have to look at them.”

Morningstar gives her friends an apologetic look.  They reluctantly stand behind the wall, not wanting to rock the boat.  Ernie sticks out his tongue.

“Morningstar, you need a proper symbol by which we will address you,” says Red Diamond.  And so she fills her mind with the power and presence of Ell.  “I am Morningstar, and I am Ell’s Shield,” she says.  “Will that suffice?”

One of the Dream Lords inches backward just a bit, but Red Diamond nods. “We will call you…”  He projects into her mind a black triangle, connected with a mental construct of divinity and darkness.

“That will do nicely,” says Morningstar.

“Why are you here?” asks Red Diamond.

One of the Navni brings over a golden tray of crystal water goblets.  She takes one and sips.  “Are you aware of the shifting of power in the waking world?  The imbalance between Yavin and Wlaqua?”

Red Diamond is confused. “You mean in the dreaming, not the waking world. But yes, there are constant struggles for power, in that cesspool of a place that those creatures go when they dream.”  He waves vaguely at the Navni working on the nearest wall of the temple. “But they are not our concern.  We have felt it out, explored it a bit in days long past, but it is not a place for the genteel.”

Well isn’t that interesting. The Dream Lords consider Ava Dormo to be the “real” world, and the waking world to be the “dream” world!  “That’s why that little kobold was so confused about waking versus dreaming,” thinks Morningstar to her friends.

To Red Diamond, she says, “I am on a mission from Ell, my Goddess, a mission of great concern to her.”  She projects to her hosts the sense she has when near to the Adversary’s blood.  “A divine being of great evil has penetrated… the Dreaming.”

Red Diamond nods and yawns.

“In your sleep, do you dream?” Morningstar asks.

“There are some eccentric explorers among us, who have explored the land of dreams to a small extent.”

“And if the land of dreams was destroyed, how would that effect you?”

“I assume it would have an adverse effect on the Navni.  We would need to find a new source of labor, for tasks which are beneath us.  For instance, it would be uncouth for us to paint ourselves.”  He motions to one of the Navni engaged in body-painting.  “You do such lovey work,” he tells his servant.  The Navni looks blissful at being complimented, as though there were no higher honor it could be afforded. 

Most of the Navni, however, the ones engaged in manual labor, do not look happy.  They look exhausted.  There are no signs of pools or paradise.

“That evil being has three servants abroad in your lands,” says Morningstar. “Three people in black robes or red armor, very rude, very uncouth. Do you know of them?”

“Interesting that you would speak of them,” says Red Diamond.  “Two Spirals spoke of something similar, months ago, during one of his excursions into the dreaming.”

“I’d like to speak with him.”

“One moment.”

Red Diamond vanishes, and returns a moment later with a second minotaur.  Her companion is less kempt than his fellows, with no fancy tattoos.  He projects his name into her head: two perpendicular silver spirals along with a notion of curiosity and knowledge.  Morningstar asks him if he has met Evil Trio.

“I wouldn’t say met,” says Two Spirals.  “I observed them, from a distance. I sensed they were dangerous, even though they were only in the dream world.”

“What were they doing when you observed them?”

“They were traveling, through tunnels in the dreaming.  I followed them.  They arrived at a place like a large ring set in the ground.  They went in and vanished.  I’ve thought nothing of them since.”

“And how do we get there? To the ring set in the ground?”

“You mean if you were in the Dreaming?  Like this.”

Two Spirals projects a map into her head, finely detailed, showing the various tunnels and shafts one would need to traverse to reach what is presumably Leaping Circle Two.

“Thank you,” says Morningstar.  She has what she came from, but has a few more questions for her hosts. “What do you do when the Navni are asleep?”  

“Pursue our creative interests,” says Two Spirals. “We compose music, write poetry, build our own temples. Carve sculptures. We advance ourselves.  Become enlightened.  Hone our abilities to control reality.”

Morningstar brings up another topic. “We met a people who called themselves the Keffet…”

Red Diamond projects a feeling of disgust and contempt.  “We have been at war with those nasty little things for as long as anyone can remember.”

“You actually fight?”

“Yes, we have a warrior caste by necessity. We are more powerful, but the Keffet are more numerous, and our ability to change reality is somewhat diminished in their territory. But they are no great threat to us, and eventually we will win the war against them. My understanding, which I admit is not great because I find the subject distasteful, is that we are making slow but gradual progress toward wiping them out.  Which is no less than they deserve.  They are filthy, rude, unintelligent, warlike.”

There seems to be nothing more to be gained by spending more time with the Egannic.  Morningstar thanks them for their time.

“It has been an interesting experience to meet you,” says Two Spirals. “We have not seen anything like you before, and so our knowledge of the world is increased, and for that we thank you.”

Morningstar returns the Company to the waking world. They decide not to disabuse the Navni of what the Dream Lords are like, though they are appalled at the manner in which the little gnomes are exploited.  It’s one more thing for the list; after they’ve saved the world, they want to come back to the Navni and set things right.  But for now, it’s on to the next Leaping Circle.  Morningstar knows the way.

…to be continued…


----------



## Neurotic

Everett said:


> Odd to think that if updates continue at this rate, the Story Hour will come to an end in a couple weeks.  There actually won't be ANY MORE Sagiro updates to look forward to, ever again?  I'll never log into EnWorld again?  Weird.




Why don't you look for halmae saga, lazybones or some other great writers


----------



## Everett

Neurotic said:


> Why don't you look for halmae saga, lazybones or some other great writers




I've looked at other Story Hours from time to time.  Some of them seem interesting, but the truth is that I've never seen another story that's as across-the-board excellent as Sagiro's is.  In terms of writing, plotting -- Sagiro's writing is clear and moves through complex dialectical arguments without ever being dull or pedantic. (This is also to the players' credit, of course.  I'm thinking of the episode when the Company had sworn to give up the Crosser's Maze, but couldn't do because it was part of Aravis' physiology.  Ernie uttered an on-the-spot profundity: “Wanting the Crosser’s Maze is like wanting the ocean.  You can see it, but you cannot hold it. You cannot control it, and no more could we bring it to you, than we could bring the ocean.”) 

The fights are filled with D&D specific-mechanics, but the mechanics never overpower the storytelling, as they do in many other campaigns; the mechanics instead serve plot points that actually mean something.  Think of the company's transition from low to high-level play, which was marked by the archmages giving up their powers, leaving the company as Charagan's pre-dominant heroes.  Think of how that was mirrored by the transition we just saw into epic level play, after the Thousandfold, when the company was supported by Abernia itself.  Memorable villains -- Moirel, Condor, Shreen, Belshikun, Octesian -- and characters who only serve a particular story arc feel just as individual and real.  Praska, Mokad, the divine animal-rings of Abernia... 

Even one-shot characters linger in the mind.  There's a woman who appeared for half a page, in Bakersfield, before the "lightless room" and One Certain Step's sacrifice, who I've never forgotten.  I just looked her up (StevenAC's collected makes it pretty easy to find this stuff) -- her name was Spindra.  She believed that everyone there was suffering their deserved punishment because they had all been consigned to hell.  She had no particular plot function to serve, but her presence for half a page added volumes of dimension and depth to my engagement with the story.

It's just the best thing ever.


----------



## Chronikoce

> And beneath a night sky made of nothing, in the light of a moon that will soon cease to be, Kay and Sagiro get to their feet.




That bit actually sent a shiver through me. I still can't believe I found such an amazing story on an RPG forum. I cannot thank this group and Sagiro especially for taking the time to write this all up. Truly awesome.


----------



## Vargo

I've been on ENWorld since before the release of D&D 3.0. I've stopped playing pen & paper RPGs (lack of time/group) but I've been coming back for this story hour (and I'd come back for Piratecat's if he ever started writing again) - when it passes, it's going to be the end of an era for me.


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

I hope that at some point Sagiro will start up a new campaign.  This Story Hour may be approaching its end, but that doesn't necessarily mean the end of Sagiro story hours in general.


----------



## Sagiro

Thank you all, as always, for the nice comments! But if you're enjoying reading the Story Hour, you largely have yourselves to blame; now that the game is over, I'm mostly writing it because I know so many people are having fun reading it. And also, because if I didn't finish it, *StevenAC* would likely fly to America and beat me to a pulp. 


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 389*_
*Checkle’s Bargain*

The Navni all wake at the same time the next morning, refreshed for another day, having dreamed their dreams of paradise. The Company briefly considers telling them the truth, that the Dream Lords effectively enslave them for nine hours every night, but decide against it. While they agree that what the Egannic are doing is morally wrong, it is not so heinous as to throw two civilizations into chaos putting an end to it.  And the Navni do lead peaceful, happy lives, and are sent back to the waking world each morning with pleasant memories. 

Kibi wonders what would happen if they woke a Navni prematurely, assuming that the Egannic alter their memories at the end of each night’s sleep.

“You’d probably ruin the life of that one Navni,” says Aravis. “The others wouldn’t believe him.”

The Company bids a farewell to Epp.  She and several other Navni nearby all bow low to Morningstar and wish her good fortune.  Morningstar now has in her head a perfect map showing how to reach Leaping Circle Two, and it doesn’t seem difficult.  The first stage involves winding through the remainder of the southern portion of the Navni territory, which takes them through long stretches of caves and fields, tunnels and temples.  In one of these, a half dozen Navni are nearly finished a thirty-foot tall statue of a Dream Lord, constructed out of a clever melding of fungus and stone.  Baskets of fungus are already piled at the statue’s feet, along with a scattering of emeralds and khet chips.  

One of the sculptors approaches Morningstar, tentatively, not looking her in the eye.  “Your name is Morningstar, yes?  Would you like a statue of you?  How would you like it to look? Tall? In a certain pose?”

Morningstar considers.  “If you want to record that I have been here, how about making an image of this.”  She presents her triangle shield.  “It’s what is most important to me.”  She tells them about Ell, and what She stands for.  The Navni are confused to think that Morningstar worships something greater than herself, but they accept her request.

The party moves on, and the Navni population thins as they approach the outskirts of their territory.  As they reach one of the last cave-homes, an old Navni waves to them.

“Are you going that way?” he asks, motioning to a wide tunnel snaking away and downward.  “You should be careful.”

“Oh?  Why?” asks Dranko.

“Our lands used to stretch for many more miles in that direction. Our kingdom was once three times the size it is now.  But we abandoned those places.  There are Cloakers there.  They are creatures that look like blankets, and cling to the ceiling, and will drop upon you.  Be wary of them.”

“Thank you,” says Aravis.  “We appreciate the warni…”

A little ball of orange flame flares up in midair, in the midst of the gathered Company.  

“Not this again,” says Grey Wolf.

It’s the same size as before, slightly larger than an apple.  But this time it grows brighter and dimmer, brighter and dimmer, slowly strobing, and makes a crackling sound.

“Are you friend or foe?” Ernie asks it.  There is no response, though it hisses a spits out a few small sparks.

“Who are you?” asks Dranko. 

It vanishes. 

Morningstar immediately casts both _detect thoughts_ and _thought capture_, but both spells come up empty.  Kibi opines that the flame reminds him of a scrying sensor, though it’s obviously more than just that.  “Maybe it’s Kay and Sagiro trying to find us?”

But that wouldn’t make sense.  The timing doesn’t work, and neither Kay nor Sagiro have that sort of casting ability.

The Company passes out of the Navni’s little kingdom, Morningstar leading the way as they navigate a complex system of tunnels, caves, and steep stairwells.  Once, long ago, the Navni occupied all of this space.  Did they really flee from Cloakers?  Or did the Egannic convince them to become more consolidated, in order to better take advantage of their somnolent slave-labor?

They get a clue to the answer part way through the day, as they enter a tall cavern on the floor of which are twenty-odd bundles, small bones protruding from them.  Each in the Company instinctively looks up to check for Cloakers, but the twenty-five foot ceiling is clear.  Dranko moves to check out the bundles.

He sees that they are not the past victims of Cloakers, but rather the Cloakers themselves. They’re thicker than the Thousandfold, like rubber sheets. Each one has a hole burned right through its middle.  Some of the bodies are also wounded in more conventional ways, slashed or crushed or burned in other places, but someone methodically burned out the heart of each one.  Could Meledien be growing stronger each time she vaporizes the soul of a living being?

“I think they’re sending us a message,” says Grey Wolf.

There are no further signs of Cloakers after that.  Perhaps when the Navni fled the region, the Cloakers also migrated away in search of sustenance. Two hours later the light motes fade, and Aravis casts their nightly _magnificent mansion_.

He dreams.



_A small bronze urn rests upon an altar to Pikon.  Members of the Spire surround it.

Lady Cornelia, High Priestess of Pikon, lifts her hand from the lid of the urn.  “He does not wish to return.  He has made the ultimate sacrifice for his kingdom, and is at peace.”

Salk bows his head.  “He did his job, and did it well.”

To the urn he speaks softly.  “Farewell, Octavius.  You were truly a master of your craft, and a good man as well.”

Fylnius turns to Belinda the Diviner.  “Will Naradawk believe it?”

“I think so,” says Belinda.  “I’m not pretending to know what Naradawk might do to ascertain the truth, but I think he’s more likely to question the assassin, and the assassin certainly believes what it saw.   Also, I had a final trick up my sleeve; a special anti-divinatory that Chiswick told me I’d need for this sort of occasion.   If anyone can keep Naradawk from the truth, even for a while, it’s him.”

“Good, good,” says Duke Nigel.  “The Vault of Scrolls has been emptied, its contents distributed.    I gather that our forces  on Nahalm are hard-pressed.  Kynder Hold has been sacked, and now Hae Kalkas is sorely besieged.  Some of the scrolls have been teleported there.   Others have been sent to Sand’s Edge; our scouts report fifteen thousand orcs marching  southward or riding the Norlin River on barges.  A few scrolls have been sent to High Priestess Rhiavonne in Kallor, and now she seems more confident that they can repel an invasion with the assistance of the troops from Dimres and Dimrelor.  And the final half-dozen or so have gone to the strike team.”

King Crunard IV, very much alive, walks to the body of Octavius Hightower and kneels before it.  

“You rest now where our debt to you cannot be repaid.  May the Gods reward you properly.”

There is a moment of silence, before Belinda speaks again.  “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you discover that Yale had been replaced by a monster?  My guild has been wary of the Emperor infiltrating the Spire ever since his arrival, and we have had no inkling at all.”

King Crunard smiles grimly.  “We’ve known since the moment it arrived.   After every Spire meeting, we’ve had it taken in secret to Rhiavonne in Kallor to have its memories modified.  It thinks we believe Naradawk is a demon, and that Ozilinsh’s group was sent to the Abyss to learn how to stop him.   It thinks we have no idea what we’re really up against.  It even thinks it’s been spying on us much longer than it really has.  But the most important thing was for Naradawk to believe the Scrolls had been destroyed, which it seems likely he now does.”

Belinda frowns.  “But how did you discover Yale had been replaced in the first place?”

The King smiles again.  “Naradawk may be powerful, but we have our own ally that may be his equal.   Parthol Runecarver told me.   He even knew the day that the monster was going to kill me.   When I asked Parthol why he was helping us, he gave the same answer  as before:  that Naradawk is merely a servant of the Adversary, and neither is likely to do Abernia any good in the long run.   As such, he dislikes Naradawk Skewn just as much as we do.  The enemy of my enemy, as they say.”

The High Stormknight Dalesandro snorts.  “But we still can’t trust him, can we?”

“No,” says Salk.  “But we need him.  If he can help defend against Naradawk and his allies, we’ll take that help.  If and when Naradawk is no more, we can place Parthol under greater scrutiny.”_



There is much cheering the next morning when Aravis retells his latest vision.  The Spire is not so helpless against Naradawk as it seemed, and that’s two promising dreams in a row.

_Wind walk_ has stopped working, this far beneath the surface. Kibi can feel a palpable increase in the ambient Earth Magic, and it thrills him.  The _pulse of abernia_ warms his fingers when he holds it. Traveling by _phantom steed_, they arrive at the proper coordinates of Leaping Circle Two at mid-day.  There’s a final tunnel that presumably leads to it, but its ceiling has been deliberately collapsed.

“Did Meledien think this would slow us down?” asks Dranko.

“It wasn’t her,” says Kibi, looking at the tumbled stones. “This cave-in is decades old at least.”

Someone has cleared out the rocks at the top of the pile, allowing one to crawl along just beneath the fractured ceiling. It couldn’t scream out “trap” any louder, so they send Scree _under_ the rockfall to see how far it goes.

“The collapse goes on about thirty feet,” Scree reports. “There’s a big circular room on the other side of it, with a Leaping Circle in it.  Only the tunnel is collapsed; the Leaping Circle is undamaged. I don’t see any Cloakers, or anything else dangerous.  There are four other tunnels leading out of the Leaping Circle room, but they’ve all caved in like ours.”

Still untrusting of the situation, Dranko casts _moment of peril_ to see if there’s danger upcoming, and gets a result of “safety.” Ernie casts _true seeing_ and inspects the rubble, while Aravis casts _greater arcane sight_ and does the same.  There are no magical auras on this side of the cave-in, or anything concealed magically. 

Aravis uses his staff to make a _passwall_ tunnel through to the Leaping Circle room, and once Dranko and Flicker are through they sweep the place for physical traps.  It’s clear. Other than the five truncated corridors leading out of it, the only feature in the room is the fifty-foot-diameter Leaping Circle set into the floor.

What’s missing, Kibi realizes, is an instruction tablet.  There’s no sign that there ever was one.

Hm.

Kibi casts _stone tell_ and queries the wall of the room.

“Hello, Kibilahthur,” says the stone. “It’s an honor to speak with you.”

“Hello,” says Kibi. “Could you tell me if anyone arrived here recently, other than us?”

“Three people were here, not long ago by our standards but maybe by yours. They went into the metal circle and disappeared.”

“Do you know what they _did_ to make themselves disappear?”

“One of them was speaking aloud for several days. Just like other people used to do, long ago.”

“Was that person reading something?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Did they collapse or destroy anything?”

“No. They crawled over the rubble, coming from the same way as you.  Three bipeds, like you. A short one, and two taller ones.  One of the taller ones spoke for several days, waving his arms.  He had a crown of metal upon his head.”

Not helpful.  “Do you know how we might activate the Circle?” Kibi asks.

“Have you tried chanting and waving your arms?”

Kibi sighs.  He runs his fingers along the wall, feeling the deep-bones power of Abernia.  “You are good rock,” he says. “When someone vanishes out of the Circle, are you involved in its magic?”

“No, no.  I do not wish to go anywhere.  I am one place, and this is it.  Kibilhathur, you also understand the importance of being one place, but not yet.”

Before Kibi can ask the stone about this cryptic comment, there is a popping sound behind him.  Someone has appeared in the room with them.  It’s Checkle, the little half-mad kobold creature that last appeared in the Drevin’s feasting hall.

The creature – a Keffet – looks around with quick, twitchy motions.

“Hi.  Hi.  Oh, good, it’s you.  Right. I knew it would be.  Are you awake yet?”

Morningstar regards him curiously.  “I am awake.”

“Are you sure? I have to tell you something, but one of us is still sleeping, and I don’t know who.”

“Just tell us,” says Dranko impatiently.

“Yes, yes,” says Checkle.  “It’s that.. I… we’re going to… oh, it’s all so much clearer when I’m awake. But it’s important. I said before you would need something from me, and now is when you need it, and I still have it! So here I am, awake for you, and sleeping.”

Checkle pauses, rubs his eyes, tugs on his stringy hair.  He looks imploringly at Morningstar.  “Can you quiet my mind, please? It’s very loud in here, and confusing, and I don’t know which is the waking part and which is the sleeping part anymore. But there are a lot of things I know, and one of those things you need to know, so if you could just quiet me down a bit… I’d appreciate that…”

Morningstar quickly drops into Ava Dormo, thinking Checkle might be there as well, but the immediate Dreamscape is empty.

“You can do something, I know it!” Checkle shouts at her. “But don’t go to sleep.  If you do, they’ll get you! You know what I’m talking about.”

Morningstar nods. “So you know the truth about the Mind Cows?”

“Yes, I do!  And I’m going to tell you that truth! But you are not asleep, and I am not awake. But soon I will be.  It’s so noisy here I can’t think, but I have it all here.”  The Keffet taps his head knowlingly.

Ernie and Aravis can see there’s no magic on Checkle, no spell causing him to be here. 

“What do you need to tell me?” Morningstar asks, soothingly.

“I… almost know what it is.  I knew it a minute ago, and I’ll know it again soon.  I’ll have to fall back asleep for that.  It’s so hard to think while I’m awake.”

Morningstar has an idea.  She bestows _protective sleep_ upon him, and then brings him into Ava Dormo with her.  He immediately wakes up, and the edge of confusion is gone from his voice, though he’s still twitchy and a bit manic.

He looks about.  “Thank you. Now I’m home.  Except that… I’m not. I understand it now. It’s all about the Egannic and us. That’s why we ended up the way we did. Nobody remembers anymore, except for me. We’ve all been born again too many times.  We’ve always… no, not always. For a long, long time we’ve been at war with the Egannic. Once upon a time we were all awake.  But we were powerful in Dream, the Keffet and Egannic, so powerful.  We would war in the waking world, and war in the Dreaming. Two fronts.”

Morningstar motions for him to continue.

“But the Dreaming war was more important,” says Checkle. “In the Dreaming, you could affect the waking, more easily than the other way around. So we started sending in permanent dreamers to do battle. We’d put people into permanent sleep, ageless, staying in Ava Dormo forever.  We did that more and more, and so did the Egannic.  Eventually, the last of us, and the last of them, went to sleep.  And the fighting didn’t stop. We are all asleep, and they are all asleep, whole races hidden away, sleeping and fighting forever in the Dreaming. And each side thinks that the other has some artifact, or power, or source, that is why we cannot kill them. You kill them, and they come back.  But that’s not what’s happening!  As soon as someone dies, we go right back in. Our minds may return to our sleeping bodies for the smallest of fractions of seconds, and then we’re back, fighting again. We don’t realize that we’re dying, and we don’t understand why the Egannic keep returning.”

“Your bodies don’t die of old age?” asks Morningstar.

“We’re in stasis.  We have to be.  It’s the only way to make it work.  We are all of us in stasis, in giant caverns built to house our sleeping bodies.  Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and nobody knows but me. They’ve all forgotten. But I can see back, through all of my memories.  I remember the vats, climbing into mine, going to sleep for the last time.”

He shudders and hugs himself. 

“But that’s all going to end now, because of you. Because you are going to wake us up! We have been asleep long enough, Morningstar.  We are going to end the war, because…”  And here Checkle leans in and whispers conspiratorially.  “…because I know where they’re sleeping. When we are all awake, we will march to their sleeping places, and fall upon them, and then there will be no more Egannic.  We will wake our people from a slumber that we never should have entered. And when we are awake…”

Checkle motions to the Leaping Circle, a gleam in his eye.

“I will tell you how that works.”

…to be continued…


----------



## Anxe

The party cheered? My immediate thought was that the Yale monster is now pretending to be the King.


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

Sagiro, with that last line of "...I will tell you how it works" you provoked a throaty appreciative chuckle from me. Thank you.

Also - like others, I've been reading this Story Hour since at least the early 3e days. I honestly can't remember when I first picked this up. To face the idea that it's somehow going to finish, well, it's kind of sad. I also know that it cannot possibly have the kind of ultimate finale that would match the hours of pleasure I've had reading through all of this. I know that on some level _any_ ending will be a little disappointing.

But you know what? That's FINE. That's actually, completely and utterly fine. I've already had so, so many brilliant memories of reading this that you cannot possibly let me down, because I can always go back and re-read some of my favourite fantasy literature ever. I've even had the pleasure of meeting KidCthulhu and Piratecat and they're even more delightful in person that I'd have hoped.

However, if or when I ever get to meet you, Sagiro... man, I owe you a beer or a dessert or something. At the very least you're getting a manly hug or a hearty handshake.

Now, and with full respect for the fact that you have a life and other things to get on with...more, please?


----------



## Sagiro

Anxe said:


> The party cheered? My immediate thought was that the Yale monster is now pretending to be the King.




Briefly:  Octavius Hightower was the leader of the Starshine Players, who served as spies for Dranko's thieves' guild. In that capacity he was a master of disguise.  In case it wasn't clear from Aravis's vision, the Spire had known (from Parthol) that a monster had killed Yale and was impersonating her.  They knew its job was to gain the King's trust, and by extension access to the Spire's store of ancient and powerful scrolls.  They allowed the monster to think it was succeeding, going so far as to have Octavius pretend to be the King so that the monster could kill him, thus making certain that it would report back to Naradawk, with utter surety, that it had carried out its mission.


----------



## Anxe

Oh... I thought he was just another casualty. Cool!


----------



## StevenAC

Sagiro said:


> Thank you all, as always, for the nice comments! But if you're enjoying reading the Story Hour, you largely have yourselves to blame; now that the game is over, I'm mostly writing it because I know so many people are having fun reading it. And also, because if I didn't finish it, *StevenAC* would likely fly to America and beat me to a pulp.



Ha.  No, I’d simply leave the incomplete Story Hour page there, nagging at you with its insistent little "...to be continued..." at the bottom like a loose tooth…   My career in software development has made me far too familiar with working on large, multi-year projects that don’t reach a satisfying conclusion (or if they do, I’ve already moved on to another job) to be dismayed about it.  Now that this one is actually within reach of the finish line, I’m not quite sure how to react… 

Admittedly, when the Collected Story Hour was first made available (exactly eleven years ago today, believe it or not!), I had no conception of just how _big_ the story would end up being (right now, over 1400 pages, and still some more to go…).  But it really has been a pure pleasure to gradually collect the pieces of this wonderful construction that both you and the players should be very proud of; in fact, thanks to the quality of the writing and the ever-fascinating twists of the adventure itself, making this compilation has been one of my favourite things I’ve ever done.


----------



## Piratecat

Sagiro is notorious for loving practical jokes. If he updates right to the very final post, and then never updates again, please don't say that I never warned anyone.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:
			
		

> But if you're enjoying reading the Story Hour, you largely have yourselves to blame




So we can "largely" blame ourselves and we can "minutely" blame you?  I think I want percentages on that.




Sagiro said:


> Briefly:  Octavius Hightower was the leader of the Starshine Players, who served as spies for Dranko's thieves' guild. In that capacity he was a master of disguise.  In case it wasn't clear from Aravis's vision, the Spire had known (from Parthol) that a monster had killed Yale and was impersonating her.  They knew its job was to gain the King's trust, and by extension access to the Spire's store of ancient and powerful scrolls.  They allowed the monster to think it was succeeding, going so far as to have Octavius pretend to be the King so that the monster could kill him, thus making certain that it would report back to Naradawk, with utter surety, that it had carried out its mission.




So Octavius knew he was going to his death?  That's exceedingly selfless of him, for a Player - must have been quite the noble soul, then?


----------



## Sagiro

Piratecat said:


> Sagiro is notorious for loving practical jokes. If he updates right to the very final post, and then never updates again, please don't say that I never warned anyone.



Now there's a Rule One violation if ever I heard one!    (Rule One:  Never give the GM any ideas.)



_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 390*_
*One Last Annoying Moral Dilemma*

The Company is momentarily stunned by the enormity of Checkle’s proposal.  Assuming he’s telling the truth, he’s offering his knowledge in exchange for genocide.

“We don’t _like_ the Mind Cows,” says Kibi slowly, but…”

“You have to careful,” says Checkle. “The dreaming caves are guarded.  At least ours are guarded by... something terrible.  You may have to fight it before you wake us up.  So be careful.  But I know you’ll do it.”

Morningstar glances at Kibi.  “I don’t like them either…”

“They are wholly evil!” Checkle interjects.  “They are slavers, you know.”

“We noticed,” says Morningstar.  “But to kill all of them, does not seem right to me.”

Checkle shakes his head in frustration. “They are trying to kill all of us, all of the time.  If you were to wake _them_ up, they would wipe _us_ out in a heartbeat.”

Dranko offers an alternative.  “But if we wake you up, you won’t _have_ to go fight them.  You’ll be awake, and they’ll still be in Dream.  You’ll each have your own realm. You could just leave them alone.”

“They deserve to be killed!” says Checkle vehemently. “They’ve been the aggressors for centuries!”

“That’s where you take the first step on the path to wrongness,” says Ernie. “Whether or not they deserve it, has nothing to do with how you live your lives.”

“No,” says Checkle. “We’ve been fighting too long…  I will not give it up.  They are evil, hideous… the world will be a better place without them!”

Morningstar casts _brain spider_ on Checkle.  She needs to know what he knows, particularly about the ritual.  If they can simply extract it from his head, that would make all of this much easier.  But she soon realizes that’s not an option.  The ritual, Checkle knows, has never been written down.  It has been magically encapsulated as a mental construct,  and can only be passed from one mind to another via telepathy.  It’s like a book.  Checkle owns the book, but is not smart enough himself to open it, read it, or understand it.  His plan is to hand the book over to the Company, once they have woken his people.

“None of us like the Egannic,” says Ernie.  “But they can’t _all_ deserve to die in their sleep.”

“If we don’t use the Leaping Circle,” says Kibi to Checkle, “the world is going to end, with you in it.”

“Then we’d best come to an agreement!  It’s in all our best interests.  I agree!”

Morningstar ponders. She hates this sort of moral dilemma, but it needs solving, and quickly.

“I think if we wake you, we would also need to wake the Egannic,” she says. 

“Wake them too?  Then they would defend themselves!  We would still destroy them all, but at great cost to us. So the result would be the same, save you’d be causing the deaths of thousands of my people for no good reason.” 

“You don’t _need_ to wipe them out,” says Ernie, but Checkle ignores him.

“If we do wake your people up,” says Kibi, “won’t they see us and immediately attack?”

“They will be disoriented and weakened at first,” says Checkle. “You’ll have plenty of time to escape; my people won’t be able to harm you.”

“But then we’ll have to come back here and spend four days casting the ritual,” says Kibi.

“They would never think to come here,” says Checkle. “I certainly won’t tell them you’re here.  I’m happy to make that part of the bargain, if you’d like!”

“There must be another way!” Ernie insists. Over the mind-link he says, “maybe we can convince them not to be hostile, using magic?”

“We’d have to convince their entire race not to take the opportunity to kill their enemies,” says Aravis. “I don’t see how that’s going to happen.”

“Why can’t you wake your people from stasis yourself?” asks Kibi.

Checkle sighs.  “I’m not strong enough.  The monster would eat me.  It’s very big.  It’s kind of like a… what do you call it… dragon?”

“Sounds like a perfect monster for Galdifain,” says Kibi.

“For what?”

“I think we can take care of the monster for you,” says Kibi.

“And then I can wake up my people myself!” says Checkle brightly.

“That way, you’re the hero,” says Dranko.

“I’ll have to remember how to turn off all the machines...” Checkle says, mostly to himself. 

To his friends, Dranko thinks, “I feel better about taking out the monster, and letting him make up his own mind about what to do afterward.”

Morningstar doesn’t buy that rationalization.  “We’re still committing genocide.”

“I disagree,” says Dranko. “And there’s a good chance he won’t be able to wake his people up by himself, and we get a free monster out of the deal.”

“We can’t count on that,” says Morningstar.

“I think Morningstar had a good idea before,” says Aravis. “If we do this, we also have to wake the Egannic, to make it fair.”

“I don’t’ feel like we owe the Egannic anything,” Dranko grumbles. “Those guys are jackasses.” 

“We can at least _warn_ the Egannic, that they’re sleeping, and need to wake themselves up,” says Aravis. “We’d be preparing them so that both races have a fighting chance. They’re _already_ fighting; we’d just be changing the venue.”

In the end, the Company decides that this is the best of the bad options available. Ernie is disgusted that they’re helping perpetuate the cycle of violence, and Morningstar still feels that they’ll be complicit in thousands of deaths, but they need to get moving.  The world needs saving either way.

They explain the plan to Galdifain, who thinks she can do her part.  “For something as powerful as a dragon, it will take me about half a minute to bind it.  That’s how long it will take me to read my scroll.  I’ll need a direct unimpeded line to the beast the entire time, and remember, when I’m done, it will be bound in whatever physical state it’s in at the moment of completion.“

“So we have to keep it away from you, but not _too_ far away, without hurting it, for thirty seconds,” says Dranko. “Wonderful.”

“Sounds like a _forcecage_ with bars would do the trick,” says Kibi.


/*/


Thanks to Morningstar’s _brain spider_ on Checkle, Morningstar knows exactly how to reach the Keffet dreaming caves.  The way is through one of the other caved-in passages leading out of the Leaping Circle chamber; Scree scouts, and then Aravis _shapechanges_ into a Digger long enough to eat his way past the rock fall.

They travel for three uneventful days, sleeping each night in a _mansion_.  On the third night, Aravis receives another vision of the surface.



_Hae Kalkas is under siege.

Its massive stone walls, though scarred and cracked from an unrelenting barrage of catapulted boulders, still stand unbroken.   The ground just outside those walls is littered with corpses, almost entirely orcish.  Here and there lie ruined siege ladders, testament to several failed attempts by the orcish mob to scale the walls.

Thousands upon thousands of orcs now sit camped outside of bowshot range, restless, as more siege engines are built.   Having ascertained what a tough nut Hae Kalkas will be to crack, their next assault will not be so easily rebuffed.   Dozens of massive trebuchets are under construction.   Hundreds of orcs are preparing huge wads of pitch, which will be set alight and lobbed over the walls. Others are slaughtering cows by the hundreds, and throwing the corpses into a charnel pit.  These, too, will be loaded into the trebuchets and fired -- disease is often a besieger’s greatest ally.  From the looks of things, the dwarves and men inside have about forty-eight hours before the next great assault will begin.

High on a hilltop, a lone orc stands at the apex of a sentry tower, gazing southward.  He has been told that there is little to worry about; all of Charagan’s armies have been accounted for, and none are within two days’ march of the besieging force.   But it’s odd – there is a heat shimmer on the grassy plains that looks quite a lot like an army.  He watches it for a few more minutes, thinking it’s some trick of the light, but soon he can no longer deny it.  Hundreds, maybe thousands of human soldiers are marching up the Norlin River from the direction of Sand’s Edge.   That can’t be right; the main host of orcs had recently been sent down that river.  There’s no way a force of humans could have bested them.  Could there?

The sentry grabs a horn and blows it, three long blasts, and this bestirs the command tents down below.   Let someone with more authority come take a look, he thinks.  Still, he continues to squint through his spyglass, and now he thinks he can make out the insignia on the banners of the approaching force.   He doesn’t recognize the white sun on a red field, but even if you had told him that he was looking upon the 2nd and 3rd battalions of One Supreme Intellect’s Army of the White Sun, those names would have meant little to him.

None of the Bloodseer’s orcs have ever even heard of the Jewels of the Plains, but that’s about to change._



It seems as though, up on the surface, the tide may be turning. Now the Company has to do its part.

They expect to reach the Keffet dreaming caves later that morning.  It’s time to warn the Egannic.  Morningstar dreams herself into Ava Dormo, back to the same temple where they had met Red Diamond and Two Spirals.  There are only two Egannic there now, not ones she has met before, and there are no Navni.  That makes sense; it’s morning, and they would have woken up.

The two Egannic whisper to one another when she arrives.

“Morningstar, you’ve returned,” says one.  “A pleasure to meet you.  My name is…” she projects an image of a cluster of spinning Rhombuses.  Her friend introduces himself with in image of broken khet chip.

“I learned something very grave in our travels,” says Morningstar. “It’s going to be very difficult for you to understand and accept, but I need you to try. May I show you something?”

“I don’t see why not.”

Morningstar has never tried this before, but in theory it should work.  Mustering a titanic force of will, she forcibly expels the two Egannic out of Ava Dormo.  The Dream Lords may be her match for power in Ava Dormo, but they don’t know how to resist, don’t even understand that this is a thing that could happen. They vanish.

She waits.

A minute later they return, blinking, confused.

“That was very strange,” says Rhombuses.  “What was that?  You… gave us a vision?”

“I woke you up,” says Morningstar. “Your people are not from this world.  Your people, and the Keffet, have been at war for very, very long time…”

“That is no secret,” interrupts Khet. 

“…and while at first you waged it while awake, now you wage it in Dream.”

“We don’t dream,” says Rhombuses flatly.

“Your people developed powerful magic, to do something I never thought possible, to send yourselves, permanently, into what I call Ava Dormo.  But you and I are both from the waking world.”

“This _is_ the waking world,” Khet insists. 

“There is a cavern, similar to what you just saw, filled with Keffet,” says Morningstar.

“But… the cavern we saw was filled with Egannic, with our people.”

“They are in stasis,” Morningstar explains. “Just as you are.  When you battle in dream, one of the facts of it is, you don’t truly die. Your people have been permanently in dream, never dying, and always coming back.”

“We have mastered death, it is true,” says Khet.

“No. You have machines keeping you in stasis.  You are only living half a life.”

“What you are saying doesn’t make any sense,” says Rhombus. “You sound like a madwoman.”

“I know, it’s difficult.”

“I am not inclined to believe you,” says Khet.  “What you are saying is, on its face, absurd.  But... there were… trays, I suppose you’d call them, for a mile in every direction… with our people.  They were all sleeping.  We tried to wake up the nearest in the little time we had, but then you ended the vision. But we were lying asleep in our thousands, resting upon stone slabs, one atop the other.” 

“As I said, there is some magic keeping your people asleep.”

“So we’re sleeping now? Those are our real physical bodies?” 

“Yes.”

“And the Navni…”

“They are awake.  They worship you when they are awake, and spend their entire days building statues to you.”

“Well, yes,” says Rhombuses.  “We know that they dream about that.”

“No.  They dream about you, here.  They rush to sleep at night, and come here when they dream.  And you give them pleasant memories afterward.”

“Yes, of course,” says Khet indignantly. “We are not cruel savages.  The Navni are very useful, but we don’t wish them to have bad dreams at night, when they are finished.  We modify them.”

“I am sorry, Morningstar, but do you have any proof of this,” asks Rhombuses.

“Did you try to exercise your Dream Lord powers while you were there?”

“It was a vision, no.  We were not _truly_ there.  It would not mean anything one way or another, what we can do, in a vision you granted us.”

Morningstar sighs.  “Here’s the thing.  The reason I’m telling you this, is that the Keffet are waking up, and that will… tip the balance of power considerably.”

“But they _are_ awake,” says Khet. “They fight us every day.  They…ah, I see.  You are telling me that they are dreaming, but that they are going to wake up…”

“And they will find your sleeping bodies, and they will kill you.  All of you.  I doubt I can prove it to you, but can you afford to take that risk?”

“We will consider.”

Khet and Rhombuses talk quietly to one another.  Morningstar can hear Khet when he raises his voice.  “They could be in league with the Keffet. This might be some sort of trick.”

“Who do you think I’m more likely to side with,” asks Morningstar.  “You, or the Keffet?”

“I would have thought us, obviously,” says Rhombuses. “You are intelligent and enlightened.  You’d not side with the barbarians.”

“We could send Two Spirals to investigate,” says Khet. “He is an explorer.  He has even been to the dream world, so he says.  Or, if Morningstar is right, to the waking one.”

“I can’t see how it hurts one way or another,” says Rhombuses. “If he finds nothing, we’re no worse off than before.”

“Two Spirals will think this is an interesting venture,” says Khet. “But how will he know where to go?”

“I will show him,” says Morningstar.  She has extracted the exact location from Checkle’s mind.

Khet teleports away, and returns quickly with Two Spirals.  Morningstar explains everything to him.

“That’s extraordinary!” he says when she’s done.  Then, to the other Egannic, he asks, “Do you believe her?”

“No,” says Khet.

“I don’t think so,” says Rhombuses.

“Well, I believe her,” says Two Spirals.  Morningstar detects a twinkle in his eye, one that reminds her, oddly enough, of Checkle.

“I believe her,” he says, “because I’ve dreamed of it.”

“But we don’t dream!” Khet protests. 

“I do,” says Two Spirals. “I’ll go. I’ll take a look.  If it’s true, we'd best be waking up. If it’s true, we will owe our race’s survival to you.”

“You’re crazy,” says Khet.

“I know.”  Two Spirals winks at Morningstar, and vanishes.

…to be continued…


----------



## Kaodi

I must be behind the times on rule numbering too. I always thought the rules started:

Rule #1: The DM is always right.

Rule #2: See Rule #1.


----------



## Anxe

There's some sort of typo in the last line there Sagiro.


----------



## Everett

Anxe said:


> There's some sort of typo in the last line there Sagiro.




Typo in the last line, and:



			
				Sagiro said:
			
		

> The dreaming caves are guarded. At least our are guarded by... something terrible.




"ours", not "our."  This is all for posterity, and every last i shall be dotted...


----------



## Piratecat

It seems like grievously bad form to give us ethical conundrums as the world is ending.


----------



## Rughat

Piratecat said:


> It seems like grievously bad form to give us ethical conundrums as the world is ending.




True.  Only a rat-bastard would do something like tha-

Oh.  Nevermind.


----------



## Zelc

I'm just happy King Crunard is alive and they got the scrolls .  Man, that was such a gut-punch when Sagiro set up the scrolls as the hope of the surface world and then took it away so abruptly.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> Sagiro is notorious for loving practical jokes. If he updates right to the very final post, and then never updates again, please don't say that I never warned anyone.




And please -- if StevenAC won't do it, _I_ will take the bus to Boston and give Sagiro a stern talking-to!


----------



## Quartz

So I don't check the thread for a while and come back to not one but two updates! Yay!


----------



## The_Warlock

When the end of the world is nigh, you should check on your heroes daily.


----------



## Solarious

Well, the story is accelerating to an apocalyptic conclusion, and Sagiro seems eager to deliver. Abernathy's Company has been around so long, it seems like their adventures would never end, having apparently spanned two entire editions from beginning to end.

But before the book closes, we're going to see the Company roll up a dragon into a scroll like a Pokemon and unleash it at their discretion. And the return of the magnificent Emberleaf, Kay, as possibly even Mrs. Horn! Things to look forward to, then!


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 390*_
*The Disposition of Dragons*

As they travel toward the Keffet dreaming caves, the Company discusses various possible approaches to the problem of Galdifain binding the monster that stands guard. Should they try a battery of illusions?  Have Flicker dash and tumble around, evading it?  Or load Dranko down with every buff spell in the book and have him go toe-to-toe?  Ideally they would make Galdifain invisible, but the light motes make that strategy untenable.

 “If the Keffet is correct, and it’s a dragon,” says Galdifain to Dranko, “I suggest you not be in its stomach when my spell completes.”

Dranko agrees. He’s had enough of stomachs for a while.

When they are only a mile out, Morningstar goes into Ava Dormo to scout.  She takes Grey Wolf as backup, just in case. The tunnel continues downward and westward, snaking this way and that, growing ever wider.  The transition between tunnel and cavern happens so gradually, it’s something of a shock when they realize they can no longer see the walls to either side or the ceiling high above.  Then, in the dimness of the motes up ahead, they see the first pillar.

It is a wide column, thirty feet across, fashioned of stone and hardened fungus.  A vertiginous spiral staircase twines around it like a vine, up, up.  And coming off the staircase are slightly concave stone slabs, like fan blades.  On closer inspection they resemble little stone coffins without lids. Here in Ava Dormo they don’t contain Keffet, but each is partially filled with a strange glowing purple fungus.

The cavern is immense, and Morningstar and Grey Wolf can see dozens more of these columns, each set far apart from the others. Altogether they count fifty of them, each able to hold five hundred Keffet. And this cavern is adjacent to at least three others, each just as enormous, each with its own fifty columns.  There may be more beyond that, but they’ve seen enough.  Hundreds of thousands of Keffet are presumably sleeping here in the waking world, dreaming of a false life, and endless war with the Egannic.

There is no sign of the dragon that guards them.


/*/


The Company approaches the dream caves cautiously.  Dranko is already loaded down with their longest-lasting spells, but they intend to hold off on the minute- and round-per-level spells until  they get closer.  Morningstar is the designated guardian for Galdifain, so she also gets some protective magics, as does Galdifain herself – though if things reach the point where the assassin needs them, the plan will have fallen fairly well apart.

While still a minute away from the nearest of the massive columns, the light motes around them start to cling to their clothes and glow a cherry red.  There is no discomfort; it seems like an early-warning system.  An idea pops into Kibi’s head.  He scoops up four small rocks and casts _magic mouth_ on them.

The rest of them start to cast their minute-per-round spells, but only have time for one each.  About five seconds later, the dragon appears.  The lines of sight here are long, and it surely could see them coming a long way off thanks to the red motes. 

It’s… big.  Easily a hundred feet from noses to tail, it hovers a few feet above the ground, wingless and brown-scaled.  It regards them with its two monstrous heads, each full of deadly teeth.  The claws on its hands gleam like sharpened broadswords.

Dranko hopes his buffing spells are enough.  He steps forward boldly.  “I’m here to kick your ass,” he says.  It growls out of both mouths and falls upon Dranko like a reptilian God of Death.  Dranko vanishes into a flurrying storm of teeth and claws.  The beast’s tail lashes around with the power of a trebuchet.

“A dream linnorm,” says Galdifain calmly. “A very nasty sort of dragon. I’m familiar with them, though I’ve never bound one.”

“Another thing I can turn into,” says Aravis, taking mental notes.

The linnorm finishes with Dranko, and, having killed the little morsel, turns its heads to the others.  

One head does a double take, and looks back at where Dranko’s shredded corpse should be.  Dranko is just standing there, smiling, barely scratched.  It turns its whole body and brings both heads right up to Dranko, confused about what it’s seeing.

Dranko reaches out and pats its snout.  “That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says, in a voice appropriate to conversing with a toddler.

“Should I start?” asks Galdifain over the mind-link.

“Not yet,” says Aravis.  “But be ready.”

Morningstar, standing next to Galdifain, casts _antilife shell_.

Dranko points to the nearest column of dreamers.  “I’ll bet I can kill a few of those guys before you can stop me.”  He dashes away.  The dragon starts to follow, then stops.

“Hey, dumbass,” Dranko calls.  “I’ll make you a deal.  My friends won’t hurt you unless you kill me first.  But if you _do_ kill me, they’ll…”

“Shut up,” says the linnorm.  It casts _maze_ on Dranko.  Dranko vanishes.  The monster turns around to look at the others.

“How do you put up with him?” it asks, right before both heads breath upon them.  The Company is engulfed, simultaneously, in a roaring blast of hellfire, and a deathly cold spray of icy wind.  All sorts of protective spells and energy buffers are triggered.  Most in the party take damage, but nothing a _mass heal_ won’t take care of. Galdifain, having been thoughtfully bestowed with _energy immunity_ to both fire and cold, is entirely uninjured.

But what to do now?  With no good idea of how long it will take Dranko to escape the _maze_, they retreat.  Kibi _teleports_ the entire group back the way they came, to the limit of his sight. Morningstar heals everyone, and they put some more protective spells on Galdifain.  But they need to return, if Galdifain is going to attempt her binding.

Dranko is caught in a glowing, pulsing labyrinth. He sees the exit and heads for it, but, no, that was just another left-turn.  Oh, there it is!  He…  no, hm, dead end.  This is trickier than he expected.  It takes him more than half a minute to find his way out.

When he does, the dragon is waiting for him, twenty feet away.  It casts _meteor swarm_ on him.  Massive fiery boulders explode all around him, chunks of burning stone flying in all directions.  The cloud of dust and smoke dissipates… and there Dranko stands, unharmed.

“Really? Little fiery pebbles? You’re so _cute_”

“_Stop calling me that!_” roars the dragon.

“I just want to put a bow on you and take you for walks in the park,” says Dranko.

The dragon casts another spell upon him, and something squeezes his mind, but bolstered by a battery of protective spells, he resists whatever it was.

The linnorm bellows in frustration.  “I will figure out how to eat you,” it promises, “and then I will!”

The others cast a few more spells, including _mass doughy folk_ and _mass xorn movement_, before Grey Wolf _teleports_ them back to near Dranko and the linnorm.  Kibi tosses his enchanted rocks in different directions, then sinks into the ground.

Aravis casts _maze_ on the dragon.  It vanishes, giving them time to cast some spells on Dranko, including a _dimensional anchor_ in case it tries to _maze_ him again.

The dragon appears again; the _maze_ didn’t hold it very long.  The Company scatters, though Morningstar stays with Galdifain.  Kibi pops up to summon a cadre of greater earth elementals which appear around the linnorm.  They are like small dogs nipping at a lion; it swats them away.

Having ascertained from Galdifain that it won’t be a problem until the moment she finishes, Aravis changes shape into a beholder, rises up, and plays its _anti-magic_ cone over the dragon.  It drops to the ground, unable to hover.

Galdifain takes our her scroll and begins to cast.  In doing so, she triggers the _magic mouths_ on Kibi’s rocks; they all start to yammer, loudly.  The dragon whips its head around, annoyed and confused.

“Out of the goodness of my heart, I offer you a deal,” says Dranko.  “You may, should you wish, agree to surr…”

“You talk too much,” the linnorm snarls. “Do I get to eat you as part of the deal, or not?”

“Not so much.”

“Then I decline.”

“You’ve lived a long life,” says Dranko. “It’s a shame it’ll end this way.”  He touches its nose with his whip, then moves off, drawing a slashing claw that he deftly avoids.  He continues to lecture the dragon on its shortcomings.

The dragon seems to come to a realization.  “Your friends have spent a lot of effort trying to protect _just you._ The real target must be someone else. Wait right there.”

It moves out of the _anti-magic cone_, and casts a _forcecage_ around Dranko.

Then it moves to Kibi, leaving the elementals behind.  “Always eat the summoner, and ignore the things it summons,” one head says sagely. The other head bites down savagely on Kibi. The dwarf has plenty of his own protections by now, but still takes massive damage from the thing’s teeth.  Kibi grimaces; in addition to the damage, he has suffered life drain.  One of his two prepared _wish_ spells is forced from his mind.  But still, he is satisfied that the dragon hasn’t yet identified Galdifain as the true threat.

The others cast more spells on themselves: _moment of prescience_ for Grey Wolf, _iron body_ for Ernie.  Any of them might be a target.  Kibi casts _otto’s irresistible dance_ on the linnorm, but the creature is outright immune to enchantments.  He sinks back into the earth.

Aravis fires its beam of _disintegrate_ on the _forcecage_ around Dranko.  Then he fires two other beams at the dragon, but it shrugs off the effects of _charm monster_ and _slow_.

Galdifain continues to read.

“Hey!” calls Dranko to the dragon. “You want to guess what I’ve been carrying around for the last  few years and almost forgot I had?”

“No,” says the dragon.

Dranko pulls out his _book of infinite spells_ and casts _dimensional anchor_ on the dragon.  The beast glows green.

“Really?” says the linnorm, incredulous.

“Give me a few minutes, and I’ll have a leash for you,” says Dranko.

The dragon glares at him, trying to piece together the puzzle.

“What are you doing here?” it asks. 

“The people you’re guarding want to be woken up,” says Dranko, thumbing over his shoulder toward the stacked columns of sleeping Keffet. 

“No they don’t,” says the linnorm.

“Yes they do.  One of them is already awake, and came to tell us himself.”

“And where is he now?”

“Not here. Dreaming again, probably.”

The linnorm scoffs.  “Let me guess.  You also have some prime Myconid real estate you want to sell me.”

“I’m not lying,” insists Dranko.  He doesn’t expect to convince the dragon, but he only has to stall it for twenty more seconds or so.

“Yes, you are,” says the dragon.  “Now hold on while I tenderize your shapechanger.”

The dragon turns and casts _meteor swarm_ on Aravis. The wizard takes massive damage, fortunately mitigated by some protective magics.  Morningstar, standing in front of Galdifain, is close enough to get caught in the fire splash.  She’s badly burned, but stands her ground.  Behind her, Galdifain keeps on reading.

“How do you like that, eyeball?”  says the dragon. “Are you a little runt who changed into an ugly eyeball, or a beholder who changed into a little runt?”  For all that these little people are a nuisance, the linnorm is still mostly unharmed, and confident in its abilities.

Ernie casts _mass spell resistance_.  Aravis uses its eye of _telekinesis_ to drop Dranko onto the dragon’s back.  Dranko tangles a rope in the scales around its neck.  “Giddyap!”

Kibi pops up out of the ground and casts _rainbow pattern_, which the dragon ignores.  But his spell does raise more suspicion in the dragon’s mind.

“Given how powerf… how annoying you are, why are you not actually trying to kill me?”

“We’ve been asked to do this by the people you’re guarding,” says Dranko.  “As soon as you’re done resisting, we’ll negotiate the terms of your surrender.”

“What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense,” says the dragon. “What happens at the end of all this dancing around?”

Dranko starts blabbing about the Keffet, and the Egannic, and how they’re all fighting in the dream world.  But after only a few seconds of this, the linnorm finally notices Galdifain, standing behind Morningstar, quietly muttering the words of her spell.

“There we go,” says the beast.  “Let’s put a stop to that.”

With terrifying speed is scurries over, rears up, and brings both heads down upon Galdifain.  They stop ten feet short, contacting the soft but unyielding barrier of the _antilife shell_.  It realizes it will have to breathe, but its breath weapons haven’t yet recharged. Dranko reaches out and heals the monster of a few minor wounds it suffered at the hands of Kibi’s earth elementals.

“Why did you do that?  I don’t understand!”

“You will,” says Dranko.

The dragon pops out of existence as Galdifain utters the final syllable of her binding spell.  She staggers backward, recovers, rolls up the scroll, then quickly ties it with enchanted golden thread before popping it into an even-more-heavily enchanted mithril tube.

“It’s done.”


/*/


As much as they would like to explore the dreaming caves, the Company knows that time is running short.  They have agreed to meet Checkle back at the Leaping Circle, where he will give them the encapsulated ritual that will allow them to Leap.

On the second night of travel, Aravis once more dreams a vision of the surface. 



Azhant the Ancient spits out the charred remains of Dalesandro, High Stormknight of Werthis.  

“You see that?” the dragon thinks into the minds of the others.  “You’ll all end up like him.  You can flee, or you can be devoured.  Too bad for you  that fleeing isn’t really an option.”

Anhaya Sunblossom, leader of the Church of Yondalla in Charagan, flies around to the east and drops a quickened _flame strike_ on the dragon’s head.  It dissipates harmlessly on its _antimagic field_, and Azhant laughs.  “Amusing,” it thinks.  “Was that your way of volunteering to be the next course?”  Anhaya glances nervously at the bits of Dalesandro that are still dropping from the dragon’s jaws, spiraling down to the ground far below.

“Maybe next time,” she says, failing to hide the panic in her voice.  She flies downward and away at top speed.  She’s flying extremely fast – much faster than a normal fly spell would allow – but not fast enough to outpace Azhant. Five Silent Crow shouts from his golden head.  “Retreat!  We’ve got to get out of here and figure out something else!  This plan has failed, and miserably!”

The four surviving heroes take off toward the ground at high speed.   Azhant gives chase.

“Too bad you used up all those _teleports_ trying to outmaneuver me,” the dragon chuckles.  “But I thank you.  It’s more fun to play with my food.”

It is not long before the heroes have reached the ground, but there is no good place for them to retreat.  They are on the flat plains of central Lanei, several miles out from where Azhant has recently destroyed the city of Storin. The Lady Cornelia, High Priestess of Pikon, cannot help letting some panicked thoughts escape.  “Crap.  Crap, crap, crap!”

Slowly, Azhant gains.  Bits of Dalesandro still drip from the dragon’s jaws.  Now the pursuit is skimming along the ground.   Azhant will be in breath weapon range in just a few more seconds.

And the heroes stop.

Five Silent Crow produces a scroll, which he quickly activates.   The author of the spell – someone named Typier – has given it the quirky name of _arcane double negative_.  As Crow reads the command words, the fast-approaching Azhant is doused in a shower of sparkling red motes.   The dragon immediately realizes that his _antimagic field_ has been removed.   He instinctively tries to reactivate it – and nothing happens, save that he feels an odd prickling pain. 

“Next!”  thinks Crow over the heroes’ mind-link.  Anhaya now holds up a scroll, which she wastes no time in activating.  At the top of the scroll are some written words, a bit of humorous editorial content:  _“In case of emergency, make glass.  – Alander.”_  Anhaya completes the spell, and a huge crystal dome appears, ninety yards across, encompassing herself, all of her allies, and the dragon.   Everyone inside the dome, Azhant included, briefly glows a deep indigo color.

“That’s _Alander’s Inescapable Arena_,” says Anhaya.  “Next!”

The final member of the strike team produces a third scroll.  At the top it is labeled _mass pan-elemental immunity_, and she thinks that it’s at least two valences above such paltry magics as _wish_ and _Mordenkainen’s disjunction_.  With a smile, Isabel Horn, the Spire’s last archmagical ace up its proverbial sleeve, reads a scroll penned centuries ago by one Parthol Runecarver.  She, Anhaya, Cornelia and Five Silent Crow are wrapped in impenetrable elemental abjurations.  

Azhant reaches the edge of the dome and whirls around, doubling back toward the heroes.  His movement is restricted by the dome, but he flies overhead and breathes hellfire all over his enemies.  They are, of course, not singed in the slightest. Starting to realize what he’s up against, he quickens a _greater dispel magic_ on Mrs. Horn.  He again feels a sharp stinging pain, and his magic fails to manifest.  It seems that _arcane double negative_ has made it impossible for Azhant to actively negate magic _in any way_. 

That turns out to be bad news for a dragon trapped in a dome with four angry spell-casters.  They bombard him with spells, and three of the four  -- two empowered _chain lightnings_ and a _flame strike_ – penetrate Azhant’s spell resistance.  The dragon snarls in pain.  He’s immune to cold and fire, but lightning hurts him, and the holy damage of the _flame strike_ sears through his scales. In a panic, he tries to _teleport_ away, but he glows a slight blue color and fails to go anywhere.  

“It’s not called _Alander’s Arena You Can Teleport Out Of_,” says Anhaya.

“Damn you!”  The dragon roars.  But he’s not done yet.  With a quick mid-air lunge, he seizes Anhaya in his huge jaws.  There’s a sickening crunch, but the priestess is still alive.  He endures another round of spells, resisting all of them this time.   Anhaya, however, _teleports_ out of the dragon’s jaws, appearing on the far side of the dome.  

“Not only is she not out of _teleports_,” says Cornelia, mockingly.  “She has about a hundred left today.   We read _Alander’s Day of Blinking_ right after this morning’s _heroes’ feast_.  I can’t remember if that was before or after the scroll that makes people – or dragons – believe practically anything we say.”

Azhant is screwed, and he knows it. He fights gamely, but his breath weapons are useless, and with his targets blipping around the dome like blink dogs, he can’t bring his full physical might to bear on any of them before they simply vanish from his claws or teeth.  All the while they bombard him, and about half of their spells get through his innate resistance.   Toward the end he hurls himself at the crystal dome itself, but it’s as resilient as a _wall of force_.  

It takes many more spells – _chain lightnings, searing lights_, and even some _magic missiles_ --  and Azhant does enough damage with his teeth and claws that Anhaya and Cornelia are down to _cure serious wounds_ at the end.  But with a final honest-to-goodness _lightning bolt_, Mrs. Horn casts the spell that brings down Azhant the Ancient in a blistered ball of flesh and scales.

…to be continued…


----------



## carborundum

W. O. W.


----------



## Quartz

Oh the shame, to be taken down by NPCs...


----------



## Cerebral Paladin

Quartz said:


> Oh the shame, to be taken down by NPCs...




Has to count for something that one of them was a retired PC.


----------



## Anxe

Where are my italicized Maze sequences?

And I've got a feeling that this is false hope. Naradawk probably has a few scrolls of his own or something.


----------



## RangerWickett

I dunno. It doesn't seem his style, and I especially don't see why he'd be creating illusions to fake out the PCs, who are effectively dead as far as he knows.

Y'know, I'm kinda dreading the fact that I'll be unable to resist rereading this storyhour once it's done. I'll enjoy it, but man, . . . I need like an audiobook version. Or I'll just sneak a chapter at a time when my boss isn't looking at work.


----------



## Anxe

I meant false hope in the sense of a literary device done by Sagiro. The archmages may be successful, but the Company's actions need to be meaningful for it to be a fun campaign. Therefore, the people left on the surface will eventually be losing until the Company does whatever they're doing in the Underdark to turn the tide.

Also, Sagiro did you leave out italics so the scrolls and spells could be italicized? That would make sense.


----------



## Piratecat

I felt kind of bad for Sagiro. He was presumably planning an epic battle. Instead, Dranko got layered with protective spells and was on full defensive. I don't remember what my AC was, but it didn't suck -- even if I can't get out of a _maze_ to save my life.

Also: screw you, Azhant!


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> I felt kind of bad for Sagiro. He was presumably planning an epic battle.




Why would he have planned such?  He knew what your plan was.  What he needed was a monster who could be difficult to deal with while Galdifain performed her rite, not a slaughter-happy epic type like Azhant.


----------



## carborundum

I'm astounded by the genius planning of Sagiro, bringing in the Maze so he could dish out dramatic and worrying handouts many years later.


----------



## Everett

carborundum said:


> I'm astounded by the genius planning of Sagiro, bringing in the Maze so he could dish out dramatic and worrying handouts many years later.




He probably didn't come up with the Maze knowing that he'd use it in the endgame or exactly how.  But he can tell you himself...


----------



## carborundum

I wouldn't put it past his Evil Geniusness


----------



## Enkhidu

carborundum said:


> I wouldn't put it past his Evil Geniusness




I read that as "Evil Guiness," and began wondering what you had against a nice stout.


----------



## carborundum

They can't be left unattended for too long either


----------



## Tamlyn

Enkhidu said:


> I read that as "Evil Guiness," and began wondering what you had against a nice stout.




I've been known to say exactly that, if I've spent a little too much time with said stout the previous evening.


----------



## Sagiro

Anxe said:


> Also, Sagiro did you leave out italics so the scrolls and spells could be italicized? That would make sense.



Bingo.

I've tried something else in this update; we'll see how it looks.

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 391*_
*Coming Home*

So, the Company now has a dread linnorm in their proverbial pocket.  They start musing about whom they should release it upon.  One of the Three, surely? Dranko suggests Tarsos, since they don’t hate him as much as the others; the Company won’t want to be denied the satisfaction of killing Meledien and Seven Dark Words themselves.

As they discuss this the next day, cheered by the vision of Azhant’s downfall, a small earthquake rocks the tunnel as they walk.  

Dranko looks all around, wondering if another purple worm is coming for them.  “Kibi, what’s happening?”

“Feels like a minor temblor,” says the dwarf.  The quake continues for another fifteen seconds and subsides, leaving small flakes of rubble and puffs of dust as its only immediate consequence.  Not trusting this as a natural occurrence, Kibi queries the nearby wall with _stone tell_.

“Hello, Kibilhathur,” says the wall.

“I just felt a tremor,” says Kibi.  “Why were you shaking?”

“Because all the rock around me was shaking.”

“But what was making all of you shake?”

The immediate wall doesn’t have specific knowledge of that, but it guesses that the epicenter was several miles beneath them.  Kibi consults the calculations of Corriv, and finds that Leaping Circle Two should send them 3.9 miles coreward.

On the final night before arriving back at Leaping Circle Two, Aravis has another vision of the surface.



_The paladin Glade parts a thick knot of web with her scythe.  Old bones crunch beneath her feet.  “Wellington, I’ve followed you into some foul places in the past couple of years.  This?  Nothing quite compares with it.”

The boy wizard nudges his glasses higher onto his nose.  “We’re past the worst of it,” he says.  “And if I’m right… and Belinda is right… and the _Banishing Lens_ is up here, we could end this war in a single stroke.”

Royce Tillman laughs.  “Remind me why is it that no one thought of this before now?” he asks.

Wellington looks serious.  “The Masking,” he says.  “Its last remnants are fading away, but it’s not all the way gone.   No one knew about the upper vaults of God’s Thorn until about week ago.  It’s a long shot, but worth it.”

“And are there any more monsters or traps between us and the prize?  Assuming it’s there?”

“I don’t know,” says Wellington, as he consults a faded, crinkled map.  “Probably.  But we’re almost there.  That door up ahead should lead to the innermost chamber.  If the Banishing Lens is here, it should be in that room.  Standard procedure?”

Royce creeps forward, magically stealthy, and listens at the door for a good minute.  He shakes his head.  Wellington casts a number of buffing spells, before casting _knock_ on the door.  Royce grins and kicks it inward.  Splinters fly, and Glade and Royce move swiftly into the room beyond.   When they give the all-clear, Wellington follows.

The room appears empty.  Wellington looks about with _true seeing._

“There are small niches in the stone walls,” he says.  “They’re masked by illusion, but you should be able to find them by feel.   They’re about knee height.  Look for a way to open them, but be wary of mechanical traps.  According to Belinda, there should be ninety-nine false Lenses, and one true one.  Our job is to grab them all and bring them back to her; she’ll figure out which one is the real one.”

Royce spikes the door open, and the three fan out, finding that the hundred small shoe-box sized niches open if pushed in hard enough.  The first fifty are vacant .

“This doesn’t seem right,” says Glade.  “There were no signs on the way up of anyone having been here in centuries.   Why are these empty?”

The door to the room slams shut, shattering Royce’s spike.  A green glow fills the entire small chamber, just as a person materializes in the center of the room.  Wellington’s eyes go wide.

“They’re empty,” says Parthol Runecarver, “because I’ve already taken everything.”

“You?” Wellington exclaims.  “What are you doing here?”

“Evening things out,” says Parthol coolly.

“What the hell does that mean?” demands Royce.

Parthol makes a quick gesture with one hand.  Wellington and Royce find themselves paralyzed.  Then he quickens a second enchantment upon Wellington.  “No metamagic for you, kiddo.”

Glade, wearing a ring with _freedom of movement_,  rushes forward and sweeps her scythe across Parthol’s chest, but her swing barely makes a scratch on the old wizard’s unarmored skin. Parthol takes a step back, casts again, and traps Glade in a glowing _forcecage._

“It means the balance has shifted too far in your direction,” says Parthol.  “The scrolls you people had in the Vault were a little _too_ powerful.  Azhant should have done much more damage before you bested him.  At the rate you’re going, you might actually end up _defeating_ Naradawk, especially with the _Banishing Lens_ in your hands.  I can’t have that.  Or, rather I _can_ have it, and you cannot.  After Naradawk finishes off the Spire, I’ll need the _Lens_ to get rid of him.”

Parthol walks forward and stands before the stricken Wellington.  “You had promise,” he says.  “A pity it had to end this way.”  He yanks an amulet from the young wizard’s neck, and pulls off the boy’s magical headband.  Then he places a glowing black hand on Wellington’s head.  The boy, paralyzed, cannot even cry out in anguish as he turns to dust.  Glade screams in fury, tears running down her cheeks.  

“You unholy bastard!”

Parthol chuckles.  “Nothing unholy about a good old-fashioned _disintegrate_.  Or _Parthol’s Peerless Paralytic_, for that matter. Now, you and the warrior may be tougher, but I’ve got over a dozen of these.  Royce, Glade, it’s been nice knowing you.”

It takes eleven more _disintegrates_, but a minute later there are two more piles of dust on the floor.  Parthol dismisses his _forcecage_, thoughtfully sweeps the dust piles into a large bag, stows what of his victims’ magic items he can carry, dismisses his _dimensional lock,_ and vanishes._



All are quiet for a moment as they consider this vision, then break into a chorus of profanity.

“I really, really want the opportunity to kick in his face,” says Dranko.  The only shred of a silver lining is that things were going so well on the surface, to prompt Parthol into such drastic action. But they mourn for their lost comrades.

They quietly pick at their morning’s _heroes’ feast_, occasionally speculating on what dangers they have yet to face.

“We’re going to end up fighting Wlaqua, right?” asks Morningstar.

“’One more before she comes herself,’" says Ernie, nodding. 

“You know what would be great?” says Dranko.  “If we end up fighting the Adversary, and Seven Dark Words, Meledien and Tarsos, and Wlaqua, all at the same time.”

Galdifain looks up from her plate. “One more before she comes herself? Are you sure that wasn’t referring to me?”

That at least is a cheering thought; maybe Wlaqua isn’t coming for them after all.


/*/


They emerge from the _mansion_, and find signs that there was another small earthquake overnight.  

“This suggests they’re doing horrible, horrible things,” says Dranko, kicking at a dislodged bit of rubble.

“We’d better get going,” says Aravis.

They make great haste to Leaping Circle Two, reviewing once more the Prophecy of the Croaking Oracle. They’ve figured out (or think they have) a great deal of it, but some remains opaque.  Ernie opines that “one loves all and one hates one,” might mean the Sister Gods, Yavin and Wlaqua.  As for “One to channel what makes dead,” that could be Grey Wolf, a spellsword who channels his deadly magics through _Bostock._  And the line “One to drive the spike clean through” could refer to the thorn in the side of Abernia; perhaps it needs to be struck in a way that pushes it out the other side, but the other side of what?  The world? No one knows the proper levels of abstraction and metaphor to apply to the Croaking Oracle’s words.

Two more small tremors shake the tunnels before they arrive at Leaping Circle Two some six hours later.

“They’re torturing the planet,” says Grey Wolf dourly. 

Checkle is there waiting for them.  “You did it!  Amazing!  Thank you!  Who wants the instructions?”

Kibi volunteers.  Checkle walks up to stand before the dwarf.  “I’m not sure exactly how this works,” says the little Keffet. “But if I just think about transferring… whoa!”

A huge rush of knowledge comes into Kibi’s head, as though he’s crammed a week’s worth of study into a single second. As he examines the details in his mind, he frowns.  It’s a four day ritual, and a tricky one at that. Any number of small errors could require the wizards to start over, delaying things unacceptably.  As if underscoring the need for haste, the earth shakes and groans. 

Kibi consults with the others, and they all concur: it’s worth using up another one of Kibi’s reality-tweaks to speed up the process.  Everyone gathers in a circle around the dwarf, and he beseeches Abernia to shift its reality to favor his wishes. 

The Leaping Circle room shudders and vibrates, the Leaping Circle itself rings like a bell, and the sum of information in Kibi’s head about the ritual shrinks to small fraction of its original size.  He thinks now that he and one other wizard can easily complete the ritual in 12 hours, down from the original 100 hours. 

It would be nice to know what awaits them beyond. Will Leaping Circle Two take them directly to where the Evil Trio are working their mischief?  If only there was some way they could know.

Morningstar blinks, and fishes in her pack.  She produces one of the oldest items the Company still possesses: a _potion of clairvoyance_ brewed by Abernathy himself, and left for her on the very day he summoned the original group to his tower.  It’s a minor item, and there’s no way it could possibly allow her to see across miles of rock.  That’s not how the spell works.  She drinks it anyway. 

Abernathy was always a bit scatterbrained.  Maybe he was distracted while brewing it, and infused it unintentionally with great power.  Whatever the case, Morningstar feels _Laramon’s Jade Clover_ grow warm in her pocket for a second, and then she has a quick vision, of an uninhabited place over a steep rocky slope.  Assuming that’s their landing spot, she now knows it’s free of immediate danger, though the floor is pitched such that they will immediately tumble downward if unprepared.

Kibi and Aravis spend the day enacting the ritual, managing (barely, in Aravis’s case) to maintain their concentration through two more earthquakes.  As they near the end, Morningstar casts a new spell of her own devising:  _Morningstar’s Mind Status_, which will let her know if anyone is trying to read or influence any of the minds of her allies. Everyone is made to _fly_, burning off charges of an old wand. 

The ritual ends, and the Company Leaps downward.  

Dranko, as is typical now of these jumps, experiences a side-trek to the Far Realms.  The whispers are familiar.  “Do not Become,” they warn, many voices in near-but-not-quite synchronicity, beseeching him, warning him.  But then a new voice sounds, louder, sibilant, as though the speaker has its lips almost pressed to his ear.  

“Dranko, you _should_ Become!  Become, Dranko.”

“I cordially invite you to bite me,” answers Dranko.

“It can happen,” says the new voice. "You can Become.  You can become famous again.  It is almost upon you, Dranko.  Don’t let it slip away.  Become!”

They arrive.  The _fly_ spell barely functions now, so far beneath the surface. It acts more like _feather fall_, allowing them to run down the steep stone slope in a more-or-less controlled fashion. Seventy feet they descend, until they stand at the bottom of a subterranean ravine, shaped like a V.  It’s hard to stand at its bottom, the ground sloping up steeply on both sides.  In both directions, east and west, the ravine extends into the darkness.  

Kibi senses that they are nearly four miles deeper than they were a moment earlier.  The Earth Magic around him is wonderfully strong.  He can hear the whispers of the stones all around him, and though he cannot make out words, he feels as though they are telling him, “welcome home.”  

“Kibi, what’s happened to you?”  Ernie is pointing his face.  The others see that patches of his skin have taken on a rough, earthy texture and hardness.  Kibi finds it comfortable, natural, but when he holds still, the others perceive something akin to a stone statue.

“He looks like Cranchus,” says Flicker.

But all is not well. While only Kibi can sense the ambient Earth Magic, all of them can feel the tainted stink of Essence all around them, a foul odor everywhere.

In Morningstar’s pocket, _Laramon’s Jade Clover_ is warm, and holding a steady temperature.  She pulls it out and looks at it thoughtfully.  “Maybe Laramon, the God of Luck, is in this clover somehow?”  But if that’s so, one wouldn’t know to look at it.  Beyond its warmth, it’s just a trinket.

Kibi casts _stone tell_ on the sloping wall of the ravine. 

“What’s happening down here?” he asks it.

“Please make it stop, Kibilhathur.  It’s not natural!” 

Kibi can tell that the stone of the world is sad, worried, pained. “What was making the earth shake?” he asks.

“We don’t know, but you’re not far from it.  Please, put an end to it!”

“I’ll try to make the badness go away,” Kibi promises. 

“Of course you will,” says the wall.

Kibi knows, can feel, that the source of the evil is to the east, not the west.  They begin to stumble that direction, keeping inside a _magic circle of protection vs. evil_ as they travel.  The ceiling slowly descends toward them, until the ravine has become a corridor shaped like an inverted triangle.  

After half an hour of this, something strange happens ahead of them. A wave of stone is coming toward them, as though the ground were a cloth sheet that someone snapped at the far end.  It rushes toward them, and most of the Company take a step back, assuming an attack.  Only Kibi is not troubled.  Ten feet away, the wave stops, and the ground buckles and bubbles into a oval dome, largely blocking the passage.

A doorway opens in the stone side of the dome nearest them.  Inside they see that it’s hollow, the ground flattened.

“A trap?” says Morningstar.

Ernie fires off a quick _divination_, but gets nothing from it. 

“I think it’ll be okay,” says Kibi.

“Kibi, says a familiar voice from inside.  “You coming in?”

He moves to step inside, but none of the others follow.

“If Dranko’s afraid,” says the voice, “ask him who else would know about the stone he swallowed, or what his cigars can do.”

Dranko lights a cigar and puffs out smoke.  It forms the words “It’s perfectly safe, you dolt!”

They all go in.  The dome is empty, but Kibi can feel Cranchus’s presence as keenly as though his grandfather had an arm draped around his shoulders.

One by one the voice of Cranchus speaks the names of the Company, greeting them hastily, as though he’s trying to get through them before he forgets.  “It’s hard for me to be this… coherent,” says Cranchus. “To be this ‘in one place.’ You’re in deep enough now that I think I can keep this up for a few more minutes.”

Kibi feels overwhelmed with peace and happiness. “It’s great to… uh… to sense you,” he says.  "Are you… part of the earth now?”

“Yes.  Yes I am. And I’ve been trying to communicate with you for a while, but you weren’t in deep enough, and my efforts were clumsy.  I only managed it a couple of times.  I did manage to goose that toad for you. Did it tell you anything good?”

Kibi grins.  That was his grandfather, blasting the Croaking Oracle with Earth Magic, prompting it to speak its prophecy!

“And I tried to give you a burst of as much power as I could, sometime after that. Wasn’t sure how well it worked.”

“It worked great!” says Kibi.  “Thanks!  We didn’t know that was you.”

“It’s been a few centuries now,” says Cranchus.  Kibi thinks his voice is already beginning to waver.  “I couldn’t stay myself, being that close to the Source for so long.  So, I became one with the Source.  And now Abernia and I are hard to tell apart.”  

“You must feel awful,” says Kibi, “with all the Essence around.”

“Yes. The thorn in my side… the splinter has encased itself.  I tried to send you that message once.  The splinter is the Hand of the Adversary.  It’s lodged here, encased in a shell of its own blood.”

Kibi understands.  “And we have to get through it…”

“It has to be you, Kibi.  It must be you who breaks its shell.”

“But you’re so powerful…” Kibi begins.

“I can’t get that close,” says Cranchus. “My consciousness doesn’t’ stay coherent if I try to get near that place.  Kibi… it has to be eradicated.  Only you can go inside.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.  Don’t you?”

“No,” says Kibi.  “But I’ll figure it out.”

“I can’t sense what’s there, not on the inside. But there is something powerful guarding it on the outside, so be careful.”  Cranchus’s voice is clearly strained now, as though he’s having trouble keeping his focus.

“Do you know about the three Black Circle people who came down?” asks Kibi. “Are they the ones guarding it?”

“No. They set something else to guard it.  I don’t know what.  But the Three are inside.  You have to stop what they’re doing.”

“Are they making the earth shake?”

“Something inside is causing it. I don’t know if it’s them.  They went inside, and that’s where I lost sight of them.  That’s where the splinter is.  The thorn in my side, the Hand of the Adversary.  It’s in there.”

Kibi recalls that the other archmagi received getting messages from Cranchus, though they never spoke with him directly. Kibi asks him how that was possible.

“My consciousness extends through the Barrier, since I surround it,” says Cranchus.  “And it was Abernathy, always Abernathy, who heard my whispers.  He’ll hear yours, too.”

“He will?”

“Or maybe he did in the past,” says Cranchus. “It’s hard for me to know.  I exist in all the pasts, all the futures.  That’s why it’s hard for me to have this conversation.  I am forcing myself into one time.”

“I’m so glad that you could gather yourself enough together to have this talk,” says Kibi, tears coming to his eyes.

“You’re going to join me, you know.”

In his heart, Kibi knows it.  “But what about mom?” he asks.

“She doesn’t expect you to come back,” says Cranchus softly. “And we’ll have a long time to figure out  how to get a message  through that big slab of iron.”

There is a pause, and Kibi fears Cranchus has gone, but his voice comes back, faint, wavering.  “It will… be nice to have some company.  I know that it happens.  Remember, I’m in all times, and when it happens to you, you’ll be the same.  But not yet.  But don’t fear death, Kibi.  You’ll just change your state.”

“Maybe that’s why I’m smiling in Leantha’s Book,” says Kibi. “Because even if I’m dying, I’m becoming one with the earth.”

“You’ll become,” whispers Dranko. “You’ll become the world.”

“This place will be safe for you tonight,” says Cranchus. “No Essence will trouble you.  I’ve also smoothed things out for you, so it won’t take you so long to get to the Shell. It’s a straight path for you, Kibi. Tomorrow this will all be over.”

“And there are no enemies between here and there?” asks Morningstar.

“I don’t think so, no. And I’ll talk to you again soon, grandson.  It’s been nice.  Now go and do to those bastards what you did to Condor.  Goodbye, Kibi.”

The sense of Cranchus fades away, and the dome is silent, save for the sound of their breathing.

…to be continued…


----------



## Everett

and yet... Kibi cannot be both the one "to take the shell and rend" and the one "forever dead as stone."  The verse specifies four beings.


----------



## Zelc

Zelc said:


> Crazy theory: The dwarf with the rocks in Leantha's book is not Kibi, it's Cranchus.  He somehow became "dead as stone".



I so called it 

Although there's still a chance the prophecy wasn't talking about Cranchus after all.


----------



## Everett

Zelc said:


> I so called it
> 
> Although there's still a chance the prophecy wasn't talking about Cranchus after all.




If Cranchus is now part of Abernia, I suppose he could "drive the spike clean through", but it just seems off to me considering the last line.  He can't die to renew hope if he's not exactly alive as it is anyway.  But I guess that could be it.


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 392*_
*Sister Act*

Their sleep is deep and peaceful, untroubled by nightmares or worry, but Aravis has a vision of the surface. It is the most momentous he has had yet.

_The location – underground, probably?   It’s a place that’s so well protected from divinations, even this vision from the Maze is a bit cloudy around the edges.  But wherever this sanctum lies, it is being assaulted.  The room into which your vision extends has recently seen some immense magical energies.  The rock walls are fractured and scarred. Shattered glasswork is scattered everywhere, and scorched paper scraps still waft here and there through the charged air.  

It’s also a bloody mess.  Bodies litter the floor, killed by means various and gruesome.  Judging from their descriptions, you guess that five of them were the adventuring group led by the siblings Jerzembeck and Junaya, whose vital missions for the Spire never brought them into the Company’s sphere.  

Others you are saddened to recognize more clearly. The golden head of Five Silent Crow has been crumpled like tin, as if it had imploded in on itself.  Isabel Horn is a statue, her left arm broken off at the elbow.  The bodies of Anhaya Sunblossom and the Pikonish priestess Cornelia are scorched ruins.   Attrius and Portia, the bodyguards assigned to keep you safe at Verdshane, seem to have hacked one another apart, judging by their wounds and bloody blades.  Sagiro Emberleaf’s sprawled body is in better shape than some of the others, but his left leg from thigh to ankle is charred to the bone.  His face has been scalded and half of his moustache has been burned away.

In fact, only two beings seem to still be alive in this chamber. One is Parthol Runecarver, injured but not near fatally.  He dusts off his robes and stretches his neck, then smiles cruelly at the kneeling man before him.  That man is Tor Bladebearer, who looks like he was rendered solidly paralyzed in the act of standing up.  An ornate flaming sword is gripped tightly in his right hand, a useless appendage to the statue Tor has become.

“Well, wasn’t that interesting,” says Parthol.   “Twelve against one, and you still couldn’t manage it.   None of you could even lay a hand on me!  You just weren’t in my league.  Though if it makes you feel better, you wouldn’t have bested Naradawk, either.”

He idly flicks a piece of fallen ash from Tor’s shoulder.  “But now _my_ job has become more difficult.  At least you would have weakened his forces somewhat.  Now there’s no one of any significant power – myself excepted – standing between Naradawk and complete control of Charagan.   I’m going to have to spend more serious effort and firepower taking the place over from him.  What an annoyance!  I hope you feel good about yourself… Tor, is it?  Or would you prefer Darien?”

Tor, of course, says nothing.

“I suppose I could leave you alive,” he says.  “You and Isabel are both salvageable.  But no, now that you’ve found a way to breach my defenses, I can’t let you live.  Naradawk might capture you and make you squeal.  I suppose I really do have to make an end of you.”

He puts a hand on Tor’s head.  “I might as well try this first,” he says.  “It worked for Glade and Royce, eventually.”  He casts _disintegrate_, and sweat pours down Tor’s face, the only sign of the pain he feels.

“If I run out of _disintegrates_ before you’re dead, what should I try then?” asks Parthol.  “Would you think less of me if I just _magic missiled_ you to death?”  He casts another _disintegrate_, and again Tor resists, but his eyes are bloodshot and watery.

“Third time’s the charm, they say,” says Parthol.  But before he can invoke another spell, he himself seizes up, his eyes going wide with surprise.  On the ground behind him, Sagiro’s body has dragged itself over to lie next to Parthol’s feet.  Sagiro’s eyes are still closed, his mouth hanging slack, but his right hand has reached out, seemingly of its own volition, and closed around Parthol’s ankle.

Parthol straightens, takes a step back, and waves his hand. Tor feels the paralysis lift, and surges to his feet.  Your vision of the scene suddenly becomes much sharper, clearer.

“Gah,” says Parthol.  “That’s the first time I’ve ever gotten someone unconscious to move.  It’s a sickening feeling, honestly."

His body convulses, his arms bending at painful angles, his facial muscles contorting wildly.

“Sooner would be better,” Parthol gasps.  “He’s resisting something fierce.  I think I’ve removed all of his abjurations and resistances, but damn, his mind is strong!  He’ll have them back in less than a minute.”

Tor nods, and cocks his sword over his shoulder in anticipation of a tremendous swing.  It blazes with enchantments infused into it by scrolls from the Vault.  “Farazil, by the power invested in me as a Knight of the Spire Guard, I hereby grant you citizenship in the Kingdom of Charagan, with all its attendant duties and protections.”  So saying, he brings his sword down upon the possessed and defenseless Parthol Runecarver, and shears the head from the old wizard’s shoulders._

A cheer goes up from the Company at hearing Aravis recount his dream.  Their mercy toward Farazil has been amply rewarded.  But two troubling truths go unspoken.  First, that the ability of their friends on the surface to resist Naradawk has just been badly diminished.  And second, that none of this will matter if they fail to stop Seven Dark Words from awakening or summoning the Adversary.

Kibi finds he can _stone shape_ an exit from the dome with the merest thought.  A smooth, wide boulevard now stretches away to the east.  As they prepare for what could be the day of confrontation with the Evil Trio, casting spells and making plans, Morningstar notes that _Laramon’s Jade Clover_ is still warm, and may be a little bit warmer than it was yesterday.

They step out of the dome, and the rank radiation of Essence strikes them.  Dranko’s head prickles uncomfortably.  _Wind walk_ fails to function, and even _phantom steed_ fails;  no spell will work if it invokes something misty or insubstantial. Kibi is not surprised. This is the Deep Earth.

“We started out on foot,” says Ernie.  “We’ll finish this on foot.”

It feels good to have their boots on solid stone, and they march, their last march, to face the greatest danger Abernia has ever known.  The heat of Essence grows stronger as they go, battering their _protection from evil_ spells.  Ernie stands in front, the _Ward of Drosh_ around his neck allowing them to progress.  Without it, none of them would be able to take even a single step forward.

Then, up ahead, the passage widens, and some three hundred feet distant it ends at a flat black wall.  In the very center of that wall is something shiny and white, but they’re too far away to make out any details.  Dranko, whose sight is keenest, peers into the gloom as they approach, and what at first is just a white oval against a dark background, resolves into a face.  

The corridor widens further, and now they are only a hundred feet from the black wall.  The length of the wall they can see, stretching across the entire width of a small cavern, is mildly convex to them, as though it’s only one small section of a great circular barrier.  The gleaming white face, twenty feet in diameter, is dead center to them, as if set to watch this very approach.  The wall is dead black, giving no cues of depth, and the marble face is unnaturally clean, such a pure white that its features are hard to make out.  The only thing that gives shape to the face are little black dots that slide across its cheeks, its forehead, its eyeballs.

The wall, they realize, is made of pure congealed Essence.  And embedded into it, is the head of the Sister God Wlaqua.

Closer now. Wlaqua’s enormous white marble eyes dart back and forth, and its mouth opens.  She lets out a terrible howl, filled with anguish, frustration and shame.

“Well, look at that,” says Grey Wolf.  “It’s warning someone that we’re here.”

He casts _indomitability_ on Kibi.

Dranko and Flicker move forward together, though it’s not clear how they might flank something set into a wall.  The eyes swivel to watch them, and Wlaqua screams, “Gooooo baaaaaack!”

Magical energies blast outward from Wlaqua’s head, striking most of the Company.  Morningstar’s _mind status_ spell pings: something has tried to _dominate_ Kibi, but failed. It pings again, as Dranko resists a _feeblemind_.  Ernie is turned to stone.  Grey Wolf resists a _disintegrate_ but suffers minor burns.  And Dranko… Dranko starts to caper and prance, struck by _Otto’s Irresistible Dance_.

“Flee for your lives!” screams Wlaqua.  “Go back!”

“You’ve made a terrible mistake,” Morningstar says to Her. “We’re here to restore things.”

“Yes!” agrees Wlaqua, Her voice desperate. “You have to slay me, but you can’t!  I’m a God!”

Aravis casts _protection from spells_ upon Grey Wolf, Flicker, Morningstar and himself.  Morningstar casts _holy aura_ on everyone.  Kibi uses _break enchantment_ to restore Ernie to flesh, before quickening _xorn movement_ and sinking into the ground.

Ernie (who felt his skin grow hard for a moment, but who must have resisted a _petrification_) casts _mass doughy folk_, giving all of his allies further protection.

“Can’t we circumvent you by finding another way through the wall?” he asks Wlaqua.

“They’ve placed me at the weak spot!” She screams. “It’s the way they went through.  It’s the only way to…. Aughhhh!”  She shrieks louder, as though some painful compelling force cut Her off, not wanting Her to say more.

Grey Wolf casts _ironstorm_, centered on Wlauqa’s head. Flicker runs forward, thinking Dranko is by his side.  “Come on, Dranko, keep up!  Can’t you… oh, for the Gods’ sake.” 

“I’m sorry” Wlaqua screams.  She erupts with another burst of magic energy. Flicker sags, struck by a potent _energy drain_.  Ernie feels his own _energy drain_ forced out of his own mind and cast back upon him, though – thanks to the Spell Resistance granted by Morningstar’s _holy aura_, he is unaffected by it.  Aravis resists _feeblemind_ and Ernie shrugs off _hold monster_.  Dranko is stripped of his own highest level spell:  _cure serious wounds_.

Aravis casts _maze_ on Wlaqua.  To all of their surprise, the Head vanishes.  It doesn’t leave a hole behind, just more solid black oozing Essence.  It seems that it’s not Wlaqua’s severed head that fights them, but merely her sliced-off face.

The Company moves forward, but Wlaqua soon reappears.  Even in death, the Sister God radiates a furious power that competes with the evil of the wall of Essence. They’re not sure they have the wherewithal to harm Her, and eventually Her magical blasts will prove  too much for them.

They need help, and Morningstar knows how to summon it.  She casts _miracle_. “Yavin!” she shouts.  “We face your Sister. She is insane. We require your assistance.”

There is a ripple of power in front of Morningstar, so strong that the ground shakes and the air ripples, though the Black Wall doesn’t react at all.  A being appears in front of Morningstar, a twenty foot black marble giantess holding a black sword.

It is the Sister God Yavin, and She is dead. Her black body is riddled with holes, and large pieces have been hacked out of Her, leaving weeping wounds.  One of her eyes has been gouged out, and the gap where it once was goes nearly all the way through her head.

“Sister!” wails Wlaqua. “I killed you, and I’m sorry!”

“I am sorry too,” says Yavin. “But it appears I have been given another chance to set things right. You were very, very foolish, Sister. You knew what you were dealing with.  Are you at all surprised?”

“Have mercy, Sister!” screams Wlaqua.

Yavin looks down upon Morningstar. “You have brought me back from the Necroplis of Naslund,” she says, her voice powerful but underscored with cracks. “My time here is very short. What would have me do?”

“When You go back, take Your sister with You,” says Morningstar.

“I cannot.  She can only go if She is dead, but the Adversary’s foul power keeps Her alive.”

“Then we need to get through this wall,” says Morningstar. “Right where Your Sister is.”

Yavin understands. She raises her enormous black sword.  “I take no pleasure in this,” She says to Wlaqua.  And the Sister God Yavin, who once resolved conflicts peacefully but who in death is freed from that tenet, takes a mighty swing at Wlaqua’s head. A large chunk of white marble is knocked free from Her cheek, and it lands on the ground with a heavy thud. More, a spider-web of cracks appears, running through the entire Head, and it no longer radiates its aura of indomitability.

Yavin steps back and motions to Her sister, while Wlaqua screams in pain.

Kibi casts _cone of cold_, and it clearly damages the Head. Aravis casts a maximized _chain lightning_ into the _ironstorm_ and Wlaqua screams again.  

“Let me introduce you to Ell.” Morningstar closes, quickens _divine power_, and strikes once with _Ell’s Will_.  It knocks another piece out Wlaqua’s head.  “It hurts, it hurts!” She cries, and though Her pain is genuine, the Company thinks Her voice also sounds almost encouraging, as though She wants them to hurry and make an end of Her.

Dranko strikes with his whip, and Grey Wolf dissolves most of Wlaqua’s nose with a _acid orb_.  The black spots on Wlaqua’s face roil, and sympathetic lesions burst out on Yavin’s dead countenance.

“I’m sorry!” Wlaqua shrieks.  “It’s not me that’s doing i!”

“It _is_ you, Sister,” says Yavin. “You made this happen, and now you are paying the price of it.”

Once more Wlqaua unleashes magical energies on her attackers.   Aravis is set to dancing, and Flicker is struck blind, but everyone else resists the various effects.

Dranko lines up his whip strikes more carefully this time, and connects twice, knocking a hole straight through Her cheek.  They can see the Black Wall behind it.  

Kibi pops up from the ground and casts _greater dispel magic_ on Aravis, curing him of his unwanted disposition to tango.  Aravis immediately casts _disintegrate_, and the Head fails to resist.  The entire thing flashes and becomes a gritty white powder, falling to the ground like a bucket of white sand upended by a giant.

“I’m sorry, Milady,” says Dranko to Yavin.

“Thank You for Your help,” adds Ernie.

“You are welcome,” says Yavin, “but this is no longer my place.” She nods, and vanishes.

…to be continued…


----------



## Piratecat

And now, at long last, we are to it. 

Wish us luck.


----------



## RangerWickett

I'm a fan of Farazil.


----------



## Everett

If anyone starts dancing in the showdown with the evil trio I will LOL continuously for many minutes.


----------



## Kilroy

Sagiro said:


> _*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 392*_
> *Sister Act*
> 
> “Farazil, by the power invested in me as a Knight of the Spire Guard, I hereby grant you citizenship in the Kingdom of Charagan, with all its attendant duties and protections.”
> 
> Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ompany-(updated-6-25-14)/page31#ixzz35iMPDqf4




Things like this are why I have been reading this story for over a decade, and why I will come back and read it again, years from now.  Thank you, Sagiro.

Bits like this and "I. Am. WROTH." and the arrival of Elder from Piratecat's story hour are remarkable, just for showing the length of time a plot hook can dangle before catching the perfect fish.

Speaking of, when is PC finishing his story?


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 393*_
*The End*

_Kibilhathur Bimson, child of Gela, child of Cranchus.  You are still the Opener.  The splinter has encased itself, I and it crying out together.   It must be you who cracks its shell.   Bless it with its lover’s kiss, the Watcher’s hour come, and together we will cleanse Abernia._

It was years ago that Kibi had that dream, and now it is about to come true.

The Shell is before him, a wall of pure Essence. If not for Ernie’s _Ward of Drosh_, he and all the others would be physically blasted backward by its presence, their minds crushed by its innate malice.

“I bet they’re waiting right on the other side, to kill us as soon as we’re through,” says Dranko.  Maybe they should send the linnorm in first? 

Kibi feels a certainty that his ability to bend reality will not work on the other side of this barrier, and so he uses that ability for the third and final time.  He requests of the world that he and his allies be fully restored to perfect health, with a full day’s complement of spells at the ready.  And the world assents, sending its power rumbling up through the Company, infusing them, refreshing, strengthening.

The Wall stands implacable, unimpressed.

Dranko lights his cigar one final time.  “Do not become,” warns the smoke.

Kibi draws the _Watcher’s Kiss_, fragment of the blade that Uthol Inga once used to stab the Adversary in the back.  Everything save the golden blade fades into a muted grayscale.  Then, only because it brings him comfort when he’s about to do something risky, he puts on his _helmet of water breathing._  He can feel the solid stone beneath his feet, the Earth Magic of Abernia bolstering his resolve.  

“Let’s get this done,” he says, and brings down the _Watcher’s Kiss_ in a diagonal slash, slicing the Wall where Wlaqua’s head had been.   The shell is nearly a foot thick, and Kibi’s hands almost come into contact with hit. But where the blade touches the Essence, the wall parts, the edges of the cut curling away and smoking like burning paper.  The hole widens to a ragged opening big enough for them to fit through.  Kibi raises the sword aloft, a smile on his face for just a second, before evil washes out from beyond the opening like a hurricane blast, knocking them all a step backward.  Even with the _Ward of Drosh_ present, they can feel its sting.

Aravis vanishes.  Everyone gasps.  Then he returns, clutching his head.

“Belshikun had one more vision he wanted me to see, before we go in,” he says.



_”I have decided to show you something of a different nature, an encounter that happened many months ago, and not on the surface of Abernia.  I may be overstepping my bounds by sharing it with you.”

Belshikun vanishes, and your perspective changes, and you observe:

*

“It has to be done,” she says.  “There’s no other choice, and we both know it.”

Two figures sit at a simple wooden table, in simple wooden chairs.  She is tall, thin, imperial, wearing golden robes and a crown of coherent light. He is not quite as tall, and his clothes are beggar’s clothes, though with golden trim, and on his chest is a sapphire pin cut in the shape of a lightning bolt.

They are Corilayna and Laramon, Deities of Fortune, and they are here to gamble.

“Yes, we both know it,” says Laramon.  “I can see where things are headed as well as you. Though if you had a shred of honor, you’d do it yourself with no games. You brought him here, after all.”

Corilayna waves her hand dismissively. “No. We fled here, and you accepted us, eventually. The Adversary’s rebirth on Abernia is all of our problem. There’s only going to be one chance to put things to rights, and as things stand now, that chance will fail.”

“You speak, of course, of the mortals chosen by Abernia,” says Laramon, steepling his fingers.  “Alander’s so-called chosen. You’d think if the world wanted to save itself, it wouldn’t need us to take such drastic measures.”

“Who knows?” says Corilayna.  “Maybe the world has already taken us into account?  Either way, Abernia’s band of precocious mortal misfits, at this very moment, doesn’t stand a chance. The wizard Abernathy may have heard the world whispering their names, but all of the recursively-derived prophecies in the world won’t do them any good as things stand now. Even if they find a way beneath the Barrier, the journey they must make is too long, too dangerous, and too _improbable.”_ 

“Yes,” says Laramon with a sigh.  “And that’s why we’re here.  They’ll need a thumb on the scale just to have a prayer.  And even then, it won’t be enough by itself. They’ll have to be smart, _and_ resourceful, _and_ powerful, _in addition_ to being absurdly lucky, especially as regards the confluence of far-separated events.  But of course our thumbs aren’t allowed where they’re going.”

“And so we come to this,” says Corilayna.  “They’re going to need good fortune, and lots of it. We could make them a magic lucky trinket the conventional way, but even that wouldn’t be powerful enough. Only one thing will be enough.”

They stare at one another across the table for a good long while.

“Well, we can’t use dice,” Laramon says eventually.  “I don’t trust you.”

Corilayna smiles.  “And we can’t use a coin.  I don’t trust you either.”

“How about a roulette wheel?” Laramon suggests.  “Neither one of us will be able to cheat on that without the other knowing.”

“Fine.  We’ll manifest one jointly.”

Seconds later a beautiful gaming wheel appears on the table, crafted of mithril and diamond. There are no numbers on the spaces.  Every other slot is black jet, etched with a gleaming red die standing on one corner, the holy symbol of Corilayna.  The remaining spaces are polished ruby, each inscribed with a black lightning bolt inside a coin, the symbol of Laramon. The ball is a perfect white pearl.

For long minutes they do nothing but stare intently at the wheel, expressions of grim concentration on their faces.  Then Corilayna looks up.  “I’m satisfied.”

“I am as well,” says Laramon.

“Good.”  Corilayna smiles.  “I have my token.  Do you have yours?”

“Of course.”

“Then we will spin the wheel, and let fortune dictate our fates, as is fitting.”

Through some unknown medium, one that must have been acceptable to both parties, the wheel begins to spin.  Both Deities of Luck watch intently as the wheel turns and the pearl glides around the edge.  After an exquisitely tense minute the ball drops and bounces several times before coming to rest.

It sits in a red slot.  

Laramon smiles.  “I win, it seems.”

Corilayna stares at the wheel.  “Yes.  Yes, it does look that way.”

Again, moments of silence across the table.

“There will be local fluctuations on Abernia,” says Corilayna, keeping her expression neutral.  “Luck is going to go haywire for a while.  No one is going to know what to make of it.  When they figure out I’m gone, my priesthood will probably assume I’ve fled with my tail between my legs, just like Drosh did.”

Laramon studiously says nothing.

“It would be best if they don’t know what it is, at least in the short term,” she adds.  “Put it somewhere they’ll find it, and enchant it so they won’t lose it.  Goodness knows they’ve misplaced enough magical objects in their short careers.  Now. I don’t see any reason to delay.”

Laramon produces his token, a jade clover with his symbol – a lightning bolt on a coin – inscribed on each leaf.  He places it on the table.   

Corilayna lets out a long breath, and closes her eyes.  

“Goodbye,” she whispers.  And then she dies.  All of her divine life energy is immediately channeled into the clover, until it glows like a green fireball.   After a moment, when the last of her Godly force has been contained in Laramon’s token, Corilayna’s body turns to vapors, disperses, and vanishes. Laramon is left alone in the room.  

He takes a silver coin from his pocket, and flips it into the air, letting it land on the table.  It bounces, wobbles, and comes to rest standing on its smooth, thin edge.

He stays in his chair for a long time after that, fingertips pressed to his lips.  

“You did have honor, after all,” he says at last.  “Let’s hope it’s enough.”  He stands and puts the jade clover into a pocket of his shirt._




Morningstar gulps and reaches into her pocket.  Her fingers close around _Laramon’s Jade Clover_, and she realizes that her earlier guess was nearly on the mark.  For months she has been carrying the full Divine power of Corilayna in the lining of her robe!

Ahead of them stretches a black tunnel like a diseased throat, its walls an even mingling of stone and Essence.  It is repulsive in every sense.

“And thus begins  possibly the last journey we will ever make,” says Aravis.

“Well, I couldn’t ask for better company,” says Ernie.  The others nod quietly.

Ernie goes first, wearing the Ward of Drosh around his neck.  There are no light motes in here, but _darkvision_ suffices. They make slow progress, through a place so stifling and sickening, it takes all of their nerve and resolve not to turn back, or just lie down and curl into a ball.

They cast a few spells as they go, protecting themselves from spells, from various energy types. Morningstar, seen as the most indispensable if they end up fighting something, gets a _mind blank_.

The tunnel is the embodiment of black despair.  With each step, they realize more certainly that  something has gone wrong. This can’t be right, can’t be where they are meant to be.  Nothing they have done heretofore could possibly matter. 

In Morningstar’s pocket, _Laramon’s Jade Clover_ suddenly becomes so hot, it burns her skin through the cloth of her robe.  At the same moment a small ball of orange flame appears, glowing in the darkness of this accursed tunnel.  Even as the Company stares at it, still wondering what it is, it expands rapidly into a fiery oval ring, like the frame of a full length mirror that has caught fire.

“There!” shouts a voice.  “I did it!  Go now before it closes!  Go, go!”

The voice sounds familiar, but no one can place it right away.

A man steps through the mirror.  It’s Cashbox Jack, one of the ones who helped the Company survive in the Lightless Room of Het Branoi.  Close on his heels are Kiro, the dwarven cleric, and the sorcerer Ox.  They stumble into the tunnel, gasping in horror at their surroundings.

But more are coming. Something like a lobster claw sticks through the portal, followed by the rest of an iron barrel-like contraption. It seems that Aristus, from the Eye of the Storm, finally finished building his Apparatus. 

And then Yoba steps through.  She rushes forward, heedless of the doom she has stepped into, and embraces Ernie in a fierce hug.  “I know you said you’d come back,” she whispers in his ear. “That’s how I knew it would be okay. I’ll just come back with you.”

But Yoba is not the last to come through the burning portal.  One more person emerges: Kay Olafsen, one of the original seven summoned to Abernathy’s tower all those years ago.  Kay, who was lost in Het Branoi, her elemental nature unable to exist in a place created by an Eye of Moirel.  As soon as she is through, the portal closes, leaving behind a last breath of heat.

“The mystic Peralta saw you’d need help,” says Yoba. “Her ‘Seeing Flame’ told her your entire world was in mortal danger.  She contacted as many of us as she could with _sendings_, and told us we could return the favor you did for us.  She’s been trying to open a portal for weeks; this place is hard to reach!”

“Of course we all said yes,” says Cashbox Jack. “And besides, we figured after the last place we helped you out of, how could _this_ be any worse?”

The Company shakes hands, utters words of thanks, and embraces Kay.  For Kay’s part, she is just as happy to see them alive.  “I wasn’t with you,” she explains, “but I was with other yous.  And the other yous kept dying.”

They quickly bring all the newcomers up to speed, explaining how dire are the straits they are in, and making some quick introductions.  No one flinches at learning there is likely no return from here, win or lose.

As the expanded group prepares to continue their final journey, there is a sound.

Gods, the sound.

It is a sound that pierces their souls to the core, like a great bell shattered by the force of its ring. It is a sound of pure despair. It is the sound of the world ending.  

The Essence-infused rock of the floor starts to boil and bubble like the surface of a fetid swamp. The walls pulse and undulate like a great black esophagus about to vomit them into hell.  Kibi feels all the stone of the world cry out in pain, and a terror floods down the tunnel like water. Terror, and defeat.

They have failed. Yoba weeps, and Cashbox Jack sinks to his knees.

And then, the Voice. It is a Voice that would make Tapheon sound like an archangel.  It carries such malice and power, just hearing it causes them pain like nothing they have ever felt.

“I am here, at last an in full,” says the Voice. “I sense you, surface dwellers of this pitiful rock.  Come here where I can look upon you. And be humbled that you are my first victims… the first of millions.”

None of them can move, or act.  Just thinking is an agony. The Adversary has arrived, and his Voice pollutes them. They should have done something different, something they didn’t think of, something hidden among all the hints and clues and prophecies. 

But they missed it, and now it is too late. They have failed.

And then they are _teleported_, as the laws of the Underdark that should prevent this are harshly violated by the Adversary. _Laramon’s Jade Clover_ melts and vanishes in a puff of metallic steam. Now they are standing in an enormous cavern, the floor of which is worked smooth and inlaid with large black obsidian circles. Equations and lines are scrawled everywhere, some of them hundreds of feet across.

High above them, protruding from the eastern wall, are four deep purple fingers, each as long as the Greenhouse is tall. The thumb, if there is one, would be under the floor.

Standing in the very center of the cavern, in the centermost of the inlaid black circles, hundreds of feet tall, is the Adversary.  His skin is purpled iron. One hand grips a black sword; the other ends in a stump.  The failed heroes are scattered around Him, apart from one another.  They cannot move, but the Adversary has arranged that each of their heads is tilted up, where they can look at Him, see His glory, and know that they could not prevent His arrival.  His very presence would be annihilating their souls if not for the presence of the _Ward of Drosh_.  But even with it, their souls are crumbling.  They are hardly aware of three other figures in the room, smiling, standing in smaller black circles on the floor.

With his last shreds of consciousness, Kibi realizes that the cavern in which they stand was not, until just now, large enough to contain the Adversary’s physical form. His arrival wrenched the stone away, altering it, changing its nature, to make room for Him. Now He is standing in something akin to a great bell jar.  His arrogance, his exultation in victory, is crushing.  With their last fleeting bits of thought and sanity, each of the Company is left to wonder what they might have done differently, how they could have prevented this.

But they didn’t.

And they have lost.

…The End.


----------



## Piratecat

Worst. Campaign. Ever.


----------



## HavokReaker

*stunned silence*

Say What!?!

(oh there best be an epilogue!)


----------



## Neurotic

Nah, he's just messing with us 

There must be some outpouring of luck (clover), time (Cranchus), Abernias power (Cranchus again)  or one other long forgotten item waiting to come to the fore...and lets not forget Drankos madness.


----------



## StevenAC

Er, Sagiro... you do know it's nearly three months past April Fools Day?  And for those of us with long memories, that trick won't work again... 

Anyway, thanks to the recent blizzard of updates, the next chapter in the Collected Story Hour is now available -- less than three weeks after the previous one!  Thank you, Sagiro, for providing so much wonderful material so quickly... although if you leave us dangling too long on that cliffhanger, I'll be reconsidering what I said about not getting on a plane to Boston...


----------



## Kaodi

Cripes. If this is how it ended, maybe Dranko Becoming and killing everyone would not have been so bad.


----------



## Gulla

This cliff hanger is of a kind to warrant a trip from Norway to get the next installment. 

Pretty Please tell us more?

(And I think this invalidates the prophesy, so  it cannot be the True Ending. I hope)


----------



## Piratecat

*Sagiro's Story Hour: The FINAL Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 6/2...*

Just to be clear, this is exactly what happened at the gaming table. Exactly. And Kay's player got to game for, what, 15 minutes? But you can't fight a God, not in this world. 

I think at this point he started to fold up his GM screen. Which was unwise, as we had dice to throw.


----------



## Everett

You know, I think Sagiro does stuff like that because all of you on EnWorld expect him to.  Though the tension up until the... June Fool's Day joke was really good.  

Probably the next update will just delete the last few paragraphs and start from there.

By the way, PC, we _have_ been waiting years for you to resume Defenders of Daybreak.

Also, was Kay's player actually there for this session?


----------



## Sagiro

Everett said:


> You know, I think Sagiro does stuff like that because all of you on EnWorld expect him to.  Though the tension up until the... June Fool's Day joke was really good.
> 
> Probably the next update will just delete the last few paragraphs and start from there.



Nothing will be deleted, I assure you.  As Piratecat said, everything I have typed is exactly how it played out. I told my players they had lost, and packed up my stuff.




> Also, was Kay's player actually there for this session?




Yes.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> Nothing will be deleted, I assure you.  As Piratecat said, everything I have typed is exactly how it played out. I told my players they had lost, and packed up my stuff.




Right then.  Cheers to that.  Though you may have trouble publishing if you end the novel the same way.


----------



## Pyske

Piratecat said:


> Just to be clear, this is exactly what happened at the gaming table. Exactly. And Kay's player got to game for, what, 15 minutes? But you can't fight a God, *not in this world*.
> 
> I think at this point he started to fold up his GM screen. Which was unwise, as we had dice to throw.




*cough*  Emphasis mine.

PS -- You managed to get me to de-lurk for the first time in 4 years.  Well done.


----------



## Kaodi

I thought about that, but I am not so sure... Though I would not put it past Sagiro to pull some kind of stunt like that, such as phoning everyone the next week to make sure they were going to be there for the conclusion of the campaign.


----------



## Sagiro

You know, I considered leaving the Story Hour here for several days, while I go off camping with the family.  But there are limits even to my cruelty.

I _did_ pack up my things.  But then I stopped, and unpacked, and returned to the table.  It turned out there was more story to tell, after all.

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 394*_
*What’s In Dranko’s Head*

Dranko has a somewhat different experience.  

For him, time stands still.  Oh, he is vaguely aware of the ocean of despair in which his friends are drowning, but he regards it with a detached curiosity, like a collector regarding an insect pinned to a board.

Something in his head has stirred, and done something akin to casting _time stop_ on his behalf.  Like the others he is looking at the Adversary, and cannot look away.  He can _feel_, acutely, the God’s satisfaction at having destroyed the world of Darvin and most of its pantheon before the rest of the Godlings fled.

He can feel the pain of betrayal, as the God is stabbed in the back by His lover, the Goddess Uthol Inga, in the moment of His victory.  

He can feel horror, as He is caught in a net, placed in a cage He cannot see, because Ell has woven a net of darkness around Him.  He has been imprisoned, and His prison set inside the Far Realms, and He reaches His hand through to escape, but the cage closes and seals, and His hand is severed.  

Dranko can feel His pain. He can feel the madness of aeons; not even a God can endure confinement in the Far Realms for so long.  

He feels the impact of the God’s Hand, smashing through the surface of a distant world, then digging, clawing its way downward until it has arrived in this cavern, there to wait, wait until someone arrives to make use of it.

Then, at last, there is the exultation of rebirth, as Seven Dark Words calls him back, in the heart of Abernia, a world that will now suffer the same fate as Darvin.

Abruptly, Dranko is somewhere else.  He is standing deep inside Naslund, Necropolis of the Gods.  He thinks for a moment that he has been brought here because he, like everyone else on Abernia, has died. Despite his lack of fame or (more importantly) divinity, he has been afforded the honor of interment among the dead Gods.

But, no.  He is not really here.  Something is showing him a memory, a clear, distinct memory of when he was here before.  He is standing with his friends before Viersk, the lone caretaker of Drosh after Meledien and Tarsos raided the tombs.

“How much do you know of what you have seen here?” asks Viersk.

“Very little,” Aravis admits. “We can’t even read half of the names above the entrances to the tombs.”

He refers to the fact that written over each God’s tomb are two names, one they all can read, and a second that cannot be read by any means they possess.

“Ah,” says Viersk, nodding. “The second names, the ones you cannot read, are the Gods’ _true_ names.  Every God has a true name that comes into existence at the moment of its birth. To know a God’s true name would be to have power over it. But the names are not known, even to the Gods themselves, until the moment that they die. Then those names are written, for the first and only time, above their tombs.” 

Then Dranko is back in the cavern, looking up at the Adversary.  

A voice whispers in his mind. “Even if something doesn’t exist, _we_ can still find it. And in return for your fame, I have given it to you.”

The Name of the Adversary.  All Dranko has to do is _think_ it to himself, and he would _become_ the Adversary.  He would have all of the God’s power, along with His malice, His urge to destroy.  He would have fame on such a scale, His name would be spoken in reverence and fear until history came to an end, on this and every world. 

The impulse to do this is very, very strong.

Or.

Or, he can speak the name as a weapon, and strip the Adversary of His immortality, and a large part of His power.  Time is slowly starting up again as he faces this choice.  He must decide.

_Become_, whispers a voice in his head.

_Do not Become_, Abernia seems to say.

Dranko shouts the Name of the Adversary, flinging it upward from his lips like a spear.  The power is too much. He drops to his knees, blood running from his ruined eyes, even as the sound of the Name echoes all around.

In the midst of their despair, the others hear that Dranko say something they are not supposed to hear, that he is not supposed to be speaking.  The earth trembles, pieces raining down, smashing into the floor, breaking apart some of the carefully set obsidian bricks.  The Adversary Himself screams in pain, and the crushing despair vanishes, leaving behind terror, but now also, for the first time, hope.  Seven Dark Words, Meledien and Tarsos try to master their confusion.

The Adversary shrinks, physically shrinks, until he stands a mere forty feet tall. He looks down, enraged at the obscenity perpetrated on His being.  He grips His sword tightly. He is still a God, fulminant with divine power.  He is still a God, but now He is one no longer beyond the reach of mortals. 

He is a God who can be slain.

And so, the battle for the fate of Abernia begins.


…to be concluded, sometime next week most likely...


----------



## Kaodi

So, at the end of this, did one play session map precisely on to one part of the story? Because after Part 383 it was mentioned there were 11 or 12 session left, and _The End_, at Part 393 makes only 10...

Edit: Wow. That was a timely recounting...


----------



## Piratecat

...don't think I wasn't tempted, especially after he'd packed up his things.


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> You know, I considered leaving the Story Hour here for several days, while I go off camping with the family.  But there are limits even to my cruelty.
> 
> I _did_ pack up my things.  But then I stopped, and unpacked, and returned to the table.  It turned out there was more story to tell, after all.




/eye roll.  

Anyway, here we are, final boss fight, and it still isn't clear who is to channel what makes dead, or what they channel, or how.  Any guesses out there?


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> ...don't think I wasn't tempted, especially after he'd packed up his things.




and how would THAT have worked?  "Oh BTW folks, Dranko Became the Adversary and spent the next millennia feasting on your souls, geez, look at the time, take care now..."


----------



## Piratecat

Everett said:


> and how would THAT have worked?  "Oh BTW folks, Dranko Became the Adversary and spent the next millennia feasting on your souls, geez, look at the time, take care now..."



I asked him that. He said they'd get to try and take down me instead. It would have been interesting academically, but Dranko would have only sacrificed himself if he could make the Adversary a kinder, happy, fluffy God -- and that wasn't in the cards.


----------



## coyote6

Everett said:


> /eye roll.
> 
> Anyway, here we are, final boss fight, and it still isn't clear who is to channel what makes dead, or what they channel, or how.  Any guesses out there?




Hmm. The True Name of a god is known but once, when the god dies. Hence, that Name could be said to be what marks the god as dead, and so Dranko just channeled it. Maybe?


----------



## Everett

coyote6 said:


> Hmm. The True Name of a god is known but once, when the god dies. Hence, that Name could be said to be what marks the god as dead, and so Dranko just channeled it. Maybe?




Interesting.  Yeah, that certainly would fulfill the prophecy in some sense, except that "four are needed" and Dranko's already one of them, for having the Name in his head.  So I think the channeler must be yet to come in the final battle.


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> I asked him that. He said they'd get to try and take down me instead. It would have been interesting academically, but Dranko would have only sacrificed himself if he could make the Adversary a kinder, happy, fluffy God -- and that wasn't in the cards.




How would Dranko even get a choice in the matter?  As with your dream, you'd Become an incarnation of pure evil.  How else is the campaign going to end?  "And then Dranko Became, and yea, Abernia did tremble at His feet... except on Wednesdays, when He gave out free milkshakes and invited toddlers to sit on His knee..."


----------



## Piratecat

Actually, I think Friday is the Drankversary's holy day. But I see your point. Sagiro didn't actually need a plan; the chance of Dranko choosing to Become was so low as to be non-existent. Sagiro knows me extremely well.


----------



## The_Warlock

But free milkshakes and toddlers!

or is that free toddler milkshakes...

I can never remember...


----------



## Tamlyn

What struck me as genuinely awesome was the role of Cranchus in the selection of the party. Cranchus had become one with Abernia. Cranchus tried to speak to people, but the only person who could hear was Abernathy. Abernathy got the names of the party from Abernia/Cranchus. And all this happened _after_ the party's visit to Cranchus in the past. Incredible!

~Tam


----------



## Everett

Piratecat said:


> Actually, I think Friday is the Drankversary's holy day. But I see your point. Sagiro didn't actually need a plan; the chance of Dranko choosing to Become was so low as to be non-existent. Sagiro knows me extremely well.




Even were you to choose the Becoming option -- you simply don't get to end a 16-year campaign without a climactic showdown, whether it's Dranko vs. Party or Party vs. Adversary.  It would be like if you had a series of fantasy novels about a Dark One who's been sealed away for a millennia who's prophesied to be defeated by a hero who hears voices of insanity in his head, and the books ran for 20-odd years and then the author died, leaving them to be completed in a functionary, lackluster manner by someone with no vision.

Oh, hang on...


----------



## Solarious

So, Abernia was alive and doing mad gambit plans to save itself and everyone on it the way Chrono Trigger's world did, setting up stable recursion loops, preparing trials and arming living weapons to point directly at the heart of the enemy.

Well done, rodent of uncertain parentage. Stealing from the classics is the greatest homage you could pay them.


----------



## Jarrod

No wonder Tapheon didn't want him around...


----------



## Everett

Typo, nix "that".



			
				Sagiro said:
			
		

> the others hear that Dranko say something they are not supposed to hear


----------



## Anxe

I'm curious what music you used for the final fight. If you did use something could you post it with the update? I'd like to listen to it while I read if possible. Would make it just a little bit cooler.


----------



## Everett

Jarrod said:


> No wonder Tapheon didn't want him around...




Tapheon couldn't have known what it was, but sure, it would terrify him.  That works.

I'm curious who played each of the NPCs during the Adversary battle -- there's 5 of them -- 6 counting Galdifain, who has no battle capacity -- and looking at the post again, I have absolutely no idea who Aristus from the Eye of the Storm is.  Someone fill me in?


----------



## The_Warlock

So close.....


And yet, so far....


----------



## Everett

So, just for funzies, what do you suppose the Name of the Adversary _was_?  Was it Sherman?


----------



## Anxe

What's Sagiro's real name? Because I bet its that. Or something like Diabolox


----------



## Sagiro

_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 395*_
*The Fate of Abernia*

Meledien and Tarsos stand inside their small black circles, clad in their red armor.  Meledien holds a glowing, flaming spear in one hand, and a shield in the other. Tarsos holds a heavy hammer, and his shield is ornate, radiating power.  A design of a book is upon it, reminding the Company that in addition to looting the Spear of Caba, Tarsos and Meledien also stole the Bulwark of Leantha. 

Seven Dark Words wears no armor. His black robes hang loosely over his lank body.  Stringy black hair hangs down to his shoulders.  His complexion is sallow.  He and his two confederates occupy three points of a virtual triangle, with the Adversary standing in the middle.  The God wears a human expression, one of confusion mixed with outrage.

The eleven heroes have been brought to this place and scattered widely about, none particularly close to any of the others.  Above them loom the fingers of the Adversary’s Hand, protruding from high up on one wall.

The Adversary looks at Himself as though He’s never seen His own body before.  Fury is writ large on His features.  He shakes His stump, still weeping Essence, and where the blood strikes the ground, two enormous constructs, blood golems, rise up like looming shadows.  Then the Adversary _teleports_, appearing next to Dranko.

Dranko is still on his knees, blind, blood pouring from his burst eyes. 

“You will pay for your insolence,” thunders the Adversary.  

“Hey,” says Dranko, blocking out the pain and pointing his head upward. “Since we’re on a first name basis now, let me tell you, it was totally worth it.”

The Adversary brings his titanic black sword down upon Dranko, who senses it coming but still cannot fully evade it.  It slices deep into Dranko’s flesh, burning him. Then He levels His stump and _disintegrates_ Dranko.  The half-orc resists, and does not die.

He does not die!  The Adversary experiences a new effrontery.  His will is Reality; He wished Dranko dead, and took steps to make it so, and yet His will has not been realized.  Outrageous!

The two blood golems each move toward the closest living foe.  One bludgeons Ox with dripping fists, while the other does likewise to Morningstar.  When it touches her, something burns beneath her skin, as though her blood was slowly catching fire.  As though she has been infected with Essence.

Seven Dark Words shoots a glance across the cavern at Tarsos, quickens a spell upon his person, and then casts one of his most powerful magics.  A two-foot-diameter _sphere of annihilation_ appears next to Morningstar.  She resists getting sucked into it, but it grazes her armor and burns a section of it away, searing the skin of her shoulder beneath.  She takes a step back, understanding what it is. “Oh, crap!”

Aristus maneuvers his _apparatus_ to face the nearest blood golem, and fires out a spray of bubbling green acid.  No magic here; the stuff is purely chemical, and it burns a bit of the golem away, sending a splatter of Essence to the ground.

Grey Wolf places an _ironstorm_ as carefully as he can, encompassing both one of the blood golems and Meledien, and none of his allies. Ox then casts an empowered _chain lightning_ into it.  Meledien dodges the electric storm but still takes significant damage; the blood golem gives off just the barest hint of Null Shadow smell, and takes no damage at all.

Then Ox doubles over in pain.  Suppurations have appeared where the Blood Golem touched him, and black fluid bursts out.  “I’m okay,” he croaks, though he feels far from it.

Flicker was placed farthest away from his enemies; while he dashes toward Seven Dark Words, Meledien and Yoba sprint toward one another, each with a weapon raised.  Yoba _smites evil_ with her sword, the _Holy Blade of Anx_, and it shears through Meledien’s plate.  Blood pours out that’s thicker and fouler than it should be; it stinks of Essence.  At the same time Meledien pierces Yoba’s shoulder with the _Spear of Caba_, the weapon striking like a bolt of fire. Yoba’s whole body becomes wreathed in orange flames.

Aravis casts _time stop_.  For a few seconds, the horrors recede, but even with no time passing, the reek of the Adversary is all around him. He casts _effulgent epuration_, then manifests a _black blade of destruction_.  Two can play at the game of controlled annihilating voids.  Then he readies an action for when the _time stop_ ends.  When it does, he casts _maze_ on Tarsos, the combatant he feels will be least likely to resist.  Tarsos vanishes, Bulwark of Leantha and all.

Kay, who had been moving toward Tarsos, finds her target suddenly missing, so she runs toward Seven Dark Words instead.  The Adversary takes an idle swipe at her as she dashes by, still groping for the memory of what it was like to have to strike mortals physically, rather than simply causing their destruction by desiring it.  He opens up a frightening wound in Kay’s  side.   

Meledien bends backward to evade Aravis’s _black blade of destruction_, and avoids the worst of its effect, but she looks every bit as worried as Morningstar.

The Adversary looks over at where Tarsos just was.  It is wrong that he is gone;  Seven Dark Words and Meledien need Tarsos and his Bulwark to tell them about their enemies, their strengths, weaknesses and ability to resist physical and magical effects.  And so, because He is still a God, and can still make _some_ demands upon reality, He snaps “Get back here.”  

And Tarsos reappears.  He is a short, wide warrior, barely taller than five feet.  He rushes to his nearest foe, who is Kibi.  “I know everything,” he tells the dwarf. “I know you’re Kibilhathur Bimson.  Goodbye, Kibilhathur.”  He swings his hammer, and Kibi is lifted up and thrown back almost thirty feet, landing with a bone-jarring crunch on his back.

Kiro, the dwarven cleric who had joined the Company to battle beyond the Black Door of Het Branoi, casts his most potent offensive spell, a _firestorm_ large enough to encompass both Meledien and one of the blood golems.  The golem is unaffected.  As for Meledien, the _Spear of Caba_ erupts in sympathy with the Kiro’s flames, and when the fires have died down, she has _healed_ as much as the spell should have damaged her.  She looks over her shoulder at the crestfallen Kiro.  “Thank you!”

Dranko is still blind, but his tongue works just fine.  “You might not be able to guess,” he says to the Adversary, “but I’m a pretty devout cleric. So I’d like to give you the opportunity to convert.  I hope Delioch will help you find peace.”  Then, because he’s not quite _that_ stupid,  he breaks his _refuge_ token that brings Morningstar to him, before healing himself with a wand.

Like Flicker, Cashbox Jack was brought to this cavern far removed from everyone else.  He runs across a section of floor thickly covered with equations and black circles, and hurls two of his returning daggers at Seven Dark Words.  Both miss.

Morningstar casts _mass heal_, bringing Dranko and Kay back to full health, and curing Dranko of his blindness.  For good measure she quickens _righteous wrath of the faithful_ imbuing her allies with extra fighting prowess.  Ernie moves up and casts _lion’s roar_, damaging his enemies and further bolstering his friends. For the first time, the Adversary feels pain. It is not a sensation He is used to, and it brings forth an ear-splitting bellow of rage.  Ernie then spins and casts _holy smite_ upon Meledien.  “Don’t touch my girlfriend!” he yells.

Kibi groans, stands up, and _summons_ five greater earth elementals.  They immediately commence  grappling, and soon Tarsos, Meledien, Seven Dark Words and one of the blood golems are wrapped up in rocky embraces.  Though the Adversary is still free, that seems to have decisively turned the tide of combat in the heroes’ favor.

With most of the enemies engaged, Galdifain decides it’s time.  “Who would you like me to name?”  The others are unanimous in their choice.  She produces a scroll, utters a few brief syllables, and in a loud voice declares “Seven Dark Words.”

The dread linnorm, limned in aquamarine, springs into being from the scroll.  It looks directly at Seven Dark Words, whose arms are pinned by an earth elemental.  It tries and fails to fly, and so settles for a bounding leap. It lands in front of Seven Dark Words and casts _disintegrate_.  The Black Circle adherent resists, but still flinches from the pain.

The Adversary looks about Himself, and sees His allies occupied by elementals, and that a dragon is attacking His most devoted servant.  “No,” he says. “I will not have this.” He casts _miracle_, and all the elementals, as well as the linnorm, blink out of existence.  Satisfied, He waves His bleeding stump, and a jagged bolt of Essence sprays from it, striking Morningstar and Kay.  Dranko bends backward and the jet of blood narrowly misses him.  He can feel its evil heat on his face.

One of the blood golems bludgeons Ox, and more oozy black suppurations appear on his skin. The other golem tries to smash Flicker, but the little halfling dances out of the way.  Seven Dark Words, freed from the elemental and finding the threatening dragon gone as well, smiles as he brings forth a _crushing fist of spite_.  It’s huge, a clenched fist fifteen feet across that drips with black fluid. It smashes down upon Aravis and Ernie, clipping them as they dive out of the way.

Then Seven Dark Words’ _sphere of annihilation_ glides _through_ the blood golem engaging Flicker, and rolls into the halfling.  He can’t fully get out of the way; it cleanly removes the greater part of his thigh.  As he screams and falls to the ground, clutching his diminished leg, Seven Dark Words quickens a _teleport_ and removes himself from the immediate vicinity of his enemies.  

Aristus backs up his _Apparatus_ and sinks a claw into one of the golems.  The machine is a battle dynamo, its claws delivering massive strikes.  Essence pours out a large rent in the golem’s body.  Grey Wolf sees that Seven Dark Words has not gone so far as to be out of range of an _acid orb_. He fires a green globe – which splashes harmlessly from Seven Dark Words’ robes.

“I hate him,” mutters Grey Wolf, as he moves to close.

Ox has better luck, striking Meledien with one of the two _polar rays_ he can cast today.  She cannot avoid it, and her body is covered with frost, but she survives.  Yoba still stands before her, and so Meledien strikes with the Spear of Caba, once, twice, three times.  Yoba is terribly wounded, and still on fire, and as if that weren’t bad enough, the flames destroy both her _cloak of resistance_ and _ring of deflection_. 

“So, you’re Ernie’s girlfriend?” sneers Meledien.  “It’s a shame your souls won’t be together in the afterlife.”

Aravis moves to Ernie and quickens a _teleport_, bringing them both near Meledien.  Then he casts _reaving dispel_ on Seven Dark Words.  This has the effect of stripping away several spells:  _energy immunity: fire, cold_ and _sonic_ as well as _indomitability_.  Better, it confers these spells onto himself!  Over the mind-link he warns his allies that Seven Dark Words still retains immunity to acid and electricity, as well as a _death ward_.  Finally, Aravis moves the _black blade of destruction_ to Meledien, who ducks its deadly swing.

The Adversary looks at Seven Dark Words and Aravis.  “No.”  All the spells Aravis reaved from Seven Dark Words are reinstantiated, though Aravis still retains them himself.

Kibi points out that he still holds the _Watcher’s Kiss_, and that while he’s unlikely to make use of it in combat, surely _someone_ ought to attack the Adversary with it.  Kay sends Oa Lyanna to retrieve the golden blade from Kibi.  Though flying is impossible here, and airy things cannot exist, Oa Lyanna defies these laws.  Whether this is because her innate power has grown so much, or because some vestige of Cranchus is bending the local rules, none can say.  Kay herself looks up at the Adversary, gulps down her fear, and slashes at Him with both of her swords.  She makes several deep cuts in His legs; black blood gushes out.  The Adversary looks down, annoyed, enraged, confused… how is possible that mortals are damaging Him?  Why is this fight still going on?  His power is absolute!

Yoba is still on fire, and nearly dead.  She steps away from Meledien and _lays on hands_, though she has still looked better.  The flames from the Spear of Caba are, for some reason, not scarring her skin or consuming her hair, but they feel terribly enervating, as though they are consuming some essential vitality within her.

Tarsos strides forward to Kibi and again smashes the dwarf with his hammer. Kibi is lifted and hurled against the wall, dropping to the floor and struggling just to get to his knees.  Kiro, closest to Flicker, casts _heal_, undoing most of the damage the _sphere of annihilation_ had done to the halfling’s leg.

While Cashbox Jack continues to battle one of the blood golems, Ernie decides to go full offense.  He prays to his holy blade and invokes the Glory of Nemmin, becoming a peerless holy warrior of Yondalla. He puts himself between Yoba and Meledien.  “You _do not touch_ the people I love,” he screams.

Dranko and Morningstar find openings to strike the Adversary.  The God feels a terribly agony as he is scored by Dranko’s whip and crushed by _Ell’s Will_.  “I had the option of taking your place,” says Dranko, “but I decided that I’d much rather kill you instead.”

Kibi realizes that by rolling just five feet, he can line up Seven Dark Words and Meledien, though it will leave him close to Tarsos.  He casts an empowered maximized _earthbolt_, then quickens another, also empowered.  Meledien is barely hanging on to life, stumbling and reeling from the Company’s attacks.

“Meledien, you’re a giant bitch,” calls Dranko.  “Also… “ he calls Meledien’s severed arm from his haversack.  “…got your arm.”  He waves it at her.

The Adversary snarls downward. Something about the glowing mace in the mortal woman’s hand is particularly disturbing; it is a weapon made to fight the divine.  She who wields it must not be allowed to continue.  

His terrible black sword comes sweeping down, and with a series of titanic slashes He cuts Morningstar into pieces.  For a second she is kept alive by a _delay death_ cast upon her, but the Adversary asserts His will.  “No. You are not to survive.”  Morningstar’s life goes out.  The Adversary flicks His hand, and _Ell’s Will_ flies up and across the cavern to stick, embedded and quivering, in the wall.

The God looks down at Dranko with a cruel smile.  “I’m sorry,” He says.  “Was she someone important?”

“Am I supposed to be demoralized?” asks Dranko, his voice low-pitched and flat.  “Now, I’m going to pluck out both of your eyes before I kill you.”

The Adversary merely laughs. Killing one of these mortal insects has filled Him with confidence, putting the troubling reality of His wounds out of His mind.

While one of the blood golems batters at Kibi, and Aristus in turn gouges the golem with the claws of his contraption, Seven Dark Words steps to Meledien and casts _heal_ upon her.  The _sphere of annihilation_ rolls towards Kibi, who barely avoids it.  All of his enemies have moved out of the range of his hovering _crushing fist_, so he sends it toward Dranko.

Grey Wolf channels a maximized _acid orb_ and slashes at Meledien.  Just healed, she is now nearly dead again, screaming as the acid burns her face.  Ox sees he has a chance to finish her off.  He has now been pummeled so many times by the blood golem that he looks like he suffers from a terrible black pox, but he concentrates enough to strike Meledien with his second _polar ray_.   “I don’t know you,” he says, “but I know I don’t like you.”  The thin blue ray goes directly through Meledien’s head.  She crumples, and the Spear of Caba blazes up.  Her body is incinerated, her red armor falling empty to the ground.  The Spear falls upon it, and with no one wielding it, its flames go out.  The fires wreathing Yoba likewise are snuffed.

The Company cheers, but their celebration is tempered by Morningstar’s death.  And as Ox finishes his casting, his body succumbs to his affliction of Essence.  His body bursts open, his insides liquefied and turned into an unholy sludge by the infection of Adversary blood.

Aravis directs his _black blade_ to slash again at Seven Dark Words, but the servant of the Adversary is so well warded, it inflicts only minor wounds upon him.  Seeing it would be better just to nullify his enemy’s abilities, Aravis_ shapechanges_ into a beholder and plays his wide _anti-magic cone_ over Seven Dark Words.

Oa Lyanna returns to Kay, bearing the _Watcher’s Kiss_.  Kay drops her short sword and wields the _Kiss_ in its place, and as her fingers close about its hilt, everything around her, even the Adversary, grows gray and faded.  Only the sword itself retains its color, shining so brightly golden it hurts to look upon it. The Adversary looks down and for the first time a shadow of fear crosses His features.

Kay strikes.  The _Watcher’s Kiss_ sings in her hand, its metal infused with the memory of laying low the Adversary once before.  Each wound it inflicts fills with an aureate fire, burning the God’s corrupted flesh.  The Adversary stares, horrified, down at Kay, her sword’s light reflected in His eyes.  But He will not be killed, not by a mortal wielding a fragment of Uthol Inga’s sword.  He brings down his own blade in a mad fury of death upon Kay.  The black sword obliterates her, so thoroughly there is nothing left of her except for Oa Lyanna.  But the Yrimpa is part of her, and where Kay goes, she will follow.  As the air spirit dies, she unleashes a parting whirlwind that sears the wounds left by the _Watcher’s Kiss_, and then she too is gone. 

The Adversary flicks his stump, and as with _Ell’s Will_, the _Watcher’s Kiss_ hurls itself into the darkness, straight up and out of sight.  It does not come down.

Yoba had been moving to strike Seven Dark Words, but would have to enter the _anti-magic cone_, so she opts instead to cast a healing spell on Ernie.

Tarsos shouts to the Adversary.  “My Lord!  Our agreement!”  The Adversary nods His head, and the Spear of Caba appears in Tarsos’s hand, his hammer falling to the ground.  Fire roars along its length, as he strides forward and thrusts it into Kibi’s side.  The dwarf catches on fire.  Kiro casts _flame strike_ on the Adversary, and penetrates the God’s resistance.  The holy damage burns away chunks of the huge God’s flesh.

Dranko decides there’s no longer any reason to stay sane.  He reaches into the depths of his mind and finds the gifts of the Cleaners still there.  He casts _time stop_, and everything around him ceases to move.

Except the Adversary.  The God has somehow joined him in the effect of the spell.  “I was there far longer than you, name-thief,” He says.  But the Adversary is still unused to lacking his full might, and struggles to take action.  Dranko takes full opportunity, donning his _ring of blinking_ and unleashing a full flurry of deadly whip-strikes.  The Adversary doesn’t die, but his wounds now are terrible.  With a little luck, Dranko thinks, they can pull this off.

“Stop that!” The Adversary waves His stump, and the _ring of blinking_ crumbles from Dranko’s finger, turning to dust.  While everything around them still frozen in time, the Adversary brings down His killing blade upon Dranko, just as He did to Morningstar and Kay.

Dranko doesn’t die.  He’s made of tough stuff, and though he is gruesomely wounded, he endures the fierce cuts of the great black sword. 

He spits out a mouthful of blood.  “That all you got?”

“No,” says the Adversary.  He casts a point-blank _disintegrate_, striking Dranko in the chest.  

And Dranko _still_ doesn’t die.

Time resumes.  From the others’ perspective, both Dranko and the Adversary have spontaneously become grievously hurt.

Ernie realizes that while the _Honor of Nemmin_ will be suppressed by the _anti-magic cone_, he himself will retain his formidable fighting skills, while his target will be nothing more than a brittle old man. He carves up Seven Dark Words, bringing the sallow-faced man perilously close to death.

Kibi is badly wounded, and his insides still burn from the touch of one of the blood golems.  He tries not to think about Ox’s fate. Instead he thinks about what he can do that will most help the forces of good win this battle.  

“I _wish_ that Morningstar were returned, in full health, wielding _Ell’s Will_.”

And Morningstar appears, though her pale skin is gray.  _Ell’s Will_ dislodges itself from the wall and flies to her waiting hand.  She knows, and Kibi knows, that she has merely assumed a brief revenant state, and soon she will die again.  But for now she has been given a change to avenge her own death.  She casts _heal_ on the barely-conscious Dranko, then smashes the Adversary once more with her holy weapon.  

Having cast his _wish_, Kibi sinks into the ground, since Tarsos could easily finish him off otherwise.  The Adversary looks at where he was, then down at Morningstar.  

“No.”  The Adversary wills that Kibi not be hidden.  The dwarf is forcibly ejected from the ground, and lands in a heap at Tarsos’s feet.  The red-armored warrior smiles down at him, raises the Spear of Caba, and plunges it into Kibi’s heart.  Kibi can feel time slowing down, and a chill runs through him.  He knows full well that when a victim’s heart is burned out by the Spear, his soul is irrevocably destroyed.

Kibi is protected by a _fortune’s fate_, which should cast _heal_ on him when he suffers mortal injury.  But its magic now acts in contention with the Spear of Caba, and the fiery artifact’s magic is stronger.  His soul is overheating, burning away…  

But there is a _third_ magic at work on the dwarf, one strong enough to overcome even the searing power of a God of Fire.  Abernia is with him.  As his soul ignites, Kibi hears the voice of the world, and it is the voice of his grandfather.  “Kibi,” it tells him calmly.  “I told you not to fear death.  I will keep your soul safe from harm. The Spear is a powerful thing, but is not of the Earth. I can focus on you, and you will join me here.  It’s time, Kibi.  I’m not sure what will happen to your soul, but it will endure.”

“I’ll come with you,” says Kibi, “as long as I can return here and finish the fight.”

“You will always be here, Kibi.  You _have_ always been here.  I’ve known it all along. Welcome home, grandson.”

Kibi’s body erupts in flames, burning so thoroughly that no remains are left behind.  The others look on in dismay, assuming his soul has been destroyed, but Kibi himself retains a diffuse sense of self, his soul spreading out into Abernia.  Cranchus is with him, and Kibi can feel his grandfather’s benevolence surround him.  It is muted, slightly, by the ambient evil in this one location, but compared to the entirety of the world, that evil is weak, holding on now by only a tenuous black thread.  Kibi realizes that if he focuses before his consciousness fades, he can take on a new form, and have a bit more to say in the battle with the Adversary.

Mere seconds after Kibi’s mortal body is destroyed, a tremendous humanoid form steps out from the wall, as though an enormous statue has carved itself from living rock.  It is sixty feet tall, towering even over the Adversary.  It resembles a cross between Kibi and an earth elemental, with enormous emerald eyes. 

He is the Vengeance of Abernia, and he is displeased.

Seven Dark Words hastens out of the _anti-magic cone_, quickens a teleport to a spot far from its area, and casts a _polar ray_ at Ernie.  Its damage is severe, but Ernie was bolstered with elemental protection, and so endures it.  Flicker, Cashbox Jack and Aristus continue to battle against the blood golems, which have proved unnaturally tough.

Aravis _teleports_, strikes Seven Dark Words one more time with his _black blade of disaster_, and quickens a _disintegrate_.  Seven Dark Words does not fully succumb to either but the small amounts of damage they do are piling up, and he falls, weakened, to his knees.

“My Lord!” he beseeches, reaching toward the Adversary.  But an answer comes instead from Grey Wolf, who launches a mighty flurry of swings with _Bostock_, channeling one more _disintegrate_ though the first swing.  Seven Dark Words, killed beyond doubt, starts to fall forward, but twitches and returns to his feet.

“You may not die yet,” says the Adversary.  “I still need you.”  Black fluid pours from the body Seven Dark Words, but his body retains a horrid pseudo-life, twitching like a badly-held marionette. 

The Adversary looks down at Dranko and Morningstar.  He has killed one of these beings already; He should kill the other.

“What’s it going to be?” Dranko asks defiantly.

“You will give back what you stole from me!” thunders the God.  He slashes at Dranko, once, twice, three times, four times with His immense black sword.  By some miracle Dranko is still alive, but barely.  The Adversary grins.  “Goodbye,” He says, and strikes Dranko with a final _disintegrate_.  Dranko cannot resist it.  He turns to dust.

As Dranko’s body is destroyed, he feels his soul depart, but it does not ascend to the afterlife.  Instead it remains, standing, present but impotent, on the spot where he died.  He is experiencing what Aravis described when the wizard was killed by Null Shadows.  He sees Kay’s spirit as well, still trapped in this cavern.  Morningstar’s soul is a flickering thing, fading in and out as her body continues to endure thanks to Kibi’s _wish_. 

Yoba, now having witnessed the deaths of Morningstar, Dranko, Kay, Kibi and Ox, screams and charges the Adversary, _smiting evil_ with every ounce of power that remains to her.  Her blade sweeps through the God’s ankle, shearing off His left foot.  A look of profound confusion crosses the Adversary’s face, and small tenatcles sprout from his face and neck.  He is losing control of His physical form.

With the Adversary thus distracted, the animated form of Seven Dark Words wavers and wobbles. Ernie hacks it in half with the _Honor of Nemmin_.  The congealed blood inside is no longer sufficient to hold it together.  Seven Dark Words falls apart, and Ernie sees that there were no organs in his body.  The man was just a bag of skin filled with Essence.  But now even that is gone.

The Vengeance of Abernia looks down upon the Adversary.  The world is angry, and ready to make an end.  Kibi raises an arm and an avalanche of boulders flies from it, smashing into the Adversary’s broken body.  After a few seconds the hundreds of huge rocks have collected against the far wall, and the Adversary is lying on the ground, crushed.  

“You… cannot…” He croaks, coughing up a gout of bubbling black blood.  “I am forever!  I will outlast  this world!”

The Watcher’s Kiss falls from the darkness above, landing point-down in the ground next to the Adversary’s shoulder.  He lolls His head to look at it, and its golden light plays across His features.  Then His eyes roll up in His head, and He loses consciousness.  But His chest still rises and falls.

“My Lord?”  Tarsos is in disbelief.  He takes a step toward the fallen God, but his legs fall apart as he moves.  Over the course of a few feet, he dissolves into a chunky sludge of Essence.  The blood golems likewise collapse into puddles of impotent goo.

The Vengeance of Abernia sinks into the ground one last time, but Kibi’s dwarven spirit is, for the moment, left behind with the other fallen heroes.  Aravis, Ernie, Flicker, Grey Wolf and Morningstar move to stand around the body of the Adversary.  One of them, they realize, must finish off the Adversary, doubtless perishing in the attempt.

Morningstar, knowing her borrowed time is almost gone, decides it should be her.  She tries to pull the golden blade from the ground, but it will not move.  It whispers in her mind.  “There is not enough life left in you, daughter of Ell.”  And Morningstar understands.  Her body falls to the ground, and her spirit moves to stand beside that of her husband.

“I will do it,” says Yoba.

“No, you won’t,” says Ernie.

Aravis steps forward and pulls the _Watcher’s Kiss_ from the ground.  Without speaking to anyone, he plunges the blade downward toward the Adversary’s heart, but Flicker grabs his arm and the blade misses its mark.  

“Why did you do that?” Aravis demands.

“It shouldn’t be you!” shrieks Flicker. “You’re too important!”  He motions to the others, to Yoba and Ernie, to Aristus and Galdifain, to Cashbox Jack and Kiro and Grey Wolf.  “These people are going to need you to help them survive after this!  I’m nobody! What am I going to do for them?”

Aravis opens his mouth to argue, but his eyes abruptly become star fields, and maze-lines draw themselves over his face. A black energy rushes from his eyes and mouth, coalescing in front of him into Belshikun, the Avatar of Drosh.  He looks much more powerful than when they last saw him; he has brought much of the power of Drosh with him.

Aravis offers Belshikun the _Watcher’s Kiss_, but the Avatar shakes his head.  “It is not for me,” he says.  “You have channeled me, and I am here, but it is not for me to strike the killing blow. But before you decide who will, I wish to thank you, Aravis Telmir. The use of your mind, your unique mind, was instrumental.  It was not simply the Crosser’s Maze I needed.  It was you. Through great study, I was able to penetrate the Iron Barrier, using the Maze.  And now I am here to do what must be done.”

He puts a hand on Aravis’s shoulder.  “I’m afraid the Maze is nearly destroyed, but it was necessary.  I had to be here, now, at the end.”

“It is probably better for the world that the Maze be destroyed,” says Aravis.

Belshikun smiles.  “I discovered an interesting fact about the Crosser’s Maze while I was studying it, Aravis. The Maze, it turns out, will be created eight hundred years from now, in the far future, by the Abernian God of Knowledge. That God will clearly possess a unique perspective, in all the ways the Maze might someday come to be used.”

Before Aravis can respond, Belshikun looks down at the body of the Adversary.  “I am here to take His soul.  I cannot do it until one of you has killed Him.  I am sorry.  Whomever of you makes this choice will be dead, forever.”

Ernie motions to the bodies of Morningstar, Dranko and Kay.  “Can _they_ be brought back?” 

“If they wish to be,” says Belshikun.  “They are dead by a conflict of mortals. Now,  I cannot stay long.  One of you must drive the spike clean through.”  He gestures to the _Watcher’s Kiss._

Aravis is still trying to absorb Belshikun’s implications about the origins of the Crosser’s Maze. “Is it necessary that it not be me?”

“No, it can be you,” says Belshikun. “Perhaps I am wrong about Maze after all. If you are the one to kill the Adversary, I certainly will be.”

“Let me do it!” says Flicker. “You know the thing I most want in this world is a thing I can never have.  And if I stay with the people I love the most, it… she… will always be there.  And not with me.”  He conspicuously avoids looking at Ernie and Yoba as he speaks.

Ernie gestures to the bodies of his friends.  “I would volunteer, you know I would, but I’m the only one now who could bring them back, if they wish it.”

Grey Wolf steps forward and takes the _Watcher’s Kiss_ from Aravis.  “This is my job,” he says quietly. “After all, the _Watcher’s Kiss_ is a family heirloom.”

Aravis nods his head, and Flicker doesn’t argue.  “I’ll miss you a lot,” says the halfling in a small voice.

“I’ll miss you all, too,” says Grey Wolf.  “Keep fighting the good fight.”

“May the doors of home always be open to you,” says Ernie.

Grey Wolf draws _Bostock_ and hands the sword to Flicker.  “I would normally find this intolerable,” says the sword.  “But you are about to engage in an act of ultimate self-sacrifice, so I cannot find fault, despite my personal feelings.  Perhaps I will allow Flicker to carry me until he finds a suitable warrior.”

“I’m coming with you,” says Edghar to Grey Wolf. “We’ve come this far together.”

“If it’s going to be done, best it be done quickly,” says Grey Wolf.  He channels the spell of _phoenix fire_ into the _Watcher’s Kiss_ and stabs it into the off-center heart of the Adversary.  A golden light flares up that fills the entire cavern, and when it fades, Grey Wolf, the sword, and the body of the Adversary are gone.  Grey Wolf’s soul now stands beside those of the other fallen heroes, but where the God’s body had lain is now just a shadow, the God’s fading spirit.  Belshikun manifests a tall gleaming scythe. 

“Good riddance,” he says, and he sweeps the scythe through the spirit’s neck. The last vestiges of the Adversary break apart and depart the world.

“And now I have one more vision to show you,” says Belshikun.  And into the minds of the living and dead alike, he shows them that



_Naradawk and over sixty red-armored warriors stand before the ruins of the Greenhouse.  The upper floor has been wrecked, and the section with the secret room has been obliterated.  The remaining members of the Spire are there: all of the archmagi, along with Tor, Mrs. Horn, Maple Sunblade from Victory, and a tall, powerful man wearing the insignia of the Jewels of the White Plains. Only Eddings appears unperturbed.  Naradawk laughs. 

“So, at last I’ve turned over the last rotten log, and what do I find?  All the remaining insects, blinking in a light too bright for them.  It will be a pleasure to…”

Naradawk Skewn seizes up and his body convulses. Eyes wide, he literally falls apart, as the God’s blood that holds him together boils away. The same happens to the red-armored warriors, all of whom have been heavily infused with Essence. They fall prone, each in their own puddle of black sludge. While the members of the Spire stand dumbfounded and slack-jawed, Eddings breaks into a huge grin.  “See!  I _told_ you!  I _told_ you something like that would happen.  Hmph.  So much for the room full of geniuses.”_

…to be concluded…


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:
			
		

> "If it's going to be done, best it be done quickly," says Grey Wolf.




If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'd jump the life to come.

--MacBeth, Act I, scene vii


----------



## Mathew_Freeman

*applause*

I have no words. What an ending, what a great fight.


----------



## Everett

Though it's after the fact, if anyone wants a soundtrack for this fight and the apocalypse therein, any/all of the boss tracks from Infinity Blade III do well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg8x4O5cPBo


----------



## Quartz

Wow.


----------



## Tamlyn

Terrific, terrific, terrific! Perfect climactic battle to this epic story. And to think, it all started with rats in Goghan's basement!


----------



## Kaodi

So they made it through without anyone's soul being completely snuffed out?


----------



## blargney the second

Wow!  I've been eagerly awaiting that update all week.

Make that all decade. 
-blarg


----------



## Sagiro

I imagine that, now that I’m done, a few readers will want to go back and read the entire thing from the beginning, to experience the tale with greater continuity.  I think I will start a new thread, where readers can talk about the Story Hour generally, commenting as they re-read (or read the first time).  I’ll try to check it regularly, to answer questions anyone has about the whole experience.

Also:  now that I’m done writing the story hour, it’s time to return to my books!  I have finished my second revision of my first novel, and now will get to work on the 3rd iteration of editing, as well as starting a first draft of the second book.  Having finished the first one (titled “The Ventifact Colossus,”), it’s time to start on the second one, which I’ll probably title “The Crosser’s Maze.”  I’ll keep you up-to-date on my progress.  After all, I’m hoping some of you might buy the novels when I eventually release them. 

Thanks, readers, for all of your time, encouragement and support!  I never would have finished this story without you.  And special thanks of course to *StevenAC*, for whose wonderful compilations I will always be in debt.

-Dorian Hart
a.k.a. Sagiro


_*Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 396*_
*One Last Circle To Come Full*

Belshikun looks upon Dranko’s hovering soul, which he can see just as well as any of the survivors.  “Well done,” he says.  “Well done.  I don’t know what’s going to become of you; I’m not the one in charge. But you have served the Gods well.”

“I’ll find my way,” says Dranko.  He still holds Morningstar’s hand.

“Can you return the Shield and the Spear to Naslund?” asks Aravis.  “That’s where they belong.”

“The Spear belongs in Naslund,” Belshikun agrees. “The Ward of Drosh as well.  And I will take _Ell’s Will_.  Morningstar, someday, in the far future, someone who aspires to your greatness will pick it up, and do their best to honor your Goddess.  Aravis, you should keep the Bulwark of Leantha.  It will serve you well.”

To all assembled, he says, “I have one more job for you. One more journey for you to make. Will you make it?”

All in the Company, living and dead, agree.

Belshikun turns to Aravis.  “Your ally in the Crosser’s Maze stuck his nose in one too many places that he shouldn’t have, and has been imprisoned by an old Keeper. You should rescue him, because in less than two days’ time the Maze will collapse and be no more.  All the Keepers, and those foolish enough to inhabit the Maze over the centuries, will vanish along with it. You have two days, but you won’t need them.  This is an easy task, but you will be glad of it. When you are done, those of you still alive will find yourselves back here.  You will not be able to cross Yulan’s Barrier, but I do not know if that will always be the case.  Your destinies are your own.  All of you may journey, spirits and living mortals alike. When your service is finished, the dead may move on. Perhaps you will bring them back someday, perhaps not.  Certainly all of the dead here have earned honored places in the heavens.”

“I don’t want them to be gone yet,” says Ernie.

After a long silence, Aravis speaks. “No sense in waiting."

“Your benefactor is a prisoner of an old keeper named Esheq.  By persuasion, coercion or violence, do what you must.”  

The entire Company finds themselves in the Crosser’s Maze again.  They are floating in its vast starfield, an echo of the multiverse.  Aravis knows where to go. With a small effort of will he translates himself and his friends across great spans of reality to where Esheq makes his home.  The old Keeper lives in a huge red metal pyramid with no obvious way in our out.

“We’ve had a very, very long day,” Aravis calls out.  “We suggest you come out and make this easier for us.”

A voice sounds all around them.  “Who’s there?  Who is that?”

“Aravis.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He wants to do this the hard way,” says Grey Wolf.

“You have someone imprisoned,” says Aravis.  “I want him.”

“I have lots of people imprisoned.”  

“Then I want them all.”

“No.  Why should I?”  Esheq’s voice is petulant, annoyed.

“Because we killed a God today, and we’re still not out of spells,” says Ernie.

In the center of one of the pyramid’s sides, a small hatch flips open.  A white-haired old fellow pokes his head out.  Dranko leans over and licks the red metal.

“Stop that!” shouts Esheq. “Don’t lick my house!  What’s wrong with you? And how did you rabble find me?”

“I am Aravis.”

“Why should I care about that?”

Aravis sighs. “Are you going to make this easy, or are we going to have to take your prisoners by force?”

“You can’t get in,” says Esheq.

“Oh, really.”

Dranko activates his sash, turns invisible, and starts to climb the wall of the pyramid, up toward the hatch.

“I see you there! You expect that to fool a Keeper?  You haven’t been the in the Maze very long, have you…”  He leans out a little more.  “…Miss Charagan? You have more facial hair than I’d expect.  Aravis, you’ve brought me a freak show.”  

Aravis _teleports_ up to him.

“Hm. Okay, you can teleport.”  

Aravis then turns into a beholder, and shines his Anti-magic ray; Dranko lashes Esheq’s arm with his whip before he can close the hatch again, and starts to pull the old man out.

The whip vanishes.  “I was a keeper of the Maze, you know,” says Esheq crossly. “What, you’d think I’d be a pushover?  Now get off my pyramid before I turn you into something unpleasant.”

Aravis turns and returns the whip to Dranko.  “I was also a Keeper of the Maze,” says Aravis. 

“Fine, fine.  Who do you want again?”

“I want everyone you have imprisoned.”

“No. That’s a ridiculous bargain. But if you swear upon the Maze to go away afterward, I’ll let you look through the cells and take one person out.”

Dranko again lashes Esheq’s arm, and this time yanks him all the way out.  Aravis immediately _polymorphs_ him into a garter snake.  

“You could have been nice about it,” says Dranko.  

Esheq turns into a cobra and tries to bite Dranko’s arm, but Dranko has the snake by the neck. The cobra then vanishes, and the hatch slams closed.

Enough is enough.  Esheq is good, but no match for Aravis.  Aravis exerts his will and removes the door altogether, along with a large section of the pyramid.  Esheq is revealed, cringing.

“Fine, fine, fine!  The cells are that way.”  The old man points.

“Show me the way,” says Aravis.

The interior of the pyramid is a series of tilted, angled hallways, but gravity works in an Escherian fashion such that the floor always feels like it’s down. Esheq leads the Company to a long corridor with fifteen cell doors. “These are it. I have sixteen prisoners at the moment; got two in one cell.”

“Why do you keep prisoners?” asks Dranko.

“Because they trespassed.  And they might be useful someday.”

Morningstar casts _detect thoughts._  Aravis augments it.  Esheq isn’t lying.

Aravis removes the doors to all the cells with a simple thought.  “Now,” he says sternly to Esheq, “I suggest you leave.”

“Do what you want!”  Esheq throws up his arms.  He has figured out how badly he is outclassed.

Aravis _teleports_ all the prisoners out of the pyramid, where they float in the void. There are indeed sixteen.  Some are extremely alien-looking, some are no more than coherent thoughts.  A few are even stranger. But one, the Company knows very well.

It’s Abernathy.  He is sleeping, snoring evenly.

Ernie wakes him with a gentle nudge.  “Abernathy?  Sorry to interrupt your nap, sir…”

Abernathy’s eyes pop open.  “Ernest!  So nice to see you again!”

“We killed the Adversary,” says Ernie.

“I’m so pleased!”

Morningstar is confused.  “We thought you were dead…”

“Morningstar my dear, I _am_ dead.  You were present when I passed away, I recall.”

The Company looks at the old wizard expectantly.

“I was following your exploits quite closely you know, after I passed on. You can do that from the afterlife. I had an interest in how things would turn out.  And just look at you!”

“How’d you end up in the Maze?” asks Dranko.

Abernathy gets that old gleam in his eye.  “Ah! The Maze has a strange relationship to the Universe.  When I was watching you, and saw you go into it, I petitioned certain higher powers to be allowed to pay you a quick visit. There’s some overlap between the afterlife and the Maze.  I’m still not certainly exactly how that works.”

“You visited us in the Maze?” asks Flicker.  “When was that?”

“You were about to fight some large battle the next day, and I thought you could use a comfortable place to stay, so I popped in, and figured out how things worked, and tried to rebuild the Greenhouse as best I could. A little sanctuary to rest in.  I wasn’t very good at it. Solomea had to help me.  Nice old chap, when he was sane. But when you had moved on from there, I couldn’t figure out how to get out!  The Maze is very confusing, you know.”  

“Yes, I know,” says Aravis, smiling.

“So I spent some time trying to contact you,” Abernathy continues. “Occasionally I could catch glimpses of you in the real world. I saw that that rascally Parthol Runecarver was after you, and tried to send you warnings.  Did you get them?”

“Yes, we did.”

“It was hard to get anything specific through, but I did try to leave an impression that a powerful and dangerous wizard was coming for you.  Once you cleverly left a little piece of yourself in the Maze, it became much easier.  I could just talk to you directly.”

“That was very helpful,” says Aravis.

“So I roamed about the Maze, trying to find anything, bits of the past, present and future than might be useful to you.  Then I would sit down and have a pleasant chat with the bit of you you left behind.  He’s a lot like you, but very single minded.  I did eventually figure out how to return to the afterlife, but once I had worked that out, there didn’t seem  any hurry.  So I kept on helping you, until one day I had an inkling that this bozo might know something, but he was wily in his way.  I was lurking around, thinking he might have some old memories from his time as Keeper that might be relevant, but he caught me and popped me in a cell. I was good at escaping from things _before_ they caught me, but I wasn’t much good _after_ I was caught.  And now, here I am.  It was nice of you to rescue me.”

The Company spends some time telling the old wizard all about their adventures, and he listens raptly.  His favorite bit is hearing that Dranko and Morningstar were married.  When he hears about Dranko’s interactions with the Cleaners, he shudders.

“Ah yes.  Terrible place.  I sent Aravis one vision from near the Far Realms and swore I’d never go back there.”

He sighs, then smiles broadly.  “Would you like to make a quick trip to the Endless Shore?  I really ought to get back there, but I don’t see a reason you couldn’t be my guests for a little while. Spend a day or two on the beach.” 

They happily agree.  To the few other prisoners still lurking around, Aravis gives warning that the Maze will soon cease to be, and they should leave it if they can.  Aravis would like to send out a more general broadcast, but even with his advanced powers in the Maze, he’s not that strong.  

But he knows someone who is.  Before going to the Endless Shore, he takes the group on a quick side-trip to visit King Vhadish XXIII.

“Ah, Aravis!” exclaims Vhadish when they arrive.

“I owe you a service,” says Aravis.  “And my service is to tell you, if you don’t already know, that…”

“Yes, I know.  You wrecked it.  Careless, but not very surprising.”

“I’m sorry,” says Aravis. “I am, after all, just a shadow of what you are.”

Vhadish inclines his head in agreement.  Aravis requests that Vhadish let as many Maze denizens as possible know that their home will soon be collapsing. 

“Your goals are noble, young Aravis, and I will do as you request. You were… a respectable pupil in most regards.”

Vhadish vanishes.  With no errands left, Abernathy leads them on a circuitous route, arriving at last on the Endless Shore, the Heaven of the Sea God Brechen.  A pristine beach of pure white sand stretches as far as the eye can see, and in their ears is the steady sound of rolling blue waves making landfall.

“You’re not _really_ here,” says Abernathy. "This is the Maze’s reflection of the Endless Shore.  But _I_ am here, and that is sufficient,  since we’re all here together. You can stay as long as the Maze survives, and then you’ll return to your bodies, or move onto the afterlife. I suppose you might end up stuck down there forever…  but forever is a long time.”

Abernathy reaches out a finger, and in the changeable sea he traces the word “forever.”  It is quickly erased, as are all things written upon water.

“After all,” says Abernathy.  “Nothing in this life is certain.  The future, least of all.”


/*/


And that is nearly the end, but there is one final postscript to the story of Abernathy’s Company.  While the others bask in the glorious warm sunshine, Abernathy speaks briefly to Kibi, alone.

"Kibi, now you are Abernia, and to you, all times are the same.  The ordering of events is no longer any impediment to your actions or understanding.  Before you become one with all the world and lose your focus, you need to find me, years ago, and speak to me a list of names.  Don’t forget, Kibilhathur. Whisper them to me.  I will hear them. I will hear them.”

…The End.


----------



## Sagiro

I've started a "Now That It's Over" thread, here.


----------



## Kaodi

Oh my God(s). After all these years the story has finally ended. A substantial portion of my life it has been, even as just a reader. Thank you, Sagiro, PirateCat, and everyone else in the group. It has been very enjoyable, and a great learning experience in gaming too.


----------



## radich

Long time lurker, first time poster...

Dear Sagiro

I came upon your story some years ago, while rummaging through ENworld. Quickly and surely I determined that here was a story worth reading and over the years I have never come to regret it. It has been about 25 years since I picked up my first fantasy novel - and in turn got hooked on the whole reading thing. Having a that time been a boy of 10, and hated everything related to reading. Fantasy has never abandoned me since, and I still take great pleasure in stories about dragons and wizards and what-not. 

But I must take my hat off to you sir - for you have enlightened me and taken the concept of fantasy to a whole new level. The immersion that you provide to us as readers in breathtaking, the visualization that your descriptions spring to mind are amazing. Add to this the depth of character development, and the ability to include and encourage your players in astounding. As pure icing on the cake, I am taken back by the plot-turns and villains you create and the level of complexity that you end up achieving (despite your responses over the years, that you only develop them as needed). 

I stand in awe of you and salute you for your work. You have inspired me as a GM to do more for my players. You have kept me on the edge of my seat, hoping for another update - and eventhough I am already underway with my third re-read of the material available so far, it hasn't gotten the least bit tiresome yet. 

It's one thing to be a good GM and have a lot of fancy work laid out for the taking - it's another to be blessed with players such as yours. For all the hard work, that you have put into orchestrating this campaign - you players have been there to back you the entire time. And were it not for their deeply commited involvement and drive, everything might have turned out differently. So my hat as well, goes off to every single player with the greatest of respect. You make me strive to be better as a player, with the examples that you set!

With my final dying words, I just want to surmise everything that I have written above into a small easy to understand metaphor. I am not a religious man - I do not believe in a higher power in any way. But if given the oppotunity to sit at your table, and play with this group of people - I would be willing to leave my wife, my kids and travel the 3600 miles needed to be there. 

That is my level of respect and admiration for what you have given onto us, your humble and thankfull readers.

Sincerly Mads Radich


----------



## coyote6

That was awesome. 

So... next campaign is what, again?


----------



## LightPhoenix

Obviously, the next campaign is when someone discovers a name long forgotten from the ears and minds of all across the land... the very whisper of it drives men mad as they try desperately to hold on to it, certain that it has meaning.  Dranko...


----------



## Quartz

Thank you.


----------



## K4K

Thank you. 

Another long time lurker and first time poster.


----------



## Gulla

Wow!

Thanks for a wonderful (long) ride and for pulling of a suitable finale.


----------



## The_Warlock

Well done!


----------



## thatdarncat

Awesome  Thank you so much!


----------



## Sagiro

*radich*, I really appreciate you taking the time to write all of that. I always feel a bit sheepish when someone says such nice things. You're certainly right about my players; I know I've said this before, but they were incredibly supportive and engaged... for fifteen years! I couldn't have run the game for so long (and probably wouldn't have bothered, even if I could) had I not had such a wonderful group of players.  Not to mention that everything I learned about DM-ing, I learned from one my players -- *Piratecat* -- in whose own D&D games I have been so fortunate to play.

But don't leave your wife! 



radich said:


> Long time lurker, first time poster...
> 
> Dear Sagiro
> 
> I came upon your story some years ago, while rummaging through ENworld. Quickly and surely I determined that here was a story worth reading and over the years I have never come to regret it. It has been about 25 years since I picked up my first fantasy novel - and in turn got hooked on the whole reading thing. Having a that time been a boy of 10, and hated everything related to reading. Fantasy has never abandoned me since, and I still take great pleasure in stories about dragons and wizards and what-not.
> 
> But I must take my hat off to you sir - for you have enlightened me and taken the concept of fantasy to a whole new level. The immersion that you provide to us as readers in breathtaking, the visualization that your descriptions spring to mind are amazing. Add to this the depth of character development, and the ability to include and encourage your players in astounding. As pure icing on the cake, I am taken back by the plot-turns and villains you create and the level of complexity that you end up achieving (despite your responses over the years, that you only develop them as needed).
> 
> I stand in awe of you and salute you for your work. You have inspired me as a GM to do more for my players. You have kept me on the edge of my seat, hoping for another update - and eventhough I am already underway with my third re-read of the material available so far, it hasn't gotten the least bit tiresome yet.
> 
> It's one thing to be a good GM and have a lot of fancy work laid out for the taking - it's another to be blessed with players such as yours. For all the hard work, that you have put into orchestrating this campaign - you players have been there to back you the entire time. And were it not for their deeply commited involvement and drive, everything might have turned out differently. So my hat as well, goes off to every single player with the greatest of respect. You make me strive to be better as a player, with the examples that you set!
> 
> With my final dying words, I just want to surmise everything that I have written above into a small easy to understand metaphor. I am not a religious man - I do not believe in a higher power in any way. But if given the oppotunity to sit at your table, and play with this group of people - I would be willing to leave my wife, my kids and travel the 3600 miles needed to be there.
> 
> That is my level of respect and admiration for what you have given onto us, your humble and thankfull readers.
> 
> Sincerly Mads Radich


----------



## Everett

Okay, my turn.

I first happened on the Story Hour in 2005, which is almost a decade ago.  Since then I've moved from San Francisco to New York city; I've gone through dozens-on-hundreds of different work gigs, plays, relationships, creative projects.  I played my last tabletop D&D game in 2008, and though I grew up immersed in fantasy literature I read very little of it these days.  There is really nothing at all that I can point to as a constant through all of those transitions.

Except Abernathy's company.  

I grew to know all of these characters intimately (as any reader does, when the imagined world becomes to them tangible and enduring and a thing beyond the author's control), and I can look back at the Company's exploits like milestones of my own.  When Grey Wolf (nearly) died to prevent Naradawk's return, I was there; when they learned of Mokad's possession of Praska, I was there, and through the Ritual of Seven Stars to banish him from her body, and the Black Circle's discovery, and the 18-second battle to destroy them.  I was there when Grey Wolf mysteriously chose a monkey as a familiar, and when Bostock began to speak, and when they met the boy wizard Wellington and his stupid spider familiar.  I was watching when Farazil nonchalantly possessed Ernie's mom to make first friendly contact, and when Sagiro Emberleaf returned from the dead.  I explored the Crosser's Maze.  I was with them when they first met Cranchus; I pondered the tragic tale of Condor and grappled with Moirel.  I watched Kibi sink into the ground for the very first time (he played tag with Scree).  I was wary of Parthol Runecarver, and always enjoyed seeing the eyeless butler Eddings or the condescending genie, Al-Tarqohz.  I witnessed the scene from somewhere behind the _Heroes' Feast_ table when One Certain Step took his final step, and I still remember how magnificent it felt.  I remember when Abernathy died.

Each of those is a moment, and there are many more, like pearls I happen across from time to time, and inspect, and find that they still shine.

It is _strange_ to me that the story is done, that in the future I won't read new installments of it.  And it's strange that we'll never know if Kay, Morningstar and Dranko chose to return to life, if they ever got out of the Underdark.  They'll all always be finally lost, in some sense.  Or so it seems to me.  Writ in water...

...but like the Crosser's Maze, like the ocean, the story cannot be given.  Only found.


--Everett


----------



## Sagiro

*Everett*, you have long been one of my most perceptive and detail-attentive readers, and your comments over the years have always shown an accurate insight into my own thought processes. I'm glad you stuck with it through to the end, and I thank you for all of your thoughtful and encouraging commentary. 

It is strange to me, too, that it's all over. 



Everett said:


> Okay, my turn.
> 
> I first happened on the Story Hour in 2005, which is almost a decade ago.  Since then I've moved from San Francisco to New York city; I've gone through dozens-on-hundreds of different work gigs, plays, relationships, creative projects.  I played my last tabletop D&D game in 2008, and though I grew up immersed in fantasy literature I read very little of it these days.  There is really nothing at all that I can point to as a constant through all of those transitions.
> 
> Except Abernathy's company.
> 
> I grew to know all of these characters intimately (as any reader does, when the imagined world becomes to them tangible and enduring and a thing beyond the author's control), and I can look back at the Company's exploits like milestones of my own.  When Grey Wolf (nearly) died to prevent Naradawk's return, I was there; when they learned of Mokad's possession of Praska, I was there, and through the Ritual of Seven Stars to banish him from her body, and the Black Circle's discovery, and the 18-second battle to destroy them.  I was there when Grey Wolf mysteriously chose a monkey as a familiar, and when Bostock began to speak, and when they met the boy wizard Wellington and his stupid spider familiar.  I was watching when Farazil nonchalantly possessed Ernie's mom to make first friendly contact, and when Sagiro Emberleaf returned from the dead.  I explored the Crosser's Maze.  I was with them when they first met Cranchus; I pondered the tragic tale of Condor and grappled with Moirel.  I watched Kibi sink into the ground for the very first time (he played tag with Scree).  I was wary of Parthol Runecarver, and always enjoyed seeing the eyeless butler Eddings or the condescending genie, Al-Tarqohz.  I witnessed the scene from somewhere behind the _Heroes' Feast_ table when One Certain Step took his final step, and I still remember how magnificent it felt.  I remember when Abernathy died.
> 
> Each of those is a moment, and there are many more, like pearls I happen across from time to time, and inspect, and find that they still shine.
> 
> It is _strange_ to me that the story is done, that in the future I won't read new installments of it.  And it's strange that we'll never know if Kay, Morningstar and Dranko chose to return to life, if they ever got out of the Underdark.  They'll all always be finally lost, in some sense.  Or so it seems to me.  Writ in water...
> 
> ...but like the Crosser's Maze, like the ocean, the story cannot be given.  Only found.
> 
> 
> --Everett


----------



## Everett

Sagiro said:


> *Everett*, you have long been one of my most perceptive and detail-attentive readers, and your comments over the years have always shown an accurate insight into my own thought processes. I'm glad you stuck with it through to the end, and I thank you for all of your thoughtful and encouraging commentary.




Anytime.


----------



## Chronikoce

I cannot believe it is finally over. Thank you for continuing until the end and an even bigger thank you to your players for sticking with a game for so many years so that such an amazing story could unfold. I can't wait for some free time so that I can read through StevenAC's awesome compilation. 

As for your books, I'll definitely keep lurking around the threads and hopefully one day see that you have one ready for us to buy!

My final thank you is for creating unique and terrifying creatures that I can use to torment my poor players with when I DM!


----------



## StevenAC

*_standing ovation_*

Congratulations, Sagiro, on providing this Story Hour with such an epic conclusion.  I particularly like the fact that you didn't go for the "happily ever after" ending.  The Company achieved everything they set out to do and saved the world, but the cost was high and even the survivors remain trapped (for the forseeable future, at least) beneath the Iron Barrier, meaning their journey through it really did turn out to be as irrevocable as advertised.

Thank you, as always, for the nice things you persist in saying about me...   For your information and/or bogglement, the completed Story Hour will contain well over 900,000 words -- that's nearly twice the length of _The Lord of the Rings_!  And given that Part One, which was initially written in a much more condensed fashion, contains more than half of the campaign's 266 sessions, my guess is a full-length telling of the tale would have ended up over 1.25 million...  I'm eagerly looking forward to reading your novels based on the campaign, to flesh out the story of those early days.

I love rereading through the story -- there always seems to be more things to discover.  It was literally just a week or so ago that it finally dawned on me just who Aravis's mysterious benefactor in the Crosser's Maze had to be, as I was flicking through the early chapters of Part Three.  When I suddenly realised the significance of the line about how he "missed the ocean" (page 62), I'm surprised you didn't hear the forehead-slap all the way over there in Boston.  Bringing back Abernathy for a final appearance to tie up the last loose ends was wonderfully well done.

The final(!!) part of the Collected Story Hour should be done soon, and I'll post in your new thread when it's ready.  For the moment, let me just offer this little tribute in musical form (for anyone who wants to sing along, here's a karaoke version).  I hope you enjoy it! 

_*If you want to make a story...*_
(with apologies to Sir W.S. Gilbert)

If you want to make a story that will be a thing of glory
in the realm of RPGs,
You must start out with a world, to be gradually unfurled,
that's packed with mysteries.
You must find a bunch of players who will work with you and stay as
their PCs will learn and grow and change,
With all the complications and surprising revelations
that your cunning can arrange.

And ev'ryone will say, As you play your epic way,
"If this campaign builds multi-year plots with dreams and prophecy,
Why, what a very singularly deep campaign
this deep campaign must be!"

Have monsters great and small bringing menace unto all
that the Company hold dear,
And some villains to despise, each of whom's deserved demise
receives a hearty cheer.
Their triumphs will then send them onward to the end
that they're fated to decide;
From humble pawns, they'll become the fatal thorns
in the Adversary's side.

And ev'ryone will say, As you play your epic way,
"If this inventive group shows off all that's good in D&D,
Why, what a very wonderfully fun campaign
this fun campaign must be!"

Then with eloquent expression after every gaming session
you must write up what transpires,  
Thus providing the redaction of the table interaction
that your readership admires.
We can relive every moment from their earliest opponent
to the final clash of power;
With the gripping storytelling and the characters compelling
it's a classic Story Hour.

And ev'ryone will say, As you play your well-told way,
"If this campaign has resulted in a tale that's as good as I've ever seen,
Why, what a most spectacularly great campaign
this great campaign has been!"


----------



## Quartz

I don't have the eloquence of the others, so I will again just say thank you.


----------



## Everett

StevenAC said:


> For your information and/or bogglement, the completed Story Hour will contain well over 900,000 words -- that's nearly twice the length of _The Lord of the Rings_!




"One does not simply _Wind Walk_ into Mordor!"


----------



## Teflonknight

Congratulations on an excellent adventure and know that you have a guaranteed book sale from me.


----------



## Enkhidu

Sagiro,

Thank you:

* For finishing! Many of my favorites in this forum over the past decade have petered out before the conclusion, but you persevered.

* For inspiration! If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, know that I have (and plan to continue to) flattered the hell out of you and your group since I sat back in the DM's chair at my table. This story hour has been a veritable firehose of ideas, many of which I have stolen wholesale.

* And for years of enjoyment! It's hard to believe that this story hour has been going for so long, harder to believe that it took you much longer to actually play through it, and hardest to believe that the ride is finally over.

This has truly been a pleasure. Thank you.


----------



## Tamlyn

Enkhidu said:


> * For finishing! Many of my favorites in this forum over the past decade have petered out before the conclusion, but you persevered.




Yeah, mine too! <cough> *Small Beginnings* <cough>


----------



## Sagiro

Ah, the inimitable lyrical stylings of *StevenAC*!  

Not only have your PDF compilations made reading the Story Hour a vastly more enjoyable experience, your efforts made the game itself better. Having a well-organized, easily-accessible archive of all my posts made it so much easier to plan my games, look for old references, and tie distant plots together. Everyone here who has enjoyed experiencing my game second hand has you, in part, to thank for its (relative) coherence. 

As for the novels:  fair warning to all.  They are not going to be a prose retelling of the campaign beat for beat.  Not even close. To make a book that works as a _book_, I've had to cut innumerable side-plots and combats; change, eliminate and add characters; and muck about with the pacing to an absurd degree. It would be more fair to say that I am writing books _heavily based_ on my campaign, but which are in no way beholden to its particulars.

I still hope everyone here buys them when they're done, though.  

Thanks for everything!



StevenAC said:


> *_standing ovation_*
> 
> Congratulations, Sagiro, on providing this Story Hour with such an epic conclusion.  I particularly like the fact that you didn't go for the "happily ever after" ending.  The Company achieved everything they set out to do and saved the world, but the cost was high and even the survivors remain trapped (for the forseeable future, at least) beneath the Iron Barrier, meaning their journey through it really did turn out to be as irrevocable as advertised.
> 
> Thank you, as always, for the nice things you persist in saying about me...   For your information and/or bogglement, the completed Story Hour will contain well over 900,000 words -- that's nearly twice the length of _The Lord of the Rings_!  And given that Part One, which was initially written in a much more condensed fashion, contains more than half of the campaign's 266 sessions, my guess is a full-length telling of the tale would have ended up over 1.25 million...  I'm eagerly looking forward to reading your novels based on the campaign, to flesh out the story of those early days.
> 
> I love rereading through the story -- there always seems to be more things to discover.  It was literally just a week or so ago that it finally dawned on me just who Aravis's mysterious benefactor in the Crosser's Maze had to be, as I was flicking through the early chapters of Part Three.  When I suddenly realised the significance of the line about how he "missed the ocean" (page 62), I'm surprised you didn't hear the forehead-slap all the way over there in Boston.  Bringing back Abernathy for a final appearance to tie up the last loose ends was wonderfully well done.
> 
> The final(!!) part of the Collected Story Hour should be done soon, and I'll post in your new thread when it's ready.  For the moment, let me just offer this little tribute in musical form (for anyone who wants to sing along, here's a karaoke version).  I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> _*If you want to make a story...*_
> (with apologies to Sir W.S. Gilbert)
> 
> If you want to make a story that will be a thing of glory
> in the realm of RPGs,
> You must start out with a world, to be gradually unfurled,
> that's packed with mysteries.
> You must find a bunch of players who will work with you and stay as
> their PCs will learn and grow and change,
> With all the complications and surprising revelations
> that your cunning can arrange.
> 
> And ev'ryone will say, As you play your epic way,
> "If this campaign builds multi-year plots with dreams and prophecy,
> Why, what a very singularly deep campaign
> this deep campaign must be!"
> 
> Have monsters great and small bringing menace unto all
> that the Company hold dear,
> And some villains to despise, each of whom's deserved demise
> receives a hearty cheer.
> Their triumphs will then send them onward to the end
> that they're fated to decide;
> From humble pawns, they'll become the fatal thorns
> in the Adversary's side.
> 
> And ev'ryone will say, As you play your epic way,
> "If this inventive group shows off all that's good in D&D,
> Why, what a very wonderfully fun campaign
> this fun campaign must be!"
> 
> Then with eloquent expression after every gaming session
> you must write up what transpires,
> Thus providing the redaction of the table interaction
> that your readership admires.
> We can relive every moment from their earliest opponent
> to the final clash of power;
> With the gripping storytelling and the characters compelling
> it's a classic Story Hour.
> 
> And ev'ryone will say, As you play your well-told way,
> "If this campaign has resulted in a tale that's as good as I've ever seen,
> Why, what a most spectacularly great campaign
> this great campaign has been!"


----------



## Sagiro

I am only too pleased that you (or anyone else) borrowed ideas for you own games.  Goodness knows I did the same, from numerous sources.

Thank you for reading!




Enkhidu said:


> Sagiro,
> 
> Thank you:
> 
> * For finishing! Many of my favorites in this forum over the past decade have petered out before the conclusion, but you persevered.
> 
> * For inspiration! If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, know that I have (and plan to continue to) flattered the hell out of you and your group since I sat back in the DM's chair at my table. This story hour has been a veritable firehose of ideas, many of which I have stolen wholesale.
> 
> * And for years of enjoyment! It's hard to believe that this story hour has been going for so long, harder to believe that it took you much longer to actually play through it, and hardest to believe that the ride is finally over.
> 
> This has truly been a pleasure. Thank you.


----------



## Sagiro

Teflonknight said:


> Congratulations on an excellent adventure and know that you have a guaranteed book sale from me.




Woo hoo!  That's one!


----------



## Neurotic

[MENTION=726]Sagiro[/MENTION], you cannot end yet!!

What about Parthol in this new world? What about Kind Farazil? Did the heroes made it back to the surface and created their own archclass (as opposed to archwizards  ) group? What about the dwarves they freed, did they survive? Oh, and did that sidekick they lugged around, you know that half orc that is never there for heroic action...did he manage to live is life fruitfully? Etc etc...


There are numerous subplots and epilogues to write.


Thank for the wonderful story


----------



## Krellic

*Now that the dust has settled*

Phew..!

Thank you Sagiro for sharing with us the type of game that we'd all like to have a chance to play in and the type of game that we all would like to be a good enough DM to run.

I'll look forward to seein the fictionalised version of it, I suspect that's quite a difficult task making the translation.  Very best of luck with that endeavour.  Of course if it hasn't got '"By Sagiro" on the front cover there's a good chance I'll miss it...

The problem is of course that now we're all wondering what sort of magical campaign you're running now... ;


----------



## Everett

Neurotic said:


> What about Parthol in this new world?




Parthol gotz decapitated.  He be dead as dead can be.


----------



## Neurotic

Stupid of me to forget it 

But still, he is (was?) an archmage, who knows where he stashed his soul 
And Farazil helped and is a citizen, but what happened afterwards with him?


----------



## Everett

Neurotic said:


> Stupid of me to forget it
> 
> But still, he is (was?) an archmage, who knows where he stashed his soul
> And Farazil helped and is a citizen, but what happened afterwards with him?




The campaign be over.  What happens next is only in your imagination.


----------



## RangerWickett

Fanfiction! Turlissa/Farazil all the way.


----------



## Richards

Sagiro, that was a thing of great beauty all the way to the very end.  Thanks for finishing it up for the enjoyment of your legion of fans, despite your other commitments.  I know it's been over a year since the campaign sessions actually ended; dare I ask if you've started up another campaign?  And is Piratecat's "Defenders of Daybreak" campaign still going?  (I know he doesn't update his Story Hour any more, but I'd love to hear what Velendo's been up to.)

Put me down for a copy of your novels when they come out.  Actually, better make that two of each, since I know my son won't be willing to wait for me to finish them and I certainly won't be willing to wait for him to do likewise!

Johnathan


----------



## wedgeski

I'm not sure what to write here that others haven't already said a lot better than me.

I've just caught up, in the last couple of days, on about the last twenty or so installments. It was an absolute pleasure to read everything through to the epic finale of the campaign.

For the record, I would have been quite okay with the story as it "ended" in the semi-penultimate update. You had me there, for a few seconds, and a few seconds was all it took for me to move from numb disbelief to a state of zen acceptance that, ultimately, going up against a god-killer is just not the sort of thing mortals are going get away with, especially since their enemies had already been in the Underdark for so long before the heroes arrived.

It was, of course, deeply satisfying to be shown the error of my ways. 

I loved the hints and implications dropped in the epilogue...just enough for the rest of us to build a little picture of what might have happened to everyone after we parted ways with them.

Like so many other people here, your game has had a deep and fundamental influence on my own DM'ing. Before reading about your game, I had a vague, aspirational fancy of what an epic narrative D&D campaign could look like, and over many years I tried (and failed, frankly) to assemble the right kind of group, and muster the appropriate level of skill to make it so. There's no longer anything vague about my views on what an epic narrative D&D campaign looks like. It's all here, in this thread.

So thanks, and all that.


----------



## Piratecat

Richards said:


> I know it's been over a year since the campaign sessions actually ended; dare I ask if you've started up another campaign?  And is Piratecat's "Defenders of Daybreak" campaign still going?  (I know he doesn't update his Story Hour any more, but I'd love to hear what Velendo's been up to.)




More like 3+ years, I think! He hasn't started a new campaign, a fact that we're all really sad about. Sagiro will be the first person to tell you that he over-preps games, so there's a pretty serious time commitment that he doesn't have yet. Instead he's composing music, writing a novel, raising kids, and generally being awesome.

The Defenders campaign wrapped up about 5-6 years ago. I'm running two 4e campaigns, one of which has all the players from the Defenders campaign, and those have perhaps a year or two to go on them. They just hit epic level. Sagiro is playing the most un-Velendo-like unwise thief imaginable.


----------



## KainG

It's been a long while since I last checked in with Abernathy's Company, and I'm both sadden and a bit relieved that's come to an end. Now to read the entire thing!

Thank you Sagiro and your group for the many hours of entertainment you've provided! Your campaign is one of the examples I look to as a great example of a long-running campaign that gets into the high-levels. I'm hoping we'll eventually see a new story hour campaign from your group!

And a big thanks to StevenAC for collecting the campaign in a great pdf format! I'm currently reading it to catch up, and I can't wait to re-read the whole thing again from the beginning!


----------



## StevenAC

*COMPLETE AT LAST!*

It's with great pleasure that I can announce that the Collected Sagiro's Story Hour is finally complete.  On the site you'll now find the entire story of Abernathy's Company, from their earliest adventures to the final epic battle to save the world.  For the statistically inclined, the final PDFs clock in at a total of 1440 pages and more than 1.125 million words (including all the invaluable commentary from dozens of EN World-ers over the years).

I'd like to thank everyone (most especially, of course, Sagiro himself) who has given me words of appreciation over the years.  It's lovely to know that what started out as an entirely private exercise, intended only for my own enjoyment, has become something that others around the world have found useful too.

It's _possible_ that there may be some supplementary material added to the site later on (maps, character sheets, monster stats, and so on), but I'm not making any promises on that.  It will depend on whether Sagiro can find the time in his busy schedule to engage in campaign archaeology (he _does_ have some novels to write... ), and on whether such material still exists anyway -- after all, the campaign actually ended nearly three years ago.

For now, though, the story is done.  I really hope you enjoy reading (or re-reading) it, and don't forget to leave comments in Sagiro's new thread here .

Steven Cooper.


----------



## Joshua Randall

Belated thanks and congratulations to Sagiro for the completion of the Story Hour, which is truly spectacular in its scope and intricacy. There are many great Story Hours on EN World, and many great authors, but only one sustained a high level of excellence for so many years and reached a satisfying conclusion: Sagiro!

Like others, I have brazely borrowed numerous ideas from Sagiro -- the Het Branoi section (my favorite) is the thematic basis for my just kicked-off campaign.

Also like others, I will happily purchase Sagiro's novels when they are published.

Thanks again for the many years of enjoyment and inspiration.

Yours,
-- Joshua Randall


----------



## Sagiro

wedgeski said:


> I'm not sure what to write here that others haven't already said a lot better than me.
> 
> I've just caught up, in the last couple of days, on about the last twenty or so installments. It was an absolute pleasure to read everything through to the epic finale of the campaign.
> 
> For the record, I would have been quite okay with the story as it "ended" in the semi-penultimate update. You had me there, for a few seconds, and a few seconds was all it took for me to move from numb disbelief to a state of zen acceptance that, ultimately, going up against a god-killer is just not the sort of thing mortals are going get away with, especially since their enemies had already been in the Underdark for so long before the heroes arrived.
> 
> It was, of course, deeply satisfying to be shown the error of my ways.
> 
> I loved the hints and implications dropped in the epilogue...just enough for the rest of us to build a little picture of what might have happened to everyone after we parted ways with them.
> 
> Like so many other people here, your game has had a deep and fundamental influence on my own DM'ing. Before reading about your game, I had a vague, aspirational fancy of what an epic narrative D&D campaign could look like, and over many years I tried (and failed, frankly) to assemble the right kind of group, and muster the appropriate level of skill to make it so. There's no longer anything vague about my views on what an epic narrative D&D campaign looks like. It's all here, in this thread.
> 
> So thanks, and all that.




You're very welcome! It's nice to know that at least one person believed the fake ending, if only for a few seconds.   It was an incredible journey with some of my favorite people, and it was my privilege to amass a readership who enjoyed it along with us.  Thanks for being one of them!


----------



## Sagiro

Joshua Randall said:


> Belated thanks and congratulations to Sagiro for the completion of the Story Hour, which is truly spectacular in its scope and intricacy. There are many great Story Hours on EN World, and many great authors, but only one sustained a high level of excellence for so many years and reached a satisfying conclusion: Sagiro!
> 
> Like others, I have brazely borrowed numerous ideas from Sagiro -- the Het Branoi section (my favorite) is the thematic basis for my just kicked-off campaign.




There's nothing brazen about borrowing ideas placed in a public place!    And goodness knows I borrowed from all sorts of sources over the years.



> Also like others, I will happily purchase Sagiro's novels when they are published.




I'm working on it!



> Thanks again for the many years of enjoyment and inspiration.




You're very welcome.  

-Sagiro


----------



## Kestrel

I've been reading this for years, since I first came here.  Thank you Sagiro and Abernathy's Company.  I have taken more inspiration from this for my own game than any other source.  Whenever I get stuck for ideas or feeling a little burned out, I read a few posts and I'm jazzed to run again.  Its a shining example of what a game can be. 

Thank you so much for the story.

Brian

(And I will definitely be buying the novels)


----------



## Shmoo

Caught up! Only 396 parts? So close to an even 400 (especially when you consider that there are parts 390)!

I took the summer of 2000 off between school and work and, bored, I somehow learned that a new edition of D&D was coming out (I hadn't played in years) which led me to Eric Noah's rpgplanet website. Still bored, I discovered the Story Hour forum and for reasons I cannot explain clicked randomly on Sagiro's Story Hour and began reading. I cannot believe that was 14 years ago!

As I've mentioned here before, I once randomly met Sagiro at a baseballprospectus.com event in Boston, where I lived at the time. That was probably 12 years ago and I'm still reading (until now). I clearly made a big mistake not asking to sit in on a session, or at least asked for his (non-forum) contact info!

Hats off to you, Dorian. I eagerly await the cable television show based on your novels.


----------



## radich

Hello Sagiro

I was interested if possible in seeing the map of Abernia that your players must have seen. I understand that it is probably just hand-drawn, but would you care to share? Currently on my fourth read-through of the Story Hour and trying to visualize the map is hard 

/Mads


----------



## Sagiro

(Posting this here, in addition to the "Now that it's over" thread, for the benefit of people subscribed to this thread but not the other.)

Hey, would you like to a) help me test my stub website for the book, and at the same time b) sign up to get an e-mail from me when the book goes live?

If yes, go here: The Ventifact Colossus and fill out the form. If something goes wrong, or it doesn't seem to work, post here and let me know. 

I also do solemnly swear that I will not use your e-mail address for any other purpose, or share it with anyone.

Thanks!

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...y-Hour-Now-That-It-s-Over/page7#ixzz3Zplbm9hj


----------



## Sagiro

(Cross-posting with my "Now that it's over" thread, since there are probably more old readers subscribed to this one)

It’s finally here. I have pressed the “launch” button, and now anyone can go to Amazon and buy The Ventifact Colossus – Book One of The Heroes of Spira. Any by anyone, I mean you!

This would obviously never have happened if not for my many enthusiastic readers right here at EN World, and I will always be grateful to you – especially those who kept pestering me to turn the Story Hour into books. So, thank you!

Here are the three main things you can do to show support, if you are in the mood for such:

1.	Buy the book! The e-book for Kindle is $3.99, and the print book is $13.95. 
Here are the links:

e-book link on amazon (US): http://amzn.com/B01AC3V8TG

print book link: http://amzn.com/0692609520

If you do not live in the U.S., you can search your own country's Amazon page for "The Ventifact Colossus."

At this time, the book is only for sale on Amazon. If you are unable to access Amazon from where you live, we can probably work something out where I buy the book myself and have it shipped to you, and you pay me via PayPal.

2.	Tell other people about the book, especially if they enjoy fantasy novels. (And – big surprise – it might be of particular interest to table-top gamers!) This is a big one; as a self-published author, I have no PR firm or marketing team. Word of mouth will be key, and by “mouth” I mean YOUR mouth.  Note: it is entirely reasonable for you to read the book first, and only recommend it if you enjoyed it.

Also: I have a URL for the book, along with a form people can fill out to receive updates about my progression on the series. http://dorianhart.com/the-heroes-of-spira/

3.	Review the book! (After you’ve read it, of course!) It doesn’t have to be a long or involved review, though it certainly can be if that’s what you’re moved to write. I want your review to be honest, even if you don’t like the book very much. The best places to leave reviews are Amazon and Goodreads.

Happy reading!

-Dorian Hart, a.k.a. Sagiro


----------



## radich

Hi Sagiro

Saw your post and got your e-mail on Saturday - first thing I did today after showing up for work... bought the book! I look forward to it already and eagerly await the read!

P.S. I wrote to you some time last year, asking if you happened to have any maps from the campaign/countries. Are there any in the books - or would you still be kind enough to look into posting/mailing them?


----------



## Sagiro

radich said:


> Hi Sagiro
> 
> Saw your post and got your e-mail on Saturday - first thing I did today after showing up for work... bought the book! I look forward to it already and eagerly await the read!
> 
> P.S. I wrote to you some time last year, asking if you happened to have any maps from the campaign/countries. Are there any in the books - or would you still be kind enough to look into posting/mailing them?




Hi radich,

Sadly, and to my great frustration, I cannot locate my old campaign maps.  I suspect I misplaced them during a remodel of my study (I probably set them aside in some unusual place, thinking to protect them), and now I can't find them anywhere.  Because of that, as well as due to issues of time, cost, and technical constraints, there are no maps in the book.  

My hope is to either find or recreate the maps of Charagan and Kivia and include them in Book 2.  It's even possible that I'll make them available on-line before that, but for now, at least, we're both out of luck on that score.  Sorry!


----------



## radich

Item Subtotal:£9.42  
Postage & Packing:  £4.82  
Total before VAT:  £14.24  
VAT:  £3.57  
Total:  £17.81 

Owning this storyhours series - *Priceless!*


----------



## steeldragons

I'm very excited to have ordered my copy. Eagerly awaiting.

Kudos, congrats, and best of luck again, Sagiro (Mr. Dorian Hart .

Thank you for showing us all how it's done.


----------



## Sagiro

radich said:


> Item Subtotal:£9.42
> Postage & Packing:  £4.82
> Total before VAT:  £14.24
> VAT:  £3.57
> Total:  £17.81
> 
> Owning this storyhours series - *Priceless!*
> 
> View attachment 73395




Either the book is smaller than I imagined, or you have huge thumbs!  (Or perhaps it's just a matter of perspective...)  

I hope you enjoy reading it!


----------



## radich

I ordered the special travel-edition, which is only as large as my thumb. The letters are quite small though...


----------



## radich

Dear Sagiro,

Great news - turns out, Amazon is selling the traveller's size version of your new book as well!

Can't wait to read it...


----------



## Sagiro

radich said:


> Dear Sagiro,
> 
> Great news - turns out, Amazon is selling the traveller's size version of your new book as well!
> 
> Can't wait to read it...




I think you just have enormous thumbs.  I hope you like it!


----------



## radich

Another year, another book secured and eager to read.


----------



## carborundum

Hmmm, Tapatalk said there was a new post but that was many moons ago. Silly app, but also a good reason to ask how everyone is - how's life, as sagiro and fans?


----------



## SolitonMan

On another read of the collected SH I find myself wondering - whatever happened to Willam Horn?


----------



## Joshua Randall

SolitonMan said:


> On another read of the collected SH I find myself wondering - whatever happened to Willam Horn?




SEQUEL!!!


----------

