MulhorandSage
First Post
Spoilers for Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor by Sean K. Reynolds
Continued from last correspondence:
The few minutes that we waited by the gate of Castle Cormanthor were among the most nervoius of my life; it felt like a basilisk was crawling up my spine. Just the sight of the gatehouse at close range, its granite walls, hard stone battlements, a portcullis of dire steel spears, and an opening so large and so tall that a storm giant would barely need to stoop, would have been enough to want to send me fleeing back to Sembia had I not been consumed by the insanity of our errand.
As we waited, I observed my companion with new eyes, looking for familiar behavior. Aron played with the pommel of his sword - he was unhappy that he was forced to conceal his dire flail beneath his cloak for a less distinctive weapon. Aron, like a dumb beast, sometimes has to be yanked with hard, deliberate tugs toward the trough of survival.
Kord was obvious trying harder to be inconspicuous - it's a good thing I've never learned any invsibility magic, for I am certain he would want them as often as possible. Still, I get the sense that this place is having a profound effect on even his emotions. His eyes glance hither and yon when he thinks no one is looking at him, and the traces of the old elfwork besot him, and he longs for the drought.
Ulrick was standing erect as a well-trained horse, not a surprise. Truth to tell, I think he has even less appreciation for the beauty and heritage of this place than Aron. He was driven by duty and by the mission, and blind to all else, like a stern father lecturing his child for getting one note of a performance wrong when a lad has sung like an angel - it is not a way I'd choose to live. Of course, if he got us out of here alive and successful, it would be boorish of me to complain too loudly. Ulrick was focusing on the chief guard, a tall man who was as broad as an ogre and wore a great black steel helm with bone inlays, shaped like a dragon's skull and whose few patches of visible skin are markedly scaly.
"Half-dragon..." I whispered to Aron, hoping that he won't openly inquire about the man and put us in mortal danger. Of course, the lummox of a Wyvernspur probably can't hear a whisper in that huge helmet anyway.
"We've completed our patrol," I heard Ulrick repeat. "No losses, praise the Dragon!" And with that, the huge half-dragon nodded, shouted something virtually incoherant and, with a metallic squeal and a carillon of chain rattles, the great gate was pulled up in a staggering motion until its grid of pointed spears loomed thirty feet above our heads.
"Enter," the half-dragon proclaimed. "Praise the dragon." Such a quaint little cult. I'm not sure whether I should answer him, but I follow Ulrick's lead and remained silent. We entered the castle grounds without incident. We were but mice in a shattered cathedral - the glory of Castle Cormanthos is not simply its physical beauty but its many magcks, its dance of dweomers, here an alteration, there an alteration, interwoven with such skill that when one sees it and has learned enough of dweomercraft to appreciate true artistry, all of the chest-swollen pretension of our brethren in Sembia seems amateurish and vulgar by comparison. This description does no justice to what I saw - in truth, I longed to cast the most basic spells and examine its dweomercraft more carefully, but the necessity of the quest prevented any spellcasting until we reach our goal.
We spoke to no one. We appeared to be no one worth speaking with, and that suited our purposes splendidly.
We strode purposely down a long, delicate spiral staircase of some unearthly blue stone, inlaid with mother of pearl trimmings, and descended into the first underground level, where we walked under an elven sky as they must have seen in it in the hoary-lore days when man was still a young race. There were many patrols here, but by feigning a martial posture - which even I can do convincingly - we managed to avoid drawing attention to ourselves.
Praise the dragon, your minions are idiots.
We said farewell to the cavern of elven memories for darker realms, for dungeons and caverns wrought from crudely hewed stone. These were not dwarf-work. As the baelnorn said, there were patrols of undead and dragon-men here. We avoided them, almost without effort. It was more taxing finding the damned secret entrance to the Pool of Radiance level.
The tunnel was pitch dark; even Ulrick's Cormyte commander's ring wouldn't illuminate this blackness. We became aware of each other's movement, the familiar clatter of metal on stone. To say that the descent seemed to go on forever would be melodramatic, but not far from how it felt. Anticipation gaveway to tedium and slight fatigue. Finally, we came to a dead stop, a great stone slab barred our way. Aron and Ulrick, straining mightily, managed to pry the seal open, and there we were. The Pool.
To call this cavern large would be an understatement, like everything else in Myth Drannor, this place was determined to impress us with its size. The walls were black granite, basalt perhaps, rising several hundred feet above us, where the shadows seemed to swirl over our heads. The shadows were cast by the light from large green-white pool that loomed in front of us. The Pool of Radiance was about fifty feet in diameter, perhaps larger, and crossed by several natural land bridges that rose over the central depression where the Pool sat. Beyond it was an altar, adorned with the trappings of the Sammasterites. Behind the altar, was a glass case - glassteel, I'd wager, in which the phylactery of Pelendralaar is contained.
Near the altar, kneeling in prayer, were two men in black robes. Necromancers I gathered, I might even guess that one of them is the great Shamoor, writer of letters. Truth to tell, I didn't give a damn in the Nine Hells who these people are, what their boyhood suffering might have been, how badly they were treated by children and pets. They were human offal, who needed to be thrown into the streets with the rest of the offal, and ground under horses' hooves. Some say that they need to know and understand their enemies to fully battle them, but deluded cultists such as these are such apocalyptic simpletons that they engage no sense of curiosity, only contempt. No death was too swift for such swine.
Unfortunately, they were not the only people here. There were also two huge dragon-men, alertly guarding against the unlikely possibility that the guardians of Faerun might invade their sanctum. More ominously, however, was the figure of a huge red dragon that was poised several hundred feet away on our right hand side.
"Five guards!" Kord whined. "What are five guards doing here? There should only be two guards! This was supposed to be a cakewalk!"
I think even Aron looked at him like he was completely mad. Ulrick shrugged, and he and Aron drew their weapons and immediately charged. Kord took cover near the door and drew his bow. We would not try to bluff our way through this battle.
"Kill the intruders!" the necromancer who's probably Shamoor shoued at the dragon.
My main tactic was to get as close to the phylactery as possible, and use the bone scepter to cast a shatter spell, but the dragon posed the most immediate problem. We noticed that the dragon's movement had a staggered quality to it, and its hide looked ragged, not at all well groomed. We also remembered encountering a red dragon that flew above us in Myth Drannor - which the baelnorn later told us had been slain by the same adventuring party that was now confronting Pelendralaar. Could this be that selfsame dragon, now animated as a zombie? Perhaps its body was placed here as a recepticle for Pelendralaar should his hopes fail?
And I smiled, for now I knew how to deal with it. First I hastened myself, then I raised a magical shield, and finally I used the scepter to cast a holding spell on the red dragon, a spell that only affected undead. The dragon froze in its tracks.
"Thought so," I smiled, advancing toward the phylactery, skirting the edge of the Pool itself. The one weakness in my plan was that the shatter spell required me to cast it at close range, whereas I wanted to be as far away from the fray s possible. By this time, Aron and Ulrick had reached the mages and were slashing away at them, though Ulrick was determined to destroy the phylactery as quickly as possible. The two mages raised dweomermirrors to protect themselves, but Aron, either through Tymora's grace (or just pure stupidity that allows him to see through a complex illusion), managed to connect with the true mage, cracking his skull with hideous and wondrous power. The other mage fired arcane bolts at Aron (who's been struck by so many during the course of our campaign that I'm surprised he hasn't grown armor against them) and dispeled the holding spell I'd placed on the zombie. I smiled, restored the spell, and aimed a lightning bolt at the two dragon-men - who were sweeping towards me as fast as their wings will carry them.
Great. You were supposed to engage Ulrick, you idiots!
They shrug off the effects of the lightning bolts and one of them grappled me. His strength was monstrous, but fortunately for me he was so anxious to hurl me into the pool that he didn't secure his grip, and I managed to wriggle free. The other dragon-man took a swing at me, only to receive an arrow between the eyes for his trouble, courtesy of Kord. The other dragon-man got hold of me, and also triedto throw me into the Pool. Somehow, perhaps knowing that the waters would prove fatal, gave me the strength to resist. Either that, or the baelnorn's spells were at work. Either way, as long as I was still breathing at the end of the day, I did not care in the least.
To make matters worse, spirits issue from the bodies of the dead necromancer and the dead dragon: Mythal ghosts I guessed. They've absorbed so much magic from the mythal of Myth Drannor and the Pool that the dweomer has permeated their entire bodies. Kord, employing an arsenal of magic arrows, slew the dragon-man-ghost thing too. The other ran down a long tunnel, silently screaming for assistance.
Now our attention was focused on Shamoor. Realizing that the words "praise the dragon" meant absolutely nothing when you're surrounded in a ring of foes, decided to leap headlong into the Pool and see what happens. Unfortunately, the Pool dissolves magic - and Shamoor, like the others, had become permeated with the energies of the Weave. Like a living, hungry thing, the Pool devoured him like a sweet treat that dissolves on one's tongue. Good riddance.
Ulrick finally shatterec the glassteel case and Aron struck a heavy blow with his flail. I attempted to cast a shatter spell, but the phylactery resisted. How annoying. What it doesn't resist is the second blow from Aron's flail. The phylactery fall to pieces. Our work was done.
We proceeded to the exit, and noted that from the exit where the mythal-ghost went, another dragon emerged. This one was breathing smoke from its nostrils. I had a brief thought of casting a lightning bolt at it, but common sense prevailed. Our one problem was that the dragon lies between Kord and ourselves - Kord loves to fix himself to a good sniper's position and not budge. Fortunately, seeing our retreat, the dragon returned to Pelendralaar's lair. Kord rejoined us, and we escaped down the tunnel.
Eventually, we followed the tunnel out of Myth Drannor; as we were warned, we crossed a Null Magic zone along the way. We finally met the baelnorn, who thanked us for our service, and asked us where we'd like to go. I expected to be sent to the Wyvernspur lands, to help save Aron's family from the troll infestation - he's certainly done us enough of a service that we should turn our attention to helping him. Kord, however, was adamant about seeing his family at Silverymoon and refused to entertain any other course of action; Ulrick, lusting after a holy avenger weapon, thought he could trade the Book and Sword of Lathander at his Silverymoon temple, and Aron hoped to join a holy order of the temple of Selune at Silverymoon.
"I'll get you as close to Silverymoon as I can," the baelnorn promised, and he raised his arms to cast a spell.
"But what about --" I said, meaning to ask about Wheloon, the benighted city that Ulrick essentially abandoned for his quest to stop the dracolich. But it's too late. We reappeared somewhere in the high mountains, in a freezing wind. The snow blew hard in our faces, stabbing like ice.
Continued from last correspondence:
The few minutes that we waited by the gate of Castle Cormanthor were among the most nervoius of my life; it felt like a basilisk was crawling up my spine. Just the sight of the gatehouse at close range, its granite walls, hard stone battlements, a portcullis of dire steel spears, and an opening so large and so tall that a storm giant would barely need to stoop, would have been enough to want to send me fleeing back to Sembia had I not been consumed by the insanity of our errand.
As we waited, I observed my companion with new eyes, looking for familiar behavior. Aron played with the pommel of his sword - he was unhappy that he was forced to conceal his dire flail beneath his cloak for a less distinctive weapon. Aron, like a dumb beast, sometimes has to be yanked with hard, deliberate tugs toward the trough of survival.
Kord was obvious trying harder to be inconspicuous - it's a good thing I've never learned any invsibility magic, for I am certain he would want them as often as possible. Still, I get the sense that this place is having a profound effect on even his emotions. His eyes glance hither and yon when he thinks no one is looking at him, and the traces of the old elfwork besot him, and he longs for the drought.
Ulrick was standing erect as a well-trained horse, not a surprise. Truth to tell, I think he has even less appreciation for the beauty and heritage of this place than Aron. He was driven by duty and by the mission, and blind to all else, like a stern father lecturing his child for getting one note of a performance wrong when a lad has sung like an angel - it is not a way I'd choose to live. Of course, if he got us out of here alive and successful, it would be boorish of me to complain too loudly. Ulrick was focusing on the chief guard, a tall man who was as broad as an ogre and wore a great black steel helm with bone inlays, shaped like a dragon's skull and whose few patches of visible skin are markedly scaly.
"Half-dragon..." I whispered to Aron, hoping that he won't openly inquire about the man and put us in mortal danger. Of course, the lummox of a Wyvernspur probably can't hear a whisper in that huge helmet anyway.
"We've completed our patrol," I heard Ulrick repeat. "No losses, praise the Dragon!" And with that, the huge half-dragon nodded, shouted something virtually incoherant and, with a metallic squeal and a carillon of chain rattles, the great gate was pulled up in a staggering motion until its grid of pointed spears loomed thirty feet above our heads.
"Enter," the half-dragon proclaimed. "Praise the dragon." Such a quaint little cult. I'm not sure whether I should answer him, but I follow Ulrick's lead and remained silent. We entered the castle grounds without incident. We were but mice in a shattered cathedral - the glory of Castle Cormanthos is not simply its physical beauty but its many magcks, its dance of dweomers, here an alteration, there an alteration, interwoven with such skill that when one sees it and has learned enough of dweomercraft to appreciate true artistry, all of the chest-swollen pretension of our brethren in Sembia seems amateurish and vulgar by comparison. This description does no justice to what I saw - in truth, I longed to cast the most basic spells and examine its dweomercraft more carefully, but the necessity of the quest prevented any spellcasting until we reach our goal.
We spoke to no one. We appeared to be no one worth speaking with, and that suited our purposes splendidly.
We strode purposely down a long, delicate spiral staircase of some unearthly blue stone, inlaid with mother of pearl trimmings, and descended into the first underground level, where we walked under an elven sky as they must have seen in it in the hoary-lore days when man was still a young race. There were many patrols here, but by feigning a martial posture - which even I can do convincingly - we managed to avoid drawing attention to ourselves.
Praise the dragon, your minions are idiots.
We said farewell to the cavern of elven memories for darker realms, for dungeons and caverns wrought from crudely hewed stone. These were not dwarf-work. As the baelnorn said, there were patrols of undead and dragon-men here. We avoided them, almost without effort. It was more taxing finding the damned secret entrance to the Pool of Radiance level.
The tunnel was pitch dark; even Ulrick's Cormyte commander's ring wouldn't illuminate this blackness. We became aware of each other's movement, the familiar clatter of metal on stone. To say that the descent seemed to go on forever would be melodramatic, but not far from how it felt. Anticipation gaveway to tedium and slight fatigue. Finally, we came to a dead stop, a great stone slab barred our way. Aron and Ulrick, straining mightily, managed to pry the seal open, and there we were. The Pool.
To call this cavern large would be an understatement, like everything else in Myth Drannor, this place was determined to impress us with its size. The walls were black granite, basalt perhaps, rising several hundred feet above us, where the shadows seemed to swirl over our heads. The shadows were cast by the light from large green-white pool that loomed in front of us. The Pool of Radiance was about fifty feet in diameter, perhaps larger, and crossed by several natural land bridges that rose over the central depression where the Pool sat. Beyond it was an altar, adorned with the trappings of the Sammasterites. Behind the altar, was a glass case - glassteel, I'd wager, in which the phylactery of Pelendralaar is contained.
Near the altar, kneeling in prayer, were two men in black robes. Necromancers I gathered, I might even guess that one of them is the great Shamoor, writer of letters. Truth to tell, I didn't give a damn in the Nine Hells who these people are, what their boyhood suffering might have been, how badly they were treated by children and pets. They were human offal, who needed to be thrown into the streets with the rest of the offal, and ground under horses' hooves. Some say that they need to know and understand their enemies to fully battle them, but deluded cultists such as these are such apocalyptic simpletons that they engage no sense of curiosity, only contempt. No death was too swift for such swine.
Unfortunately, they were not the only people here. There were also two huge dragon-men, alertly guarding against the unlikely possibility that the guardians of Faerun might invade their sanctum. More ominously, however, was the figure of a huge red dragon that was poised several hundred feet away on our right hand side.
"Five guards!" Kord whined. "What are five guards doing here? There should only be two guards! This was supposed to be a cakewalk!"
I think even Aron looked at him like he was completely mad. Ulrick shrugged, and he and Aron drew their weapons and immediately charged. Kord took cover near the door and drew his bow. We would not try to bluff our way through this battle.
"Kill the intruders!" the necromancer who's probably Shamoor shoued at the dragon.
My main tactic was to get as close to the phylactery as possible, and use the bone scepter to cast a shatter spell, but the dragon posed the most immediate problem. We noticed that the dragon's movement had a staggered quality to it, and its hide looked ragged, not at all well groomed. We also remembered encountering a red dragon that flew above us in Myth Drannor - which the baelnorn later told us had been slain by the same adventuring party that was now confronting Pelendralaar. Could this be that selfsame dragon, now animated as a zombie? Perhaps its body was placed here as a recepticle for Pelendralaar should his hopes fail?
And I smiled, for now I knew how to deal with it. First I hastened myself, then I raised a magical shield, and finally I used the scepter to cast a holding spell on the red dragon, a spell that only affected undead. The dragon froze in its tracks.
"Thought so," I smiled, advancing toward the phylactery, skirting the edge of the Pool itself. The one weakness in my plan was that the shatter spell required me to cast it at close range, whereas I wanted to be as far away from the fray s possible. By this time, Aron and Ulrick had reached the mages and were slashing away at them, though Ulrick was determined to destroy the phylactery as quickly as possible. The two mages raised dweomermirrors to protect themselves, but Aron, either through Tymora's grace (or just pure stupidity that allows him to see through a complex illusion), managed to connect with the true mage, cracking his skull with hideous and wondrous power. The other mage fired arcane bolts at Aron (who's been struck by so many during the course of our campaign that I'm surprised he hasn't grown armor against them) and dispeled the holding spell I'd placed on the zombie. I smiled, restored the spell, and aimed a lightning bolt at the two dragon-men - who were sweeping towards me as fast as their wings will carry them.
Great. You were supposed to engage Ulrick, you idiots!
They shrug off the effects of the lightning bolts and one of them grappled me. His strength was monstrous, but fortunately for me he was so anxious to hurl me into the pool that he didn't secure his grip, and I managed to wriggle free. The other dragon-man took a swing at me, only to receive an arrow between the eyes for his trouble, courtesy of Kord. The other dragon-man got hold of me, and also triedto throw me into the Pool. Somehow, perhaps knowing that the waters would prove fatal, gave me the strength to resist. Either that, or the baelnorn's spells were at work. Either way, as long as I was still breathing at the end of the day, I did not care in the least.
To make matters worse, spirits issue from the bodies of the dead necromancer and the dead dragon: Mythal ghosts I guessed. They've absorbed so much magic from the mythal of Myth Drannor and the Pool that the dweomer has permeated their entire bodies. Kord, employing an arsenal of magic arrows, slew the dragon-man-ghost thing too. The other ran down a long tunnel, silently screaming for assistance.
Now our attention was focused on Shamoor. Realizing that the words "praise the dragon" meant absolutely nothing when you're surrounded in a ring of foes, decided to leap headlong into the Pool and see what happens. Unfortunately, the Pool dissolves magic - and Shamoor, like the others, had become permeated with the energies of the Weave. Like a living, hungry thing, the Pool devoured him like a sweet treat that dissolves on one's tongue. Good riddance.
Ulrick finally shatterec the glassteel case and Aron struck a heavy blow with his flail. I attempted to cast a shatter spell, but the phylactery resisted. How annoying. What it doesn't resist is the second blow from Aron's flail. The phylactery fall to pieces. Our work was done.
We proceeded to the exit, and noted that from the exit where the mythal-ghost went, another dragon emerged. This one was breathing smoke from its nostrils. I had a brief thought of casting a lightning bolt at it, but common sense prevailed. Our one problem was that the dragon lies between Kord and ourselves - Kord loves to fix himself to a good sniper's position and not budge. Fortunately, seeing our retreat, the dragon returned to Pelendralaar's lair. Kord rejoined us, and we escaped down the tunnel.
Eventually, we followed the tunnel out of Myth Drannor; as we were warned, we crossed a Null Magic zone along the way. We finally met the baelnorn, who thanked us for our service, and asked us where we'd like to go. I expected to be sent to the Wyvernspur lands, to help save Aron's family from the troll infestation - he's certainly done us enough of a service that we should turn our attention to helping him. Kord, however, was adamant about seeing his family at Silverymoon and refused to entertain any other course of action; Ulrick, lusting after a holy avenger weapon, thought he could trade the Book and Sword of Lathander at his Silverymoon temple, and Aron hoped to join a holy order of the temple of Selune at Silverymoon.
"I'll get you as close to Silverymoon as I can," the baelnorn promised, and he raised his arms to cast a spell.
"But what about --" I said, meaning to ask about Wheloon, the benighted city that Ulrick essentially abandoned for his quest to stop the dracolich. But it's too late. We reappeared somewhere in the high mountains, in a freezing wind. The snow blew hard in our faces, stabbing like ice.
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