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[5E] The Age of Worms - Solid Snake's Campaign
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<blockquote data-quote="Alexander Bryant" data-source="post: 7153195" data-attributes="member: 6884000"><p>I will not dwell on the architecture we found – this, the living quarters of the vain architect, <strong>Nadrok</strong> – nor on the peculiar black egg atop its odd demon-metal pedestal. For Layla was here, or rather, her body was.</p><p></p><p>She was suspended above a huge coma-inducing bed made for a being who required terrible magiks merely to slumber, its spell nearly knocking me unconscious – if you are not of fey blood, you cannot know how terrible this is – as I retrieved her emaciated and wasted <em>corre</em>. Poor thing, poor brave, curious girl. I don’t believe she suffered though, merely slept to death.</p><p></p><p>Egan was devastated.</p><p></p><p>“My poor wee lass. Layla. Oh, this is my fault, my fault,” he cried, and for some time it would be a sort of chant.</p><p></p><p>We took her solemnly out of the chamber, up to the surface. Egan held her all the way out. There was no home to retreat to, he said, no family left to commiserate with, and so he would bury her nearby. We found a suitable place, a pretty patch of the overgrown old mine to satisfy Egan and his vision of what her grave needed to be.</p><p></p><p>He and I spoke about her. At first all he could let out was guilt, and when that was spent he allowed me to speak to him. I asked about their lives together and who she really was. What I knew of her had been sparse: daffy and dim she might have been as first presented, it was clear to me that she was also brave, persistent and curious. There was no question I would have liked her very much. Egan dwelled on their arguments at first but also remembered the games they played, their protecting one another, surviving together through almost unrelenting bad times. She had been quietly remarkable just like her brother.</p><p></p><p>Rey was restless during this time, and so she removed herself and began to make something of the old abandoned mining office clearing away rubble so that Egan could have a place to sleep under a roof. When it seemed he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, I asked if I could take my leave and meditate. I calmed my thoughts, focused on Her, asked if my task is complete.</p><p></p><p>No, apparently.</p><p></p><p>Rey was under a tree, the very one I was perched in, or perhaps not. She is skewered with human-made crossbow bolts, her life drained out on the grass, dead eyes ripped at by ravens, blue mouth agape. She is in the hides and tunic she wears now, and other signs meant this to be the near future, or even the present! Now, beneath my tree!</p><p></p><p>I woke on the ground, ready to scream, ready to find her. Who has done this?</p><p></p><p>But she was not there. She was cleaning up the yard in front of Egan’s quarters. She was perfectly fine.</p><p></p><p>Gods and devils, who has taken ahold of my visions?</p><p></p><p>I needed to tell her despite what I had to say, but when I was finished she merely smiled slightly and said, “We should not let that happen.” No, we should not: what these visions do not show me is me. I will stand between Rey and a thousand arrows. I will stand between young Phreet – or the children of this town if those are who she represented – and the worms.</p><p></p><p>Egan wanted to solve the mystery of the Cairn now more than ever, to give meaning to his sister’s sacrifice as he was now beginning to think of it. He wanted to speak the name of the general in its tomb. I could not argue, but Rey would accompany him into the that place again without me: I was not prepared for yet another venture there, and now there are worms and crossbows on my mind. I would make certain the lamps were lit to light their way back.</p><p></p><p>They returned before the sun had passed two handsbreath. Egan had spoken the name of the general, <strong>Zostial</strong>. The sarcophagus opened. Inside were two items: a diadem of metals, and a small hoop attached to a handle. Egan did not have any idea what they were. Needless to say, neither did Rey or I.</p><p></p><p>We returned to Allustan to sort out what we knew. We told him everything save for finding the artifacts which we presented as drawings we found instead. We will keep these items hidden near our mine office, buried for safety, as we do not know what they are or what the extent of their power is. If they are wildly destructive, we will need to discuss this with powers greater than ours, powers we trust. I can only think of two, perhaps three far-off individuals I have faith in who would be able to help – one of them a golem, actually – but perhaps Egan will have some ideas if he thinks on the matter.</p><p></p><p>Allustan told us that worshipers of <strong>Theruzdan</strong> wielded the objects we were describing. They were able to partially control the legendary and mysterious Spheres of Annihilation. I had not thought these real, just stories, but they are real and have been used in war. Zostial, this great general for whom the Whispering Cairn was created, was engulfed by one and that was the end of him. Though it does beg the question, why would he have these devices in his own crypt? How would he have them there? Perhaps he was trying to wield the Spheres himself for good or ill and they consumed him?</p><p></p><p>On a larger scale, what is the connection between Hannah’s family’s odd, ever-blooming lupine, the Cairn housing potentially terrible devices, Layla’s death – and – the green worm, Filge, and the Dourstone mine here in town where the worm came from, and my visions?</p><p></p><p>I spent the night gathering – there was a cluster of <em>ni’erreen</em>, “fennel” in the Common – that we went past as we were taking the Land bones back to their family farm from the observatory. I wanted to investigate, see if there were clusters of them in the area. When I returned, Phreet told me that the albino half-orc and his two, eh, “goons” had been by and left a message.</p><p></p><p>She shrugged off my storm of questions: “Did they harm you, Phreet? Did they lay a hand on you? Did they threaten you in any way?” I watched her closely and I think she is telling the truth: so she was not to provide me an excuse to put those men down.</p><p></p><p>Smenk had sent a summons: “The elf, meet Smenk” was all they said to Phreet and they left.</p><p></p><p>Perhaps we should tell others what we know. There is a garrison on the southwest outskirts of town. They are engaged in patrolling the area but particularly the southern marshes – where the worms are said to originate from – and so they might be interested in our specimen.</p><p></p><p>We traveled there asking to see someone we could tell our story to, someone interested in Smenk, the green worm, and a possible problem in the mine. We were led by a lieutenant to the captain of the garrison, <strong>Trask</strong>. He was probably not interested in the Whispering Cairn and might regard us as simple thieves if he was, so we only told about the worm and Filch, and Mr. Smenk apparently supporting a band of cultists who live in an unused part of the working mine.</p><p></p><p>“You just let Filch go?” he asked.</p><p></p><p>“We had no reason to detain him once he told us everything he knew, gave us the worm and let us take the bones we had come for in the first place,” I replied, a bit annoyed. “I am sure you can find him on the road to somewhere: he doesn’t seem the type to wander off into the brush.”</p><p></p><p>Captain Trask told us that he was indeed very interested in the worm possibly being here in the mine – some of his own men have come back from the marshlands telling of people infected with it – but that his focus is on a growing presence of hostile lizardmen down there. So we were to be deputized to investigate what was happening. To provide a seal of approval for our party, he asked us to take along a very bored young lady with out-of-control red hair who had been sweeping the grounds in front of a small chapel to Pelor which her father evidently attended to.</p><p></p><p>When we arrived and asked if she could join, she went wild with joy! I have never seen such a transformation in a human. She disappeared into the back of the chapel behind the worship space and came out in full chain mail and a mace, clearly waiting for this moment for months, perhaps years, perhaps her entire life.</p><p></p><p>Her name is <strong>Melinde</strong>.</p><p></p><p>Our party, now of four, went to Smenk’s huge, heavily-guarded mansion. I know its outside very well, not only because it is near our shack but also because I have had to pick Phreet up from there a couple of times as she was caught casing the place. Fortunately for her, in both instances it was the same man, a friendly, laughing soul named <strong>Sperritt</strong>, who had nabbed her. I had also been interested in testing my skills against the place, merely for sport, but had not ever made the attempt to venture inside.</p><p></p><p>We were expected and, our names presented, escorted inside.</p><p></p><p>We waited. Egan and I were calm. Melinde looked pleased like she had a wonderful secret inside her. Rey paced.</p><p></p><p>Rey has all the patience I do – probably more – but inside a human building she was increasingly restless and began quietly cursing as the time moved past.</p><p></p><p>Finally we were led from the foyer to a pair of large ornamental doors. Like the rest of the place, they were opulent in a decaying sort of way like highwaymen had taken up living in an abandoned palace.</p><p></p><p>Smenk himself was a sight to behold. I had seen him before, I now realized, many times. He is fat to the edge immobile. Sallow skin. Pale. Death would not merely visit but take some time to feast on him before long.</p><p></p><p>Behind him were two great chained apes.</p><p></p><p>I have visited the great human city of Greyhawke but once. It was disorienting, noisy, smelly but also soaring and majestic. It could not hope to ever rival the metropolises of the Fey, but here I felt was some of the best that humans could achieve and so it shone in its own way. It was also a heady mix of races with as many elves here as twice my entire tribe. I saw dwarves, gnomes, a pod of centaur, and many other peoples living together if not in harmony then at least making the best of being thrown together.</p><p></p><p>I saw other creatures there as well, but they were not free, not roaming. They were caged. They were on display. They were in pain, some of them, and others had the light extinguished from their eyes. There were several of these collections, called menageries, and they made me sad and also angry. I had to free them. Mistress Moonbow commanded it even though I could not hear her – She was still silent – but her teachings were unambiguous. I had to free them.</p><p></p><p>While I undertook my task – observing their keepers, making a plan to return the animals to the wild somehow, including the many that had come from other far-off lands – I fell in with a group who were planning the same thing. Their leader, Adair, was a passionate man, delightfully in more ways than one. He had a vision but no firm plan. Unlike me, however, he was not patient, and so our little group against my protests impulsively descended on one of the menageries one night. The largest collection, of course. That was Adair.</p><p></p><p>We were very successful at the freeing-the-prisoners part. We did not know what to do with them once uncaged, however. Our plans to ferry them out of the city to a waiting ferry we had earlier secured unraveled when we were spotted by quite a lot of people returning from a music festival combined with a great silver-backed ape unexpectedly breaking out of its cage and tearing into through the crowds and up the walls towards the royal part of the city. I had . . . I had to kill it. It was mad with rage and would have . . . . I had to kill it.</p><p></p><p>There is more to this tale, of course, but I will leave it there. I don’t like seeing animals chained for amusement. I would have to see if this Smenk could be persuaded.</p><p></p><p>He waved us in to the vaguely charnal chamber where he slumped on his tired throne. I stepped forward, unsure of what I would open with, but a widening blood stain on his vest and the shocked look on his face took all my words away. </p><p></p><p>Crossbow bolts whipped through the air at all of us hitting Rey and Melinde as well as Smenk. I recognized them from my vision.</p><p></p><p>“Poison,” muttered Rey, grimacing but refusing to succumb to it. If anyone could simply power through being poisoned as if it was an unpleasant meal, it was Rey. Melinde uttered a ululating war cry, and with the joy of a happy mother looking for her giggling, hiding children, began prowling, thwapping her shield with her mace. Egan and I simply dove for cover.</p><p></p><p>Who was attacking Smenk? He had said in the letter to Filge that he was losing control of the mine situation. Was it the cultists down there? An old enemy? Was he caught in an assassination attempt directed at one or all of us?</p><p></p><p>Egan and I did not intend to die without answers.</p><p>Rey did not intend to die at all, I knew.</p><p>And Melinde . . . .</p><p></p><p>This was the happiest day of Melinde’s life.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Alexander Bryant, post: 7153195, member: 6884000"] I will not dwell on the architecture we found – this, the living quarters of the vain architect, [B]Nadrok[/B] – nor on the peculiar black egg atop its odd demon-metal pedestal. For Layla was here, or rather, her body was. She was suspended above a huge coma-inducing bed made for a being who required terrible magiks merely to slumber, its spell nearly knocking me unconscious – if you are not of fey blood, you cannot know how terrible this is – as I retrieved her emaciated and wasted [I]corre[/I]. Poor thing, poor brave, curious girl. I don’t believe she suffered though, merely slept to death. Egan was devastated. “My poor wee lass. Layla. Oh, this is my fault, my fault,” he cried, and for some time it would be a sort of chant. We took her solemnly out of the chamber, up to the surface. Egan held her all the way out. There was no home to retreat to, he said, no family left to commiserate with, and so he would bury her nearby. We found a suitable place, a pretty patch of the overgrown old mine to satisfy Egan and his vision of what her grave needed to be. He and I spoke about her. At first all he could let out was guilt, and when that was spent he allowed me to speak to him. I asked about their lives together and who she really was. What I knew of her had been sparse: daffy and dim she might have been as first presented, it was clear to me that she was also brave, persistent and curious. There was no question I would have liked her very much. Egan dwelled on their arguments at first but also remembered the games they played, their protecting one another, surviving together through almost unrelenting bad times. She had been quietly remarkable just like her brother. Rey was restless during this time, and so she removed herself and began to make something of the old abandoned mining office clearing away rubble so that Egan could have a place to sleep under a roof. When it seemed he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, I asked if I could take my leave and meditate. I calmed my thoughts, focused on Her, asked if my task is complete. No, apparently. Rey was under a tree, the very one I was perched in, or perhaps not. She is skewered with human-made crossbow bolts, her life drained out on the grass, dead eyes ripped at by ravens, blue mouth agape. She is in the hides and tunic she wears now, and other signs meant this to be the near future, or even the present! Now, beneath my tree! I woke on the ground, ready to scream, ready to find her. Who has done this? But she was not there. She was cleaning up the yard in front of Egan’s quarters. She was perfectly fine. Gods and devils, who has taken ahold of my visions? I needed to tell her despite what I had to say, but when I was finished she merely smiled slightly and said, “We should not let that happen.” No, we should not: what these visions do not show me is me. I will stand between Rey and a thousand arrows. I will stand between young Phreet – or the children of this town if those are who she represented – and the worms. Egan wanted to solve the mystery of the Cairn now more than ever, to give meaning to his sister’s sacrifice as he was now beginning to think of it. He wanted to speak the name of the general in its tomb. I could not argue, but Rey would accompany him into the that place again without me: I was not prepared for yet another venture there, and now there are worms and crossbows on my mind. I would make certain the lamps were lit to light their way back. They returned before the sun had passed two handsbreath. Egan had spoken the name of the general, [B]Zostial[/B]. The sarcophagus opened. Inside were two items: a diadem of metals, and a small hoop attached to a handle. Egan did not have any idea what they were. Needless to say, neither did Rey or I. We returned to Allustan to sort out what we knew. We told him everything save for finding the artifacts which we presented as drawings we found instead. We will keep these items hidden near our mine office, buried for safety, as we do not know what they are or what the extent of their power is. If they are wildly destructive, we will need to discuss this with powers greater than ours, powers we trust. I can only think of two, perhaps three far-off individuals I have faith in who would be able to help – one of them a golem, actually – but perhaps Egan will have some ideas if he thinks on the matter. Allustan told us that worshipers of [B]Theruzdan[/B] wielded the objects we were describing. They were able to partially control the legendary and mysterious Spheres of Annihilation. I had not thought these real, just stories, but they are real and have been used in war. Zostial, this great general for whom the Whispering Cairn was created, was engulfed by one and that was the end of him. Though it does beg the question, why would he have these devices in his own crypt? How would he have them there? Perhaps he was trying to wield the Spheres himself for good or ill and they consumed him? On a larger scale, what is the connection between Hannah’s family’s odd, ever-blooming lupine, the Cairn housing potentially terrible devices, Layla’s death – and – the green worm, Filge, and the Dourstone mine here in town where the worm came from, and my visions? I spent the night gathering – there was a cluster of [I]ni’erreen[/I], “fennel” in the Common – that we went past as we were taking the Land bones back to their family farm from the observatory. I wanted to investigate, see if there were clusters of them in the area. When I returned, Phreet told me that the albino half-orc and his two, eh, “goons” had been by and left a message. She shrugged off my storm of questions: “Did they harm you, Phreet? Did they lay a hand on you? Did they threaten you in any way?” I watched her closely and I think she is telling the truth: so she was not to provide me an excuse to put those men down. Smenk had sent a summons: “The elf, meet Smenk” was all they said to Phreet and they left. Perhaps we should tell others what we know. There is a garrison on the southwest outskirts of town. They are engaged in patrolling the area but particularly the southern marshes – where the worms are said to originate from – and so they might be interested in our specimen. We traveled there asking to see someone we could tell our story to, someone interested in Smenk, the green worm, and a possible problem in the mine. We were led by a lieutenant to the captain of the garrison, [B]Trask[/B]. He was probably not interested in the Whispering Cairn and might regard us as simple thieves if he was, so we only told about the worm and Filch, and Mr. Smenk apparently supporting a band of cultists who live in an unused part of the working mine. “You just let Filch go?” he asked. “We had no reason to detain him once he told us everything he knew, gave us the worm and let us take the bones we had come for in the first place,” I replied, a bit annoyed. “I am sure you can find him on the road to somewhere: he doesn’t seem the type to wander off into the brush.” Captain Trask told us that he was indeed very interested in the worm possibly being here in the mine – some of his own men have come back from the marshlands telling of people infected with it – but that his focus is on a growing presence of hostile lizardmen down there. So we were to be deputized to investigate what was happening. To provide a seal of approval for our party, he asked us to take along a very bored young lady with out-of-control red hair who had been sweeping the grounds in front of a small chapel to Pelor which her father evidently attended to. When we arrived and asked if she could join, she went wild with joy! I have never seen such a transformation in a human. She disappeared into the back of the chapel behind the worship space and came out in full chain mail and a mace, clearly waiting for this moment for months, perhaps years, perhaps her entire life. Her name is [B]Melinde[/B]. Our party, now of four, went to Smenk’s huge, heavily-guarded mansion. I know its outside very well, not only because it is near our shack but also because I have had to pick Phreet up from there a couple of times as she was caught casing the place. Fortunately for her, in both instances it was the same man, a friendly, laughing soul named [B]Sperritt[/B], who had nabbed her. I had also been interested in testing my skills against the place, merely for sport, but had not ever made the attempt to venture inside. We were expected and, our names presented, escorted inside. We waited. Egan and I were calm. Melinde looked pleased like she had a wonderful secret inside her. Rey paced. Rey has all the patience I do – probably more – but inside a human building she was increasingly restless and began quietly cursing as the time moved past. Finally we were led from the foyer to a pair of large ornamental doors. Like the rest of the place, they were opulent in a decaying sort of way like highwaymen had taken up living in an abandoned palace. Smenk himself was a sight to behold. I had seen him before, I now realized, many times. He is fat to the edge immobile. Sallow skin. Pale. Death would not merely visit but take some time to feast on him before long. Behind him were two great chained apes. I have visited the great human city of Greyhawke but once. It was disorienting, noisy, smelly but also soaring and majestic. It could not hope to ever rival the metropolises of the Fey, but here I felt was some of the best that humans could achieve and so it shone in its own way. It was also a heady mix of races with as many elves here as twice my entire tribe. I saw dwarves, gnomes, a pod of centaur, and many other peoples living together if not in harmony then at least making the best of being thrown together. I saw other creatures there as well, but they were not free, not roaming. They were caged. They were on display. They were in pain, some of them, and others had the light extinguished from their eyes. There were several of these collections, called menageries, and they made me sad and also angry. I had to free them. Mistress Moonbow commanded it even though I could not hear her – She was still silent – but her teachings were unambiguous. I had to free them. While I undertook my task – observing their keepers, making a plan to return the animals to the wild somehow, including the many that had come from other far-off lands – I fell in with a group who were planning the same thing. Their leader, Adair, was a passionate man, delightfully in more ways than one. He had a vision but no firm plan. Unlike me, however, he was not patient, and so our little group against my protests impulsively descended on one of the menageries one night. The largest collection, of course. That was Adair. We were very successful at the freeing-the-prisoners part. We did not know what to do with them once uncaged, however. Our plans to ferry them out of the city to a waiting ferry we had earlier secured unraveled when we were spotted by quite a lot of people returning from a music festival combined with a great silver-backed ape unexpectedly breaking out of its cage and tearing into through the crowds and up the walls towards the royal part of the city. I had . . . I had to kill it. It was mad with rage and would have . . . . I had to kill it. There is more to this tale, of course, but I will leave it there. I don’t like seeing animals chained for amusement. I would have to see if this Smenk could be persuaded. He waved us in to the vaguely charnal chamber where he slumped on his tired throne. I stepped forward, unsure of what I would open with, but a widening blood stain on his vest and the shocked look on his face took all my words away. Crossbow bolts whipped through the air at all of us hitting Rey and Melinde as well as Smenk. I recognized them from my vision. “Poison,” muttered Rey, grimacing but refusing to succumb to it. If anyone could simply power through being poisoned as if it was an unpleasant meal, it was Rey. Melinde uttered a ululating war cry, and with the joy of a happy mother looking for her giggling, hiding children, began prowling, thwapping her shield with her mace. Egan and I simply dove for cover. Who was attacking Smenk? He had said in the letter to Filge that he was losing control of the mine situation. Was it the cultists down there? An old enemy? Was he caught in an assassination attempt directed at one or all of us? Egan and I did not intend to die without answers. Rey did not intend to die at all, I knew. And Melinde . . . . This was the happiest day of Melinde’s life. [/QUOTE]
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