Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
[5E] The Age of Worms - Solid Snake's Campaign
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Alexander Bryant1" data-source="post: 7896593" data-attributes="member: 6916184"><p>We make for our final charge: an uneventful trip to the stone giant’s castle. He gives us his belt, free at last to be loosed on an unsuspecting world. He is no worse than a local tornado, I suppose.</p><p></p><p>It is done. We have succeeded in our quests. The library is open to us.</p><p></p><p>But it is not the place we imagined. We are not led into a building or a chamber, Tiligast at our shoulders tut-tutting us to silence. Instead, to bring the missing knowledge back into the world, we are summoned into history.</p><p></p><p>He motions us to step into a silvery circle that has faint scenes of somewhere else, somewhere not here, swirling like – what did that desert druid friend of Verdre’s call them? – <em>dust devils</em> within the circle, each a barely-glimpsed face or place.</p><p></p><p>We step in, the silver outline on the ground swirls up around and over us. I see – or taste? or hear? or<em> susse</em>? – metallic-brown-voice-chant-colors.</p><p></p><p>Traveling to another era past is akin to being frozen. Is there insight in seeing one’s life pass before you while your heart slows and your blood cools? When their sap runs cold, do arctic trees re-live all the time before that moment? Does reverse time move forward to us? How can I make memories if I am passing backwards through events? Am I in a bubble? Am I in the universe?</p><p></p><p>Thankfully, I do not have to ponder these questions for the rest of eternity: eventually I feel solid ground under my feet and can trust my other senses again. I <em>susse</em> we are once more firmly in one place. I am freezing, even slightly blue as are the others, save for Verdre who does not seem discomfited at all. Shivers of ice encrust our equipment. Angivre’s slim body sparkles, and Verdre’s Glitter is faintly smoking.</p><p></p><p>We have been laid in front of a singular sight.</p><p></p><p>In the background, a <em>quin’e</em> distant, a mile, two sides are clashing in a mighty war: a human-populated stone city built into a cliff face is attempting to stand against swarms of gray climbing creatures – ghasts or ghouls of some kind – scrabbling straight up the rock walls from a thousand feet below, and dragons – many, many chromatic dragons – diving and swooping and generally bringing the mayhem as would attend a veritable swarm of them.</p><p></p><p>Verdre turns to me. “Do you feel it?”</p><p></p><p>“Feel what?”</p><p></p><p>“A storm. But more than that.” Her body, the look in her eyes: she is <em>yssar’e</em>, a druidic word meaning all senses alert, assessing something in her surroundings. She looks, bigger, somehow, or more solid.</p><p></p><p>“Yes,” Jodan says. “There is power here.”</p><p></p><p>I also note a change in Rey’s stance. She is uncomfortable, physically irritated as if her back hurt. I ignore it now. I will not, later. Treig seems merely interested, his default facade.</p><p></p><p>In the foreground, we are staring at robed men and women staring at us. I wave. One of them waves back, instinctively, and then looks at his own hand, mystified.</p><p></p><p>The leader among this group of druids, <strong>Tylanthros</strong>, is coming forward.</p><p></p><p>“The heroes we have summoned to save us are here!” he proclaims. “Welcome, legends.”</p><p></p><p>I look around. He seems to referring to us, which is flattering to be sure, but….</p><p></p><p>I no longer focus on him as Jodan has caught my eye. He is changed. That is, he is now normal: no sword, no stone sheath on arm, no chains and no … <em>Hell</em>, for want of a better word. He looks to me, smells to me, not unlike Treig. Utterly human.</p><p></p><p>I glance again at Treig whose own eyes are now resting on a palanquin carrying a great, gold lantern. Jodan also stares at it.</p><p></p><p>“We may now move the phylactery,” says Tylanthros, “Our chance to save the world, dearly purchased, is here.”</p><p></p><p>“Indeed.” Here it is, the trouble in the world, the quests, everything we have been needing. It is right in front of us. “So what do you want us to do?” Treig continues.</p><p></p><p>“Defend us until we can set this into the vault.”</p><p></p><p>“This is the reliquary of Dragotha,” Rey asks.</p><p></p><p>“Yes.”</p><p></p><p>“Then we should destroy it!” Her spear is out. The phylactery probably has only moments in one piece.</p><p></p><p>“No.”</p><p></p><p>“Why not?” Rey and I ask together. I continue. “Would it not deprive Dragotha of escape should we be able to destroy its material form? Would it not kill that abomination once and for all?”</p><p></p><p>“Yes. But do so and he will fight knowing there is nothing to lose. Damned already, he would be unstoppable in his fury and could annihilate all. Keep the phylactery secured away, however, and he tempers his fury; he calculates. His aim turns from destruction to recovery, and the world is spared.”</p><p></p><p>“But what if we could destroy him?” Rey pursues.</p><p></p><p>“It is too great a risk.”</p><p></p><p>“Very well,” I say, though this topic will be revisited, Rey’s eyes add. “Where do you need us to be?”</p><p></p><p>He points to the cliff city. “We must move through there.”</p><p></p><p>I nod at Rey. “We shall clear the way. The others … oh.” I look around. While we have been conversing, Treig, Jodan and Verdre have each moved off, the two up onto an overhanging hill above us and Verdre peering over the edge down into the valley. “They will, I think, escort you up the road when they finish scouting.” My aunt is actually on her knees now, looking down, slowly waving out Glitter in a wide circle above her head. She stands and continues the spell she has started, turning to me in the midst of it, nodding and waving us on. I cannot help but notice she is grinning wickedly.</p><p></p><p>Jodan and Treig are likewise occupied with opening furrows in the ground and dropping some of Treig’s little explosive toys within. Verdre interrupts her spell, and with a wave of her hand cracks open a fissure across the road to help them before returning to her incantation. I have seen these movements before: she is summoning the cold.</p><p></p><p>When we are a few hundred paces up the road, I hear wind and rain and sleet behind us. There is a sharp crack, as of a frozen lake thawing under sun. The curve in the road allows us now to see that the entire cliff face is misty with cold and caked in ice. A hundred of the scrabbling ghasts seeking to make their way to the top, finding no purchase and being pummeled with fist-sized hail and swirling gusts, are torn off the wall to splat messily below.</p><p></p><p>Further back, Jodan is ushering the group of druids and their golden charge up the path to us. Behind him, on the wide, circular outcropping where we had arrived in this era, Treig has sunk a final object into the ground and now runs toward us.</p><p></p><p>Behind him: POP POP POP POP POP POP.</p><p></p><p>One by one, little smoke puffs appear in a curving line around the outcropping, and then all of it – a small mountain of stone – crashes down to the valley floor below, burying the rest of the climbers that escaped Verdre’s hazard.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p>The town, we see, is well-fortified to repel an attack of the sort being visited on it, though not one of this magnitude. There are simply too many dragons! And the main force of the attacking army is still on its way: these are but scouts.</p><p></p><p>I take up supporting positions in different towers firing on the swooping beasts, and with Jodan and Rey also in the air somehow, we manage to drive them from the druids scurrying as best they can with their charge towards the stone spire.</p><p></p><p>Jodan has forged some kind of bond with air elementals: he summons them now, flies, and can attack with force even pushing off from nothing more than atmosphere. Rey, too, has acquired flight, though more fledgling than Jodan: she is still unsteady but fierce as she lunges about, cries of rage and frustration with every crumpled landing. And I have never seen Verdre summon such a fierce storm of this size nor coat so much area with ice, effortlessly interrupting that effort with opening a crack in the ground. What is happening? Has being in this time brought with it abilities?</p><p></p><p>We make it to the stone bridge leading to the spire. From my position in the final protective tower, I watch Jodan and Rey land in front of me, Treig and Verdre catching up on foot. We greet what the enemy sends next: a massive worm like that from the temple, and a bone dragon right below my position. They are not diplomats sent here to parley.</p><p></p><p>Jodan and Treig engage the worm. It is astonishing how such small creatures as those two humans can so swiftly kill so massive a monster, but this is what they do. In about two minutes, the thing has writhed its last.</p><p></p><p>For our part, we three elves – well, two elves and whatever Rey can now be called – dispatch the demon, hurling it down to its death below. We have won the entrance to the spire.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p>I am about to climb down from my perch to sprint across the bridge when the world turns silver and cold and quiet.</p><p></p><p>She is here.</p><p></p><p>She is floating in the air in front of me. All of senses, and my heart, assure me it is Sehanine.</p><p></p><p>“You are here,” She says with faint amusement. “I am delighted, child. You have lent your efforts, as is usual for you, for none who will thank you or even know.”</p><p></p><p>“What may I do for my Lady?”</p><p></p><p>“I am here to give you a choice in how you aid these people. Stumble on as you have always done, struggling and anonymous. Or wait until my full face is upon this wretched swarm and reveal your full flower.”</p><p></p><p>“Mistress, if I wait, more will die. This is true, isn’t it?” I ask.</p><p></p><p>“Stand fast and help your friends and the city, and some will be saved, perhaps, that would perish otherwise. Or wait for the moon and become legend.”</p><p></p><p>“My Lady, I am here now. I will help now. I will not endanger people to fuel my vanity unless, of course, you order me.”</p><p></p><p>She smiles – I cannot read if it is approval or the opposite – and fades away. All the noise and mayhem of the present circumstance drops once more on my senses like an ocean wave.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p>I join Verdre and Rey. The latter is grinning having just raised a spear and cried victory to the heavens. Verdre merely looks satisfied. But then she sees my expression, or perhaps something else.</p><p></p><p>“Our Mistress?” she ventures. I must have some of the glow still about me.</p><p></p><p>“She is here, and if we survive into night, promises mighty action through us.”</p><p></p><p>“I have already felt this. Haven’t you?”</p><p></p><p>I reflect on that. “Have I? Nothing like the powers you seem to be wielding.”</p><p></p><p>“Yes, something is happening to me, certainly. I do not know if it is Our Lady of Uncertain Gifts.”</p><p></p><p>A groan of pain escapes Rey. She arches her back, her hands moving to her shoulder blades.</p><p></p><p>“Rey!” I step to her but she wards me off. Something is hurting her, and in a moment it is clear what that is.</p><p></p><p>Two great dragon wings of four, five, no, seven colors erupt from her back! Red, blue and green – known ill-tempered chromatic dragon colors – but there are yellow, orange, purple and indigo as well, dragon hues I had not heard of, though I am no scholar.</p><p></p><p>I peer into her eyes.</p><p></p><p>“Rey?”</p><p></p><p>“Yes.”</p><p></p><p>“Is it still you?”</p><p></p><p>She looks annoyed. “Yes! But….” I wait for her. “Yes. It is me. But you are right to ask: I have been hearing her in my head.”</p><p></p><p>“Seraph?”</p><p></p><p>“Tiamat.”</p><p></p><p>“Queen of the Chromatics?” Verdre clarifies, and Rey nods. “What does she say?”</p><p></p><p>She hesitates. Verdre asked as a master to a student, and Rey, I see, is weighing this budding relationship.</p><p></p><p>“Please,” I add.</p><p></p><p>“She wishes me to slay as many undead dragons here as possible, and to use any means to hurt or even kill Dragotha.”</p><p></p><p>Verdre grunts an approval. I take Rey’s hand.</p><p></p><p>“If she is in your thoughts, she can influence them. I have had some experience with that myself. Rey, will you tell us, only us if you are uncomfortable with the others, if you think she is pushing you to action or moods you do not feel are your own? I may be able to … I don’t know what, actually. But please tell me anyway?”</p><p></p><p>“All right, Etona.”</p><p></p><p>I hug her until she says, “Etona?”</p><p></p><p>“Yes?”</p><p></p><p>“We need to save the world.”</p><p></p><p>“Oh. That. Yeah.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">***</p><p></p><p>The mighty stone door to what will be the resting chamber of the phylactery is ornate. Five unhappy-looking dragon heads are inscribed along its top arch.</p><p></p><p>“To pass through, you must be attuned,” says Tylanthros.</p><p></p><p>This turns out to be a process wherein each of us places a hand on a glyph in the door while the druid caretakers chant. Their faces are calm though even this short journey – through the town to this door – has cost them. I think back to my own shivering, dizzy days when I had to concentrate from dusk to dawn, but the fate of the world wasn’t in my hands, and I wasn’t relying on people I had never met.</p><p></p><p>We all enter the chamber.</p><p></p><p>Once inside, Treig wonders aloud whether we should open the phylactery. Tylanthros is troubled by this but is willing to discuss it. I know I should be on the side of these wise guardians of the world, but I am also very curious about the lantern’s contents and take up Treig’s side as to whether we should take Dragotha’s essence with us back to our time.</p><p></p><p>While we converse, Treig has Rey unfurl her new, magnificent wings. He attempts to use them to shine light in different ways off of them, her colors exactly matching those of, what did Rey call it? the reliquary, or lantern. But there doesn’t seem to be a way to shine all the lights we need in all the places simultaneously, at least not here right now.</p><p></p><p>After failing to open it, and more discussion, we are all persuaded that our purpose here is not to meddle with this relic but rather to bring the knowledge of it and its location – inside this spire – back to our time.</p><p></p><p>The druids place the phylactery inside the final chamber. Straining to complete this last work of heavy concentration after all they have been through already, the ritual of sealing begins around a ring of water in the middle of which sits the phylactery and around the outside all of the druids.</p><p></p><p>They pass around the Seal of Chaos, each pausing and raising a voice higher while handling it, until it ends in the druid leader’s grasp. He completes some arcane step and a fine white web descends on Dragotha’s soul’s receptacle.</p><p></p><p>They continue chanting.</p><p></p><p>One druid, exhausted from the ordeal, keels over, unconscious. Verdre takes his place and starts muttering something, I cannot quite hear.</p><p></p><p>Another druid passes out, and Treig has caught something out of an eye corner. His eye. Out of the corner of his eye – yes, that is the expression. He nods to Jodan and me at the water but I do not detect anything, I examine the second fallen druid. A tiny, almost invisible pair of puncture wounds bleed tiny filaments of blood at his ankle. Something is biting them, an airy presence moving around the circle.</p><p></p><p>A wet, blurbing sound raises my eyes: Jodan has created a sphere of water – another new trick from our no-longer-cursed noble – and captures the ‘wee beastie’, as Egan would say. He drops it onto dry stone and it vanishes in a way that seems to suggest it was banished or dispelled.</p><p></p><p>I believe I can counteract the toxin: it appears to be a common tranquilizer. I throw together a couple of ingredients and whip up a poultice. It works surprisingly quickly, and the druid wakes up immediately. It is possible that one of these ritualists is working against the rest of us, so I ask him in a low voice if he could point out any he doesn’t know or believes to be acting oddly or has acted oddly before. Hesitantly, he points to a robed woman, and I unveil her.</p><p></p><p>“Oh, dis ritual, is a thing you want, too, is it? Ah ha ha ha ha!”</p><p></p><p>Baba Yaga.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Alexander Bryant1, post: 7896593, member: 6916184"] We make for our final charge: an uneventful trip to the stone giant’s castle. He gives us his belt, free at last to be loosed on an unsuspecting world. He is no worse than a local tornado, I suppose. It is done. We have succeeded in our quests. The library is open to us. But it is not the place we imagined. We are not led into a building or a chamber, Tiligast at our shoulders tut-tutting us to silence. Instead, to bring the missing knowledge back into the world, we are summoned into history. He motions us to step into a silvery circle that has faint scenes of somewhere else, somewhere not here, swirling like – what did that desert druid friend of Verdre’s call them? – [I]dust devils[/I] within the circle, each a barely-glimpsed face or place. We step in, the silver outline on the ground swirls up around and over us. I see – or taste? or hear? or[I] susse[/I]? – metallic-brown-voice-chant-colors. Traveling to another era past is akin to being frozen. Is there insight in seeing one’s life pass before you while your heart slows and your blood cools? When their sap runs cold, do arctic trees re-live all the time before that moment? Does reverse time move forward to us? How can I make memories if I am passing backwards through events? Am I in a bubble? Am I in the universe? Thankfully, I do not have to ponder these questions for the rest of eternity: eventually I feel solid ground under my feet and can trust my other senses again. I [I]susse[/I] we are once more firmly in one place. I am freezing, even slightly blue as are the others, save for Verdre who does not seem discomfited at all. Shivers of ice encrust our equipment. Angivre’s slim body sparkles, and Verdre’s Glitter is faintly smoking. We have been laid in front of a singular sight. In the background, a [I]quin’e[/I] distant, a mile, two sides are clashing in a mighty war: a human-populated stone city built into a cliff face is attempting to stand against swarms of gray climbing creatures – ghasts or ghouls of some kind – scrabbling straight up the rock walls from a thousand feet below, and dragons – many, many chromatic dragons – diving and swooping and generally bringing the mayhem as would attend a veritable swarm of them. Verdre turns to me. “Do you feel it?” “Feel what?” “A storm. But more than that.” Her body, the look in her eyes: she is [I]yssar’e[/I], a druidic word meaning all senses alert, assessing something in her surroundings. She looks, bigger, somehow, or more solid. “Yes,” Jodan says. “There is power here.” I also note a change in Rey’s stance. She is uncomfortable, physically irritated as if her back hurt. I ignore it now. I will not, later. Treig seems merely interested, his default facade. In the foreground, we are staring at robed men and women staring at us. I wave. One of them waves back, instinctively, and then looks at his own hand, mystified. The leader among this group of druids, [B]Tylanthros[/B], is coming forward. “The heroes we have summoned to save us are here!” he proclaims. “Welcome, legends.” I look around. He seems to referring to us, which is flattering to be sure, but…. I no longer focus on him as Jodan has caught my eye. He is changed. That is, he is now normal: no sword, no stone sheath on arm, no chains and no … [I]Hell[/I], for want of a better word. He looks to me, smells to me, not unlike Treig. Utterly human. I glance again at Treig whose own eyes are now resting on a palanquin carrying a great, gold lantern. Jodan also stares at it. “We may now move the phylactery,” says Tylanthros, “Our chance to save the world, dearly purchased, is here.” “Indeed.” Here it is, the trouble in the world, the quests, everything we have been needing. It is right in front of us. “So what do you want us to do?” Treig continues. “Defend us until we can set this into the vault.” “This is the reliquary of Dragotha,” Rey asks. “Yes.” “Then we should destroy it!” Her spear is out. The phylactery probably has only moments in one piece. “No.” “Why not?” Rey and I ask together. I continue. “Would it not deprive Dragotha of escape should we be able to destroy its material form? Would it not kill that abomination once and for all?” “Yes. But do so and he will fight knowing there is nothing to lose. Damned already, he would be unstoppable in his fury and could annihilate all. Keep the phylactery secured away, however, and he tempers his fury; he calculates. His aim turns from destruction to recovery, and the world is spared.” “But what if we could destroy him?” Rey pursues. “It is too great a risk.” “Very well,” I say, though this topic will be revisited, Rey’s eyes add. “Where do you need us to be?” He points to the cliff city. “We must move through there.” I nod at Rey. “We shall clear the way. The others … oh.” I look around. While we have been conversing, Treig, Jodan and Verdre have each moved off, the two up onto an overhanging hill above us and Verdre peering over the edge down into the valley. “They will, I think, escort you up the road when they finish scouting.” My aunt is actually on her knees now, looking down, slowly waving out Glitter in a wide circle above her head. She stands and continues the spell she has started, turning to me in the midst of it, nodding and waving us on. I cannot help but notice she is grinning wickedly. Jodan and Treig are likewise occupied with opening furrows in the ground and dropping some of Treig’s little explosive toys within. Verdre interrupts her spell, and with a wave of her hand cracks open a fissure across the road to help them before returning to her incantation. I have seen these movements before: she is summoning the cold. When we are a few hundred paces up the road, I hear wind and rain and sleet behind us. There is a sharp crack, as of a frozen lake thawing under sun. The curve in the road allows us now to see that the entire cliff face is misty with cold and caked in ice. A hundred of the scrabbling ghasts seeking to make their way to the top, finding no purchase and being pummeled with fist-sized hail and swirling gusts, are torn off the wall to splat messily below. Further back, Jodan is ushering the group of druids and their golden charge up the path to us. Behind him, on the wide, circular outcropping where we had arrived in this era, Treig has sunk a final object into the ground and now runs toward us. Behind him: POP POP POP POP POP POP. One by one, little smoke puffs appear in a curving line around the outcropping, and then all of it – a small mountain of stone – crashes down to the valley floor below, burying the rest of the climbers that escaped Verdre’s hazard. [CENTER]***[/CENTER] The town, we see, is well-fortified to repel an attack of the sort being visited on it, though not one of this magnitude. There are simply too many dragons! And the main force of the attacking army is still on its way: these are but scouts. I take up supporting positions in different towers firing on the swooping beasts, and with Jodan and Rey also in the air somehow, we manage to drive them from the druids scurrying as best they can with their charge towards the stone spire. Jodan has forged some kind of bond with air elementals: he summons them now, flies, and can attack with force even pushing off from nothing more than atmosphere. Rey, too, has acquired flight, though more fledgling than Jodan: she is still unsteady but fierce as she lunges about, cries of rage and frustration with every crumpled landing. And I have never seen Verdre summon such a fierce storm of this size nor coat so much area with ice, effortlessly interrupting that effort with opening a crack in the ground. What is happening? Has being in this time brought with it abilities? We make it to the stone bridge leading to the spire. From my position in the final protective tower, I watch Jodan and Rey land in front of me, Treig and Verdre catching up on foot. We greet what the enemy sends next: a massive worm like that from the temple, and a bone dragon right below my position. They are not diplomats sent here to parley. Jodan and Treig engage the worm. It is astonishing how such small creatures as those two humans can so swiftly kill so massive a monster, but this is what they do. In about two minutes, the thing has writhed its last. For our part, we three elves – well, two elves and whatever Rey can now be called – dispatch the demon, hurling it down to its death below. We have won the entrance to the spire. [CENTER]***[/CENTER] I am about to climb down from my perch to sprint across the bridge when the world turns silver and cold and quiet. She is here. She is floating in the air in front of me. All of senses, and my heart, assure me it is Sehanine. “You are here,” She says with faint amusement. “I am delighted, child. You have lent your efforts, as is usual for you, for none who will thank you or even know.” “What may I do for my Lady?” “I am here to give you a choice in how you aid these people. Stumble on as you have always done, struggling and anonymous. Or wait until my full face is upon this wretched swarm and reveal your full flower.” “Mistress, if I wait, more will die. This is true, isn’t it?” I ask. “Stand fast and help your friends and the city, and some will be saved, perhaps, that would perish otherwise. Or wait for the moon and become legend.” “My Lady, I am here now. I will help now. I will not endanger people to fuel my vanity unless, of course, you order me.” She smiles – I cannot read if it is approval or the opposite – and fades away. All the noise and mayhem of the present circumstance drops once more on my senses like an ocean wave. [CENTER]***[/CENTER] I join Verdre and Rey. The latter is grinning having just raised a spear and cried victory to the heavens. Verdre merely looks satisfied. But then she sees my expression, or perhaps something else. “Our Mistress?” she ventures. I must have some of the glow still about me. “She is here, and if we survive into night, promises mighty action through us.” “I have already felt this. Haven’t you?” I reflect on that. “Have I? Nothing like the powers you seem to be wielding.” “Yes, something is happening to me, certainly. I do not know if it is Our Lady of Uncertain Gifts.” A groan of pain escapes Rey. She arches her back, her hands moving to her shoulder blades. “Rey!” I step to her but she wards me off. Something is hurting her, and in a moment it is clear what that is. Two great dragon wings of four, five, no, seven colors erupt from her back! Red, blue and green – known ill-tempered chromatic dragon colors – but there are yellow, orange, purple and indigo as well, dragon hues I had not heard of, though I am no scholar. I peer into her eyes. “Rey?” “Yes.” “Is it still you?” She looks annoyed. “Yes! But….” I wait for her. “Yes. It is me. But you are right to ask: I have been hearing her in my head.” “Seraph?” “Tiamat.” “Queen of the Chromatics?” Verdre clarifies, and Rey nods. “What does she say?” She hesitates. Verdre asked as a master to a student, and Rey, I see, is weighing this budding relationship. “Please,” I add. “She wishes me to slay as many undead dragons here as possible, and to use any means to hurt or even kill Dragotha.” Verdre grunts an approval. I take Rey’s hand. “If she is in your thoughts, she can influence them. I have had some experience with that myself. Rey, will you tell us, only us if you are uncomfortable with the others, if you think she is pushing you to action or moods you do not feel are your own? I may be able to … I don’t know what, actually. But please tell me anyway?” “All right, Etona.” I hug her until she says, “Etona?” “Yes?” “We need to save the world.” “Oh. That. Yeah. [CENTER]***[/CENTER] The mighty stone door to what will be the resting chamber of the phylactery is ornate. Five unhappy-looking dragon heads are inscribed along its top arch. “To pass through, you must be attuned,” says Tylanthros. This turns out to be a process wherein each of us places a hand on a glyph in the door while the druid caretakers chant. Their faces are calm though even this short journey – through the town to this door – has cost them. I think back to my own shivering, dizzy days when I had to concentrate from dusk to dawn, but the fate of the world wasn’t in my hands, and I wasn’t relying on people I had never met. We all enter the chamber. Once inside, Treig wonders aloud whether we should open the phylactery. Tylanthros is troubled by this but is willing to discuss it. I know I should be on the side of these wise guardians of the world, but I am also very curious about the lantern’s contents and take up Treig’s side as to whether we should take Dragotha’s essence with us back to our time. While we converse, Treig has Rey unfurl her new, magnificent wings. He attempts to use them to shine light in different ways off of them, her colors exactly matching those of, what did Rey call it? the reliquary, or lantern. But there doesn’t seem to be a way to shine all the lights we need in all the places simultaneously, at least not here right now. After failing to open it, and more discussion, we are all persuaded that our purpose here is not to meddle with this relic but rather to bring the knowledge of it and its location – inside this spire – back to our time. The druids place the phylactery inside the final chamber. Straining to complete this last work of heavy concentration after all they have been through already, the ritual of sealing begins around a ring of water in the middle of which sits the phylactery and around the outside all of the druids. They pass around the Seal of Chaos, each pausing and raising a voice higher while handling it, until it ends in the druid leader’s grasp. He completes some arcane step and a fine white web descends on Dragotha’s soul’s receptacle. They continue chanting. One druid, exhausted from the ordeal, keels over, unconscious. Verdre takes his place and starts muttering something, I cannot quite hear. Another druid passes out, and Treig has caught something out of an eye corner. His eye. Out of the corner of his eye – yes, that is the expression. He nods to Jodan and me at the water but I do not detect anything, I examine the second fallen druid. A tiny, almost invisible pair of puncture wounds bleed tiny filaments of blood at his ankle. Something is biting them, an airy presence moving around the circle. A wet, blurbing sound raises my eyes: Jodan has created a sphere of water – another new trick from our no-longer-cursed noble – and captures the ‘wee beastie’, as Egan would say. He drops it onto dry stone and it vanishes in a way that seems to suggest it was banished or dispelled. I believe I can counteract the toxin: it appears to be a common tranquilizer. I throw together a couple of ingredients and whip up a poultice. It works surprisingly quickly, and the druid wakes up immediately. It is possible that one of these ritualists is working against the rest of us, so I ask him in a low voice if he could point out any he doesn’t know or believes to be acting oddly or has acted oddly before. Hesitantly, he points to a robed woman, and I unveil her. “Oh, dis ritual, is a thing you want, too, is it? Ah ha ha ha ha!” Baba Yaga. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
[5E] The Age of Worms - Solid Snake's Campaign
Top