Fae'shiel digs in the mud with her bare hands, suspecting that there was some fey prophecy at work. As she digs, the suspicion grows to an absolute certainty without her realizing it. Before long, the elf maiden is tunneling wildly into the mud, throwing gobbets of filth everywhere, her fingernails broken and her hands chafed and bleeding. Worried, several of the party members begin discussing about how to restrain her before she does real damage to herself, but Fae'shiel suddely shouts in triumph and draws an object from the murk. For a moment, it seems to be a battleaxe, but the mud shifts, revealing a scimitar with an unearthly black blade.
[sblock=Maui]The scimitar that Fae'shiel found is beautifully worked, but there's bad juju coming off it in waves. Maui wants no part of it.[/sblock][sblock=Fae'shiel]As Fae'shiel wraps her hands around the weapon's hilt, an ancient, inhuman voice echoes through her consciousness, all but overwhelming her.
I AWAKE FROM MY LONG SLUMBER, DRAWN FROM A BED OF EARTH AND WATER BY THE HAND OF A DAUGHTER OF THE AIR. MANY TIMES THE WHEEL HAS TURNED AND TURNED AGAIN WHILE I SLEPT, AND ONCE MORE I AM CALLED TO BATTLE, FOR THE DEVOURING FLAME RISES TO CONSUME THE KINGDOMS OF THIS PLACE AND THIS TIME.
The voice recedes. Fae'shiel is unsure whether it is weak from its sleep, or whether it simply had no more to say. She looks down and finally realizes that she is covered in mud and her hands are scraped raw.[/sblock]
A few minutes of slightly less frenzied excavation uncover the ancient bones of a dwarf and an elf, locked in combat. The scimitar seemed to have belonged to the dwarf, and the bony fingers of his other hand clutch a pearl. The elf is clad in a hide shirt inscribed with runes. By all rights, it should have rotted away, as everything else has, but it seems there is some magic keeping the shirt in good condition.
From up above, you hear a high tittering laugh, and Beyal looks down at the party from a perch on the ruined wall of the keep.
"And so the lesser king falls and dies, and the greater king takes his place, as is the natural order. And the new king is a wise king, for he rewards his subjects for their service to him, giving freely of the riches of his kingdom." She claps her hands happily.
"Such an excellent story! One which I shall keep close to me and treasure forever. Fare thee well, champions." She drops over the far side of the wall and disappears from view.
Mortar looks dubiously at the blade that Fae'shiel carries, having extricated himself from the trap some few minutes before.
"You know, lass, it occurs to me that as much as Beyal was a bargaining sort, she never charged you anything for that piece of information about getting your hands dirty," he says.
"Which makes me sort of suspect she didn't do you any favors by telling you. I'd be right careful of whatever that is."
The party can lash together branches with some spare rope salvaged from the traps in the guard room, in order to more easily carry the chests of trade goods back to the road. It's a muddy business getting everything together, but as the party leaves the ruined tower behind, a warm, refreshing rain begins to fall, and the the first members of a veritable feast of flies spiral down into the basement, drawn to the to the corpses of the boggard and the great toad. Walking through the empty pugwampi village, the party can hear the contented croaking of the tiny toad king in his new home.
| GM: | We're about ready to wrap. The pearl is a Pearl of Power, and the armor is a +1 hide shirt. The scimitar is the black blade for Fae'shiel magus class feature.
You can all get to levelling if you'd like. I'll have final totals for you soon. |
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