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Sagiro's Story Hour Returns (new thread started on 5/18/08)
- Thread starter Sagiro
- Start date
el-remmen
Moderator Emeritus
Great stuff as always, Sagiro! I look forward to more.
Question: Are you working towards a final end for this campaign? Will you go 4E?
Also, this conversation reminded me of one near the end of my "Out of the Frying Pan" campaign:
Question: Are you working towards a final end for this campaign? Will you go 4E?
Also, this conversation reminded me of one near the end of my "Out of the Frying Pan" campaign:
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
el-remmen said:
Yes, I'm working towards a final end -- and I always have been! It's hard for me to say how far away I am from that end. I'm tempted to say the campaign is about 65% - 75% done, but I could be way off in either direction.
As for 4E -- no, I don't plan to switch. I've already moved the campaign from 2E to 3E to 3.5E, and I can't put my players through another system-change wringer, let alone require them to spend hundreds more collective dollars on books. That's no condemnation of 4E, which I find quite intriguing from what I've read, but I'm happy with 3.5 and figure I'll close out the campaign with it.
If I run a second campaign someday, it'll probably be using 4E, assuming it turns out not to suck.
-Sagiro
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 273
Condor’s Folly
The Company appears in the dark, under a bright half-moon and a sky full of stars. It’s a pleasantly warm evening with a light breeze ruffling the tall grasses indigenous to Harkran’s southern plain region. The Mirrors of Semek, a.k.a. Condor’s Plinths, are not immediately at hand. Aravis looks around with arcane sight and there is no magic within a hundred feet.
But while Cranchus’s teleportation was not spot-on accurate, things are not as dire as they might seem – as Grey Wolf’s half-elven eyes adjust to the moonlight he sees blocky shadows silhouetted against a darker horizon, no more than a couple hundred yards distant.
They are doubly protected against observers, being both disguised as small rats by a veil from Kibi and invisible through Morningstar’s cloak of night. A few minutes of walking brings them within a short stone’s throw of the Mirrors; they halt, and Morningstar casts true seeing. Neither she nor Aravis can detect any magic auras besides the overwhelming Earth Magic radiating from the Plinths.
Suspicious of their inaccurate arrival, Dranko suggests they circle around to the far side of the Mirrors in case their vector of approach was specifically arranged by an enemy, but all seems just as quiescent on the far side. Only the breeze and some field mice keep company with the Company.
Cautiously they move nearer to the standing stones, expecting ambush at every step. As close an observation as they can make without crossing the perimeter shows no footprints or scuffmarks on the dry dirt within the ring. As a final precaution Aravis casts mirage arcana, generating a duplicate illusionary ring of Mirrors next to the real ones, and adds a fake secure shelter in the middle of it implying that they might be hiding inside.
They step into the ring and walk warily to its center. Kibi takes the restored Eyes of Moirel from his robes and holds them in his cupped hands; immediately they start to glow a soft white. Seconds later they rise up into the air of their own volition, forming into a flat circle some ten feet above the ground. There they begin to spin, and as happens on Flashing Day, white light flashes from Mirror to Mirror, reflecting off of each polished obsidian face until it forms a seven-pointed star. Ernie concentrates on Home, one hand on his belt of stability.
A minute passes.
Two minutes.
To maintain the ruse of the mirage arcana, Kibi uses his staff of illusion to mimic the light show there.
Three minutes.
The Eyes of Moirel spin faster in their circle, and the translucent beams of light now start to flicker with color.
It is in the 6th minute, when the Company has just started to believe that the ambush will come at the end of their journey rather than the beginning, that they are attacked.
* *
Most wizards, if asked to produce magics that could send a subject far into the future, would laugh at the very idea. For two reasons, the Earth Wizard Condor did not.
For one thing, laughing at Emperor Naloric is not typically conducive to long-term survival, no matter how outrageous his suggestions. For another, Condor actually knew he could do it.
Time travel was, at the time of the Emperor’s humble proposal, mostly a theoretical possibility. Condor had dabbled in small ways over his many years of study, pulling at the threads of causality and continuum surrounding small, inanimate objects. He had drawn up schematics for larger projects, surmised impossibly complex formulae, constructed elaborate jeweled constructs. And he had descended to the deepest hot pits beneath the Emperor’s palace, there to commune with the Source and learn its secrets.
Naloric was not normally a patient creature, but he took a surprisingly relaxed and tolerant attitude towards Condor’s eventual proposal – a ring of standing stones crafted in conjunction with a set of tortured and magic-saturated diamonds. Condor suspected the reason, and he was correct: for all of Naloric’s malign power and formidable intellect, he didn’t really know what Condor was talking about when it came to the project’s details.
“I anticipate that the entire undertaking will last eight months,” Condor had said at the conclusion of the presentation. “My apprentices can begin on the plinths while I prepare the diamonds. There will be seven of each, in order to preserve the essential symmetries of...”
Naloric cut him off with a dismissive wave.
“Can your apparatus be tested, before I go myself?”
“Of course, my lord Emperor,” Condor had said emphatically. “I will be able to tune the diamonds as well as infuse the...”
“Enough, Condor. I believe you. And to further demonstrate to me your great confidence, your daughter Moirel will be the test subject. I will afford her that singular honor.”
Time slowed then for Condor, and he knew that the next second contained many possibilities, few of them good. His words, his expressions, his posture, these all could betray his concerns, his doubts, his unspoken fears of side-effects. Would Naloric see into his soul, see that Condor had already considered that, were the Emperor not to return, the Earth Wizard would be unmatched in power in Charagan?
“You are generous beyond words,” is what he said. “My daughter will blaze a trail for you through the centuries and return triumphant.”
“Excellent.” Naloric smiled, and Condor suspected then that the Emperor knew every thought in his head, and didn’t care. “I see no further need for delay. You are dismissed.”
It took a little over a year for the completion of Condor's Plinths and what he called the "Diamond Keys." Over forty slaves died during the construction, most from a combination of exhaustion and malnourishment, a few from being crushed beneath great masses of rock or collapsing scaffolds. Naloric never once complained of the extended schedule, or offered Condor anything but his full support.
Moirel was a formidable Earth Wizard in her own right, a 31-year-old woman on a career trajectory to someday match or exceed her father in arcane might. She stoically accepted her role as guinea-pig and spent most of the year studying, questioning, readying. She even assisted Condor in some of the more fiddly bits of the Diamond Keys' creation, and co-authored a spell of fusion that set the perfect spheres of jet in the very center of each otherwise-flawless gemstone.
When the time came Moirel was confident of success. She would take the seven Diamonds, stand in the center of the Plinths, and be transported some hundreds of years into the future. She would only stay as long was necessary to ascertain the year, and then return. (The journey back would require the casting of several complex spells, but nothing beyond her impressive talents.)
Had anyone consulted Cranchus about all of this he would have suggested a Ring of Stability to prevent Moirel from losing her sanity during the excursion. But no one did, and long after Moirel vanished from the center of the flashing Plinths, Condor and Naloric still waited. The plan had been for Condor's daughter to return to a time only 5 minutes after she left, but Condor insisted that time travel was an inexact science at best and that it could be hours instead of minutes.
Naloric gave him one full day, during which Condor's thoughts transitioned from optimistic, to nervous, to an internal debate regarding whether he should resist the inevitable punishments or simply submit to them. Already depressed by the apparent sacrifice of his only child, he settled on the latter when Naloric pronounced his judgment.
"Condor, you have failed me. Furthermore, your inner thoughts of sedition and treachery have not escaped my notice. I am displeased but not surprised; I have had many servants reach heights of power that invited such ambitions.
"I will leave you your life, and will retain you in my court, albeit at a diminished position. But your power must be culled -- it will be for your own good, in the long run."
Condor bowed his head, and Naloric placed his hand upon it.
Sometime later Condor regained consciousness. He felt violated, angry, and in his mind and memories were now gaping holes that might never be refilled. It was especially galling that he no longer possessed the knowledge to fully analyze his failure. Still, possessed of a certainty that Moirel had traveled through time but was either unable or unwilling to return, he brooded over his daughter's fate. Excluded now from Naloric’s inner circle he found himself with abundant time for bitter introspection.
Years passed, but Condor gained scant perspective. Only his indignation and shame increased with time. Moirel had not returned, and his Plinths were long abandoned, monuments to his greatest mistake. ‘Condor’s Folly,” they were now called by some. Finally, heedless of the potential consequences should Naloric discover his plot, he gained a forbidden audience with one of Naloric's three Oracular Crones. The Crone, named Tizha, sat him in a room thick with incense mingled with the reek of fresh entrails. Like all the Crones, Tizha was Blood-touched, and her aura was so foul that Condor, no stranger to evil’s palpable aspects, squirmed in his chair.
He gave his gift of gold, and his gift of blood, and his gift of kin (a distant cousin, unlikely to be missed). Tizha pronounced his fate.
"Your daughter is lost, but your legacy returns, and your Diamonds also. One chance remains to you, in the half-moon light of Grenke's heavenly journey. Muster what power remains to you, and take truth and gems from disjoint interlopers. Should you survive – a thing by no means certain -- and present your proof, the Emperor will see you again with favor."
Some months later Tizha's prophetic words came to fruition. Condor waited on each night of the half-moon, heavily enchanted and watching with perfect perception from the secret safety of one of his Plinths. And the interlopers came, just as the Crone had foretold.
...to be continued...
Condor’s Folly
The Company appears in the dark, under a bright half-moon and a sky full of stars. It’s a pleasantly warm evening with a light breeze ruffling the tall grasses indigenous to Harkran’s southern plain region. The Mirrors of Semek, a.k.a. Condor’s Plinths, are not immediately at hand. Aravis looks around with arcane sight and there is no magic within a hundred feet.
But while Cranchus’s teleportation was not spot-on accurate, things are not as dire as they might seem – as Grey Wolf’s half-elven eyes adjust to the moonlight he sees blocky shadows silhouetted against a darker horizon, no more than a couple hundred yards distant.
They are doubly protected against observers, being both disguised as small rats by a veil from Kibi and invisible through Morningstar’s cloak of night. A few minutes of walking brings them within a short stone’s throw of the Mirrors; they halt, and Morningstar casts true seeing. Neither she nor Aravis can detect any magic auras besides the overwhelming Earth Magic radiating from the Plinths.
Suspicious of their inaccurate arrival, Dranko suggests they circle around to the far side of the Mirrors in case their vector of approach was specifically arranged by an enemy, but all seems just as quiescent on the far side. Only the breeze and some field mice keep company with the Company.
Cautiously they move nearer to the standing stones, expecting ambush at every step. As close an observation as they can make without crossing the perimeter shows no footprints or scuffmarks on the dry dirt within the ring. As a final precaution Aravis casts mirage arcana, generating a duplicate illusionary ring of Mirrors next to the real ones, and adds a fake secure shelter in the middle of it implying that they might be hiding inside.
They step into the ring and walk warily to its center. Kibi takes the restored Eyes of Moirel from his robes and holds them in his cupped hands; immediately they start to glow a soft white. Seconds later they rise up into the air of their own volition, forming into a flat circle some ten feet above the ground. There they begin to spin, and as happens on Flashing Day, white light flashes from Mirror to Mirror, reflecting off of each polished obsidian face until it forms a seven-pointed star. Ernie concentrates on Home, one hand on his belt of stability.
A minute passes.
Two minutes.
To maintain the ruse of the mirage arcana, Kibi uses his staff of illusion to mimic the light show there.
Three minutes.
The Eyes of Moirel spin faster in their circle, and the translucent beams of light now start to flicker with color.
It is in the 6th minute, when the Company has just started to believe that the ambush will come at the end of their journey rather than the beginning, that they are attacked.
* *
Most wizards, if asked to produce magics that could send a subject far into the future, would laugh at the very idea. For two reasons, the Earth Wizard Condor did not.
For one thing, laughing at Emperor Naloric is not typically conducive to long-term survival, no matter how outrageous his suggestions. For another, Condor actually knew he could do it.
Time travel was, at the time of the Emperor’s humble proposal, mostly a theoretical possibility. Condor had dabbled in small ways over his many years of study, pulling at the threads of causality and continuum surrounding small, inanimate objects. He had drawn up schematics for larger projects, surmised impossibly complex formulae, constructed elaborate jeweled constructs. And he had descended to the deepest hot pits beneath the Emperor’s palace, there to commune with the Source and learn its secrets.
Naloric was not normally a patient creature, but he took a surprisingly relaxed and tolerant attitude towards Condor’s eventual proposal – a ring of standing stones crafted in conjunction with a set of tortured and magic-saturated diamonds. Condor suspected the reason, and he was correct: for all of Naloric’s malign power and formidable intellect, he didn’t really know what Condor was talking about when it came to the project’s details.
“I anticipate that the entire undertaking will last eight months,” Condor had said at the conclusion of the presentation. “My apprentices can begin on the plinths while I prepare the diamonds. There will be seven of each, in order to preserve the essential symmetries of...”
Naloric cut him off with a dismissive wave.
“Can your apparatus be tested, before I go myself?”
“Of course, my lord Emperor,” Condor had said emphatically. “I will be able to tune the diamonds as well as infuse the...”
“Enough, Condor. I believe you. And to further demonstrate to me your great confidence, your daughter Moirel will be the test subject. I will afford her that singular honor.”
Time slowed then for Condor, and he knew that the next second contained many possibilities, few of them good. His words, his expressions, his posture, these all could betray his concerns, his doubts, his unspoken fears of side-effects. Would Naloric see into his soul, see that Condor had already considered that, were the Emperor not to return, the Earth Wizard would be unmatched in power in Charagan?
“You are generous beyond words,” is what he said. “My daughter will blaze a trail for you through the centuries and return triumphant.”
“Excellent.” Naloric smiled, and Condor suspected then that the Emperor knew every thought in his head, and didn’t care. “I see no further need for delay. You are dismissed.”
It took a little over a year for the completion of Condor's Plinths and what he called the "Diamond Keys." Over forty slaves died during the construction, most from a combination of exhaustion and malnourishment, a few from being crushed beneath great masses of rock or collapsing scaffolds. Naloric never once complained of the extended schedule, or offered Condor anything but his full support.
Moirel was a formidable Earth Wizard in her own right, a 31-year-old woman on a career trajectory to someday match or exceed her father in arcane might. She stoically accepted her role as guinea-pig and spent most of the year studying, questioning, readying. She even assisted Condor in some of the more fiddly bits of the Diamond Keys' creation, and co-authored a spell of fusion that set the perfect spheres of jet in the very center of each otherwise-flawless gemstone.
When the time came Moirel was confident of success. She would take the seven Diamonds, stand in the center of the Plinths, and be transported some hundreds of years into the future. She would only stay as long was necessary to ascertain the year, and then return. (The journey back would require the casting of several complex spells, but nothing beyond her impressive talents.)
Had anyone consulted Cranchus about all of this he would have suggested a Ring of Stability to prevent Moirel from losing her sanity during the excursion. But no one did, and long after Moirel vanished from the center of the flashing Plinths, Condor and Naloric still waited. The plan had been for Condor's daughter to return to a time only 5 minutes after she left, but Condor insisted that time travel was an inexact science at best and that it could be hours instead of minutes.
Naloric gave him one full day, during which Condor's thoughts transitioned from optimistic, to nervous, to an internal debate regarding whether he should resist the inevitable punishments or simply submit to them. Already depressed by the apparent sacrifice of his only child, he settled on the latter when Naloric pronounced his judgment.
"Condor, you have failed me. Furthermore, your inner thoughts of sedition and treachery have not escaped my notice. I am displeased but not surprised; I have had many servants reach heights of power that invited such ambitions.
"I will leave you your life, and will retain you in my court, albeit at a diminished position. But your power must be culled -- it will be for your own good, in the long run."
Condor bowed his head, and Naloric placed his hand upon it.
Sometime later Condor regained consciousness. He felt violated, angry, and in his mind and memories were now gaping holes that might never be refilled. It was especially galling that he no longer possessed the knowledge to fully analyze his failure. Still, possessed of a certainty that Moirel had traveled through time but was either unable or unwilling to return, he brooded over his daughter's fate. Excluded now from Naloric’s inner circle he found himself with abundant time for bitter introspection.
Years passed, but Condor gained scant perspective. Only his indignation and shame increased with time. Moirel had not returned, and his Plinths were long abandoned, monuments to his greatest mistake. ‘Condor’s Folly,” they were now called by some. Finally, heedless of the potential consequences should Naloric discover his plot, he gained a forbidden audience with one of Naloric's three Oracular Crones. The Crone, named Tizha, sat him in a room thick with incense mingled with the reek of fresh entrails. Like all the Crones, Tizha was Blood-touched, and her aura was so foul that Condor, no stranger to evil’s palpable aspects, squirmed in his chair.
He gave his gift of gold, and his gift of blood, and his gift of kin (a distant cousin, unlikely to be missed). Tizha pronounced his fate.
"Your daughter is lost, but your legacy returns, and your Diamonds also. One chance remains to you, in the half-moon light of Grenke's heavenly journey. Muster what power remains to you, and take truth and gems from disjoint interlopers. Should you survive – a thing by no means certain -- and present your proof, the Emperor will see you again with favor."
Some months later Tizha's prophetic words came to fruition. Condor waited on each night of the half-moon, heavily enchanted and watching with perfect perception from the secret safety of one of his Plinths. And the interlopers came, just as the Crone had foretold.
...to be continued...
Last edited:
blargney the second
blargney the minute's son
Woah. How long ago did you plan this story and upcoming encounter?
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 274
The Last Step
Condor steps out smoothly from the solid northernmost Plinth. He is invisible, but in case anyone can see him regardless he is also surrounded by a cluster of mirror images.
He is a Sharshun, or at very least a Mors Tarathi. Muscles unbecoming of a wizard bulge beneath black robes; his bare arms and face are obscured by myriad tattoos and piercings. His face has a timeless quality that belies estimates of age. And confirming the Company’s worst fears, his skin is flesh and stone mingled, just like Cranchus.
“Condor,” breaths Kibi in dismay.
“Hi, great-great-great-grand-dad,” says Grey Wolf. “We’re just leaving.”
Condor ignores this meaningless babble; in fact, he is already casting. An elder earth elemental appears much sooner than it should, towering in front of Aravis and standing nearly as tall as the Plinths themselves. The Sharshun follows this with a tactically placed wall of force before hissing:
“This will return me to the Emperor’s favor.”
Condor is well prepared for this battle, but so is the Company. For starters they’re all still invisible until someone attacks, and secondly many of them are sporting protection from evil that hedges out the direct touch of summoned creatures. As a result of this, one of the sixty-foot-tall elemental’s fists strikes the ground, and the other glances off of Yoba’s ward.
There are three members of the party who can see Condor: Morningstar with her true seeing and Grey Wolf and Kibi with see invisibility spells. Aravis, with greater arcane sight, cannot see Condor’s body, but can figure out his location easily enough by the miasma of arcane auras that surround him.
The wall of force, while not blocking the beams of light from the Eyes and Mirrors, is faintly illuminated by it. With the wall between him and Condor, Dranko decides the best way over it is by climbing the elemental’s body. He’s half way up its back when Condor sinks into the ground.
“Xorn movement” groans Kibi. “Of course.” So saying, he casts the same on himself.
With Condor momentarily out of the picture, Yoba, Morningstar and Snokas concentrate on the elemental – Snokas and Yoba swing their weapons (with little effect) while Morningstar tosses a fire seed (somewhat more effective). Ernie readies a spell while Aravis takes a few seconds to check on the Eyes of Moirel. The Eyes are still spinning in place, seemingly oblivious to, and so far unaffected by, the recent violence.
The elemental notices that some small irritant is using its body as a ladder. It plucks Dranko from its back and holds the half-orc firm in a stony grip. At its feet, Grey Wolf’s summoned wolves appear – a pack of speed-bumps, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The elemental swats at them with Dranko.
Condor appears again, rising up from the ground and casting a spell. Over the Rary’s telepathic bond Grey Wolf serves as spotter, and this triggers Ernie’s flame strike, dropped on Condor’s head. The Sharshun wizard winces but maintains his concentration well enough to catch the entire Company in a horrid wilting. Water is forced painfully from their bodies. He follows this with a quickened slow that only affects Flicker and Yoba.
“Just so you know,” says Grey Wolf, his voice pained, “you just sucked the moisture out of one of your own kin.”
Condor continues to ignore him. Kin? Absurd.
Kibi casts Evard’s Black Tentacles with Condor at its center, and one of the writhing black pseudopodia wraps the enemy up tight. He follows it up with coldfire.
“I know how you feel,” calls out Dranko.
“Use the half-orc as a club!” Condor shouts to the elemental. It’s good advice, as this will circumvent the hedging effects of protection from evil.. Dranko feels the wind pushed from his lungs as the rocky behemoth tightens its grip.
Aravis puts an incipient dimension door on Pewter and sends his familiar scampering up toward Dranko in order to free him. Morningstar casts the first of many mass cure spells, restoring some vital fluids to herself and her friends, before quickening a searing darkness. Worse yet for Condor is a reciprocal gyre from Grey Wolf, which does damage commensurate with the number and strength of active spells on the target.
Condor is heavily enchanted and so his scream of pain is certainly genuine. He gulps, and vanishes, only to reappear on the far side of the circle. He absorbs the pain of a readied ice storm Dranko casts through a magic ring, and blasts the majority of the party with a delayed blast sonic ball. Then he sinks into the ground again.
Kibi surfaces and uses a staff to cast rainbow pattern around the earth elemental’s head. Such beautiful, mesmerizing lights! The elemental is transfixed, enchanted both literally and figuratively. It drops Dranko and follows the lights as Kibi moves them off to the side, stepping idly over the wall of force as it leaves.
Grey Wolf immediately dismisses his wolf pack, not wanting an attack to shake the elemental from its reverie. Pewter sighs as his mission is made meaningless, and casts the dimension door on himself to return to Aravis. Morningstar casts a second mass curative, while the others ready for Condor’s return.
The malign wizard rises up from the ground in a new part of the circle. Ernie drops a holy smite on his head, just before Aravis casts maze. A second later Aravis finds himself in the maze, and grumbling about the vicissitudes of spell turning.
Condor gulps again, a strange and deliberate gesture that suggests something more than simple nerves, and then casts a second horrid wilting that leaves Flicker and Kibi nearly dead, and many others badly injured. Not a few members of the Company start to wonder if Condor might be out of their league, diminished though he might be.
(They might have been comforted to know that Condor was starting to wonder the opposite. He knew that in a one-on-many fight, time favors the many, and not a single adversary had dropped from a pair of his most potent necromantic blasts. But there was nothing for it but to battle on – what would be the point of fleeing? His foes would vanish into the future, leaving him with the unacceptable status quo. He needed time to cast the spells that would dislodge the Eyes from their current activities, and there would be no such opportunity while these strange heroes were alive. It was kill or be killed.)
Kibi gasps desperately for healing before popping most of Condor’s remaining mirror images (and using up the last vestiges of the spell turning) with a magic missile. Then he quickens a glitterdust upon Condor, whose invisible form (as well as his last remaining mirror image) is now coated with tiny glowing flecks.
Dranko heals Kibi with a wand, while Yoba lays on hands, bringing the dwarf back from the brink.
Morningstar blasts Condor with a flame strike, followed by a searing darkness. Shouldn’t a wizard be dead by now? On closer inspection, it’s evident that Condor has been healing himself throughout the battle.
“So,” calls Dranko. “You sacrificed your daughter for this? Was it worth it?”
Condor glares fiercely. “You wish to talk? Then surrender.”
“I would have expected you to have some backup from the Emperor,” continues Dranko. “Oh, but wait! He doesn’t trust you, does he? Ha ha!”
Beside himself with rage and confusion, Condor snarls. “Who are you, and what do you know of these things?”
“We have a relative of yours among us,” says Morningstar, gesturing to Grey Wolf.
“I have no...”
“Through your daughter, you dinglebat!” says Grey Wolf. “Haven’t you been listening?”
Condor, in all of his 61 years on Abernia, has never been called a ‘dinglebat’ or anything like it.
“That’s not possible,” he spits.
“I’m afraid so... grand-dad,” says Grey Wolf with a smirk.
Kibi frowns. Is gloating really worth giving away information that Condor wouldn’t otherwise know? I’m sure for Dranko it is...
Grey Wolf pops the final image with another flurry of magic missiles, and follows it up with a quickened acid orb before speaking again.
“If you had listened to me before, and called off your attack, you might have had a chance.”
“You lie!” Condor hisses. “My daughter had no children!”
“Oh, but she did. And now I’m here. But it doesn’t matter, at least not to you.”
Ernie casts heal on the nearly-dead Flicker while the others are engaged in their witty repartee. “Now stop getting so injured!” he admonishes. “Take care of yourself!”
Aravis reappears from his own maze, having easily found his way out. He’s pleased with himself for about two seconds before coming to regret the timing – Condor blasts the entire party with an empowered cone of cold. Amazingly no one is dead; their patchwork of healing spells, potions and wands is barely keeping everyone conscious. Now, though, over half the Company is one spell away from death. Yoba herself looks like you could kill her with strong language, and Snokas blinks like he’s not sure where he is. Having cast his spell, Condor quickly steps behind the nearest Plinth, out of the line of sight of every member of the Company.
Dranko, healthiest of the party, wants nothing more that to charge over and get in Condor's face. Since the direct path is blocked by Kibi’s black tentacles he downs a fly potion and flies. As he nears the Plinth behind which he expects to see Condor, he encounters Condor's repulsion field. With a tremendous burst of concentration and will, he fights through it. Behind the Plinth he sees Condor's glittering outline.
Kibi summons his own earth elemental, smaller than Condor’s but big enough. It appears next to Condor’s rock and grabs the Earth Wizard, grappling.. Kibi then sinks back underground.
The rest of the Company keeps healing, trying to keep up with Condor’s prodigious damage-dealing. Potions are consumed, wands used, and Morningstar casts her third mass cure.
To Dranko’s great frustration, Condor gulps again before casting a spell – dimension door or teleport, presumably – and vanishing from the elemental’s grip. Dranko flies straight up and looks around frantically. There’s no sign of Condor’s glittering form – he could be hiding behind any of the Plinths. Grey Wolf and Snokas both make a quick search but also come up empty. Morningstar casts heal on herself and murmurs thanks to Ell.
Condor knows that it’s almost over, one way or another. He has run out of healing and cannot endure more than another spell or two, but the same, he thinks, is true of many of his enemies. When he next emerges from the ground he will have to endure whatever his foes have ready and blast with his most potent remaining spell – an empowered chain lightning. He has dispelled the glitterdust, but he knows that some of his foes can see him anyway. He dares wait no longer.
Kill or be killed.
Condor appears and starts to cast. Grey Wolf is too far to cast his enervate, but Aravis casts reverse gravity almost concurrently with a flame strike from Morningstar. For the first time in memory Condor’s contact from the ground is forcibly severed. His discomfiture at rising from the ground makes it impossible to dodge any of the flame strike, and the combined effect causes his chain lightning to fizzle despite his superhuman ability to concentrate. Condor falls upward, coming to a bobbing stop high above the ring of Mirrors.
“He’s at the top,” confirms Grey Wolf.
Dranko leaps into the gravity shaft and hurtles upward, colliding with Condor at the apex. They float there together, and though Dranko cannot see his opponent, he can feel the brush of Condor’s robe. And then Dranko feels something else: the plink of iron filings from Grey Wolf’s ironstorm. He grins wickedly, showing his tusks. He knows what’s coming.
“You know what’s sad?” says Dranko. “You lived a failure, and you’re going to die a failure.”
“There was no failure!” roars Condor. “My experiment succeeded. You are living proof!”
“That’s not what the Emperor would say,” says Dranko.
“He will change his mind when I bring him your corpses, along with my Diamonds!”
Dranko glances downward, wondering when the blast is coming. From his high vantage the light of the Plinths is astonishingly beautiful, a seven-pointed star of rainbow lights in the countryside’s wide and dark expanse.
“You know, if you were a real wizard, you could just fly away right now,” he says.
“Who are you?” demands Condor.
Dranko’s grin grows wider. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to say this: ‘I’m your worst nightmare!’”.
That turns out to be quite true.
Aravis can’t see Condor well enough to target his spell, but he can see Dranko, and with the ironstorm in place that’s all that matters. He targets an empowered chain lightning on his friend, and when the stroke enters the field of iron filings the entire area is filled with raging electricity. Dranko twists, dodges, and avoids all harm.
The same cannot be said of Condor. His body explodes in a shower of rocks and gore, which, along with his magic items, rain down in a gruesome shower upon the Company below. So comes to an end one of the greatest Earth Wizards ever born on Abernia.
The Eyes of Moirel continue to spin.
Flicker and Aravis quickly collect the magic items, and there’s a flurry of healing in case more danger comes.
Fourteen minutes after the Eyes started spinning, a voice sounds in their minds: “Ernest. It’s time.”
The Company crowds around Ernie, putting their hands on his shoulders. Ernie closes his eyes and thinks fondly of Home, his proper place in space and time. The belt of stability becomes warm around his waist.
Condor’s Plinths start to blink in and out of existence. As they did when they traveled backward in time the Company feels as if they are floating, though that is objectively untrue.
Time passes in unknowable ways. The Company is detached from the universe as it rushes past them. Toward the end of their journey there is a brief flash, and a snapshot vision of their own duplicates passing in the other direction. Then there is soft oblivion; there are parts of the journey for which it is best to be unaware.
* *
Above them the sky is a cold and washed-out blue. Beneath them is a thick bed of snow. Before they can come to any realization of their journey’s end, the sky and sun fade out together into a uniform white, and they hear a strange sound in the distance. It is the rhythmic thumping of horse hooves. Together they share a vision of a distant place:
In Djaw, greatest of the Jewels of the Plains, a stable-boy named Four Honest Thoughts stands agog. Before him is the stall of the warhorse Thunder, steed of the errant paladin One Certain Step. It was almost six months ago that she trotted into the city, alone, released temporarily from service while her master journeyed underground. Since that time it has fallen to Honest Thoughts to see to her feeding and comfort, against the day that One Certain Step would return.
“Feathers, come quickly!” he calls to his friend, a teenaged lass his own age who shares duties with him in the stables. Two Orange Feathers runs over to see what’s the matter, and soon she too is standing slack-jawed. The stall is empty. Thunder has vanished, though she was there not moments ago, and it’s impossible that the mare could have walked out without them knowing. But what has the two youngsters in awe is that the empty stall is glowing with a soft yellow radiance, a holy cloister strewn with straw.
On the wide slopes of Mount Celestia a holy knight in unstained armor stands facing a burgeoning sunrise. His heart and mind are at peace, and no earthly care troubles his fair countenance. Far below him a magnificent white horse gallops toward him through boundless fields of the greenest grass. The sound of her thundering hooves comes clear to the ears of the knight, and a tear of joy shines bright in his eye, for soon, soon, he will be riding again.
The Last Step
Condor steps out smoothly from the solid northernmost Plinth. He is invisible, but in case anyone can see him regardless he is also surrounded by a cluster of mirror images.
He is a Sharshun, or at very least a Mors Tarathi. Muscles unbecoming of a wizard bulge beneath black robes; his bare arms and face are obscured by myriad tattoos and piercings. His face has a timeless quality that belies estimates of age. And confirming the Company’s worst fears, his skin is flesh and stone mingled, just like Cranchus.
“Condor,” breaths Kibi in dismay.
“Hi, great-great-great-grand-dad,” says Grey Wolf. “We’re just leaving.”
Condor ignores this meaningless babble; in fact, he is already casting. An elder earth elemental appears much sooner than it should, towering in front of Aravis and standing nearly as tall as the Plinths themselves. The Sharshun follows this with a tactically placed wall of force before hissing:
“This will return me to the Emperor’s favor.”
Condor is well prepared for this battle, but so is the Company. For starters they’re all still invisible until someone attacks, and secondly many of them are sporting protection from evil that hedges out the direct touch of summoned creatures. As a result of this, one of the sixty-foot-tall elemental’s fists strikes the ground, and the other glances off of Yoba’s ward.
There are three members of the party who can see Condor: Morningstar with her true seeing and Grey Wolf and Kibi with see invisibility spells. Aravis, with greater arcane sight, cannot see Condor’s body, but can figure out his location easily enough by the miasma of arcane auras that surround him.
The wall of force, while not blocking the beams of light from the Eyes and Mirrors, is faintly illuminated by it. With the wall between him and Condor, Dranko decides the best way over it is by climbing the elemental’s body. He’s half way up its back when Condor sinks into the ground.
“Xorn movement” groans Kibi. “Of course.” So saying, he casts the same on himself.
With Condor momentarily out of the picture, Yoba, Morningstar and Snokas concentrate on the elemental – Snokas and Yoba swing their weapons (with little effect) while Morningstar tosses a fire seed (somewhat more effective). Ernie readies a spell while Aravis takes a few seconds to check on the Eyes of Moirel. The Eyes are still spinning in place, seemingly oblivious to, and so far unaffected by, the recent violence.
The elemental notices that some small irritant is using its body as a ladder. It plucks Dranko from its back and holds the half-orc firm in a stony grip. At its feet, Grey Wolf’s summoned wolves appear – a pack of speed-bumps, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The elemental swats at them with Dranko.
Condor appears again, rising up from the ground and casting a spell. Over the Rary’s telepathic bond Grey Wolf serves as spotter, and this triggers Ernie’s flame strike, dropped on Condor’s head. The Sharshun wizard winces but maintains his concentration well enough to catch the entire Company in a horrid wilting. Water is forced painfully from their bodies. He follows this with a quickened slow that only affects Flicker and Yoba.
“Just so you know,” says Grey Wolf, his voice pained, “you just sucked the moisture out of one of your own kin.”
Condor continues to ignore him. Kin? Absurd.
Kibi casts Evard’s Black Tentacles with Condor at its center, and one of the writhing black pseudopodia wraps the enemy up tight. He follows it up with coldfire.
“I know how you feel,” calls out Dranko.
“Use the half-orc as a club!” Condor shouts to the elemental. It’s good advice, as this will circumvent the hedging effects of protection from evil.. Dranko feels the wind pushed from his lungs as the rocky behemoth tightens its grip.
Aravis puts an incipient dimension door on Pewter and sends his familiar scampering up toward Dranko in order to free him. Morningstar casts the first of many mass cure spells, restoring some vital fluids to herself and her friends, before quickening a searing darkness. Worse yet for Condor is a reciprocal gyre from Grey Wolf, which does damage commensurate with the number and strength of active spells on the target.
Condor is heavily enchanted and so his scream of pain is certainly genuine. He gulps, and vanishes, only to reappear on the far side of the circle. He absorbs the pain of a readied ice storm Dranko casts through a magic ring, and blasts the majority of the party with a delayed blast sonic ball. Then he sinks into the ground again.
Kibi surfaces and uses a staff to cast rainbow pattern around the earth elemental’s head. Such beautiful, mesmerizing lights! The elemental is transfixed, enchanted both literally and figuratively. It drops Dranko and follows the lights as Kibi moves them off to the side, stepping idly over the wall of force as it leaves.
Grey Wolf immediately dismisses his wolf pack, not wanting an attack to shake the elemental from its reverie. Pewter sighs as his mission is made meaningless, and casts the dimension door on himself to return to Aravis. Morningstar casts a second mass curative, while the others ready for Condor’s return.
The malign wizard rises up from the ground in a new part of the circle. Ernie drops a holy smite on his head, just before Aravis casts maze. A second later Aravis finds himself in the maze, and grumbling about the vicissitudes of spell turning.
Condor gulps again, a strange and deliberate gesture that suggests something more than simple nerves, and then casts a second horrid wilting that leaves Flicker and Kibi nearly dead, and many others badly injured. Not a few members of the Company start to wonder if Condor might be out of their league, diminished though he might be.
(They might have been comforted to know that Condor was starting to wonder the opposite. He knew that in a one-on-many fight, time favors the many, and not a single adversary had dropped from a pair of his most potent necromantic blasts. But there was nothing for it but to battle on – what would be the point of fleeing? His foes would vanish into the future, leaving him with the unacceptable status quo. He needed time to cast the spells that would dislodge the Eyes from their current activities, and there would be no such opportunity while these strange heroes were alive. It was kill or be killed.)
Kibi gasps desperately for healing before popping most of Condor’s remaining mirror images (and using up the last vestiges of the spell turning) with a magic missile. Then he quickens a glitterdust upon Condor, whose invisible form (as well as his last remaining mirror image) is now coated with tiny glowing flecks.
Dranko heals Kibi with a wand, while Yoba lays on hands, bringing the dwarf back from the brink.
Morningstar blasts Condor with a flame strike, followed by a searing darkness. Shouldn’t a wizard be dead by now? On closer inspection, it’s evident that Condor has been healing himself throughout the battle.
“So,” calls Dranko. “You sacrificed your daughter for this? Was it worth it?”
Condor glares fiercely. “You wish to talk? Then surrender.”
“I would have expected you to have some backup from the Emperor,” continues Dranko. “Oh, but wait! He doesn’t trust you, does he? Ha ha!”
Beside himself with rage and confusion, Condor snarls. “Who are you, and what do you know of these things?”
“We have a relative of yours among us,” says Morningstar, gesturing to Grey Wolf.
“I have no...”
“Through your daughter, you dinglebat!” says Grey Wolf. “Haven’t you been listening?”
Condor, in all of his 61 years on Abernia, has never been called a ‘dinglebat’ or anything like it.
“That’s not possible,” he spits.
“I’m afraid so... grand-dad,” says Grey Wolf with a smirk.
Kibi frowns. Is gloating really worth giving away information that Condor wouldn’t otherwise know? I’m sure for Dranko it is...
Grey Wolf pops the final image with another flurry of magic missiles, and follows it up with a quickened acid orb before speaking again.
“If you had listened to me before, and called off your attack, you might have had a chance.”
“You lie!” Condor hisses. “My daughter had no children!”
“Oh, but she did. And now I’m here. But it doesn’t matter, at least not to you.”
Ernie casts heal on the nearly-dead Flicker while the others are engaged in their witty repartee. “Now stop getting so injured!” he admonishes. “Take care of yourself!”
Aravis reappears from his own maze, having easily found his way out. He’s pleased with himself for about two seconds before coming to regret the timing – Condor blasts the entire party with an empowered cone of cold. Amazingly no one is dead; their patchwork of healing spells, potions and wands is barely keeping everyone conscious. Now, though, over half the Company is one spell away from death. Yoba herself looks like you could kill her with strong language, and Snokas blinks like he’s not sure where he is. Having cast his spell, Condor quickly steps behind the nearest Plinth, out of the line of sight of every member of the Company.
Dranko, healthiest of the party, wants nothing more that to charge over and get in Condor's face. Since the direct path is blocked by Kibi’s black tentacles he downs a fly potion and flies. As he nears the Plinth behind which he expects to see Condor, he encounters Condor's repulsion field. With a tremendous burst of concentration and will, he fights through it. Behind the Plinth he sees Condor's glittering outline.
Kibi summons his own earth elemental, smaller than Condor’s but big enough. It appears next to Condor’s rock and grabs the Earth Wizard, grappling.. Kibi then sinks back underground.
The rest of the Company keeps healing, trying to keep up with Condor’s prodigious damage-dealing. Potions are consumed, wands used, and Morningstar casts her third mass cure.
To Dranko’s great frustration, Condor gulps again before casting a spell – dimension door or teleport, presumably – and vanishing from the elemental’s grip. Dranko flies straight up and looks around frantically. There’s no sign of Condor’s glittering form – he could be hiding behind any of the Plinths. Grey Wolf and Snokas both make a quick search but also come up empty. Morningstar casts heal on herself and murmurs thanks to Ell.
Condor knows that it’s almost over, one way or another. He has run out of healing and cannot endure more than another spell or two, but the same, he thinks, is true of many of his enemies. When he next emerges from the ground he will have to endure whatever his foes have ready and blast with his most potent remaining spell – an empowered chain lightning. He has dispelled the glitterdust, but he knows that some of his foes can see him anyway. He dares wait no longer.
Kill or be killed.
Condor appears and starts to cast. Grey Wolf is too far to cast his enervate, but Aravis casts reverse gravity almost concurrently with a flame strike from Morningstar. For the first time in memory Condor’s contact from the ground is forcibly severed. His discomfiture at rising from the ground makes it impossible to dodge any of the flame strike, and the combined effect causes his chain lightning to fizzle despite his superhuman ability to concentrate. Condor falls upward, coming to a bobbing stop high above the ring of Mirrors.
“He’s at the top,” confirms Grey Wolf.
Dranko leaps into the gravity shaft and hurtles upward, colliding with Condor at the apex. They float there together, and though Dranko cannot see his opponent, he can feel the brush of Condor’s robe. And then Dranko feels something else: the plink of iron filings from Grey Wolf’s ironstorm. He grins wickedly, showing his tusks. He knows what’s coming.
“You know what’s sad?” says Dranko. “You lived a failure, and you’re going to die a failure.”
“There was no failure!” roars Condor. “My experiment succeeded. You are living proof!”
“That’s not what the Emperor would say,” says Dranko.
“He will change his mind when I bring him your corpses, along with my Diamonds!”
Dranko glances downward, wondering when the blast is coming. From his high vantage the light of the Plinths is astonishingly beautiful, a seven-pointed star of rainbow lights in the countryside’s wide and dark expanse.
“You know, if you were a real wizard, you could just fly away right now,” he says.
“Who are you?” demands Condor.
Dranko’s grin grows wider. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to say this: ‘I’m your worst nightmare!’”.
That turns out to be quite true.
Aravis can’t see Condor well enough to target his spell, but he can see Dranko, and with the ironstorm in place that’s all that matters. He targets an empowered chain lightning on his friend, and when the stroke enters the field of iron filings the entire area is filled with raging electricity. Dranko twists, dodges, and avoids all harm.
The same cannot be said of Condor. His body explodes in a shower of rocks and gore, which, along with his magic items, rain down in a gruesome shower upon the Company below. So comes to an end one of the greatest Earth Wizards ever born on Abernia.
The Eyes of Moirel continue to spin.
Flicker and Aravis quickly collect the magic items, and there’s a flurry of healing in case more danger comes.
Fourteen minutes after the Eyes started spinning, a voice sounds in their minds: “Ernest. It’s time.”
The Company crowds around Ernie, putting their hands on his shoulders. Ernie closes his eyes and thinks fondly of Home, his proper place in space and time. The belt of stability becomes warm around his waist.
Condor’s Plinths start to blink in and out of existence. As they did when they traveled backward in time the Company feels as if they are floating, though that is objectively untrue.
Time passes in unknowable ways. The Company is detached from the universe as it rushes past them. Toward the end of their journey there is a brief flash, and a snapshot vision of their own duplicates passing in the other direction. Then there is soft oblivion; there are parts of the journey for which it is best to be unaware.
* *
Above them the sky is a cold and washed-out blue. Beneath them is a thick bed of snow. Before they can come to any realization of their journey’s end, the sky and sun fade out together into a uniform white, and they hear a strange sound in the distance. It is the rhythmic thumping of horse hooves. Together they share a vision of a distant place:
In Djaw, greatest of the Jewels of the Plains, a stable-boy named Four Honest Thoughts stands agog. Before him is the stall of the warhorse Thunder, steed of the errant paladin One Certain Step. It was almost six months ago that she trotted into the city, alone, released temporarily from service while her master journeyed underground. Since that time it has fallen to Honest Thoughts to see to her feeding and comfort, against the day that One Certain Step would return.
“Feathers, come quickly!” he calls to his friend, a teenaged lass his own age who shares duties with him in the stables. Two Orange Feathers runs over to see what’s the matter, and soon she too is standing slack-jawed. The stall is empty. Thunder has vanished, though she was there not moments ago, and it’s impossible that the mare could have walked out without them knowing. But what has the two youngsters in awe is that the empty stall is glowing with a soft yellow radiance, a holy cloister strewn with straw.
On the wide slopes of Mount Celestia a holy knight in unstained armor stands facing a burgeoning sunrise. His heart and mind are at peace, and no earthly care troubles his fair countenance. Far below him a magnificent white horse gallops toward him through boundless fields of the greenest grass. The sound of her thundering hooves comes clear to the ears of the knight, and a tear of joy shines bright in his eye, for soon, soon, he will be riding again.
Last edited:
coyote6
Adventurer
el-remmen said:
It's a WotC spell; there's a version in the Spell Compendium, but I think the original was in Complete Arcane (and was nastier; 1d6 per spell level, where the SC version is 1d12 per spell).
Also, I just realized that I should steal One Certain Step's name (at least) for my Exalted game.
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