Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 335
The Tree that Guards the Way
In some respects, Naslund looks and feels much like many other cities. It has streets. It has buildings. But in most ways, Naslund looks and feels like a graveyard without gravestones. The buildings are close-packed, lean precariously, and resemble drip-sand-castles that have hardened into granite. Carvings on every building depict funeral processions and other death-related imagery. The buildings themselves offer few hints of their function; their doors are locked, their windows clouded and opaque. Names are inscribed above each door in an alien tongue. Perhaps they are all mausoleums?
No sun shines overhead, but the dome is filled with a thin gray light that brings on a great and heavy sadness. Faintly, all around, there is a quiet susurration, as if hundreds of unseen beings are whispering. But there is no doubt that, for the moment at least, they are alone.
For a minute or two they just stand inside the doorway. The dome has re-sealed itself behind them. They talk briefly about what happened to Cencerra, and how their attackers gained access to the interior. They come to the conclusion that Cencerra and her group had been unable to enter, and so made camp outside, staying alive with magic and provisions. Then the two peasants had shown up, killed them, burned out their hearts, stolen their stuff, and entered the dome themselves. But how they did so is a mystery.
“Either they knew something we don’t,” says Aravis, “or one of them is a deity.”
“And if they left,” Grey Wolf adds, “they know a way out. Which we also don’t.”
/*/
Dranko glances nervously at the mausoleums of Naslund. “I’m screwed,” he gulps. “This place is full of divine beings. There’s a chance I’ll run into some servitor of Delioch here!”
Ernie looks at him in surprise. “This is where divine beings come to get their eternal rewards. They’re not going to stop you and give you a quiz!”
Dranko looks guilty. “But… but I used to insert dirty words into the morning prayers.”
“Do your healing spells work?” asks Aravis impatiently. “Yes. So you’re fine. Delioch is happy enough with you.” He listens for a second to the sourceless whispers before adding, “You might want to tone down your irreverence while you’re inside, though.”
Just in case, Dranko fishes out his holy robes from the bottom of his pack and puts them on.
/*/
Rising up at the center of the city is an enormous amethyst tower, visible above the rooftops of the drip-castle buildings. It stands like a spike, so tall that it looks as though its apex must be grazing the top of the pearly dome.
“I really wish we knew why we were here,” says Aravis, as they start to walk down the street in the general direction of the amethyst tower.
Morningstar has a burst of insight. “We’re following Tarsos and Meledien. The peasants must have been them. We know that Tarsos is short and Meledien is tall…”
Aravis recalls his vision of the two of them, with Tarsos handing Meledien a small drink. “Now you’ll survive the trip,” Tarsos had said.
“It’s the black goo that got them in here,” Aravis realizes. “It’s the blood of the Adversary. It’s divine essence.”
“What about your vision of Naslund?” asks Morningstar. “Was there anything else important in it?”
Aravis nods. “Vhadish asked who would tend it, with its caretakers gone.”
“I wonder what happened to them?” asks Ernie.
No one knows.
“You know what kind of guy guards this place?” asks Dranko. “A sarcophagi.”
/*/
The streets are not straight, and the party wends its way through them, heading ever closer to the amethyst spike in the center of the dome. At one intersection, a ghostly horse and rider come into view. As it approaches, they can see a body is draped across the horse’s back, and the tall, noble-looking rider has tears in her eyes. It passes in front of them, and melts away into the graying gloom.
It’s about that time when the singing starts. It’s an eerie, haunting sound, floating through the streets of Naslund like a ghost’s pipe. The direction from which it comes is hard to discern, though most in the Company think it’s coming from the amethyst tower. Dranko has an immediate desire to pray, and fervently, but he feels a disconnection, as though he’s trapped in a box and Delioch is not inside with him.
To Flicker, Kibi and Grey Wolf, the song melts into the fibers of their beings, filling them with a crushing sadness and despair, as if everything good and important in the world has just died. And just as strongly, they feel that the only way to shed that despair is to find the source of the song. Ernie cannot help but notice that the color of Kibi’s face has drained to a dead gray beneath his beard.
“Kibi, are you okay?”
“No,” says Kibi plaintively. “I’m so very sad. But we’re going to find the source of the singing, right?”
Ernie nods. “Well, yes, but we’re also exploring…”
“No!” barks Kibi. “Toward the singing!”
Ernie casts a circle of protection, but it does not banish the song or quell its effects. Flicker looks as though he’s about to burst into tears. Morningstar casts silence, and this does block out the song as long as everyone stays close. The sadness remains, though the compulsion to find the singer abates. And telepthaic bond – being a divination – doesn’t work here in Naslund. They can only communicate with gestures while inside the sphere of silence.
Dranko casts resurgence on the afflicted, allowing Grey Wolf and Kibi to shuck off the soul-crushing effect of the song. Flicker remains in despair. He’s weeping openly now.
“They’re all dead!” he wails. “The Gods… they’re all dead…”
He sits down and refuses to take another step. Morningstar sighs and casts mind blank on him.
“Oh, that’s better!” Flicker leaps to his feet. “Things don’t seem so bad anymore. I don’t even know why I was so worried!”
Dranko lights his cigar, and the smoke drifts in strange patterns, as if it’s trying to form into prophecy but failing. Aravis, on a hunch, casts rope trick. The spell fails. Dranko is horrified, thinking that his widemouth pouch has become inaccessible, but it turns out that extradimensional spaces still function if they’re small enough.
Around another corner they see a large ghostly procession, hundreds of shrouded humanoids, making their way down a wide avenue. A coffin is raised up in the center of the mob, held aloft by many hands. Ghostly petals are strewn ahead of the crowd, and they fade away after the last of the beings has moved past. The group of them turns a distant corner and fades to nothing.
/*/
It’s only half a mile in total from the edge of the dome to the purple rock tower in the middle, so the entire journey is over quickly even though their progress is slow. They round one final corner and see that the road ends in a wide, round plaza that surrounds the amethyst tower. Large stone statues of noble visage stand in haphazard pattern throughout the plaza. The thirty foot diameter base of the spire is filled with doorways, dim, insubstantial, sliding over and beneath one another. The wake of shadowy humanoids is vanishing through of these portals.
Only one door is really there, closed but solid, and planted directly in front of that door is an enormous Tree. Its fifty-foot trunk rises directly from the cobblestones of the plaza, and its long limbs stretch far overhead. It has no leaves, and appears dead, though its branches sway slightly in the complete absence of breeze. A few of its branches seem to have been severed, and lie upon the ground near its base. Flicker, protected by mind blank, steps outside Morningstar’s silence and can hear the song quite clearly now, coming from the Tree. He also notices that there is room for maybe one person at a time to squeeze through the doorway behind the Tree, assuming it was opened.
Aravis moves out of the silence as well, and though he hears the song, he suffers no ill-effects. While the others wonder if Tarsos and Meledien might have planted the Tree to slow them down, Aravis feels as though it belongs here.
The branches of the Tree quiver, and everyone in the party except for Aravis feels an assault upon their minds. They also become aware that on the cobbles near the trunk, there are three small black stains, smelling very faintly of Essence.
“We should, uh, maybe back up?” Dranko suggests. The others instead start to cast buffing spells, and then an enormous branch comes swinging down and clocks Aravis in the head. He may be immune to its song, but the blow feels like an iron pipe.
“Is there anything we can do to help you?” he asks it.
There is no response. It is, after all, a Tree.
Kibi glances at Aravis and decides to risk casting xorn movement. He sinks into the ground, and finds that the stone does not reject him. It feels ancient, older than any place in Abernia, and is unnaturally solid. There are no gaps or impurities; it is the rock of ages, and alien to him. He quickens a mirror image just to be safe.
“What do I do?” cries Flicker. “Rush it? Or are we fleeing?”
“Neither, for the moment,” says Aravis. Flicker scoots out of range of the extended branches, while Dranko uses a healing wand on Aravis.
“Then what’s the plan?” asks Grey Wolf.
“We just have to get past it,” says Ernie. “We want to follow Meledien and Tarsos, and they didn’t kill the Tree.” Though, as he says this, more than one in the Company realizes that the black stains of Essence are probably bloodstains, indicating that there was battle here before now.
Ernie feels his bones start to stiffen, but he fights off whatever new magic the Tree was attempting. In response, Ernie casts a healing spell at range, hoping to change its behavior.
“We are not hear to harm you!” says Aravis. “We want to deal with those who have already harmed you. Please, let us pass!”
Aravis walks forward again, thinking that between his message and his divine nature, something must be getting through to the Tree. It slams him again with a stout branch, and this time it projects a sentiment into his head.
MORTALS SHALL NOT PASS ME.
Aravis sighs. He may have a divine spark, but he is still mortal. “What about the two who have already passed you?”
The Tree offers no response.
Kibi pops up from the ground. Unwilling to directly harm the Tree, he instead strikes it with a maximized ray of enfeeblement. Its branches dip and sag. While Dranko heals up Aravis again, Flicker tries to run past the Tree to the door. It strikes him hard with another branch; even enfeebled, it still packs quite a wallop. Grey Wolf adds to the Tree’s weakened state with enervation, and this (combined with the ray of enfeeblement) probably saves Aravis’s life. With Aravis now in range of most of its branches, the Tree clubs him five times, driving him to the ground. Morningstar and Ernie rush in to heal him.
Aravis tries to turn the Tree into something smaller and less dangerous using polymorph any object, but plants, it turns out, are unaffected by such magics. Having failed at that, he rushes for the door, squeezes behind the Tree’s trunk, and touches the doorway it guards. The door is warm.
It’s also locked, and while he thinks his divine nature will work upon it given time, it doesn’t open immediately. “Ah, crap!”
Kibi casts a wall of stone that creates a sort of long curved hangar, an open-sided tunnel of stone that shields about half the party from the Tree’s branches. Dranko casts shield other on Aravis. Grey Wolf saps the Tree with another enervation.
The Tree remains undaunted, and seemingly determined to bludgeon Aravis to death. It brings several branches thundering down upon his head, and both he and Dranko are staggered.
As Ernie heals Aravis one more time, Morningstar sighs. “Are you sure we can’t just chop this thing down?”
Aravis shakes his head. “We won’t need to.” He casts shapechange on himself, quickens a shield just in case, and assumes the form of the most hard-to-hit creature he can think of: a blood fox. The whole time he keeps one hand/paw pressed up against the doorway, and at last he is rewarded. The doorway vanishes, leaving an ingress to the amethyst tower. Using Kibi’s semi-tunnel for cover, the whole Company scrambles for the doorway. Once they are all inside, the tower wall reasserts itself, and the sounds of the Tree’s creaking branches and song of despair are abruptly cut off.
They now find themselves at the end of a long straight corridor, its walls, floor and ceiling made entirely of amethyst. It slopes gently downward, and clearly extends past the far side of the tower, underground. Everywhere is a diffuse purple light. All along the walls, at head-height, are carvings in the stone: battles scenes, Gods fighting, Gods dying.
In this place, there are no echoes.
…to be continued…
The Tree that Guards the Way
In some respects, Naslund looks and feels much like many other cities. It has streets. It has buildings. But in most ways, Naslund looks and feels like a graveyard without gravestones. The buildings are close-packed, lean precariously, and resemble drip-sand-castles that have hardened into granite. Carvings on every building depict funeral processions and other death-related imagery. The buildings themselves offer few hints of their function; their doors are locked, their windows clouded and opaque. Names are inscribed above each door in an alien tongue. Perhaps they are all mausoleums?
No sun shines overhead, but the dome is filled with a thin gray light that brings on a great and heavy sadness. Faintly, all around, there is a quiet susurration, as if hundreds of unseen beings are whispering. But there is no doubt that, for the moment at least, they are alone.
For a minute or two they just stand inside the doorway. The dome has re-sealed itself behind them. They talk briefly about what happened to Cencerra, and how their attackers gained access to the interior. They come to the conclusion that Cencerra and her group had been unable to enter, and so made camp outside, staying alive with magic and provisions. Then the two peasants had shown up, killed them, burned out their hearts, stolen their stuff, and entered the dome themselves. But how they did so is a mystery.
“Either they knew something we don’t,” says Aravis, “or one of them is a deity.”
“And if they left,” Grey Wolf adds, “they know a way out. Which we also don’t.”
/*/
Dranko glances nervously at the mausoleums of Naslund. “I’m screwed,” he gulps. “This place is full of divine beings. There’s a chance I’ll run into some servitor of Delioch here!”
Ernie looks at him in surprise. “This is where divine beings come to get their eternal rewards. They’re not going to stop you and give you a quiz!”
Dranko looks guilty. “But… but I used to insert dirty words into the morning prayers.”
“Do your healing spells work?” asks Aravis impatiently. “Yes. So you’re fine. Delioch is happy enough with you.” He listens for a second to the sourceless whispers before adding, “You might want to tone down your irreverence while you’re inside, though.”
Just in case, Dranko fishes out his holy robes from the bottom of his pack and puts them on.
/*/
Rising up at the center of the city is an enormous amethyst tower, visible above the rooftops of the drip-castle buildings. It stands like a spike, so tall that it looks as though its apex must be grazing the top of the pearly dome.
“I really wish we knew why we were here,” says Aravis, as they start to walk down the street in the general direction of the amethyst tower.
Morningstar has a burst of insight. “We’re following Tarsos and Meledien. The peasants must have been them. We know that Tarsos is short and Meledien is tall…”
Aravis recalls his vision of the two of them, with Tarsos handing Meledien a small drink. “Now you’ll survive the trip,” Tarsos had said.
“It’s the black goo that got them in here,” Aravis realizes. “It’s the blood of the Adversary. It’s divine essence.”
“What about your vision of Naslund?” asks Morningstar. “Was there anything else important in it?”
Aravis nods. “Vhadish asked who would tend it, with its caretakers gone.”
“I wonder what happened to them?” asks Ernie.
No one knows.
“You know what kind of guy guards this place?” asks Dranko. “A sarcophagi.”
/*/
The streets are not straight, and the party wends its way through them, heading ever closer to the amethyst spike in the center of the dome. At one intersection, a ghostly horse and rider come into view. As it approaches, they can see a body is draped across the horse’s back, and the tall, noble-looking rider has tears in her eyes. It passes in front of them, and melts away into the graying gloom.
It’s about that time when the singing starts. It’s an eerie, haunting sound, floating through the streets of Naslund like a ghost’s pipe. The direction from which it comes is hard to discern, though most in the Company think it’s coming from the amethyst tower. Dranko has an immediate desire to pray, and fervently, but he feels a disconnection, as though he’s trapped in a box and Delioch is not inside with him.
To Flicker, Kibi and Grey Wolf, the song melts into the fibers of their beings, filling them with a crushing sadness and despair, as if everything good and important in the world has just died. And just as strongly, they feel that the only way to shed that despair is to find the source of the song. Ernie cannot help but notice that the color of Kibi’s face has drained to a dead gray beneath his beard.
“Kibi, are you okay?”
“No,” says Kibi plaintively. “I’m so very sad. But we’re going to find the source of the singing, right?”
Ernie nods. “Well, yes, but we’re also exploring…”
“No!” barks Kibi. “Toward the singing!”
Ernie casts a circle of protection, but it does not banish the song or quell its effects. Flicker looks as though he’s about to burst into tears. Morningstar casts silence, and this does block out the song as long as everyone stays close. The sadness remains, though the compulsion to find the singer abates. And telepthaic bond – being a divination – doesn’t work here in Naslund. They can only communicate with gestures while inside the sphere of silence.
Dranko casts resurgence on the afflicted, allowing Grey Wolf and Kibi to shuck off the soul-crushing effect of the song. Flicker remains in despair. He’s weeping openly now.
“They’re all dead!” he wails. “The Gods… they’re all dead…”
He sits down and refuses to take another step. Morningstar sighs and casts mind blank on him.
“Oh, that’s better!” Flicker leaps to his feet. “Things don’t seem so bad anymore. I don’t even know why I was so worried!”
Dranko lights his cigar, and the smoke drifts in strange patterns, as if it’s trying to form into prophecy but failing. Aravis, on a hunch, casts rope trick. The spell fails. Dranko is horrified, thinking that his widemouth pouch has become inaccessible, but it turns out that extradimensional spaces still function if they’re small enough.
Around another corner they see a large ghostly procession, hundreds of shrouded humanoids, making their way down a wide avenue. A coffin is raised up in the center of the mob, held aloft by many hands. Ghostly petals are strewn ahead of the crowd, and they fade away after the last of the beings has moved past. The group of them turns a distant corner and fades to nothing.
/*/
It’s only half a mile in total from the edge of the dome to the purple rock tower in the middle, so the entire journey is over quickly even though their progress is slow. They round one final corner and see that the road ends in a wide, round plaza that surrounds the amethyst tower. Large stone statues of noble visage stand in haphazard pattern throughout the plaza. The thirty foot diameter base of the spire is filled with doorways, dim, insubstantial, sliding over and beneath one another. The wake of shadowy humanoids is vanishing through of these portals.
Only one door is really there, closed but solid, and planted directly in front of that door is an enormous Tree. Its fifty-foot trunk rises directly from the cobblestones of the plaza, and its long limbs stretch far overhead. It has no leaves, and appears dead, though its branches sway slightly in the complete absence of breeze. A few of its branches seem to have been severed, and lie upon the ground near its base. Flicker, protected by mind blank, steps outside Morningstar’s silence and can hear the song quite clearly now, coming from the Tree. He also notices that there is room for maybe one person at a time to squeeze through the doorway behind the Tree, assuming it was opened.
Aravis moves out of the silence as well, and though he hears the song, he suffers no ill-effects. While the others wonder if Tarsos and Meledien might have planted the Tree to slow them down, Aravis feels as though it belongs here.
The branches of the Tree quiver, and everyone in the party except for Aravis feels an assault upon their minds. They also become aware that on the cobbles near the trunk, there are three small black stains, smelling very faintly of Essence.
“We should, uh, maybe back up?” Dranko suggests. The others instead start to cast buffing spells, and then an enormous branch comes swinging down and clocks Aravis in the head. He may be immune to its song, but the blow feels like an iron pipe.
“Is there anything we can do to help you?” he asks it.
There is no response. It is, after all, a Tree.
Kibi glances at Aravis and decides to risk casting xorn movement. He sinks into the ground, and finds that the stone does not reject him. It feels ancient, older than any place in Abernia, and is unnaturally solid. There are no gaps or impurities; it is the rock of ages, and alien to him. He quickens a mirror image just to be safe.
“What do I do?” cries Flicker. “Rush it? Or are we fleeing?”
“Neither, for the moment,” says Aravis. Flicker scoots out of range of the extended branches, while Dranko uses a healing wand on Aravis.
“Then what’s the plan?” asks Grey Wolf.
“We just have to get past it,” says Ernie. “We want to follow Meledien and Tarsos, and they didn’t kill the Tree.” Though, as he says this, more than one in the Company realizes that the black stains of Essence are probably bloodstains, indicating that there was battle here before now.
Ernie feels his bones start to stiffen, but he fights off whatever new magic the Tree was attempting. In response, Ernie casts a healing spell at range, hoping to change its behavior.
“We are not hear to harm you!” says Aravis. “We want to deal with those who have already harmed you. Please, let us pass!”
Aravis walks forward again, thinking that between his message and his divine nature, something must be getting through to the Tree. It slams him again with a stout branch, and this time it projects a sentiment into his head.
MORTALS SHALL NOT PASS ME.
Aravis sighs. He may have a divine spark, but he is still mortal. “What about the two who have already passed you?”
The Tree offers no response.
Kibi pops up from the ground. Unwilling to directly harm the Tree, he instead strikes it with a maximized ray of enfeeblement. Its branches dip and sag. While Dranko heals up Aravis again, Flicker tries to run past the Tree to the door. It strikes him hard with another branch; even enfeebled, it still packs quite a wallop. Grey Wolf adds to the Tree’s weakened state with enervation, and this (combined with the ray of enfeeblement) probably saves Aravis’s life. With Aravis now in range of most of its branches, the Tree clubs him five times, driving him to the ground. Morningstar and Ernie rush in to heal him.
Aravis tries to turn the Tree into something smaller and less dangerous using polymorph any object, but plants, it turns out, are unaffected by such magics. Having failed at that, he rushes for the door, squeezes behind the Tree’s trunk, and touches the doorway it guards. The door is warm.
It’s also locked, and while he thinks his divine nature will work upon it given time, it doesn’t open immediately. “Ah, crap!”
Kibi casts a wall of stone that creates a sort of long curved hangar, an open-sided tunnel of stone that shields about half the party from the Tree’s branches. Dranko casts shield other on Aravis. Grey Wolf saps the Tree with another enervation.
The Tree remains undaunted, and seemingly determined to bludgeon Aravis to death. It brings several branches thundering down upon his head, and both he and Dranko are staggered.
As Ernie heals Aravis one more time, Morningstar sighs. “Are you sure we can’t just chop this thing down?”
Aravis shakes his head. “We won’t need to.” He casts shapechange on himself, quickens a shield just in case, and assumes the form of the most hard-to-hit creature he can think of: a blood fox. The whole time he keeps one hand/paw pressed up against the doorway, and at last he is rewarded. The doorway vanishes, leaving an ingress to the amethyst tower. Using Kibi’s semi-tunnel for cover, the whole Company scrambles for the doorway. Once they are all inside, the tower wall reasserts itself, and the sounds of the Tree’s creaking branches and song of despair are abruptly cut off.
They now find themselves at the end of a long straight corridor, its walls, floor and ceiling made entirely of amethyst. It slopes gently downward, and clearly extends past the far side of the tower, underground. Everywhere is a diffuse purple light. All along the walls, at head-height, are carvings in the stone: battles scenes, Gods fighting, Gods dying.
In this place, there are no echoes.
…to be continued…
