Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
I fixed the first one, but I must be too dense to see where the typo is in the second.
-
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!
Sagiro's Story Hour: The FINAL Adventures of Abernathy's Company (FINISHED 7/3/14)
- Thread starter Sagiro
- Start date
I fixed the first one, but I must be too dense to see where the typo is in the second.
"understand" should be past tense.
carborundum
Adventurer
So, the Underdark is... a giant Rubik's cube? 
Teflonknight
Explorer
Sagiro's Story Hour: The FINAL Adventures of Abernathy's Company (updated 3/2...
Sagiro,
I'm curious as to your publishing plans for the book adaptation. Are you planning to self publish, PDF publish, kick starter or submit it to a publishing company?
Sagiro,
I'm curious as to your publishing plans for the book adaptation. Are you planning to self publish, PDF publish, kick starter or submit it to a publishing company?
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Assuming I ever get my draft of Book One whipped into shape, I hope to find an agent willing to take me on. If that fails (which is likely, just going by the numbers), I'll look more seriously into self-publishing options.
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 376
Quantum Leap
A map of the Leaping Circles? The entire Company lets out a long “oooooooohhhhh” in unison, just as if they were still watching Nellig’s performance on the mote-phone.
Corriv gives a ghostly chuckle. “That sounds like you have some interest in the Leaping Circles.”
“Up on the surface,” says Dranko, “we have magics that let you jump all around in the world in the blink of an eye. You don’t have that down here.”
“You have your own Leaping Circles?”
“We can transport ourselves without Leaping Circles,” says Aravis.
“Not everyone,” adds Dranko. “Just very powerful wizards.”
Corriv looks thoughtful. “Ah, and if you get far enough anti-coreward, that would work, yes… it makes perfect sense. But down here you need to use the Circles.
“A prophetic toad told us, ‘five, nine, two,'" says Morningstar.
“Well, if you want to go to Leaping Circle Five from here, you have a fifty-fifty shot,” says Corriv. “And Five does go to Nine, and Nine to Two… in a manner of speaking.”
“But there must be a way of influencing which one we go to from here,” says Aravis.
“I know better than anyone how this one works,” says Corriv. “Trust me, there isn’t.”
“Can’t you explain it to us?” asks Dranko. “We’re pretty smart.”
“I’m sure you are, and that you know much about those topics you’ve chosen to study. But tell me, for how many centuries have you been studying the Leaping Circles?”
“There is that,” murmurs Grey Wolf.
“It is possible that the Leaping Circles are similar to something we have studied,” says Aravis. He’s not used to the possibility of something arcane in nature being beyond his understanding.
“I am more than happy to discuss my work at great length,” says Corriv. “I’ve been working a long, long time with no one to talk to.”
Kibi gestures at the enormous cubic scaffold. “So, this map, how does it work exactly?”
Corriv is eager to explain. “Before my city died, I devoted myself to the project of mapping the Leaping Circles. They were created before any historic record of the Mehar, and their interconnections were byzantine, to say the least. Indecipherable. There was some way of getting from any Circle to any other, at any time, but where you went was a function of so many variables, that no one to my knowledge had ever worked them all out. I decided that I would. I wanted to learn what rituals would get a traveler from where to where, what the temperature had to be at both locations, any local seismic activity that was either required or prohibited at the moment of translation, of Leaping… there are so many variables. Time of day, time of year, sometimes even what a traveler had recently eaten, could affect where one Leapt.
“I was about two thirds of the way to figuring it all out, and that’s when… the Event occurred. The one that wiped out my people. But it also, to my great frustration, displaced the Leaping Circles, and largely dissociated them from one other. And so I began my work again, posthumously, and it has been much more difficult. I may someday finish, and I’ve made great progress, but it’s possible that I will never finish, because the connections are still changing, very slowly, as they have been for a thousand years. It is no longer the case that one can go from any Circle to any other Circle. It is now the case that every Circle takes one out of the center, which is where we are. There are three arms, going coreward only. Every Circle now goes only to one other Circle, which in turn will take you one Circle coreward from there. There are thus three branches, terminating at three points.”
Corriv flips through his papers.
“There is a terminus at Seven, at Two and at Ten.”
“What happens after you end up at one of those?” asks Kibi.
“You cannot take any Leaping Circles from there. You’d have to walk anywhere you wanted to go after that.”
“What’s between here and Number Ten?” asks Dranko.
“Circles Three and Six,” says Corriv. “There are two chains out from Mehar. If you end up going to Circle Three, you can from there go to Circle Six, and from there to Circle Ten. Or you may end up at Five, from which you can go to Nine, and then on to Two. The third branch goes from Eight to Four to Seven, but Eight has been severed from One, the Circle here, and the hub of all the others. Though Circle Four is not far from here; only a week’s journey, assuming there are still connecting tunnels.”
Kibi exhales. “Hopping, hopping, Five, Nine, Two.”
“Now understand,” continues Corriv, “That because of the displacement, none of the Circles are directly connected. All of the arrival points are somewhat removed from their destination Circles. So, for example, if our Circle One here takes you to Circle Three, it will actually take you to a place near to Circle Three. You’ll have to walk to it. And after you take it, you’ll be somewhere near Circle Six. And so on.”
Dranko ponders this. “So, if we end up at Circle Three, could we walk from Three to Five to get back on track?”
“Given enough time, and assuming there are sufficient tunnels, yes. But it would take you a very long time.”
Papers bloom around Corriv’s head and he consults a chart of figures. “You would have to travel anti-coreward 14.3 miles, and a lateral distance of… 873 miles, according to my calculations.”
“That’s a long way to xorm move," says Kibi. “And there’s really no way to know, just before jumping, which one we’ll be going to?”
“No, there is not.”
“I wish we could use a miracle,” Morningstar sighs.
“Oh, that wouldn’t work,” says Corriv. “The magics inherent in even the most potent spells are trivial compared to the forces at work on the Leaping Circles.”
“It’s just a teleportation circle!” Dranko objects.
“You do not understand quantum effects.”
“Sure I do,” says Dranko. “One effect, two effects, three effects… I can quantum all day long.”
Aravis gives Corriv a sympathetic look. “Don’t get into these conversations with him. They’re very frustrating.”
/*/
Corriv shows the party to the Leaping Circle, which is behind the university building in a large courtyard. Like Circle Eight at the Stribe city, this one is fifty feet in diameter, an adamant ring sunk into the stone floor. Runes are scrawled on it around its entire circumference, and on a nearby stone slab has been carved a large numeral “1.”
Morningstar walks to the center (where according to Corriv, the Evil Trio enacted their ten second ritual to activate it) and blankets the area with thought captures. Most of them reveal thoughts of someone concentrating very hard on getting a short but complex ritual correct. One thought is of someone hoping that the local ghost guard won’t catch up to them until they’re done. The final thought is “Damn, but that music is making it hard to concentrate. If this doesn’t work the first time, we should go back and annihilate that thing.”
Corriv and the party wizards talk well into the night on a number of arcane topics. The old ghost is pleased as punch to have intellectual peers for company. Kibi can’t help but ask him about Earth Magic, and how it’s stronger as one goes coreward.
“Well of course it is,” says Corriv. ‘Earth Magic is magic. It comes from the core. I imagine any magic you have up on the surface is just runoff.”
Kibi feels indisputably smug about that! “It’s harder to use, though,” he admits.
“Interesting,” says Corriv. “I would imagine that trying to make use of the magic dissipating into the air would be more difficult. Abernia is Abernia! You tap directly in! Not that I’m an accomplished wizard. I’m more of a scholar, I only dabble.”
Morningstar asks if Corriv knows about the local Dreamscape.
“Ah, yes,” says Corriv. “But no one in their right minds ever went there. It’s crawling with those… creatures. They’re all around us right now, probably eating lunch and practicing killing one another.”
On the topic of the Sister Gods, Corriv confirms Morningstar’s suspicion that as they travel coreward, they will be heading into Wlaqua’s territory. “Yes. The Sister Gods have divided creation between them, and coreward you find a greater concentration of those who venerate Wlaqua. The Sister Gods don’t take much interest in scholarly pursuits, and so I don’t much care about them. I don’t like talking about them , though; you never know when they might be listening.”
When the wizards’ talk grows more esoteric and technical, the others grow bored. Morningstar, Flicker, Dranko and Ernie take a quick trip into Ava Dormo to see if it’s still infested with Keffet, and to see if the Leaping Circle exists there. Not only are there Keffet, but Corriv’s words turn out to be unintentionally prophetic. There is no Leaping Circle – if it ever was there, it’s been paved over – and the four of them arrive in a huge mess all. Three hundred Keffet are eating at long tables. At the intruders’ arrival, most of the nearest ones jump to their feet and start scrambling for weapons. Dranko yanks one of their mugs with a deft snap of his whip, and it flies to his waiting hand. He takes a drink, and finds it both sweet and alcoholic.
“Drop your weapons!” shouts one of the Keffet. Twenty more have spears pointed at them.
“We just came by to say ‘hi’,” says Dranko affably.
“Take them prisoners, you foo…”
But they don’t hear the end of that, as Morningstar returns them to the waking world. Dranko is sad that his Keffet beer doesn’t come with them.
The wizards converse for hours. Corriv manages to convey a basic groundwork of the magical theory behind the “quantum” Leaping Circle, and by the time the party mages go to bed, they are convinced that there’s truly no way to predict or influence where the Leaping Circle will take them.
Kibi looks for the silver lining. “Maybe the Croaking Oracle said ‘Five, Nine, Two’ because it knew this Circle would take us to number five.”
Corriv shrugs, not putting much stock in oracular amphibians. “If you’re going to take Leaping Circle One,” the ghostly scholar tells them, “you’re just going to have to roll the dice.”
/*/
Nothing attacks them overnight, which is a pleasant surprise. The next morning, before they get started on the six-day-long ritual, Corriv gives them all the figures for the distances and locations of the Leaping Circles and their destinations. He also confirms that the Evil Trio went through themselves 143 days ago, meaning the bad guys are still about five months ahead of them.
They begin the ritual, which is time consuming but not difficult. It’s just a long recitation involving a typical combination of gestures and syllables, in which the three living wizards take turns participating. The days go by. Dranko wanders Mehar-Bec looking for the elusive treasury, and manages to stumble across an old shop containing about 1200 khet chips in a back room. Flicker scavenges another 800. Khet chips don’t stack neatly like coins, but are much lighter on a per-unit basis.
One morning, Aravis wakes up to find Flicker standing over him.
“You vanished again, while I was on watch,” the halfling tells him. “You were gone about four hours.”
And indeed, Aravis has been given another vision of what’s transpiring on the surface.
Two beings in matching blood-red armor stand facing one another.
The taller of the two is a man, heavily muscled, bald-headed, his face crosshatched with scars.
The other is an orc, fat and familiar. It is the Bloodseer, wearing Restimar’s old armor.
They are sitting in the Bloodseer’s den, at ease. They have been talking for some time. “Naradawk Skewn will grant you any lands in Nahalm that you can take and hold,” says the human. “Kallor, Hae Kalkas, Kynder Hold. Dimres. Sand’s Edge. I advise you stay away from Sentinel, but otherwise you may choose your own objectives. All Naradawk asks is that you act aggressively, give no quarter, choose high-population targets, and kill as many of your enemy as possible. How soon will your armies be ready?”
The Bloodseer takes a long sip of wine from an ornate cup before answering. “Two days,” he says, his smile growing wider and showing sharpened teeth.
“Two days?” The man is unable to hide his surprise. “How many orcs can you possibly muster in two days?”
“Fifty thousand at least,” says the Bloodseer, obviously enjoying this.
The man splutters. “Fifty… with all due respect, I don’t see how you could…”
“I knew this day was coming,” says the Bloodseer. “And I knew it would be today.” He casually reaches over to a table with dwarf-bones for legs, picks up a copy of Prophecies of the Orcish Crusades, and quotes from its pages. “And from a prison that is all the world, a great warrior will fall upon this land, and your conquests will be as his sword of fury. His messenger comes in crimson, on Grolsh’ ninth day in the Year of Vermin. Be ready in your thousands; you are the storm.”
The man blinks, but quickly gains his composure.
“Naradawk has brought formidable strength into this world, but you will be his soldiers on the ground. And you are confident that you can not only lead your orcs, but control them?”
“Control orcs?” The Bloodseer snorts. “ As well as anyone, for what that’s worth. But I am the Chun Aggrat reborn, whom any orc would follow to the ends of Abernia and be thankful for the honor. Give me two days, and your massacre will begin.”
Ugh.
Dranko spits. “I hate that guy!”
The vision certainly fills the party with regret at not having killed the Bloodseer during their previous encounter, and reminds them that they never did get their hands on a copy of Prophecies of the Orcish Crusades
“It will make me so happy if Tor kills him,” says Grey Wolf.
“Fifty thousand orcs!” Dranko is aghast. “They’re going to devastate the kingdom!”
“I guess we shouldn’t have hoped you were going to have happy visions from now on,” says Grey Wolf to Aravis.
At last the final minute of the ritual arrives, and they all hold their breaths, waiting to see if they’ll be put on the Toad-ordained path to stop the Evil Trio, or be sent hundreds of miles in the wrong direction. In the final seconds, Morningstar becomes aware of something warm in her pocket, quickly growing hot. It’s Laramon’s Jade Clover, a magic item they found in the hoard of the dragon Azhant the Ancient. It’s a minor luck item, and heretofore she hasn’t thought much about it, but now she can feel it heating her skin through the fabric of her pocket.
They Leap.
As before, most of the Company experiences an instant translation, but Dranko does not. He finds himself hanging in a nauseating nothingness, stars of madness twinkling just beyond his peripheral vision. There are things, regarding him. He should not exist here, but he does, having something in common with the denizens of the Far Realms.
The voice sounds from the darkling depths. You are called, Dranko, and you are as you are called. Let not your delusions be of grandeur. DO NOT BECOME!
And then they are all there, standing in a low-ceilinged store room that smells of fungus, dried fruit and spices. The Jade Clover is rapidly cooling now, and Morningstar holds it in her palm.
“Impossible to affect, indeed,” she says with a smile, and returns it to her pocket.
…to be continued…
Quantum Leap
A map of the Leaping Circles? The entire Company lets out a long “oooooooohhhhh” in unison, just as if they were still watching Nellig’s performance on the mote-phone.
Corriv gives a ghostly chuckle. “That sounds like you have some interest in the Leaping Circles.”
“Up on the surface,” says Dranko, “we have magics that let you jump all around in the world in the blink of an eye. You don’t have that down here.”
“You have your own Leaping Circles?”
“We can transport ourselves without Leaping Circles,” says Aravis.
“Not everyone,” adds Dranko. “Just very powerful wizards.”
Corriv looks thoughtful. “Ah, and if you get far enough anti-coreward, that would work, yes… it makes perfect sense. But down here you need to use the Circles.
“A prophetic toad told us, ‘five, nine, two,'" says Morningstar.
“Well, if you want to go to Leaping Circle Five from here, you have a fifty-fifty shot,” says Corriv. “And Five does go to Nine, and Nine to Two… in a manner of speaking.”
“But there must be a way of influencing which one we go to from here,” says Aravis.
“I know better than anyone how this one works,” says Corriv. “Trust me, there isn’t.”
“Can’t you explain it to us?” asks Dranko. “We’re pretty smart.”
“I’m sure you are, and that you know much about those topics you’ve chosen to study. But tell me, for how many centuries have you been studying the Leaping Circles?”
“There is that,” murmurs Grey Wolf.
“It is possible that the Leaping Circles are similar to something we have studied,” says Aravis. He’s not used to the possibility of something arcane in nature being beyond his understanding.
“I am more than happy to discuss my work at great length,” says Corriv. “I’ve been working a long, long time with no one to talk to.”
Kibi gestures at the enormous cubic scaffold. “So, this map, how does it work exactly?”
Corriv is eager to explain. “Before my city died, I devoted myself to the project of mapping the Leaping Circles. They were created before any historic record of the Mehar, and their interconnections were byzantine, to say the least. Indecipherable. There was some way of getting from any Circle to any other, at any time, but where you went was a function of so many variables, that no one to my knowledge had ever worked them all out. I decided that I would. I wanted to learn what rituals would get a traveler from where to where, what the temperature had to be at both locations, any local seismic activity that was either required or prohibited at the moment of translation, of Leaping… there are so many variables. Time of day, time of year, sometimes even what a traveler had recently eaten, could affect where one Leapt.
“I was about two thirds of the way to figuring it all out, and that’s when… the Event occurred. The one that wiped out my people. But it also, to my great frustration, displaced the Leaping Circles, and largely dissociated them from one other. And so I began my work again, posthumously, and it has been much more difficult. I may someday finish, and I’ve made great progress, but it’s possible that I will never finish, because the connections are still changing, very slowly, as they have been for a thousand years. It is no longer the case that one can go from any Circle to any other Circle. It is now the case that every Circle takes one out of the center, which is where we are. There are three arms, going coreward only. Every Circle now goes only to one other Circle, which in turn will take you one Circle coreward from there. There are thus three branches, terminating at three points.”
Corriv flips through his papers.
“There is a terminus at Seven, at Two and at Ten.”
“What happens after you end up at one of those?” asks Kibi.
“You cannot take any Leaping Circles from there. You’d have to walk anywhere you wanted to go after that.”
“What’s between here and Number Ten?” asks Dranko.
“Circles Three and Six,” says Corriv. “There are two chains out from Mehar. If you end up going to Circle Three, you can from there go to Circle Six, and from there to Circle Ten. Or you may end up at Five, from which you can go to Nine, and then on to Two. The third branch goes from Eight to Four to Seven, but Eight has been severed from One, the Circle here, and the hub of all the others. Though Circle Four is not far from here; only a week’s journey, assuming there are still connecting tunnels.”
Kibi exhales. “Hopping, hopping, Five, Nine, Two.”
“Now understand,” continues Corriv, “That because of the displacement, none of the Circles are directly connected. All of the arrival points are somewhat removed from their destination Circles. So, for example, if our Circle One here takes you to Circle Three, it will actually take you to a place near to Circle Three. You’ll have to walk to it. And after you take it, you’ll be somewhere near Circle Six. And so on.”
Dranko ponders this. “So, if we end up at Circle Three, could we walk from Three to Five to get back on track?”
“Given enough time, and assuming there are sufficient tunnels, yes. But it would take you a very long time.”
Papers bloom around Corriv’s head and he consults a chart of figures. “You would have to travel anti-coreward 14.3 miles, and a lateral distance of… 873 miles, according to my calculations.”
“That’s a long way to xorm move," says Kibi. “And there’s really no way to know, just before jumping, which one we’ll be going to?”
“No, there is not.”
“I wish we could use a miracle,” Morningstar sighs.
“Oh, that wouldn’t work,” says Corriv. “The magics inherent in even the most potent spells are trivial compared to the forces at work on the Leaping Circles.”
“It’s just a teleportation circle!” Dranko objects.
“You do not understand quantum effects.”
“Sure I do,” says Dranko. “One effect, two effects, three effects… I can quantum all day long.”
Aravis gives Corriv a sympathetic look. “Don’t get into these conversations with him. They’re very frustrating.”
/*/
Corriv shows the party to the Leaping Circle, which is behind the university building in a large courtyard. Like Circle Eight at the Stribe city, this one is fifty feet in diameter, an adamant ring sunk into the stone floor. Runes are scrawled on it around its entire circumference, and on a nearby stone slab has been carved a large numeral “1.”
Morningstar walks to the center (where according to Corriv, the Evil Trio enacted their ten second ritual to activate it) and blankets the area with thought captures. Most of them reveal thoughts of someone concentrating very hard on getting a short but complex ritual correct. One thought is of someone hoping that the local ghost guard won’t catch up to them until they’re done. The final thought is “Damn, but that music is making it hard to concentrate. If this doesn’t work the first time, we should go back and annihilate that thing.”
Corriv and the party wizards talk well into the night on a number of arcane topics. The old ghost is pleased as punch to have intellectual peers for company. Kibi can’t help but ask him about Earth Magic, and how it’s stronger as one goes coreward.
“Well of course it is,” says Corriv. ‘Earth Magic is magic. It comes from the core. I imagine any magic you have up on the surface is just runoff.”
Kibi feels indisputably smug about that! “It’s harder to use, though,” he admits.
“Interesting,” says Corriv. “I would imagine that trying to make use of the magic dissipating into the air would be more difficult. Abernia is Abernia! You tap directly in! Not that I’m an accomplished wizard. I’m more of a scholar, I only dabble.”
Morningstar asks if Corriv knows about the local Dreamscape.
“Ah, yes,” says Corriv. “But no one in their right minds ever went there. It’s crawling with those… creatures. They’re all around us right now, probably eating lunch and practicing killing one another.”
On the topic of the Sister Gods, Corriv confirms Morningstar’s suspicion that as they travel coreward, they will be heading into Wlaqua’s territory. “Yes. The Sister Gods have divided creation between them, and coreward you find a greater concentration of those who venerate Wlaqua. The Sister Gods don’t take much interest in scholarly pursuits, and so I don’t much care about them. I don’t like talking about them , though; you never know when they might be listening.”
When the wizards’ talk grows more esoteric and technical, the others grow bored. Morningstar, Flicker, Dranko and Ernie take a quick trip into Ava Dormo to see if it’s still infested with Keffet, and to see if the Leaping Circle exists there. Not only are there Keffet, but Corriv’s words turn out to be unintentionally prophetic. There is no Leaping Circle – if it ever was there, it’s been paved over – and the four of them arrive in a huge mess all. Three hundred Keffet are eating at long tables. At the intruders’ arrival, most of the nearest ones jump to their feet and start scrambling for weapons. Dranko yanks one of their mugs with a deft snap of his whip, and it flies to his waiting hand. He takes a drink, and finds it both sweet and alcoholic.
“Drop your weapons!” shouts one of the Keffet. Twenty more have spears pointed at them.
“We just came by to say ‘hi’,” says Dranko affably.
“Take them prisoners, you foo…”
But they don’t hear the end of that, as Morningstar returns them to the waking world. Dranko is sad that his Keffet beer doesn’t come with them.
The wizards converse for hours. Corriv manages to convey a basic groundwork of the magical theory behind the “quantum” Leaping Circle, and by the time the party mages go to bed, they are convinced that there’s truly no way to predict or influence where the Leaping Circle will take them.
Kibi looks for the silver lining. “Maybe the Croaking Oracle said ‘Five, Nine, Two’ because it knew this Circle would take us to number five.”
Corriv shrugs, not putting much stock in oracular amphibians. “If you’re going to take Leaping Circle One,” the ghostly scholar tells them, “you’re just going to have to roll the dice.”
/*/
Nothing attacks them overnight, which is a pleasant surprise. The next morning, before they get started on the six-day-long ritual, Corriv gives them all the figures for the distances and locations of the Leaping Circles and their destinations. He also confirms that the Evil Trio went through themselves 143 days ago, meaning the bad guys are still about five months ahead of them.
They begin the ritual, which is time consuming but not difficult. It’s just a long recitation involving a typical combination of gestures and syllables, in which the three living wizards take turns participating. The days go by. Dranko wanders Mehar-Bec looking for the elusive treasury, and manages to stumble across an old shop containing about 1200 khet chips in a back room. Flicker scavenges another 800. Khet chips don’t stack neatly like coins, but are much lighter on a per-unit basis.
One morning, Aravis wakes up to find Flicker standing over him.
“You vanished again, while I was on watch,” the halfling tells him. “You were gone about four hours.”
And indeed, Aravis has been given another vision of what’s transpiring on the surface.
Two beings in matching blood-red armor stand facing one another.
The taller of the two is a man, heavily muscled, bald-headed, his face crosshatched with scars.
The other is an orc, fat and familiar. It is the Bloodseer, wearing Restimar’s old armor.
They are sitting in the Bloodseer’s den, at ease. They have been talking for some time. “Naradawk Skewn will grant you any lands in Nahalm that you can take and hold,” says the human. “Kallor, Hae Kalkas, Kynder Hold. Dimres. Sand’s Edge. I advise you stay away from Sentinel, but otherwise you may choose your own objectives. All Naradawk asks is that you act aggressively, give no quarter, choose high-population targets, and kill as many of your enemy as possible. How soon will your armies be ready?”
The Bloodseer takes a long sip of wine from an ornate cup before answering. “Two days,” he says, his smile growing wider and showing sharpened teeth.
“Two days?” The man is unable to hide his surprise. “How many orcs can you possibly muster in two days?”
“Fifty thousand at least,” says the Bloodseer, obviously enjoying this.
The man splutters. “Fifty… with all due respect, I don’t see how you could…”
“I knew this day was coming,” says the Bloodseer. “And I knew it would be today.” He casually reaches over to a table with dwarf-bones for legs, picks up a copy of Prophecies of the Orcish Crusades, and quotes from its pages. “And from a prison that is all the world, a great warrior will fall upon this land, and your conquests will be as his sword of fury. His messenger comes in crimson, on Grolsh’ ninth day in the Year of Vermin. Be ready in your thousands; you are the storm.”
The man blinks, but quickly gains his composure.
“Naradawk has brought formidable strength into this world, but you will be his soldiers on the ground. And you are confident that you can not only lead your orcs, but control them?”
“Control orcs?” The Bloodseer snorts. “ As well as anyone, for what that’s worth. But I am the Chun Aggrat reborn, whom any orc would follow to the ends of Abernia and be thankful for the honor. Give me two days, and your massacre will begin.”
Ugh.
Dranko spits. “I hate that guy!”
The vision certainly fills the party with regret at not having killed the Bloodseer during their previous encounter, and reminds them that they never did get their hands on a copy of Prophecies of the Orcish Crusades
“It will make me so happy if Tor kills him,” says Grey Wolf.
“Fifty thousand orcs!” Dranko is aghast. “They’re going to devastate the kingdom!”
“I guess we shouldn’t have hoped you were going to have happy visions from now on,” says Grey Wolf to Aravis.
At last the final minute of the ritual arrives, and they all hold their breaths, waiting to see if they’ll be put on the Toad-ordained path to stop the Evil Trio, or be sent hundreds of miles in the wrong direction. In the final seconds, Morningstar becomes aware of something warm in her pocket, quickly growing hot. It’s Laramon’s Jade Clover, a magic item they found in the hoard of the dragon Azhant the Ancient. It’s a minor luck item, and heretofore she hasn’t thought much about it, but now she can feel it heating her skin through the fabric of her pocket.
They Leap.
As before, most of the Company experiences an instant translation, but Dranko does not. He finds himself hanging in a nauseating nothingness, stars of madness twinkling just beyond his peripheral vision. There are things, regarding him. He should not exist here, but he does, having something in common with the denizens of the Far Realms.
The voice sounds from the darkling depths. You are called, Dranko, and you are as you are called. Let not your delusions be of grandeur. DO NOT BECOME!
And then they are all there, standing in a low-ceilinged store room that smells of fungus, dried fruit and spices. The Jade Clover is rapidly cooling now, and Morningstar holds it in her palm.
“Impossible to affect, indeed,” she says with a smile, and returns it to her pocket.
…to be continued…
That was so dumb I had to stare at it a minute before I got it.
Who is the Bloodseer? Don't remember him. Something to do with the Orc-Champion who switched bodies when the party killed him?
And what's with the Jade Clover, and Morningstar's comment on it?
So -- it seems that if Dranko has delusions of grandeur -- tries to gain fame in some way -- then he will Become, which presumably means that he'll grow lots of eyes where he shouldn't have eyes, and a giant tongue, and become radioactive, and anyone who looks at him drops dead of fright? That's my guess.
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
The Bloodseer was an orcish leader who helped the party kill Restimar -- a red-armored servant of the Emperor who was impersonating various humanoid figures-of-legend. After Restimar (masquerading as the Chun Aggrat, a legendary orcish war-leader) was killed, the Bloodseer turned on the Company and had his orcs chase them away. It seems that the Bloodseer kept Restimar's red armor, and now HE is pretending to be the Chun Aggrat.
Morningstar was guessing that after all of Corriv's insistence that the random nature of Leaping Circle One couldn't be influenced, the luck magic inherent in Laramon's Jade Clover must have done exactly that, presumably to make sure they ended up nearer to Leaping Circle Five than to Leaping Circle Three.
No comment.
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Jerk.
I'm just thinking, or starting to think, "Hopping. Hopping. Five. Nine. two." is supposed to mean, "DON'T GO TO FIVE NINE TWO!!!!! Hop somewhere else! Hop somewhere else! Five-Nine-Two is utter and complete death and destruction! You can't win that way!"
Don't go to FIVE! Five is in the Far Realms! Typheon and a hundred tentacled and hundred-eyed "things" waiting for you at five!
All that said, the whole "minor magic item 'luck charm' from some former adventure" playing a decisive role in the current adventure is yet one more example of the DMing GENIUS [GENIUS, I say!] on Sagiro's part. Just gorgeous. I can only hope that some day I might achieve some level of brilliance in DM story-telling as you.
I can not tell you how many campaigns I've had or been a part of that have really cool magic items that are simply forgotten [by us all!]. Not in Sagiro's campaign. No sirree.
Well done, sir. Well done. A pure thing of DMing beauty. Hat's off.
Don't go to FIVE! Five is in the Far Realms! Typheon and a hundred tentacled and hundred-eyed "things" waiting for you at five!
All that said, the whole "minor magic item 'luck charm' from some former adventure" playing a decisive role in the current adventure is yet one more example of the DMing GENIUS [GENIUS, I say!] on Sagiro's part. Just gorgeous. I can only hope that some day I might achieve some level of brilliance in DM story-telling as you.
I can not tell you how many campaigns I've had or been a part of that have really cool magic items that are simply forgotten [by us all!]. Not in Sagiro's campaign. No sirree.
Well done, sir. Well done. A pure thing of DMing beauty. Hat's off.
