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The Liberation of Tenh (updated April 24)
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<blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 480440" data-attributes="member: 41"><p>Coldeven 9, CY 593</p><p></p><p><strong>18: Wherein it is supposed that sometimes it is best to just sheathe your sword and go home.</strong></p><p></p><p>Prisantha takes Elijah back to the mines at Cur'ruth, only to find a strange Pholtan priest engaged in a game of Seers and Sovereigns with Heydricus. Heydricus (who is loosing badly) feigns surprise and overturns the board. "Prisantha! Elijah! So good to see you! Meet Tau."</p><p></p><p>While Pris and Elijah were in Chendl, getting lectured by the Headmaster about the dangers of inadvertent planar travel and counting gold into the hands of an old rival, Heydricus was having a reunion of his own.</p><p></p><p>Tau is a cleric of Pholtus, a servant of the Blinding Light. He is primarily a scholar, specializing in the fields of undead lore and genealogy. He also happens to be a childhood friend of Heydricus.</p><p></p><p>Between the ages of seven and eleven, the two were thick as thieves. As the only son of a diplomat from the Theocracy of the Pale, Tau was the smallest child at the private school where he was to be educated. The other foreigner of note was a hulking Tenha named Heydricus, a child who even at that young age stood a head taller than his other classmates. </p><p></p><p>They met one day when Heydricus pulled a child off of Tau who had been tormenting him with a handful of dead bugs, hoping to force the smaller boy to eat them. Heydricus carried the bully bodily across the yard, and deposited him inside a rabbit hutch, head first.</p><p></p><p>Tau was never picked on again, and the two became inseparable.</p><p></p><p>When the boys were eleven, Tau's father was recalled to the Pale, forced to submit to The Question, and never seen again. Tau, showed divine aptitude, and even as a young lad he had the temperament of a scholar. Thus, he was assigned into an apprenticeship with the Bureau of Genealogy (Lineage and Nobility). There he excelled, and his natural connection with the divine led him eventually into the clergy, and the study of Metaphysical Events (Negative Material, Undead).</p><p></p><p>Heydricus, due to his connection with a diplomat's family, had been a name on a thin file in the cellar of a basement in Wintershiven. But after the killing of Zinvellon made him a hero in the Marklands, his file was 'promoted', and he was watched. It did not escape the notice of the Pholtan clergy that one of their own had close ties to the Tenha sorcerer.</p><p></p><p>When Duke Eyeh of Tenh Beheld the Blinding Light, and converted to the worship of Pholtus, more cynical politicos around the Marklands pointed out that if Nyrond had any money or troops to lend him, Eyeh would have 'converted' himself a Nyrondeese wife. But from the point of view of many important decision-makers in the Pale, Tenh was first and foremost a Flan state. In fact, Tenh was the only other 'pure' Flan state remaining, other than the Pale itself. Thus, it seemed natural to the powers-that-be in the Theocracy that they should lend their support to Eyeh, assuming he could come to an understanding of the One True Faith.</p><p></p><p>And so he did. Many important clerics of the Theocracy have long viewed Tenh with something approaching carnal desire. That they could never convince their compatriots to agree to conquer Tenh held them back, but their intelligence on the place is probably better even than the Old One's.</p><p></p><p>When word started to circulate that Heydricus of the Temple intended to free Tenh, divinations were cast. Pholtus was very clear on one point: "He has at least as much a chance as Eyeh".</p><p></p><p>Heydricus has spent the last several days waiting primarily for Prisantha and Elijah to extricate themselves out of a series of predicaments the two women have found themselves in. Down to three from an original group of thirty-four, the Liberators of Tenh have mauled slaving Stonefisters, come within a hair's breadth of getting themselves poisoned in their sleep, aided and abetted criminals, formed unscrupulous alliances along Tenh's southwestern border and solved mysteries back home, but they have yet to make any Iuzians pay for being Evil.</p><p></p><p>Heydricus can barely stay in his own skin, he is so itchy to kill, kill kill. Sometimes, although he doesn't admit it, he grows antsy when he looks up at the sky and realizes that there is no dungeon ceiling over his head, and no monsters in the next room over, waiting to eat his friends or die trying. </p><p></p><p>It's amazing what one can get used to.</p><p></p><p>Heydricus introduces Tau, and takes Prisantha aside to gloat. "We have a cleric!" </p><p></p><p>Prisantha regards Heydricus stonily "He's Pholtan."</p><p></p><p>"Undead <em>hate</em> clerics." Heydricus says with a gleeful smile.</p><p></p><p>Prisantha sighs. "He's a ranking Pale theocrat."</p><p></p><p>"We attack tomorrow."</p><p></p><p>The discussion is made to use a <em>teleport </em>spell to get into the Iuzian-held mines, then cut a swath of destruction while trying to save any of Heydricus' followers who might yet be living. It's a good plan, and Pholtus willing it would have worked. But the God of the Blinding Light must have been angry with Heydricus for cheating at Seers and Sovereigns, because Prisantha's <em>teleport</em> lands the party half a mile away from the mines, in a badly exposed flatland.</p><p></p><p>Tau suggests that he transport the party to the etheric plane, and there they can wait while the assault is delayed a day.</p><p></p><p>The next morning, Prisantha coolly ignores Heydricus' questioning glance, and confidently <em>teleports </em>the group to the border etheric, just outside of the room where Pris and Elijah first discovered the spectre.</p><p></p><p>They pass ghostlike through the doorway, and find the room empty. A nearby guard room is passed through, with none of the warriors the wiser. A pair of strange fleshy statues are examined, and then the group is within the main Iuzian complex. Shortly thereafter, they spot another spectre.</p><p></p><p>This spectre is, like the other, dressed in the garments of ancient Tenha royalty, but unlike the other, this one is armed. Unfortunately for the archaic weapons scholars amongst the group, they never got a chance to see the sword, as it's bearer was cut into ribbons of mist before it could draw the blade.</p><p></p><p>Tau incants softly as he points his staff skyward. A pendant dangling from the end of the staff swings against gravity, pointing in a direction that indicates the presence of undead. They must be non-corporeal to be detectable from the etheric. The remaining Five Terrors.</p><p></p><p>"Follow me" Tau says.</p><p></p><p>The party is forced to join hands as Tau follows the straightest path to the undead - through the 'rock' of the mines. Upward and southward they go, until they find themselves within a large, circular room.</p><p></p><p>The Tenha have always held the circle to be a sacred shape. It represents for them the ways in which life always turns on itself. The Tenha hold all of their sacred observances within circular chambers like this one. Unfortunately, like far too many Tenha temples these days, this one also has been <em>desecrated</em>, and given over to the worship of Iuz.</p><p></p><p>This day, the place is crawling with worshippers. At the altar (a second circular depression that represents the Womb, now of course, the Barren Womb) a handsome well-dressed human faces a room full of mixed Iuzian and Stonefister faithful. A gnoll is the lone humanoid, and stands alone. An older man, dressed in the raiment of the Iuzian clergy also observes the rite.</p><p></p><p>The disturbing part is the five spectres positioned equidistantly around the circle. That and the fact that the man addressing the faithful also appears solid, indicating that he is at least semi-real in this plane. The spectres, the Iuzian and the Liberators all notice one another, and for a brief moment that seems to stretch on forever, nothing at all happens. Then suddenly, everyone is in motion.</p><p></p><p>The man at the altar casts a spell and suddenly begins to move very rapidly. A second spell follows immediately on the heels of the first, and he disappears. As the spectres close in on the party, Tau repulses a pair of them with a positive energy burst, and Heydricus goes looking for the mage.</p><p></p><p>He finds him soon enough. The mage re-appears in the center of the room, and leads with his best spell: a grotesque burst of black, cloying death pulses out from the middle of the party's formation. Prisantha gives a short sigh and falls to the ground, lifeless. Tau and Elijah manage to resist the death spell, but the spectres seem to be bolstered by the wicked spell.</p><p></p><p>The ritual attendees begin milling about in a confused way, providing a ghostly backdrop for a desperate fight.</p><p></p><p>The Iuzian laughs as Heydricus attacks him. Heydricus' weapons pass harmlessly through the fell necromancer, and he rains spells down on the group at a prodigious rate, blasting Heydricus and Tau with a <em>lightning bolt</em>, and draining Elijah with a ray of <em>enervation. </em></p><p></p><p>Tau struggles against the spectres that are swarming Elijah, tearing at her armor, and driving their putrid flesh-incrusted fingernails deep into her skin. The spectres seem to be drawing her very breath out of her body, and savoring the cruel torture.</p><p></p><p>Heydricus, meanwhile falls back to where Prisantha's corpse is floating and attempts to harm the Iuzian mage with <em>magic missiles</em>, but to no avail. The missiles pass harmlessly through the man, as if he were himself an apparition.</p><p></p><p>Elijah gives a small cry, and perishes, overwhelmed by the spectres and their cold touch. The mage laughs and watches, unconcerned, as Tau and Heydricus grab the corpses of their fallen and <em>plane shift </em>away. In the heat of battle, the first destination that pops into Tau's mind is the plane closest to his own heart, Mount Celestia.</p><p></p><p>The Plane of Total Law and Perfect Goodness.</p><p></p><p>-----</p><p></p><p>Next: Tau holds the fate of his fallen companions by the thread of his Faith!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="(contact), post: 480440, member: 41"] Coldeven 9, CY 593 [b]18: Wherein it is supposed that sometimes it is best to just sheathe your sword and go home.[/b] Prisantha takes Elijah back to the mines at Cur'ruth, only to find a strange Pholtan priest engaged in a game of Seers and Sovereigns with Heydricus. Heydricus (who is loosing badly) feigns surprise and overturns the board. "Prisantha! Elijah! So good to see you! Meet Tau." While Pris and Elijah were in Chendl, getting lectured by the Headmaster about the dangers of inadvertent planar travel and counting gold into the hands of an old rival, Heydricus was having a reunion of his own. Tau is a cleric of Pholtus, a servant of the Blinding Light. He is primarily a scholar, specializing in the fields of undead lore and genealogy. He also happens to be a childhood friend of Heydricus. Between the ages of seven and eleven, the two were thick as thieves. As the only son of a diplomat from the Theocracy of the Pale, Tau was the smallest child at the private school where he was to be educated. The other foreigner of note was a hulking Tenha named Heydricus, a child who even at that young age stood a head taller than his other classmates. They met one day when Heydricus pulled a child off of Tau who had been tormenting him with a handful of dead bugs, hoping to force the smaller boy to eat them. Heydricus carried the bully bodily across the yard, and deposited him inside a rabbit hutch, head first. Tau was never picked on again, and the two became inseparable. When the boys were eleven, Tau's father was recalled to the Pale, forced to submit to The Question, and never seen again. Tau, showed divine aptitude, and even as a young lad he had the temperament of a scholar. Thus, he was assigned into an apprenticeship with the Bureau of Genealogy (Lineage and Nobility). There he excelled, and his natural connection with the divine led him eventually into the clergy, and the study of Metaphysical Events (Negative Material, Undead). Heydricus, due to his connection with a diplomat's family, had been a name on a thin file in the cellar of a basement in Wintershiven. But after the killing of Zinvellon made him a hero in the Marklands, his file was 'promoted', and he was watched. It did not escape the notice of the Pholtan clergy that one of their own had close ties to the Tenha sorcerer. When Duke Eyeh of Tenh Beheld the Blinding Light, and converted to the worship of Pholtus, more cynical politicos around the Marklands pointed out that if Nyrond had any money or troops to lend him, Eyeh would have 'converted' himself a Nyrondeese wife. But from the point of view of many important decision-makers in the Pale, Tenh was first and foremost a Flan state. In fact, Tenh was the only other 'pure' Flan state remaining, other than the Pale itself. Thus, it seemed natural to the powers-that-be in the Theocracy that they should lend their support to Eyeh, assuming he could come to an understanding of the One True Faith. And so he did. Many important clerics of the Theocracy have long viewed Tenh with something approaching carnal desire. That they could never convince their compatriots to agree to conquer Tenh held them back, but their intelligence on the place is probably better even than the Old One's. When word started to circulate that Heydricus of the Temple intended to free Tenh, divinations were cast. Pholtus was very clear on one point: "He has at least as much a chance as Eyeh". Heydricus has spent the last several days waiting primarily for Prisantha and Elijah to extricate themselves out of a series of predicaments the two women have found themselves in. Down to three from an original group of thirty-four, the Liberators of Tenh have mauled slaving Stonefisters, come within a hair's breadth of getting themselves poisoned in their sleep, aided and abetted criminals, formed unscrupulous alliances along Tenh's southwestern border and solved mysteries back home, but they have yet to make any Iuzians pay for being Evil. Heydricus can barely stay in his own skin, he is so itchy to kill, kill kill. Sometimes, although he doesn't admit it, he grows antsy when he looks up at the sky and realizes that there is no dungeon ceiling over his head, and no monsters in the next room over, waiting to eat his friends or die trying. It's amazing what one can get used to. Heydricus introduces Tau, and takes Prisantha aside to gloat. "We have a cleric!" Prisantha regards Heydricus stonily "He's Pholtan." "Undead [i]hate[/i] clerics." Heydricus says with a gleeful smile. Prisantha sighs. "He's a ranking Pale theocrat." "We attack tomorrow." The discussion is made to use a [i]teleport [/i]spell to get into the Iuzian-held mines, then cut a swath of destruction while trying to save any of Heydricus' followers who might yet be living. It's a good plan, and Pholtus willing it would have worked. But the God of the Blinding Light must have been angry with Heydricus for cheating at Seers and Sovereigns, because Prisantha's [i]teleport[/i] lands the party half a mile away from the mines, in a badly exposed flatland. Tau suggests that he transport the party to the etheric plane, and there they can wait while the assault is delayed a day. The next morning, Prisantha coolly ignores Heydricus' questioning glance, and confidently [i]teleports [/i]the group to the border etheric, just outside of the room where Pris and Elijah first discovered the spectre. They pass ghostlike through the doorway, and find the room empty. A nearby guard room is passed through, with none of the warriors the wiser. A pair of strange fleshy statues are examined, and then the group is within the main Iuzian complex. Shortly thereafter, they spot another spectre. This spectre is, like the other, dressed in the garments of ancient Tenha royalty, but unlike the other, this one is armed. Unfortunately for the archaic weapons scholars amongst the group, they never got a chance to see the sword, as it's bearer was cut into ribbons of mist before it could draw the blade. Tau incants softly as he points his staff skyward. A pendant dangling from the end of the staff swings against gravity, pointing in a direction that indicates the presence of undead. They must be non-corporeal to be detectable from the etheric. The remaining Five Terrors. "Follow me" Tau says. The party is forced to join hands as Tau follows the straightest path to the undead - through the 'rock' of the mines. Upward and southward they go, until they find themselves within a large, circular room. The Tenha have always held the circle to be a sacred shape. It represents for them the ways in which life always turns on itself. The Tenha hold all of their sacred observances within circular chambers like this one. Unfortunately, like far too many Tenha temples these days, this one also has been [i]desecrated[/i], and given over to the worship of Iuz. This day, the place is crawling with worshippers. At the altar (a second circular depression that represents the Womb, now of course, the Barren Womb) a handsome well-dressed human faces a room full of mixed Iuzian and Stonefister faithful. A gnoll is the lone humanoid, and stands alone. An older man, dressed in the raiment of the Iuzian clergy also observes the rite. The disturbing part is the five spectres positioned equidistantly around the circle. That and the fact that the man addressing the faithful also appears solid, indicating that he is at least semi-real in this plane. The spectres, the Iuzian and the Liberators all notice one another, and for a brief moment that seems to stretch on forever, nothing at all happens. Then suddenly, everyone is in motion. The man at the altar casts a spell and suddenly begins to move very rapidly. A second spell follows immediately on the heels of the first, and he disappears. As the spectres close in on the party, Tau repulses a pair of them with a positive energy burst, and Heydricus goes looking for the mage. He finds him soon enough. The mage re-appears in the center of the room, and leads with his best spell: a grotesque burst of black, cloying death pulses out from the middle of the party's formation. Prisantha gives a short sigh and falls to the ground, lifeless. Tau and Elijah manage to resist the death spell, but the spectres seem to be bolstered by the wicked spell. The ritual attendees begin milling about in a confused way, providing a ghostly backdrop for a desperate fight. The Iuzian laughs as Heydricus attacks him. Heydricus' weapons pass harmlessly through the fell necromancer, and he rains spells down on the group at a prodigious rate, blasting Heydricus and Tau with a [i]lightning bolt[/i], and draining Elijah with a ray of [i]enervation. [/i] Tau struggles against the spectres that are swarming Elijah, tearing at her armor, and driving their putrid flesh-incrusted fingernails deep into her skin. The spectres seem to be drawing her very breath out of her body, and savoring the cruel torture. Heydricus, meanwhile falls back to where Prisantha's corpse is floating and attempts to harm the Iuzian mage with [i]magic missiles[/i], but to no avail. The missiles pass harmlessly through the man, as if he were himself an apparition. Elijah gives a small cry, and perishes, overwhelmed by the spectres and their cold touch. The mage laughs and watches, unconcerned, as Tau and Heydricus grab the corpses of their fallen and [i]plane shift [/i]away. In the heat of battle, the first destination that pops into Tau's mind is the plane closest to his own heart, Mount Celestia. The Plane of Total Law and Perfect Goodness. ----- Next: Tau holds the fate of his fallen companions by the thread of his Faith! [/QUOTE]
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