To War Against Felenga (FINAL UPDATE POSTED!)

[the Jester]

'Something Awaits You'

Our heroes hesitate before a bridge in the tunnel under the mountain. A stream of icy cold water flows beneath it; before stands what may be a guardian, which seems to have expected them. It blocks the road.

It sure is ugly.

"What are you?" demands Angelfire.

With a strange wheezing laugh, the oozing pimple on the world answers, "I am called Alketh. You may not pass unless you pay the toll."

"What toll," Malford intones, "is that?"

"A pittance, really! A mere hundred gold coins apiece! And," Alketh adds, gesturing towards Angelfire, "something awaits you."

"Oh yeah?" Angelfire responds. "What's that?"

With a convulsion- perhaps a shrug?- the faceless creature answers, "I cannot say."

"Can't, or won't?" asks Angelfire.

"I cannot say," the creature repeats. "But it is worth your while to pass. And without paying the toll, you may not."

"Who do you serve?" demands Malford.

"Who do I serve, or for whom do I guard this bridge? The answers are different. In either case, the answers are not important. What is important is that you pay the toll."

"And if we won't?" Angelfire is grinning, anticipating the possibility of battle.

"You must," Alketh intones, "if you wish to find what awaits you." Again, it seems to indicate Angelfire.

The party huddles to discuss for a moment; then they pay the toll contemptuously- after all, a hundred gold apiece is virtually nothing to such as them- and pass the weird, oozing monster. It seems to chuckle wetly in their wake. When they reach the far end of the bridge, they find a stake on either side. Mounted upon each stake is a skull; within the mouth of the skull is a severed phallus.

"Froth*," Malford spits. "I blame Lester." Disgusted, he stomps forward along the road.

The road here is dotted with stones that have fallen from the ceiling. It's clearly better maintained than the area before the bridge, however, and soon enough the sharp eyes of the party notice hidden forms spying on them. But when forced to reveal themselves, they turn out not to be hostile. They're deep gnomes.

"We're on guard," the svirfneblin spy answers when questioned. He recognizes Malford; the gnome is a legend in his own time, having been Dexter's first companion, one of Fuligin's overthrowers, one of the heroes that destroyed the menace of the clockwork horrors forever.** "We watch for our enemies. Our town is not far from here." And the svirfneblin escorts them deeper into the mountain, to the deep gnome village of Mud, so-named for the mud that they harvest. "It has certain medicinal properties," the deep gnome offers by way of explanation.

The svirfneblin are a folk known to be as dour as dwarves; with their scarce resources and many foes it's hard to have a chipper outlook on life. But they are Malford's kinfolk, and he's a great hero to gnomekind, and so they fete our heroes as well as they can, feeding them fungal soups and weird underdark brews.

"Your scouts mentioned enemies," Malford prompts one of the svirfneblin leaders. "What enemies are these? Is there anything we can help you with?"

"Aye," the deep gnome growls, "illithids. Horrible brain-suckers, they are! There's a community of them not far from here. If ye could destroy them, we'd be in yer debt, that's for sure. We've nothing much to offer ye by way of reward save gratitude, but..."

"Well, we're pressed for time," Lester interjects. "I have a geas on me, you see, and-"

Malford holds up a hand. "If we can help your folk, we shall," he says gravely. "We make no promises, but if our travels take us by your foes we'll smite them."

I hate illithids, his sword Memory telepathically snorts in Malford's brain. Remember, I can help protect us against them. The gnomish god-king pats the hilt reassuringly.

As the group settles in for the evening in the community's inn, Angelfire says, "That was weird."

"What was weird?" asks Sybele.

"Zelman. Didn't you guys see him?" To the blank expressions on their faces, Angelfire frowns. "He approached me... here, in the gnome village. None of you saw? Hmmm..."

The group drinks in the svirfneblin inn. Angelfire orders a shot of tiley, a thin distillate of red dragon's heartblood (said to be so toxic it's instantly lethal unless properly treated first) and promptly passes out. In 'concern' Drelvin socks him in the gut until he vomits; the archer finds this quite amusing. In the morning, staggering under the weight of his hangover, Angelfire purchases a flask holding five shots of tiley and is told to sip it, for Dexter's sake!

Then the party sets off, heading further down the road. Malford inwardly hopes they'll stop in and kill the mind flayers; like his sword, he too hates them. Little do they realize that they are about to face a battle with Felenga himself.



*Froth is the god of rape, necrophilia and cowardice, among other unsavory practices. He was released from an imprisonment of billions of years thanks to a party that included Lester. Naturally, Lester was the one to pull the lever that started it all by releasing Fuligin.

**'Forever'- well, never mind.


Next Time: Our heroes against Felenga, the Dark One!

 

[Welverin]

Re: 'Something Awaits You'

"A pittance, really! A mere hundred coins apiece! And," Alketh adds, gesturing towards Angelfire, "something awaits you."

Did he/you atually say 'coins?' If so why did our intrepid adventurers pay with gold and not something less valuable?

 

[the Jester]

Eh, he specified gold. Whoops! Will edit.

 

[Welverin]

Eh, he specified gold. Whoops! Will edit.

Good, I expect more sneakiness from your players and letting something like that happen would just ruin their image.

 

[the Jester]

Felenga

The party heads past the svirfneblin fungus farms, some of the crops glowing with weird luminescence, and moves towards the alleged illithid infestation. Perhaps a mile further along the mountain's internal road they come to a large cavern.

Ahead of them is Darkhold.

"Aha," Angelfire says softly, remembering Zelman's words in the deep gnome village.

The towers of what seems to be a small keep thrust above the hedge that surrounds it, a hedge that somehow seems to obscure the view of the main building behind it. The hedge is remarkably green for something buried so far away from the sun; but Malford and Lester know that Darkhold moves.

"Don't open anything you shouldn't open!" Malford barks at the others, remembering Fuligin with dread. "Don't be a Lester. Don't Lester anything." He tosses a furious glance at the L, who mumbles something about guarding levers better in one's stronghold.

"We should go in," Angelfire starts, and there's a faint popping sound as air displaces around someone teleporting in. Someone named Felenga.

"Fools!" the Dark One cries. "Thank you for leading me to this place!"

With that, Felenga hastes himself and unleashes first a quickened meteor swarm just to show he's nobody to mess with, and then a deadly ray of cold* at Angelfire. With a scream of terrible pain, Angelfire vanishes into the time stream.

Ah, Felenga. For just a moment let us pause to describe this horrible creature. Looming nearly a full 7' in height before his horns, Felenga is a skeletal figure with tatters of flesh and muscle hanging from his bones. His eyes burn with cold blue pinpricks of light- except for the one in his chest, a huge eye disturbingly reminiscent of a beholder's central eye. Stringy hair, stinking of death, lies plastered greasily on his skull. Just above his eyes a pair of wicked-sharp antlers emerge, curving cruelly up and out. From his scapula extrude two thick, fleshy tentacles of a dull rusty copper color. He wears rotting black robes, torn in many places- such as the area that would otherwise cover the huge bloodshot eye in his chest.

All righty, then; let's get on with this.

Angelfire's already gone into the time stream, barely alive after the freezing ray. Deadly danger!! Malford screams inwardly, and tries to teleport to the most relevant sanctuary he can think of at the moment- the doors of Darkhold. His spell fails. He knew he couldn't 'port inside, but to his chagrin, he notes that "inside" starts at the hedges. He casts a quick succession of spells, hasting himself and trying to disintegrate Felenga. His ray doesn't even find its target.

Felenga is moving quickly, using his magic to fly to the top of the hedge and then block a chunk of it with a wall of iron. Our heroes are scattering like windblown leaves. Drelvin, also flying now thanks to Shastruth, his evoker blade, tries to shoot Felenga down with an arrow to no avail. It whizzes past. Cursing, he nocks another, but he has a terribly bad feeling about this one.

Cackling gleefully, Felenga casts a pair of puncture spells at Malford, and though the first misses him, the second blows a hole through his lung. Gargling blood, Malford retreats behind the iron wall even as Felenga doubles the barriers with a quickened wall of force. Angelfire reappears near the others, having cast his only healing magic- a cure light wounds- while in the timestream.

"No chance!" yells Malford to the party, flipping out his trump of his keep and striving for contact. Cowed, the rest stay huddled with him behind the wall of force until he achieves contact, and as one they retreat.

Laughing evilly just like an archvillain should, Felenga watches them go. Then he strides across the hedge, sinking into it a foot or so with each step, then drops down beyond it in the keep's grounds. The yard is long- 100 yards to the drawbridge and then the castle itself. But he need not go the entire way.

As his unholy feet touch the grass, it bursts into a terrible green fae flame. Unfazed, he strides across the place, humming a hymn to his dark master, Tharizdun. The guardian crysmals clank out, rushing at him, and he destroys them with barely a thought. When he comes to the drawbridge, he flies above it, for his true sight reveals it for what it is: illusion. He descends cautiously to just above the surface of the moat. Carefully, he extracts a beaker of dull metal from his robes and tips it into the acid that fills the moat. Hissing, the liquid fills the beaker and he caps it and then seals it with magic. Cackling, Felenga flies up to the small isle upon which the castle building itself rests. Pulling a bag from his robes he fills it with soil. Glancing up, he notices that the door to the castle is open, inviting.

He makes an obscene gesture at the castle. "You trapped one Angel of the Apocalypse for billions of years," he snarls. "You will not get me." Eyes shining coldly, he snaps, "I shall liberate my Lord- and then your precious creation, your precious Nature, will be devoured as well! This time you shall not escape!"

But then Felenga flies quickly back to the hedge. Here, of all places, he knows a touch of fear. Only a touch, but...

Reaching the hedge, he alights upon it and walks back out. Cackling again, the most dangerous creature in the world teleports back to his Temple of Elemental Evil. He's practically won already.


*A triple-empowered cold ray from an Otiluke's freezing sphere, just for the record.



Next Time: Well, that can't be good! Our heroes could sure use some advice about now!!

 

[Welverin]

Best line ever? Possibly

"Don't be a Lester. Don't Lester anything."

My new motto!

Tallarn, where are you? Did you think you could go on vacation just because I started posting again? If so you're sorely mistaken.

 

[Snoweel]

Awesome, Jester.

While I'm not a fan of high-fantasy (or is that high-magic?), and I really don't like Moorcock, your game (and your Story Hour) is very entertaining.

Well done.

 

[the Jester]

Going Back to Darkhold

“Quickened meteor swarms,” Malford grumbles.

“Yeah, that’s definitely what I call in over our heads,” Horbin agrees, equally disgruntled.

“Well, if we go back there, we can try to go into that Darkhold place and hope that Felenga hasn’t- well- done whatever it is he’s trying to do. And remember, the Master of that place imprisoned Fuligin for six billion years,” the L points out.

“Until you released him,” Malford chides.

“Hey, you’d think that if you had some guy like that locked up you’d have some sort of guard on the release mechanism!”

“Except that there was no way anyone should’ve been able to get to it... not until Zelman managed to get his staff to Thimbleton to guide us to him. Let’s just not pull any random levers this time, okay?”

Lester sighs. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. I say we go back to Darkhold and see what we see. If we have to, we can always flee in a hurry.”

“Maybe,” Drelvin says. “Depends on how fast Felenga throws those meteor swarms.”

“He almost killed me,” Angelfire adds.

“And besides, Darkhold moves around,” Malford points out. “It probably won’t be there when we return.”

“Can’t hurt to try,” the Elementalist insists.

“Unless Felenga’s still there,” Drelvin mutters. “Then it could hurt a lot.” But nobody pays him heed.

Healing, a brief rest full of paranoid dreams, a hearty breakfast- and then our heroes depart, teleporting back to the caverns beneath the Bendrock Mountains where the road they were traveling led. Heck, even if Darkhold isn’t there they can at least go kill illithids. And there, just as they left it, is Darkhold. The hedges remain, blocking their view of everything except the tallest portions of the towers through some trick played by magic on perspective. Even when they fly above the hedges, the adventurers cannot see more. In fact, attempting to fly over the hedges reveals an oddity: it just doesn’t seem possible. They always seem to rise just a little higher. Climbing across them is easy enough, however, and so our heroes do so- but not without some trepidation. They drop down into a grassy yard; ahead of them, a castle, surrounded by a moat. The drawbridge is down, inviting; there is an open entrance beyond it.

“This place is creepy,” Lester remembers. He glances at Malford. “Why do you think Felenga wanted to get here?”

Nobody has an answer.

Everyone under the influence of a mass flight, our heroes approach the drawbridge. Nervously, Drelvin draws Shastruth and asks for some reconnaissance; in response, the blade sends forth an arcane eye. “That’s the toilet room,” Lester mutters, “or at least it was last time we were here.” Of course, that was the L, Malford and a number of other adventurers- who are not present. I wish Hobbes or Stone or Thimbleton was here, the L thinks to himself, missing his old friends.

“Looks clear,” comes the crisp, metallic voice of the archer’s sword, and the party flies cautiously forward into Darkhold. They find themselves on a ledge of some sort of white ceramic material that goes almost completely around a small bowl-shaped room half full of water. There are no obvious exits, but Drelvin’s keen eyes spot a hole in the bottom of the bowl, under the water, and after a few moments of hesitation the archer jumps in. He glances up with a look of horror on his face.

“Oh, YUCK!” he cries, and then a great whirlpool forms, flushing him down the hole.

“Drelvin!” Malford cries, but the archer is nowhere to be seen- or heard. “Crap,” the gnome-king mutters, and plugs his nose and jumps into the water. Spluttering, he glances upward- and sees a huge sphincter opening to dump offal into the water with him. Pulling back in disgust, he almost flies up and out of the water- but there’s a dull roar, and before he has a chance to move, the whirlpool forms again and he, too, vanishes from sight.

“Oh, well,” sighs Angelfire, and the rest of the group joins in being flushed. The water is disorienting, swirling them around, making it impossible, briefly, to tell up from down. When they find themselves breaking the surface, the group is in a small pool of waste-filled water that seems to be the endpoint of the drain. And the room the pool is in is immense- and full of offal. Huge piles of it, scores of feet high in places. No part of the floor is clean of it; no walls are visible, save walls of poop. Even the ceiling seems to be covered in clinging crustiness. The stench is hideous.

“Gah!” Angelfire coughs, pulling himself from the pool. “This is really gross.”

Indeed it is; and it only gets grosser as a huge log of filth begins to move, rearing up like a snake to strike.



Next Time: Our heroes fight poop! Advice from the Master of Darkhold! And what did Felenga want those samples for anyway?

 

[Talix]

Wow, that is truely foul.

And quickened meteor swarms - that is truely scary! Good thing the party figured out quickly enough that they were out of their league. Normally I'd say that one mage is in trouble against a whole group of at least semi-powerful people, not matter how powerful the individual is, but in this case I think he might have managed a TPK!

Excellent writing!

 

[Snoweel]

Just when I think things couldn't get any more bizarre... giant sphincters, Stool Elementals...

Crazy stuff.