ZEITGEIST [ZEITGEIST] The Continuing Adventures of Korrigan & Co.

[gideonpepys]

Session 68, Part One – A titan-free interlude

Uru decided to prepare for their inevitable encounter with Granny Allswell by protecting himself against interference by gremlins with some low-level wards and hexes. Then he realised that Quratulain would be the worst affected and offered to protect her too. She accepted and in return augmented some of his ammunition so that it would continue to bore into any target it felled, killing them, despite the Blood of Ostea.

Uriel worked to recharge his powerful staff, though the process was draining and slow. He also undertook more research into the nature of the changes affecting the new world and discovered that spirits could now be viewed in mirrors, hanging round their old bodies for some time after their deaths. Then they seemed to wander off. Uriel concluded that this was due to the disappearance of Av, which – though it formed part of the new system of planes (as the plane of death, not life) – was so far away as to be invisible from Lanjyr. Spirits could no longer reach the Bleak Gate independently.

Leon ordered a bath to be drawn at their lodgings and when he retired to his chamber he found a seagull perched on the wooden rim. It flew away when he approached. Though it seemed very far from its natural habitat, Leon shrugged and put the matter out of his mind, but when he got into the bath, he noticed a small piece of seaweed floating amid the suds, around which the water began to bubble and coalesce into a solid shape which slowly rose from the water. Leon remained calm and lay back in the bath allowing the magic to proceed. He recognised it as a harmless programmed image, taking the form of the archfey Beshela. She said: “The fey titans contest with Risur, but none will cause more harm than my mistress, She Who Writhes. I wish to help you. When you are ready to grapple with this menace of the seas, you may find me by placing a bouquet of white lilies on the water at your docks.” Then the form dissipated with a splish. Leon realised that Beshela must be in a substantially weakened position now that she had been cut off entirely from the Dreaming and the rest of the Hedgehog Court.

 

[gideonpepys]

Session 68, Part Two – Mountainside Madness

On their mule-back approach to Favela, they were ambushed by a rag-tag band of ne’er-do-wells, who didn’t know what they were up against and didn’t stand a chance. Their leader fled through the trees and was easily apprehended. He was a snivelling junior RHC officer – one of the many recruits Shaiaila Lundquist had been forced by circumstances to draft in to her local force and one of a pair of officers sent to arrest Katlin Eisner, White Tongue cultist and sister to the druid Ochran. Without much effort they got him to confess his infatuation with Katlin, who had convinced him to murder his superior partner and ‘feed him to the pigs’. Since then, she had become Mayor of Favela and had the townsfolk eating out of the palm of her hand. Worse still, she had been provoking Granny Allswell by using minor magic to create the sound of singing, playing children throughout the town – in particular, inside the walls of the Barret Damworks. She hoped that Granny would destroy the dam and flood Favela and Bole.

Thus apprised of the situation, they went on up the slope into the mountains beyond the treeline. They found the town to be almost deserted, although they knew that more than three-hundred of the original thousand-plus inhabitants remained, hopeful that they might be able to rescue their children, kidnapped by gremlins in the first few days after the Great Eclipse. Braziers full of fire-gems burned everywhere – a dangerous fire hazard in a wooden town, but an obvious sign that the people feared the darkness here even more than elsewhere.

They found the townsfolk gathered at the docks up by the reservoir. Katlin Eisner was conducting some kind of lottery and she had the townsfolk rapt, groaning with apprehension as each name was drawn. Uru watched from hiding and reported this back to the others. As the dismay of the crowd grew, he noticed the glimmering seed of a hivemind begin to form in the air above them. He alerted the others to this and then ran out of hiding in the form of the infatuated officer they had just arrested, yelling, “They’re coming!”

They were indeed: the king and his retinue now rode into view and – before she could react or flee – Uriel grasped Katlin Eisner with telekinetic force. Leon was already standing invisibly close beside her and now applied mage cuffs. Korrigan used his new ‘macrophone’ (created by Wondermaker at his request) to address the crowd. They flocked to him and begged for help in rescuing their children, quickly overcoming any shock they may have felt at the arrest of their mayor. Disrupted, the hivemind vanished. Korrigan reassured them that their children were his foremost concern but proceeded to disperse the crowd for fear of generating more hiveminds (albeit of a different ‘flavour’).

Eisner confessed her malfeasance with a shrug. “The world is doomed anyway. Why shouldn’t I stand highest atop the ruins?” The lottery was being held to decide which of the miners would go into the mines each night and sing songs to appease Granny Allswell. The townsfolk were afraid because – almost every night – one or more of the singers disappeared.

With Eisner under arrest, and armed with as much information as they could gather from the rather confused and unreliable miners, they left Gupta with the important task of maintaining order in Favela (preventing Eisner’s escape and the formation of any more hiveminds) and headed for the Redcap Mine. Before they went, Gupta reminded them of a song Jered Lawman and his band had been singing in the Thinking Man’s Tavern, when they went to interview the first crop of refugees to arrive in Flint. Perhaps he chose the number to help settle the nerves of the newcomers, or perhaps to fend off his own concerns? (As a new father, out celebrating the birth of his daughter with his girlfriend in the crowd). Whatever the inspiration, it was a jaunty remake of ‘All’s Well’, a tune miners drank to after a day with no mishaps in the mines.

 

[gideonpepys]

Session 68, Part Three – the Greatest of Gremlins

Session Soundtrack


The entrance to the Redcap mines was a lonely cluster of temporary dwellings spaced between shafts leading into the mountain. The buildings were once the homes of dozens of miners, as well as support shops, meeting areas, workshops and lavatories. All of the buildings were abandoned; their interiors stripped clean, with goods transported back to Favela or dragged into the mines by the gremlins. No metal remained: Door hinges had been crudely removed, fences picked clean save for the wood mounts, and even the handles on the latrines were missing. Each of the entry shafts save one were broken beyond mundane means of repair. Within lay crashed elevators and broken cabling, while the sole working elevator had a crude wooden sign-post erected at the entrance. Written haphazardly in splashed blood was the following: “This mountain is ours. Come and play. Play and be ours too.”

The miners had told them about a large section of the mines that had been abandoned for a few years. They had broken through some debris and found a much older section of tunnels, then went in and started setting up cranes, a rail car and a steam engine to drive them, but then a representative of King Aodhan showed up and ordered that section of the mine closed. They needed to take this lift to reach that area, where Queen Zidli had imprisoned Granny Allswell.

There was some debate as to how to proceed. They eventually established that none of them was particularly concerned about falling, even if it did turn out to be a trap (which they presumed it would). Eventually, after plenty of dithering, Uru and Quratulain got onto the platform and headed down, with Korrigan, Uriel and Leon observing their descent. It was a long way down. At the one-hundred foot mark, a gremlin hidden in a small cubby leaned out and cut the cabling. Leon teleported it up top and he and Korrigan attempted to interrogate it while Uriel lowered the whole platform safely with telekinesis. The gremlin gave them no meaningful responses. It was like trying to grill a ferret. They disposed of the thing without qualm and Leon created a dimension door down the shaft.

Down below, four gremlins awaited them – Granny’s favourites, tasked with leading them to her. These were Glower, Guffaw, Tremble and Pout. The only female of the group, Pout was garbed in a fanciful crimson dress and behaved like a meek teenager, turning her head away shyly and batting her eyelids. Close inspection revealed that the fabric of her dress had been white, but it was now soaked in fairly fresh blood. Glower was blue-skinned and stunted even for a gremlin and his expression was one of perpetual angst. He wore a finely tailored suit that was clearly sized for a child, along with an appropriately sized bowler hat in the Drakran fashion. Guffaw – a hugely obese, orange, freckled gremlin with the floppy ears of a basset hound – was the first to speak. “Huh huh huh, here they are, just like Granny said, eh?” But most of the talking was done by Tremble, a twitching, shaking gremlin with blue skin and a shock of thick white hair. Regarding them with one wide eye (the other forming a narrow feline slit) he welcomed them on behalf of his mistress and asked them to f-f-follow along.

The caverns of the Redcap mines were filled with twisting turns and narrow passages, necessitated by Risur’s druidic mining practices, which favoured appeasing nature spirits instead of strip mining. Each section of the mine was reinforced with wooden struts and every 100 feet or so there was a secured bunker complex where miners could seek shelter in the case of a collapse. There were no lights, but the king and his retinue had been sure to employ magical darkvision.

As they went, they interacted with gremlins as best they could. Uru spoke with Glower, who talked only about how unimpressed he was with the new king and the new, sunless world outside. Aside from general rancour and bitterness, what drew Uru to him were his toys: The inside lining of his jacket was filled with hooks upon which dangled dozens of tiny children's toys, which Glower occasionally pulled out and played with, with no evident pleasure or enjoyment. When Uru asked him where he got them, Glower displayed a sinister and humourless rictus.

Pout rarely spoke, but often had apparently random disagreements with her brothers, most of which turned into savage maulings. Her favourite victim was Guffaw, who was picked on relentlessly by all the others and frequently burst in helpless, flatulent tears.

Tremble bombarded the unit with ceaseless and inane questions: Favourite colour? Favourite food? Favourite celebrity? He was overjoyed to find that he and Leon agreed on the latter: Rock Rackus. “The greatest human of all time!” (Leon wasn’t sure he would go that far.)

It didn’t take long before they ran into the first trap: a thirty-foot ladder, much like others they had encountered, had poisoned quills sticking out of several rungs. Uru failed to notice them at first, but was quick enough to flinch away and was unharmed. The others used a dimension door to avoid the trap and Uru scuttled down the wall. (The four gremlins conferred in approving tones. Maybe these were the right ones after all?)

Leon’s portals helped them to bypass the next trap too – a collapsible bridge (fairly easy to spot now they knew to be on the lookout). After that, they came into an extremely dangerous-looking storage bunker, filled with incredibly sharp objects and tools. There was a narrow corridor through these objects. Leon created another dimension door. On the other side, the passage continued up a slight slope, and they noticed tiny cubby-holes set into the walls at regular intervals. The purpose of these bolt-holes became clear when, at the far end of the passage (where it sloped up more sharply before curving round to the right), Uru stepped on a pressure plate. At once, an enormous boulder dropped down onto the slope in front of him and began to roll down the passage.

Uru shadow-stepped through it; Leon created a door through to the last one (which remained open), stepped through it, and then again through to the third door which lay on the far side of the deadly storage bunker, (which would surely become a death-trap if the boulder reached it). Quratulain followed suit. Then Korrigan simply closed the walls slightly and caught the boulder, before Uriel reshaped it sufficiently for them to squeeze through. (The gremlins were very excited now. This must be the king!)

That was the last of the traps, and they proceeded without further ado.

 

[gideonpepys]

Session 68, Part Four – All’s Well Down Here

Bedtime, children. Please, please hush.
You don’t want granny waking up.
-Common Risuri Nursery Rhyme

Folk tales tell of a child who disobeyed his parents and kept breaking plates, windows, and everything else he could. His parents, on the edge of poverty and unable to keep replacing the destroyed property, took their son into the woods and told him to play a game: close his eyes and sing a song about breaking dishes, down from ninety-nine dishes until there were none left.

While the boy counted, the parents snuck away, hoping the boy would perish and they’d never have to replace another broken item. But his singing attracted Granny Allswell, who loved his voice and adopted him to sing for her forever, along with all the other children who had been abandoned in the woods. He became a gremlin, and on his birthday the next year, his parents found everything they owned cracked and shattered.

*​

After being led through the mine by their gremlin guides, the unit heard a murmur of hundreds of tiny voices, accompanied by the hearty but somehow off-putting smell of stew. The tunnel grew taller and scaffolding on the left led up to a small air vent. Beyond it, the passage opened up into a vast chamber, lit only by a dim fire-light emerging from a pit to the north. Magical fire runes around the pit kept the stew bubbling nicely.

The chamber was filled with a whole host of gremlins, most of which stood less than a foot tall in height, though their varied coloration forming a sickly, wriggling rainbow carpet. They gathered and cowered before the north wall, from which – some twenty feet above the chamber floor – Granny Allswell’s enormous head protruded like a grotesque gargoyle. Her bulbous eyes swivelled independently about the chamber and her mouth lolled open, finding continual humour in the gremlins’ antics.

At the foot of the wall lay a huge pile of shiny (and not-so-shiny) metal doodads acquired by the gremlins. The mining cart rails ran directly into the pile, but any miner could tell that the tracks seemed out of place, stopping at the wall.

On the right side of the room, a mass of makeshift metal cages held dozens of children, ranging between infants and twelve years old. Behind the cages sat a huge pile of red barrels marked with a fiery icon to warn of explosions; these held fire-dust used for blasting. Several of the children had their wrists tied to the bars of the cages with twine, and wooden signs hung around their necks, painted in blood with the word ‘Naughty.’

Tremble stepped forward to address Granny, whose eyes – previously pointed in different directions – spun to lock onto the unit, then twitched independently to examine each member in turn. Granny called for her children to calm down. At first the gremlins around the chamber didn’t seem to listen, but a forceful shout of “BE QUIET NOW!” caused them gremlins to freeze in their tracks and slowly slink to the edges of the room. Even the four greater gremlins retreated back in response to Granny’s outburst. Once the gremlins were settled, Granny called for the unit to come closer so she could “get a better look at them.” Then she said sweetly, “Why don’t cha tell Granny what this is all about now?”

Korrigan stepped forward. His foremost concern was for the children in the cages, so he decided to be as diplomatic as possible. He told Granny Allswell about the machinations of the Voice Rot and his servants, and that the serpent had tried to trick her into destroying the damn and incurring the displeasure of Risur and its king. It took a while to convince her of this; she couldn’t understand why the Voice of Rot would want to do such a thing – but when they finally convinced her she grew angry and demanded that they punish her rival and bring her his tongue “within a year”.

Granny was disappointed to hear that there were no more children close at hand and angry that she had been tricked. She had heard about a sunless world and cooed that Risur’s children must be so scared of the dark. One eye glanced over at the children in their cages. “Look how safe they are in there,” she said. Granny told the new king that she wanted to stay in charge in the Athras Mountains and she wanted a steady stream of children – just the naughty ones, though – to make part of her family. She even had a proposal: have all the miners move out of the mountains and instead send her all the children old enough to sing a song or swing a pick. She’d keep them until they were twelve, teaching them obedience if she could, or making gremlins out of the ones who wouldn’t behave. “Then on their thirteenth birthday I’ll send them back to civilization with whatever they’ve mined.”

Uriel could see that Granny was not like the Ash Wolf or the Father of Thunder. She might seem crazy, but she was clearly as malevolent as the Voice of Rot and he was reluctant to leave her awake and in charge of any part of Risur.

Korrigan was unhappy about all of this, but sought to negotiate – in particular for the release of the children in the cages. At once, Granny pounced, enquiring about the little ‘princeling’ he had brought with him. “For me?” she said, “You shouldn’t have!” Granny would be happy to swap the son of the king for all of the miners’ children. “He’s sure to be very well behaved!”

Uru rolled his eyes and reached for his crossbow. It was bound to kick off now!

But Kai leaned in close to his father’s ear from his perch on Korrigan’s back and whispered, “Let’s just pretend. I’m not afraid. I know you won’t really leave me.”

To the surprise of everyone, Korrigan agreed, pretending that he had intended to hand over Kai all along. Even Granny seemed surprised, even doubtful, and Leon stepped in to assuage her suspicions and stroke her enormous ego. Thus flattered, she was only too happy to accept. Korrigan took Kai off his back and Granny cooed to him and called for Glower, Pout, Tremble and Guffaw to come forth and lead him to her.

Quratulain stood for a moment in shock, staring at her king and his relinquished son, both of whom she had vowed to protect. In the next instant, however, she understood his intent all too clearly – as did everyone else in the unit. Without a word being spoken, they formed a plan, following Korrigan’s wishes. (Later, they would wonder how this marvellous phenomenon occurred, but for now, they simply obeyed their clear, mental instructions.) Uriel and Uru released the children from their cages and corralled them around Leon. (Then Uru slipped into the shadows and approached the fire-dust barrels…) Leon did two things at once: he quickly figured out that it would take him two trips – and a great deal of magical energy – to get the kids out of harm’s way fast. All the while he maintained his stream of obsequious blather designed to flatter and distract Granny. Quratulain stood poised and ready.

Korrigan bowed and began to withdraw, when Leon disappeared with the first group of children.

“What’s this?” said Granny. “Why this unseemly haste?” She was alert to duplicity and her eyes began to roam away from Kai.

“You said we could take the children,” said Uriel. “You said nothing about how.”

“Wait,” she said. “The boy must come to me, before…”

Leon reappeared and, almost instantaneously, disappeared with the rest of the kids. Korrigan gestured to the others and they began to leave the chamber.

“Oh very well,” said Granny. “Be careful on your way back to the surface. I’ve heard that the tunnels are extremely hazardous. …”

Leon reappeared for the second time, and this time he had Gupta with him. At once, Korrigan transformed in a lightning bolt and went back for Kai, snatching him up into his arms. The rest of the unit was ready for action, but it turned out Granny was too:

The ‘wall’ she was ‘trapped’ behind exploded into action, forming limbs and heads as it split into three huge earth elementals. Granny began to cackle with glee and stood to take on her full sixty-foot height. “More chunky bits for my stew!” she cried, as waves of gremlins began to surge into the room from all sides. “Dice ‘em up, kids! There’s nothing tastes better than a dead double-crosser!”

 

[RangerWickett]

I imagine your party is the only one to bring a child with them to this encounter.

 

[gideonpepys]

Session 69, Part One – Curse Ye!

Soundtrack


When Korrigan bolted back to grab Kai, he took Quratulain by surprise. So the voices in her head sharing the ‘plan’ were real?

Korrigan found himself beset by the baleful auras of Glower, Guffaw, Tremble and Pout. To rid himself of them, he stomped on the ground, but they were well-used to such tremors and simply rode the shockwave.

Uru planted demolition charges among the fire-dust barrels and then stole upwards onto the rough, high ceiling.

Uriel invested a great deal of energy in his deathly gaze power, causing the swarms of gremlins throughout the cavern and the three huge earth spirits to become frozen in horror at terrible visions of their own demise (which, in most cases, would turn out to be imminent). Pout was frozen too, but the rest of Granny’s favoured four were unaffected. More gremlins began to swarm into the room, to take the place of those that had been frozen. Uriel warned the others not to harm their frozen foes, or they would be freed from the effect.

“Aw, now ye’ve made Granny mad. Time for a spanking!” cackled the titan, as she swiped at Uriel and Korrigan. They should have been out of reach, but her arms seemed to elongate impossibly, though they managed to jump back out of the way. She tried to curse Korrigan, too, but it failed to land.

Gupta stepped back out of the gremlins' auras and studied them for weaknesses.

Glower, Guffaw and Tremble pounced on Korrigan and clawed at him. He fell to the ground, momentarily blinded, and the lesser gremlins swarmed over him and stole all of his possessions!

Quratulain tried to shoot at the favoured gremlins, but her guns would not work until she stopped aiming to inspect them, whereupon they went off spontaneously!

One of Granny’s roving eyes cursed Quratulain with bad luck. “Aww! Does the widdle hero want to cwy now?” she mocked.

Korrigan flew up and out of the auras. Leon levitated and healed himself as best he could – he was exhausted after the huge teleports he had just pulled off.

Before the lesser gremlins could spirit all of Korrigan’s belongings away, Uru flew down on Little Jack and released his ghostly entourage, who snatched back all of Korrigan’s stuff. “You play fair now,” Granny admonished and her evil eye stripped Uru of all but his most mundane abilities. Then she cursed Quratulain too, causing her to stumble blindly forward into the midst of the greater gremlins, where Granny trapped her with a stone wall. The gremlins then interfered with Quratulain’s metallic form, causing her to be frozen, unable to move.

Granny cursed Gupta too.

The demolition charges went off, causing a huge explosion that blew away scores of frozen gremlins and caused the surface of the nearest earth spirit to crack, shaking it out of the deathly gaze. It swung at Korrigan and missed.

Leon teleported into the stone prison around Quratulain and teleported back out with her.

Uru shadow-stepped past the line of earth spirits to the huge cavern that had opened up behind Granny Allswell. Here, he took in the huge range of opportunities for mischief: a steam engine, three cranes, more shinies and a two-hundred-foot-deep pit.

Uriel and Granny exchanged spells. He fended off her evil eye, then subjected her to swarms of midges. Then she tried to curse him again, and again he warded her off.

Gremlins clambered up from crevices nearby, surrounded Leon and clawed at him painfully. He responded with a tiefling curse before teleporting away. (One of Granny’s eyes watched him go – he was not Unseen by her…)

Korrigan held forth his Icon of Urim and took control of the freed elemental, sending it stomping after Granny. Leon dispelled her hex on Quratulain.

Working on a hunch, Uru asked his spririt friends Winkin, Blinkin and Nod (who could work without creating too much noise, unlike his entourage) to ‘re-bling’ the earth spirit Korrigan had controlled, filling the pits that dotted its surface with coins from the royal treasury. This did indeed cause the spirit to change allegiance and become their ally. Then Uru scuttled across the chamber to inspect the cranes.

Uriel used telekinesis to hurl Quratulain as far as he could and Quratulain used her rocket boots to aim herself at Granny Allswell’s face. Granny again tried to curse Uriel, who now was forced to ward it off with his staff, as his own reserves of willpower were sorely drained.

Gupta took on tiger form and sprinted across the room towards the titan; she was hit by a second curse.

The allied earth spirit struck at Granny, but its arm – damaged by the explosion – shattered on impact.

Propelled by Uriel and by her rocket boots, Quratulain struck Granny Allswell a powerful blow. First blood! Better still, Quratulain’s armblade could weaken the defences of a foe bit by bit.

Uriel kept her in the air where she could do the most damage; Korrigan flew up alongside to support her and she reproached him. “You idiot! What were you thinking? Giving up your own child!” Korrigan smiled in admiration at her forthright manner, then summoned a second version of himself.

Granny gave a twitch when she was struck and momentarily focused both eyes on Quratulain. “Hehehe, dat tickled ol Granny a little bit. Maybe after this rough’n’tumble you can come scratch me back a little?” With that, she cursed Quratulain with mundanity, so she could no longer pry open her defences. Then, with a hand-gesture, Granny dismissed the stone wall she had conjured earlier, releasing her favourite gremlins, who scampered out to wreak havoc. Seeing the danger – for their very presence was inimical – Leon weaved an aggressive teleport spell that dumped them over the two-hundred-foot pit. They squealed as they fell to their deaths. “My children!” Granny wailed.

Now his hunch had been proved right, Uru encouraged the ghost children to fill up the holes in the remaining elementals, then released one from its frozen status by shooting an all-but-harmless shuriken at it, just enough to sting it into action.

Surrounded by gremlins, Uriel muttered an incantation and became insubstantial to stop them stealing his stuff!

Granny threw out more curses and destroyed the one-armed elemental with her fists.

Korrigan 2 stomped on the head of the only elemental that was still frozen, then armed with two earthen monsters, advanced towards Granny, with the intention of shoving her into the pit.

Granny’s evil eye roved back onto Uriel who was by now too exhausted to resist. Her eye rendered him mundane and he returned to normal. So he summoned the righteous might of his staff and prepared to fend off the gremlin swarm. Meanwhile, with Uriel’s telekinesis abruptly ended, Quratulain dropped like a stone and was forced to pick herself up off the cavern floor. Then Granny landed another curse on Uriel, one that neither he nor Leon could identify.

It turns out that the timing could not have been worse. When Korrigan’s elementals tried to bum rush Granny, she invoked her hostile juxtaposition and swapped places with Uriel. The opportunity to end this quickly was lost! And then both Korrigans vanished.

At this point, things were looking dire: Granny’s curses were exhausting to fend off and crippling if they landed; most of the unit had been rendered ‘unlucky’ or ‘mundane’; very little harm had come to Granny; most of the unit was drained and Uriel – who might otherwise have been able to restore them to full vitality – was unable to cast any of his spells.

Quratulain and the elementals quickly triangulated on Granny, but she dominated Quratulain and turned her on the stone giants. Then she lashed out and damaged both of them herself.

The turning point came when Uriel shrugged off the last curse afflicting him. There was a trend here, as Quratulain and Gupta won free in short order too.

Leon, some distance away at the far end of the cave, took immediate advantage and teleported Uriel to him, creating a dimension door next them, with the other end close to Granny. Uriel used the healing power of his incarnation Tadeo to restore Leon fully, then Leon stepped through the portal he had created and took the fight to the evil titan with his Dreaming Blade. Korrigan returned and, seeing that victory was still within their grasp, inspired his comrades to fight on.

Uriel drew upon his most warlike aspect, turned the Arsenal of Dhebisu into a sword and stepped through the portal Leon had created. There, he rejuvenated Quratulain with a touch, and she struck at the titan again and again, as did the elementals, now her magical wards were worn away. Leon landed a debilitating curse of his own, and Granny cried out in alarm. Here was pain! Here was danger!

She lashed out, her immense, shovel-like hands catching both the elementals and shattering them. But the tide had already turned, and under a relentless flurry of attacks from her foes, she suddenly stumbled and at once, cried out, not for mercy – her pride would not allow that – but for a different bargain: Now, all she wanted was Redcap, just this one little mountain to call her very own. In return for that (and her life, of course, so much was implicit) she would send curses out against all of their enemies – a dozen foes who they could name, would be weakened by wicked dreams each night.

Uriel counselled against leaving her be; such a wicked creature should not lay claim to a single square inch of Risur. Korrigan agreed. Uru needed no further invitation. He had buzzed across the cavern on Little Jack and taken up a position where his aim was clear. Now he shot Granny in the eye and she let out a horrible wail that caused the walls, the floor and the ceiling of the cavern to rumble and begin to crack. They had just seconds in which to escape.

Gupta resumed her human form and Stared in Wonder for a means to do so. There was none, unless Leon could find the strength to get them all out at once.

Uriel empowered Leon, Korrigan manoeuvred everyone into place, and Leon teleported them all to the surface, just as Granny Allswell’s cave collapsed in on itself.

Granny may have forced them to flee before they landed further blows, but all was not well down there. Uru had shot Granny with one of the new shuriken Quratulain had designed for him – to overcome the effects of the Blood of Ostea, and deliver an automated, clockwork coup-de-grace. The insidious, mechanical thing burrowed its way deeper into Granny’s head – not far, but just far enough that, in her weakened state, when it stopped moving, she did too. The mother of all gremlins had been killed by a technological doodad.

 

[RangerWickett]

Awesome demise!

 

[gideonpepys]

Awesome demise!

It really was. And it was one of those moments when random events, dictated by dice rolls, end up tying the story up with a neat little bow, as if they had been planned all along.

The victory was all the more sweet because it was hard-earned too. It really did look like the group would have to surrender, flee or die; then suddenly, everything went in their favour for a couple of rounds, enough for them to swing it. Granny's curses were terrifying for a high-level group. This was one of the closest run things we've seen for a very long while.

Also, it's a good job I have a habit of reading ahead, because there's a little tidbit of information in adventure #13 about what happens in the event of the death of the Voice of Rot, which I think applies equally well right here. ...

 

[gideonpepys]

Session 69, Part Two – A New Power Arises

Later, while the rest of the unit took part in a riotous celebration in Favela – surrounded by the children they had rescued and feted by their adoring families – Uru slipped away, drawn by strange echoes from all around him which the others did not seem able to hear. Outside the lights of the town, and away from the noise of the townsfolk, he found himself surrounded by many shadowy figures – gremlins and other mountain fey, and even the spirits of those who had died here, especially the children. They had come to him to ask what they should do now, since their mistress was dead. After all, he had killed her. Surely he must have had something in mind?

Leon had already told Uru that it fell upon whosoever killed a titan to decide what manner of entity should arise in its stead. There was little precedent here – in fact, there was none; no ‘rules’ to go by, save for the obvious: that the entity should be fey, suitably powerful, and have a bond to the environment over which it would rule. (Deep, dark caves; cold, lightless rivers; the netherworld.)

Uru now gave the gremlins the same answer he gave Leon, when asked who would take the place of Granny Allswell:

“Me.”

 

[RangerWickett]