Session 253, Part One
Seobriga & Slate
Lauryn Cyneburg brought Conquo into the outskirts of Seobriga, shrouded by an invisibility spell. She warned him to be cautious, nonetheless, as the spell would not silence him, but for the time being neither of them could see anyone around. The huge golem climbed a nearby building to get his bearings and saw four Ob lanterns dotted about the city. Unlike those in Flint, these were purpose-built wooden structures. He could also see something going on in the light of one of those towers: a huge public gathering by the look and the sound of it. Conquo knew Seobriga reasonably well, and thought that it was the square where he and the unit had first arrived, searching for Tinker Oddcog.
He decided to take a closer look, and was about to set off when Cyneburg suggested she teleport them there. Conquo was enthusiastic about this, and asked her to take him straight into the wooden lantern tower. Cyneburg refused. “We don’t know if it could take your weight.” How about a nearby roof, then? “Again, who knows if that’s safe. I’ll bring us close to the square at ground level, if it’s all the same to you.” They bickered a bit more and Conquo thought, ‘she’s worse than Xambria’. In the end he gave up: “If that’s all you could do, why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”
They teleported to a trash-filled alleyway at the edge the square. Their arrival caused quite a din, as the rubbish was displaced noisily, but the nearby citizens did not appear to notice. All of the streets leading to the square were crowded with people, facing the square intently, despite not having any clear view. The reason for this soon became apparent, when both Conquo and Cyneburg received the same mental broadcast as everyone else – a moving image of what was happening in the square:
Wearing a leather mask over his hideously deformed face, Bruse Shantus himself stomped a long row of prisoners, flanked by a pair of king-bred tyrannosaurs draped in royal raiment, and accompanied by Brakken of Heffanita, whose telepathic projection this must have been. Other Berans of note were present, Zarkava Ssa’litt and Kenna Vigilante among them, and the square was also crowded with orc soldiers. All seemed to be under the sway of the hivemind.
“Don’t look away, citizens!” bellowed the Bruse. “These savages before us were given a chance to obey our laws, but they rejected us. Disobedience is an uncivil serpent, and we must strike off its head before it poisons us. Let all who would resist our unity smell the blood spilled today, and know we shall come for them soon!” Brakken then handed him a ceremonial greatsword.
“This is too dangerous,” said Cyneburg. “You can’t go up against all of them!”
“Then I will focus on the lanterns,” said Conquo. “We’ll stop the Ob from burning the city and come back to free the people later. Can you teleport me to the towers?”
Cyneburg shook her head. “I blew most of my dailies fighting you guys. I’m pretty drained right now. I need to save some juice to get you home.”
Just then, as the Bruse began to approach the prisoners, hefting the greatsword threateningly, a prisoner at the centre of the line stood, even though she had to awkwardly heave up two goblins who were manacled to her. It was the gnoll, Glaucia Evora, and she spat her words at the Bruse:
“We were never a nation of obedience, tyrant! We were a nation of justice. On this killing field, you might cut us down, but our blood will water a new crop of revolution. Better a savage than a slave.”
The Bruse snarled in reply, “You have volunteered to die first,
executore!” The crowd roared with relish. This is what they had come to see!
Conquo looked down at Cyneburg. “Sorry, but she’s a friend. Got to help now.”
“Wait!” hissed Cyneburg. “Give me a second!”
*
Korrigan found himself lying under loose floorboards. They lifted easily, only for the space to be filled by an avalanche of stale hay. He struggled up through it, and found himself in a hayloft above a stable – and quite a grand one at that. He recognised it as the royal stables in the grounds of Torfeld Palace. A couple of young grooms were tending the horses, but they didn’t see him. He opened the upper door and flew out into the night.
It was strange to be without Kai after all this time. He made a mental note that a couple of the powers he drew from Kai were not available to him (as Kai enabled him to access all the planes, not just those he was attuned to himself).
There was an Obscurati lantern tower right here on the palace grounds, planted with some effrontery on the enormous oval lawn. This one was a simple wooden structure, not like the ones in Flint. It did not appear to be guarded, but rather than investigate it straight away, Korrigan decided to head back into the stables and get some answers, which he extracted from the stable-hands, once he’d freed them from the hivemind. It wasn’t clear whether the two young lads were more surprised to be free, or that their king was now addressing them. They told them that Viscount Price-Hill was in charge here in Slate, and that he was resident in the palace. Korrigan told them to lay low, and if possible not to leave the stable. Then he went to check out the lantern tower.
Inside, he found large barrels of oil which he quickly identified as being identical to the oil currently burning with a sepia light designed to dampen emotions. There didn’t appear to be any pipes or mechnisms connecting this lamp up to another site; no refinery like the one they had discovered in Flint. So no means of turning this lamp into a killing machine. Korrigan sent his mind’s eye up into the sky and saw about nine more lamps dotted about Slate. All were of similar construction. The Ob had no plans to use Slate as part of their scorched-earth contingency.
Still, to reclaim his capital, he needed to address the hivemind situation, and free Viscount Price-Hill.
Before he could even begin to formulate a plan of action, he received a coded
sending from Lauryn Cyneburg:
“Conquo is in trouble here, your majesty. Can you or any of the others be spared?”
Slate could wait. They had good friends in Seobriga. Korrigan gave the signal for his extraction, and reappeared on Cauldron Hill.
As Wondermaker fiddled with the dial on the top hat, he said, “The duplicants in Seobriga are far from the city centre. The Berans are alert to such technology!”
All of a sudden, Korrigan was off again, hoping he would arrive on time. …