Update #24: Finding Whitehearth
Loki’s axe glances off the stone arch and strikes the soldier’s shoulder, drawing sparks and a grunt from the man, but failing to pierce his armor. Hastily he raises his flail and shield to answer the attack, but his eyes are suddenly drawn to the half-elf behind the half-giant, and for a brief moment, Dazed, his thoughts cloud and he forgets to attack. Behind Loki, Elisa and Audric move forward, waiting to attack but unable to join the fight in the cramped doorway. Seeing the bottleneck, Dox quickly runs out of the southern passage and Ruel hurries after him as his spell ends.
Loki recovers from his errant swing and sends his greataxe hurtling towards the soldier, who brings his shield up and grits his teeth as the blow hammers his guard, the shock threatening to numb his arm. Backing away from the half-giant, he shouts to his companion, “Run, fool! Get reinforcements!”
Audric is upon him in an instant. Springing past Loki he charges the soldier, hooking an arm around his neck and bearing down. The soldier’s knees bend but do not buckle and he slides out of the monk’s grip, escaping from the grapple. Loki is on the soldier again a moment later, however, and his chainmail is not enough to protect him from a third strike that shears flesh and chain from his side. The soldier’s desperate counterattack glances off of Loki’s breastplate and his eyes widen as the half-giant raises his greataxe for a killing blow. While he focuses on the coming attack something slams into his injured side, and the searing pain is relieved by an icy numbness, then darkness.
Audric wriggles his foot free from the slumped over guard’s side with a grimace, wiping the gore off on his emerald tabard.
“Nice kick,” Loki smiles as he let’s the axe head fall to crunch into the glassy debris below.
Meanwhile, Elisa charges right past the melee, quickly making up ground on the soldier's fleeing partner. Her greatsword lashes out, and the man screams as she opens a long gash from back to thigh with the blade. Desperately he tries to leap a low stone wall and put distance between him and the much faster woman, but his legs give out and he trips over it instead. Elisa has no trouble leaping the barrier, and her blade plunges into the soldier’s back as she lands over him. As she yanks her sword free, Ruel and Dox run onto the scene, but lower their weapons as they find the situation well in hand.
As they drag the bodies back into the map room, they find Alexandre still hastily divesting himself of his armor. “You can relax, we took care of it,” Elisa smirks as she sheathes her blade. Alexandre curses colorfully and Audric chuckles, returning to help him remove the rest of the chainmail and replace it with his usual leathers.
***
Ruel frowns, his eyes glowing violet under the effect of Detect Magic as he scans the map room, “The only item that shows any magical aura is the shield.” Studying it a minute further he nods, “Abjuration. It is probably a simple defensive enhancement. But if there is no other magic here, it seems unlikely that this is the map we are looking for. I should see some sort of illusion if the See Invisibility scroll is to be of any use.”
Dox grins, “I have an idea! We still have one of the soldiers alive, right? I can pretend to be his partner and you can pretend to tie me up next to him. Then we can see what he knows!”
Ruel considers a moment, nodding, “Very well, I will play the part of interrogator.”
Dox is soon made to appear trussed up next to the sole surviving Emerald Claw soldier the Irregulars have encountered, and he shifts his appearance to imitate the man’s companion whom Alexandre skewered earlier. He nods to Ruel who takes out his waterskin and splashes the soldier, then slaps Dox across the face, launching into a barrage of questions that the changling stoutly refuses to answer as the soldier slowly comes to. Ruel shifts his questions to the soldier.
“What’s your name?” he barks.
“Lambrose,” the soldier groggily replies.
“How many of you are here?”
The soldier clamps his mouth shut and glares hard at the wizard. Quickly Ruel draws and loads his crossbow, pointing it at Lambrose’s face and shouting, “How many?” The two of them lock eyes. A bead of sweat rolls down Ruel’s cheek and his arm begins to shake. The soldier smirks and spits up into the wizard’s face. “Do your worst.”
“Perhaps one of the others will be interested in having their lives spared!” Ruel retorts as he wipes his face and walks through the archway. Standing at the doorway, Elisa glares at Lambrose while thumbing her greatsword a moment before following Ruel, leaving the soldier and the rogue alone.
Dox shifts and struggles against his bonds a moment before whispering, “What do you think we should do?”
Lambrose snorts, “They’re dead already. Just wait until Garrow gets a hold of them.”
Dox nods and struggles again with his ropes. Lambrose watches with interest, “Can you get free, comrade?”
“No, no they’ve got me tied up pretty good. What are we going to do?” Dox repeats.
“Either our comrades will rescue us, or we will die as the faithful!” Lambrose declares, his expression set and his eyes gleaming as he stares past Dox.
“Yes, but do you think if we made enough noise…?”
“With all that mining?” Lambrose shakes his head, then laughs and gestures with his chin towards the map room. “If Garrow can’t figure it out, those bumblers never will!”
Dox sighs and leans back against the wall, “Did you get any duty with the miner’s this week, I didn’t… Hey, stay with me!” Dox jabs the man’s leg with his foot as his head begins to slump over again. He only mutters incoherently as his shoulders continue to sag.
Dox suddenly surges to his feet, pretending to break free from his bonds. The soldier raises his head and focuses on Dox again, “Excellent! Now we can die fighting, as soldiers of the Emerald Claw should!”
Dox hesitates a moment, “I should try and alert the others though… and get rid of these meddlers. Where was Garrow when last you saw him?”
“Digging up graves. You must have taken a nasty knock on the head if you don’t remember that!” Lambrose slurs with a lopsided grin.
“Yeah, they got me pretty good.” Dox bites his lip.
“They got me pretty good too,” Lambrose winces again. “Worse than you I think, I can’t make it very far. Let me free, I’ll distract them and you can make a break for our camp.”
Dox nods, then steps forward, peering around the doorway. He whispers back to Lambrose, “Let me make sure the coast is clear.” Stepping through, he casually strolls up to where the rest of the Irregulars are waiting.
“What did you find out?” Ruel whispers.
“Its not going well for them, their boss is named Garrow and he’s been in the graveyard trying to decipher something or another.”
Alexandre cocks his head, “I don’t remember anyone else but those other guards there.”
Dox blinks, then frowns. “Oh yeah. That’s weird.”
Ruel shakes his head, “Did you find out how long their guard shifts are?”
Dox’s expression sinks again, “No. Hang on, I’ll go find out!”
Half the Irregulars open their mouths to protest. But Dox has already turned the corner.
Lambrose looks up expectantly, “Well?”
“I must have hit my head harder than I thought… do you know when the next shift change will be? Maybe we can wait until they get here to sound the alarm.”
“Lambrose sighs, “No good. We’re still at least a few hours from the next change. You’ll have to get to the camp now. Come on, let me free!” The soldier’s eyes are wide and desperate, and he struggles again with his bonds.
Dox holds up a finger and runs around the corner again, once again returning to the Irregulars. “The next shift change isn’t for another few hours, we have time.”
Ruel nods, “Then we have time to search. Let us see if we can find any other maps or clues in the rest of the site, before we use the scroll.”
Loki sighs, “What do we do with Dox’s friend in there?”
Alexandre folds his arms and nods decisively, “Let’s finish him off.”
“Oh come on! He’s helpless, let’s just leave him be!” Elisa retorts.
“I don’t want to leave him alone in there, I mean, what if he escapes? But I’m not so sure we should just kill him either.” Dox waffles.
Audric shakes his head, “I will take care of him.” He steps around the corner and moves to the bound soldier. His shoulders have slumped again, but he looks up blearily at the monk. Before he can call out, Audric jabs a pressure point in his neck and Labrose lists back over to his side. Checking his pulse, Audric nods to himself and returns to join the rest of the party.
“Come on, let’s search the grounds.”
The Irregulars search the area thoroughly. They find a glass encrusted mine shaft and Audric is carefully lowered inside, only to find it sealed off with nothing more than a charred piece of mournful dwarven poetry of interest. They search broken and demolished exterior buildings, but find charred wood, stone, glass and little more. Finally, they return to the graveyard where the skeletal workers continue to mine for bodies, even without any Emerald Claw soldiers or reasonable facsimiles on watch. Beside the graveyard is the last unexplored building, but the only entrance is right by the bustling undead.
Dox, still in the guise of an Emerald Claw soldier and Ruel, after casting Disguise Self to look similar to the rogue enter the building unmolested. Once again they find nothing akin to a map, though Dox does discover an ornate chalice buried underneath a giant lump of glass. Dox starts chipping at the glass with his dagger, but has difficulty making any progress. Ruel returns to the Irregulars gathered outside the graveyard, and Loki is sent in to help dig out the goblet. The Irregulars prepare to engage the undead if they should leave their tasks, but they ignore the half-giant as he passes within a few feet of them. Loki makes short work of the interposing glass and the chalice is retrieved. The party returns to the map room.
“Nothing. Unless those soldiers are camped right over the map, this must be it.” Ruel declares. “I will use the scroll.”
Loki grumbles, “We could have saved a lot of time if we had just done that in the first place.”
Dox grins, “Yeah, but then we wouldn’t have found this!” He flecks crusted bits of glass from the rim of the goblet, eyeing it closely. “It looks valuable to me.”
Loki shrugs as Ruel recites the See Invisibility scroll. The wizard’s shoulders slump a moment later. “Nothing!” He steps closer to the red lion and dragon statue, circling it and inspecting it as close as he can. He pauses as he examines the back of the lion’s neck, “Wait, there is something here. It is very small, it says: Tallis, Black Seal, E4.” Ruel quickly checks the back of the dragon’s broad neck. “There is another one here: Whitehearth, White Seal, NE9. Whitehearth!” He looks up with a grin, before quickly moving to the rest of the statues and writing down a similar series of text on the back of each statue.
Elisa laughs, “I guess you were right Loki. But what does that mean?”
Loki smiles, “Easy. E4 and NE9. Those are compass directions.” Loki moves towards the white statues, standing on the white marble slab on the ground beside them. He looks at the map, now east of him. “The number is probably the number of paces from these colored slabs to reach them on the map.”
Ruel raises his eyebrows and nods, “Indeed, quite clever Loki. But I imagine they are not half-giant paces, if you will allow me.” Following each set of directions, the Irregulars find Loki’s theory to be correct and soon the rubbing of the Cyre portion of their map is filled with not only Whitehearth’s location, but also several more House Cannith sites.
As Ruel carefully rolls up their map, it is Audric who sees they are being watched. A tall, emaciated figure stands outside the southern entrance of the map room, swathed in a black silk cloak, with a long scar running down his cheek and blood red eyes. He grins at the monk, displaying long tapered canines. As Audric calls out a warning, he laughs and addresses the Irregulars with a gravely voice, “What have we here? I must thank you for shedding light on this puzzle of a map, alas that is not enough to make up for your trespasses here. To me, my warriors while I feast on their blood!” He gestures briefly and dissipates into mist. As the Irregulars draw their weapons, a few humanoid shapes move forward into the obscuring fog.
Undaunted, Alexandre raises his thinblade and charges. Halfway there he balks and his feet slide and skitter across glass and debris and as he hastily tries to arrest his charge. There are over twenty Emerald Claw soldiers surging forward to attack!
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
