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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 1282406" data-attributes="member: 8530">Game #9 - 12/21/03Chapter 32, “Gheldaylin”, September 14th, 1019, 12:15 A.M. Alton, Cassie, Mojo, Narg, Nahmi and Teakas are looking at the creature when Mojo glances at Nahmi and says “Hey guys, what have we decided to do with this guy?”   Narg exclaims, “No.  Absolutely not!  No gnolls in the party.  We have to draw the line somewhere!”   Mojo replies, “Hey, if drew that line you’d have never been let into this party.”   “And look where that’s gotten us,” Cassie sarcastically comments.     Alton says, “Hey, he’s my kind of people, he’s hairy and grows things.”  It appears that Narg is going to lose this argument and he exclaims, “Well this is the last straw.  From now on if I run into anyone that I don’t like I’m just going to kill them outright.”  “How is that any different than what you do now?”  Mojo replies.   Alton tells Narg, “Look, we already have a gay bugbear on the island.  How can this be any worse?”   Narg says, “Okay, I give up.  But I don’t want him anywhere near my house.”  Mojo replies. “You barely let me go into your house.”  “I think that’s more of his wife’s good judgment,” Cassie answers. Since Cassie is still in dragon form she decides to obtain some samples from the creature, flying up and collecting blood as well as some pieces of torn flesh and muscle.  She also flies by the rubble pile and gets a few scales that had broken off.   She returns to the party and Mojo says, “What do you need that for?”  “Analysis,” she replies.   “I think you’re the one who needs analysis,” he answers.  They hear the sound of horses approaching from the town, and the party gets into a defensive stance.  A dozen horses ride up and an armored woman dismounts.   Teakas approaches her and they briefly converse.  Teakas introduces the woman as Captain Ral Twarn, the leader of the town guard and also Gellyath’s cousin.   She then introduces the Silver Moon Adventurers, explaining that the chimp and dragon are polymorphed party members “What do you want?” Cassie asks.Ral says that they are concerned about the creature since it is still less than a mile from town, and they have come to post guard over it.    Cassie explains that, “Its tired and resting.  When it wakes up it is planning to teleport away from here.”   Mojo adds, “Or it might decide to wander into town and (Grandma offending comment omitted).  We’re not sure yet.”    Cassie gestures to Mojo and comments, “What is it that the Queen sees in this Bozo?”  Mojo reaches towards his belt buckle and replies, “Do you really want to see?”   “You just keep those on,” Narg interjects.Getting back to Ral, Cassie says, “Ignore him.  Look, the creature is going to rest and then it will be going home to another world.  We’ve also instructed it to stay away from your buildings. You have nothing further to worry about.”  Mojo comments, “Hey, if it is going to teleport away shouldn’t we first load it up with all the people we’d like to get rid of?”  “Starting with you?” Alton inquires.   Mojo answers, “I was thinking more like the King, and possibly my cousin Lono.”  Alton answers, “We just got one group of monsters off its back, why give it another?”   Ral tells the group, “Well, I’m happy to hear that, but we still want to keep an eye on it just to be safe.”   Cassie suggests that they keep a distance, to which she says, “No problem.  The horses don’t want to get too close to it anyway.”    Ral then tells them, “The town is that way.  Your friends Mark and Purge got rooms for you at the Gheldaylin Inn.”   “A bed and a drink, you don’t have to tell me twice,” Narg comments.   “Let’s go,” Mojo states.   Alton and Cassie say that they plan to stay and keep an eye on the Kadtanach.  Nahmi decides it is probably safer for him to avoid the town is well.  The two fighters walk off.  Teakas decides to fly back to the town as well.  The other three bed down for the night.  Narg and Mojo soon arrive in town.   Gheldaylin is a typical rural crossroads hamlet.   The center of town consists of around twenty buildings surrounded by a wooden palisade fence.    There are two inns in the community.  One is named the “Cranky Rooster”, which has the refugee carts near it.   The other is a sturdier stone structure with the sign “Gheldaylin Inn.”  Mojo comments, “At least they picked the better establishment for us to stay at.” They enter the building, seeing Mark and Purge sitting at a table and join them.   Narg says, “I have one critically important question.  Have we missed last call?”   Purge replies, “No. With a giant monster less than a mile away this place isn’t planning to close.”   Purge hands each of them a room key.  Mojo quips, “Gee Purge, I’m really not that kind of guy.  You have to get at least a drink into me first.”   They order drinks and catch each other up on what is going on.   Mark says that the town normally has a population of around 300, but that the overwhelming majority of the residents have evacuated.  They finish their drinks and the four then head upstairs to their respective rooms. Cassie is the first party member to awaken, finding it to now be well past dawn.    The sun is shining down and she notices the rays of sunlight are shining through the Kadtanach, with it now being translucent.    She approaches the creature and passes her hand through it, encountering a minimum of resistance similar to movement through water.   She rejoins the others, and is pleased to see that the samples she collected are still solid.   The town guards are pleased that the creature is fading away.  Cassie spends the next two hours using her dragon form and the four draft horses to start pulling the large harness straps away from the rubble pile.   She is able to get several that had been attached to the torso, but all of the ones still fastened to the massive yoke are still buried under tons of rubble.    “What do you want that for?” Alton asks.   She says, “Are you kidding?   These staps are made of a petrified leather and are 9-inches thick, 3-feet wide, and hundreds of feet long.  There’s nothing like them on this world.  I’m sure we can come up with something to use them for.”     She instructs Ral to keep everyone away from the debris pile, claiming salvage rights.   Ral agrees to rope off the area, pointing out that rocks are still falling from the hill, so they should keep people away for safety sake. The four party members from town eventually join them.  By this point it is almost gone, being only a faint outline.   Alton passes his hand through the creature, finding no resistance at all.   Cassie explains that she has read about inter-dimensional travel like that before, that the elvan timekeeper Lord Aldorn wrote about a mysterious cube-like structure that once visited the planet which took three days to solidify on this world and another three days to fade away when it was done.    By mid-morning the creature is totally gone.   Cassie and Alton both transform back into their normal humanoid forms.  Ral tells the party that she has just been notified that the gnoll prisoner they captured has regained consciousness and is currently in the town jail.  Alton reminds the party that the gnoll was present in the room where Yeenoghu disappeared from and might have an ideas as to where he went.   She also has brought horses for the party to ride back to town on.  They arrive at the town jail.  Purge and Nahmi stay outside while the others head inside, with Nahmi reminding them that this gnoll was a Lieutentant and son of the gnoll chief.   Mojo comments that the iron cage the gnoll is inside reminds him of a baby’s playpen.  He goes up the side of the bars and says in a silly voice “Oh, what a big gnoll.  Oh what a big gnoll!”   Cassie says, “I’ll handle this.”   She says in the gnoll language, “Listen.  We want some information from you.  If you tell me what I want you will not be harmed.”  He replies, “Of course you won’t harm me.  You are only a woman.  Can’t your men speak for themselves wench?”   Cassie goes ballistic at that and surprises him by reaching into the cell and grabbing him.   She then casts a reverse Hairy cantrip onto the beast, making him instantly bald.   The others are repulsed at this, as the creature also wasn’t wearing any clothing.   Mojo comments “What was that I said about ‘too much information’”The gnoll is totally shocked by this.  Narg says, “I’ll handle this.   Listen pal, you just blew it.  She was the only one of us who didn’t want to take your head off.   Answer our questions NOW or I’ll let her do some real damage to you.”    Cassie then adds to this by telling him in detail about the Kadtanach being gone, the buildings that it carried all being destroyed, the other gnolls all being dead, and that they are his only possible hope to live.”  The gnoll’s defiance is now gone.  He answers their questions.  He says that Yeenoghu only briefly took the form of the spectral hound, and that he then transformed back into his own form and teleported away.    Alton says, “Makes sense, I partially recover from wounds when I change form.  He must have too, since I hurt him pretty bad.  I guess he needed to be better to use spells.”  They ask where he would have gone.  The gnoll tells them where Yeenoghu’s howdah had been located.  “Where checked, he wasn’t there,” Mojo comments.   “Maybe he was invisible,” Alton comments.  “Nah, my visor would have seen that.  He must have plane shifted away,” Mojo comments.  “Well, we didn’t leave him anything to stick around for,” Narg adds. They head back outside.  Ral asks what should be done with the prisoner.  “Whatever you want,” Purge comments “He was one of the leaders of that thing that attacked the other three towns.  You may want to turn him over to the former authorities from those towns.”   Ral comments, “Yeah, I imagine more of those refugees will be wandering in during the next day or two.”   Ral then invites the party to stay for around for lunch, saying that there will be a banquet to honor the heroes that saved the town.  “Do you mean us?” Cassie comments.   She answers, “You, and the Dragon Stalkers.”   Several people are uncomfortable with the idea of sharing the accolades, but Narg points out “We probably should give them some of the credit.  Didn’t the Dragon Stalkers lose something like seventeen guys fighting that thing?”  “I think the actual number was two,” Purge points out.  Narg responds, “I never was very good at math.”</blockquote>

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