True Heroes: Reloaded (heh)
The tunnel ended fairly quickly, and beyond it was a massive shaft that led far above them, beyond what anyone of them could see. A stone staircase, which appeared to be carved from the walls, spiraled around the outside walls of the shaft upwards, but no one was really interested in being the first one up the stairs and straight into whatever was waiting for them. Finally, Damien, who was finally recovering from the effects of the magical charm and was feeling pretty bad about what he did to the party, sighed and volunteered to scout ahead. Of course, before he did so, he turned invisible and began flying, and then quickly went up to investigate, while the rest of the party followed on the stairs. The only exceptions were Robin, who used his Wings of Flying, and Sinael, who literally walked up the wall using his magical slippers. It wasn’t long before the first few lines of defense were encountered, but it was a brief fight.
The first defenders were a trio of rogues, probably from the thief’s guild, and another of the polygonal, ten-armed monsters, which were modrons according to Danae. Damien simply incinerated the Decaton with an enhanced fireball, and then continued onward to let the party fight the rogues. The rogues tried to attack Damien as he flew upwards, but this only revealed themselves to the party, and they were quickly cut down by Robin’s arrows, Err’s blade, and Danae’s magic.
While they were distracted, Damien reached the top of the shaft, with Sinael close behind. The defenses were a little better here, but not much. Another ten-armed modron, five pentagonal modrons what Danae believed were a weaker variety, one of the military’s griffon-mounted knights, and a pair of a wizard and cleric were there to greet them. Damien easily destroyed the four lesser modrons with one chain of electricity, and then simply pointed a finger at the larger one, and fired a black beam out of it. It struck the creature right in the “chest,” causing it to drop dead instantly. Meanwhile, Sinael reached the wizard, and managed to sneak up on him from the wall. However, he decided to try and use another potion of fire breathing, and while it singed the wizard, he was able to stay on his feet, and responded by causing black tentacles to rise up around Sinael, where they immediately began to squeeze the life out of him.
Elsewhere, the knight took of with his mount, and dove down to attack the party members he could actually see. Of course, it was him and his mount against Tal, Danae, Err, Robin, Galeron, and Thorrun, so the odds were against him. Err, Galeron, and Thorrun concentrated on getting up the stairs in time to help Sinael, so Robin, Tal, and Danae easily defeated both of them in a hail of arrows and spells. They flew or dashed up to help the others. By this time, Err had reached the wizard and the tentacles around him, and finally decided to start flying, letting him easily reach the wizard. Once within striking range, he dismembered his unfortunate foe in one swing. Finally, while the rest of the party caught up, Damien had enough time to imprison the wizard inside a wall of force. With no way out of the prison, he surrendered, and Damien turned him over to Tal for interrogation.
Unfortunately, after a lengthy interrogation, Tal learned nothing about who their enemy was, as he or she only spoke with the cleric and the other guards through intermediaries. Damien canceled his spell, letting Err and Galeron pummel the cleric into unconsciousness, and they then bound and gagged him, so they could turn them over the proper authorities when this was all over. The party then concentrated on where to go next. At the top of the stairs, there was a small ledge but no apparent way to advance, but there was a very strange statue carved into the wall. It looked like an angelic woman, who was wielding a sword and had her mouth open as if she was singing. Suspicious, Sinael investigated it, and quickly found a hidden switch. “I think we can use this to get out of the tunnel,” he said, while pointing to the switch. “Should I push it?”
However, the others were hesitant. “I have very little magical power left,” Damien said, and Tal and Danae nodded their heads in agreement. “We dealt with the guards, and obviously nobody knows we’re here, or they would have already come after us. We should rest here for the night, so that we’ll be better prepared to face whatever is beyond this door.”
No one objected, so the party rested and prepared to finally inflict justice on whoever betrayed them. The next day, however, didn’t get off to a good start. Though Sinael found the way to open the door, he missed the many potent magic traps that were also on the statue. As he pushed the switch, the statue screamed at Sinael while simultaneously releasing the sword. It began to spin on its own, forming a blade-like trap in front of the statue. Finally, the floor began leaking a slippery black fluid. Sinael took the full brunt of the scream’s sonic energy, but was able to scamper out of the way before slipping on the grease or getting caught in the blade trap. However, his injuries were the least of the party’s concerns at this point. That scream reverberated throughout the shaft, and it was almost certain that whoever was beyond the statue’s passageway also heard it and knew the party was here. Even worse, the blade barrier was blocking the passage, so they couldn’t even leave to retain some element of surprise. Finally, in desperation, Tal used his staff of stone to move most of the stone wall next to the barrier out of the way, revealing a wooden wall beyond it. Err had no trouble making that crumble, and the party charged into…a bathing chamber.
Though confused by their surroundings, the party realized it had no time to lose, and dashed out of the only door in sight (besides the obvious other side of the secret passageway.) They found themselves inside a very well furnished and elegant hallway. There was a stairway to the lower levels of whatever building they were in, another door on this floor, and a shorter and more expensive-looking staircase leading upwards to an equally expensive door. Taking an educated guess that the more elaborate doorway led to the master’s residence, the party dashed up the stairs and through the doorway into what looked like some sort of record room. Rows of bookshelves lined the walls, but they look like they were recently emptied, and a pile of books and other papers was still burning in a pile in the center of the room. There were two other items of note in the room. First, there was another modron, though this one had only five arms. However, according to Danae, this meant it was actually more powerful than the ten-armed ones. Also here was an official seal of the house; a seal which contained an image of a black stag. Their betrayer was none other than Lancaster himself.
The shock that their so-called savior was the one who had planned their downfall from the start, not to mention Tal’s realization of what secrets he told him, was enough for the modron to get the jump on them. He only uttered one word, but the word was so filled with power that it engulfed the senses for the less lawful members of the party. However, as most of them were stumbling around after being deafened or slowed, Damien, Galeron, and Thorrun casually dispatched with the creature. Tal then put out the fire, but there was little time to investigate the remains. Lancaster must be found.
The next room looked similarly ransacked, though there was no fire here. There was also a strange wall of darkness blocking the doorway to the balcony, but there was a lever right next to it, and they didn’t need Sinael’s help to figure out what it did. Sinael was nonetheless the quickest to react, and he quickly sprinted to the lever and pulled it down, disabling the balcony. He and the others rushed to the balcony.
As expected, Lancaster was escaping. Less surprisingly, his black stag mount was using some form of magical wings, letting him fly to safety at high speed. However, the bigger concern for the party was a strange floating vessel that was also exiting the mansion. It looked a little like a coach, but it could fly, and the party immediately realized that Lancaster was risking an earlier completion of his plans and trying to let the drow escape the city now!
With little time to lose and two crucial targets, the party split up to tackle both targets. Robin immediately after Lancaster using his wings, and Sinael ran after as well, relying on his magic slippers to track his foe wherever the fight leads. Damien prepared a spell that let much of the remaining party fly, and then Galeron, Err, and Tal took off after Lancaster as well. Danae, however, decided to focus on the magical craft and Lancaster’s guards, which included a number of Griffon Knights that had allied themselves with Bas.
Lancaster had a significant lead over the party, and made it over the top of the noble sector’s private plateau before anyone could reach him. Undeterred, Robin plunged over the edge, and began firing at the fleeing villain while entering freefall. Elsewhere, Sinael had just managed to reach the plateau himself when a number of the Griffon guards surrounded him. Thinking quickly, he attacked the saddle of the nearest knight, quickly separating him from his mount. The knight cursed the party before beginning his long drop, which ended almost a minute and thousands of feet later with a sickening thud. Damien, who was hovering between the two groups, further helped Sinael out by using a spell that turned a second knight to stone. With his rider’s weight significantly increased, the griffon also plummeted.
Meanwhile, Danae wasn’t even considering getting close to the vehicle, since it was being guarded by several more griffon knights. Instead, she began to assault the group and the vehicle with disintegrate and chain lightning magic. She had just managed to destroy most of the vehicle’s back, exposing the drow and the driver, when the griffon knights managed to double back to deal with this new threat.
Back in the empty space of Methosilang, Galeron managed to pass the freefalling Robin by letting gravity aid him and charging downward at high speed. Lancaster, already getting sick of Robin’s arrows and Tal’s magic, suddenly stopped his own descent and fled into the maze of stalactites around the sides of the mountain. Galeron carefully followed him in, only to be the next victim of Lancaster’s dire charge. With one attack, he had almost killed Galeron just as he once did to Sinael. However, Galeron managed to focus his thoughts on his goddess to cleanse the pain from his mind, and maintained his consciousness, preventing him from falling to certain doom. Satisfied, Lancaster turned to continue his escape, when Err managed to catch up to him as well.
Meanwhile, the knight escorts for the vessel had reached Danae, and they began to attack her. Though she was in little immediate danger from such relatively inexperienced enemies, Danae was distracted from her real target, forcing Damien and Thorrun (who wasn’t part of the fly spell and had to stay behind anyway,) to take action. Between the three of them, the knights were quickly dealt with, and with one last lightning spell, the driver of the vehicle was killed instantly, though it wasn’t immediately certain what had happened to the drow. When the vehicle went out of control and crashed into the royal castle, plateau, though, it was obvious that no one survived the crash.
Meanwhile, Err was making sure that Lancaster wasn’t going anywhere, either. Lancaster again wheeled his mount around, and gave him the same brutal attack that Sinael and Galeron suffered. However, Err wasn’t as quick to back down, and he responded with a series of attacks that were even more brutal. In a move that was actually very clever considering the source, he attacked Lancaster’s mount first, and after a volley of blows reduced the poor creature to a few bloody chunks, he knocked Lancaster unconscious as well. Realizing that a royal family member, even a traitorous one, would be better off alive than dead by their hands, Galeron swooped down to grab the unconscious Lancaster before he died in the fall, and healed him enough to prevent his immediate death when they landed.
By now, a crowd had gathered around the party. They looked shocked at first, and then blinded by rage, that this party of “traitors” would dare escape and commit near-regicide. In fact, a massive military contingent was arriving, with Amira taking the lead. Realizing he would be quickly executed by Lancaster enraged sister, Galeron quickly spoke. “Before you judge me, look at the papers Lancaster is carrying,” he said, hoping that Lancaster really did bring incriminating information and correspondence with Bas with him.
Amira did so upon arrival, and after reading some of the papers, her anger didn’t decrease, but it did change targets. Wordlessly, she let the party read some of them, and saw at last the scope of the plan against them. Rothaire, as expected, was bribed to testify against them, but Lerissa suffered far worse. After her latest arrest, she was captured, giving mind-numbing drugs and magical curses, and then forced to receive a Helm of Opposite Alignment, which made her a willing servant in Lancaster’s conspiracy. Of course, none of the people that Tal asked for as witnesses were even contacted. Surprisingly, the letter from Phellis was not a forgery, suggesting that their spotted friend was, as always, more aware of what was happening to them than they thought. The worst news, however, was a report that the dragon eggs were recently confiscated by Lancaster’s forces, and shipped to parts unknown, and information about a location on the Southern Continent. Tal’s worst fears had come true.
Damien had another fear. “If he was giving Bas this much information, we can’t ignore the possibility that he revealed our location to Bas as well.”
Danae shook her head. “If that was true, he wouldn’t have been so desperate to get that drow out of here. Apparently that was the only source Bas trusted with this news. But he might have given her enough evidence for her to make a few educated guesses. She might have narrowed it down to a few possible locations by now.”
Amira and the crowd at large was hearing all this, but they seemed too numb to respond. Instead, sobbing, shouts of anger and anguish, and the cries of desperation could be heard. Some were in denial about the whole thing, but many others seemed on the verge of giving up. “Even our own royal family has worked against us, and our church has been lying to us,” one of them said. “Bas is real? How can we fight a goddess that can attack us physically?” another person asked.
Tal and the others had arrived by now, and Tal realized that what these people needed now was answers, and even more than that, hope. “I understand how hard this must be for all of you. It was hard for us when we first learned of the forces against us as well. But we fought on still, despite this. And we won many fights against Bas. She may be here on this world, but she is nowhere near as powerful as the eleven sisters that protect us. And look at the tactics Bas has used against us. Fear, deception, trickery, these are her weapons. That’s because she fears our strength. She knows that she lacks the power to match us in a fair battle, so she has tried to drive us and her other enemies against each other and themselves. We can still beat her, if we work together. It will take some new ideas, though. We can no longer be content to fight from hiding, and rely on stealth. When the time comes to defeat Bas, and defeat her we will, we must march boldly together, on the surface and as warriors. We will reclaim our strength, our glory, and when the time comes, even our homes. And we will do it together!”
His words were just what the people of Methosilang needed to hear, and a cheer went up from Amira and the crowd. The next stage of their careers as adventurers was ready to begin, as the true heroes of Methosilang. But first, it would take months of preparation to raise an army in Methosilang. The party set out to build this army almost immediately, aware that when it was finally prepared, the final battle against Bas would begin.
OOC Notes: I should warn you now, expect more sporadic updates in the next couple of months. I can probably pull off about one a week for the rest of October, but November is Nanowrimo, an online writing challenge which will take up much of my free time. Expect at most another update or two for the entire month. Because of this, once again, I request more comments fro my readers. I know some of you have some questions or comments, and I would really like the chance to talk to some of you. To be honest, I have been getting frustrated with the almost nonexistent response to my Story Hour lately, and any sign of interest and support will go far in encouraging me to keep the updates coming at what has been one of the fastest rates I’ve seen on ENWorld. I hope to hear from some of you soon!
