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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 1465461" data-attributes="member: 9626">Intra and Inter-Party StrifeKhat’Shir’Mol was growing impatient.  The sounds of battle have been heard outside for the last minute, and he knew that the pursuers that killed his rear guard and scout were here.  Yet the shrine keeper refused to start the test!  “Why do you delay, point ear?” he roared.  “Our enemies are right outside the door!  I won’t have them interfere in the restoration of our leader.  You know, the emperor has been very kind in allowing you to live and maintain your shrine, despite being an enemy race and a worshipper of a false god.  I would suggest you do whatever it takes to remain useful to us.”The shrine keeper, an extremely pale elven woman with jet-black hair, was unmoved.  “If I live, so be it.  If I die, so be it.  I have no fear of either possibility, but I sincerely doubt that your emperor would be willing to lose a resource as valuable as me because one of his clerics was afraid they would lose a challenge to a band of elves.”Khat scowled, but shrugged his shoulders in defeat.  Very well.  If this was to be resolved by the contest, then so be it.*****************************************************The party burst into the shrine, ready for a fight, but was surprised to see that the orcs, while in a defensive position, did not immediately enter the fight.  There were quite a few of them.  Besides the kobolds and orc rider that fled the earlier fight, there were two more orc warriors, and a third orc wearing the strange holy symbol of the orcs (an unfathomable pattern arranged to resemble a circle of energy, like a sun, ironically.)  Behind this front rank, there was another wolf, and a powerful-looking orc wielding both a long sword and another strange tube weapon, though this one was much larger.  He also wore a holy symbol of the orc god.  There was a third apparent cleric, lying on the ground.   Like the orc they found earlier, he was altered beyond belief, with metal grafts, missing limbs, and strange metal tentacles emerging from his body.  He looked like he could move slightly, but he looked very weak, and appeared to be in constant pain.  Between the party and the orcs was a thin elven woman.  She held up a hand to the party, and quietly whispered, “Hold, brave adventurers.  Before you decide to resolve this conflict with violence, may I recommend another method?  The shrine does not give its power freely; those who desire it must be judged worthy, by engaging in a contest.  Those with the most knowledge of life and the world beyond it will succeed.  Normally, this test is a formality, since it’s rare that more than one group desires the power at the same time, but it is designed for multiple challengers as well.  Will you consider this method of resolution?  I must warn you, if you were to fight, you could damage the shrine or myself in the process, and no one will gain the power.”The party briefly considered all this, and then Tal spoke up.  “How will this challenge work, exactly?”    “Well, one among you will be selected; one who has knowledge of the afterlife.  That champion will be transported to a pocket realm, where he will compete with the other side’s champion.  The challenger must gather the components of a successful attempt at resurrection, including the magical power, the monetary components, and the intelligence needed to understand the world beyond.  Using these things, each challenger can try to raise sample dead creatures, which reside in a central chamber of the plane.  The one who can raise the most beings, and do so with the greatest degree of success, will be the winner.”The party again conferred.  Tsine and Rudyard, not surprisingly, were against it.  “We can easily take them, and without doing anything too damaging to the shrine, either.  I’m sure the elf was just bluffing about any risk to her.  And she has to help us when the fight breaks out; no elf would ever willingly help an orc.”  However, Quercus, Tal, Flix, and Raz decided against it.  “We can’t risk harming or offending this shrine keeper.  Now that we discovered this shrine again, it could be an invaluable resource to Methosilang.  We can’t let our mission endanger the city’s long-term success.  Besides, I want to see this challenge for myself.”  Quercus said.  The others quietly argued and muttered for a few moments, and then he stood up and said, “We have agreed to the challenge.  I will go for our side.”The woman nodded, and soon Quercus and Khat’Shir’Mol, the orc’s leader, were teleported away.  The party and orc teams both crowded around a strange table in the center of the room, and the Methosilang side at least was shocked to see Quercus and the orc inside it!The plane was a tiny labyrinth, filled with glowing orbs.  Both Quercus and Khat materialized in the central chamber, where six strange chambers, each a different color, were resting on the sides of the room.  Quercus noticed that the orc immediately tore off, grabbing as many orbs as he could, so Quercus went off in the opposite direction, doing the same thing.  He discovered that each orb either added 100 gold to the components of one of the resurrection spells, a bonus to his knowledge of the afterlife, a bonus to his intelligence, or simply damaged him without providing any real benefit.  After gathering as many of these as he could, he dashed back to the central chamber, to try raising one of the creatures apparently put to rest there, and noticed that Khat was doing the same thing.  He chose the silver tomb, and focused all of his mental energies towards the task of entering the world beyond, finding and grabbing this creature’s soul, and guiding it safely back to its body.  He ended up raising a tiny fey creature, which he later learned was called a grig, and which was apparently brought back to life without difficulty.  As he did the raising, Quercus noticed that the process was much faster than most resurrections, but that his own knowledge and intelligence did nothing.  He had to rely on the power granted by the orbs.  While he was doing this, Khat managed to raise a lizard folk, and seemed equally successful, if not more so.  Soon, the pair dashed through the maze again and again, bolstered occasionally by their new allies.  Quercus later managed to resurrect a tiny white dragon, which looked like it was only a few minutes out of the egg and then somehow he “raised” a ghoul, though surprisingly the creature ignored the inherent nature of its kind and served Quercus.  Khat managed to raise a wolf in the same time frame, but Quercus raised vaguely reptilian humanoid, though it looked more like a twisted, monstrous frog than a normal humanoid.  With a score of four to two, and generally more successful raises with the possible exception of the ghoul, Quercus emerged the champion, and both he and Khat were sent back to the shrine.While all this was going on, the two sides looked through the glass roof of the table at the events being played out.  After a few moments of tension, one of the kobolds suddenly spoke up, “Well, we can still help him, right?”  While the party was trying to figure out what he meant, the orc woman (who rode the hippogriff earlier,) snapped, “Of course we can still help him!”  So speaking, she nudged a tiny square in the glass, and somehow was able to move the hole across the glass’s surface.  She then scooped an orb up from elsewhere in the maze, and set it down next to Khat, letting him pick it up with ease.Seeing this, Tal quickly searched the board, found another hole like the one the orc woman used, and tried using the same tactic to help Quercus.  Tsine, however, had had enough.  It was bad enough he had to make peace with the orcs.  Now, he had to sit back and let them use their obvious advantage (having studied this shrine beforehand,) to cheat them out of their mission’s success.  He would have nothing to do with that.  The orcs were all watching the glass.  It would be easy to cast a simple spell to take out half the enemy team, and basically force the issue on the rest of the party.  He quietly muttered to himself while gathering some sand…Within seconds, the room broke out into chaos.  One of the orc warriors slumped unconscious, but the other fighter, along with the healthy cleric and the hippogriff riding woman and the wolf, immediately leapt into the fray.  The kobolds, seeing how things turned against him, dashed out of the room while the bard played a quick, “Sir Gebby bravely turned around and fled” on his lute.  Rudyard eagerly switched to this new plan, and dropped the orc cleric quickly, while Flix and Raz entered with more reluctance, but were able to easily fell the wolf with a slash across the face and a surprise thrust to the kidneys.  This just left the rider and the last fighter, but both held on to the end.  Met’Tir’Sith, the lower-ranking orc rider, was able to get revenge on Tsine with a brutal slash across the chest, dropping him to one knee from the pain, while Girme’Dry’Log, the orc warrior, went against Flix, Rudyard, and Raz simultaneously for what seemed like forever, giving as many sword thrusts as she was taking.  Their diseased orc shaman, however, could do little.  Though he tried to use his magic to aid his allies a few times, every time, the pain would be to great and he would collapse on the floor, pleading with both sides to end this fight.  During all of this, a confused Tal, who was having trouble that the truce would be broken so easily, tried to help Quercus using the table holes, but soon gave up as he saw the chaos around him.As the fight neared its end, Quercus and Khat returned.  Khat took one look around the room and drew his tube weapon, shouting, “What is the meaning of this?!”  Rudyard merely chuckled as he turned his weapon on him, saying “Oh, nothing important.  Just killing some orcs!”  Khat put up a valiant fight, but Girme soon fell, and he was surrounded.  He died fighting, while cursing elves and their lying, honor less ways.  Soon after, his weapon exploded as well, while Rudyard finished off the helplessly sleeping orc and the diseased cleric.  During all this, the elf shrine keeper watched emotionlessly, and then, as if this never happened, she spoke.  “Well done, Quercus.  You have won the challenge, and earned the right to use the shrine’s blessing to aid your diseased friend.”While Quercus made the preparations for the spell and the others did the standard looting (the shrine keeper assured them that she would take care of the bodies,) Rudyard went outside, and noticed that both the kobolds and two of the party’s horses were gone!  Shouting a curse to all orcs and their allies, he spent the day tracking them down.  He soon found that they split up, but was able to catch up to the kobold bard, Gebby, easily enough, and then brutally killed him.  However, while he was chasing Teggif, the kobold sorcerer down, he learned that creature separated from his mount, and Rudyard chose to retrieve the horse and let the creature go for this day.  However, as he returned to the shrine, he swore that he would find the creature one day, and bring it to judgment as well.Back at the shrine, Quercus finished resurrecting their charge.  The power of the shrine was indeed impressive, for he was actually better than normal after being raised!  The party left that very same day, eager for the hospitality of a Methosilang city, even if it was only Necropolis.  It was a mostly silent few days, however, as everyone shot each other accusing glances.  It was obvious that Tal and Quercus had something they wanted to say to Tsine, but decided to let it rest until they were safe in the city.  Similarly, Tsine and Rudyard looked at Tal and Quercus with scorn, since the mercy they were willing to show the orcs was pitiful.At Necropolis, the party was paid by the grateful Radmackis, and since they arrived late, they decided to head right to the inn, and plan their next move in the morning.  However, as he was resting that night, Quercus heard a familiar voice singing outside.  He bolted up, and dashed outside to discover who it was.  What he found was an elven woman; the same one that rescued him at the bridge, though he didn’t know this at the time.  The woman turned to him, and smiled.  She stopped singing, and explained herself to Quercus.  “Welcome, Quercus.  I am pleased to meet you.  You may call me Shedell.  I have been watching the progress your group has made for these past few days, and you have succeeded admirably.  Though I have to question some of your choices of allies.  Some of your group seems too focused on revenge to truly care about justice.”Quercus grunted reluctantly, “Well, some of them are a little over-enthusiastic, I suppose.  But they have their hearts in the right place.  I’m sure I’ll help them on the path towards true righteousness as we travel.  But tell me, woman, why have you been following us?  Who are you?”“Well, Quercus,” the woman began, “I’ve actually been looking for you for decades now.  And I wanted to make sure what kind of man you’ve grown into before meeting you.  But now I am finally sure you are a good man, and I am glad to finally meet you, my brother.”  As she said this last party, she partially removed the cloak she was wearing, revealing a pair of brilliant white wings much like his own!OOC Notes:  I was genuinely surprised at how the party handled the orcs at the shrine.  I especially thought they’d at least left the wounded, diseased, pacifist orc cleric alive, and I had to make a few small changes to my next large adventure as a result.  Still, I got a few good future adventure seeds from here, including some I just developed writing this recap!</blockquote>

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