5:10 p.m., just outside the Temple of Elemental Good
An angel descends from the rainy sky.
Inoke, Gerontius and Sybele greet him warily. “You!” Alcar and Sybele say simultaneously, giving each other hard looks.
“You, uh, know each other?” Inoke asks cautiously.
“Yeah, this is Alcar,” Sybele replies, her voice wary. “He traveled with us for a little while, but then he died in Bile Mountain.” Her tone hardens. “He attacked one of our party members once.”*
Alcar scowls. “Angelfire was
evil.”
“Yeah, but she was a companion.”
Alcar keeps on scowling. “We met before that, too, when you were opposing the Light in guarding those eggs!” he barks. Clearly, old grudges are neither completely forgotten nor completely forgiven.
“Yeah, but we brought you back from the dead,” Sybele reminds him.
“No,
Horbin brought me back from the dead,” Alcar retorts righteously.
“What are you doing here, angel?” Inoke asks.
Alcar pauses. Then he says, “Since
Horbin resurrected me, I’ve been meditating nearby. Just a little while ago I saw some big monstrous worms not far from here. Lots of them. I came to warn the Temple of Elemental Good.”
“We just fought two of them,” Inoke says.
“One of them was
tough.” Gerontius shivers. “It could let loose a noise so loud that it almost overwhelmed me.”
“Where’s Lester?” Alcar asks.
“He and Orbius are getting supplies in Var. They’ll be back later, but we don’t know exactly when.”
Alcar and Inoke have what Inoke now considers a necessary conversation with anyone who has traveled with our heroes before: the Drelvin Conversation. Inoke confesses that he killed Drelvin while magically insane, and then waits for an explosion. Alcar simply nods. “I’ve had a few insane friends in my time. Some would have even called my brother Cyrax insane.”
The party places the Temple of Elemental Good on alert. Then they rest, with orders that they be awoken at the first sign of trouble. Early the next mornng they get up and split their forces. Gerontius will scout the holes the worms came out of while the others teleport to Var, where Alcar will try to figure out what they can do for Veil. “I’ve seen Chaos at work before,” he says.
Soon Veil is taken to an isolated spot in one of the ruined areas of Var. Old burnt timbers, half-buries by the dust and dirt of decades, provide our heroes with the means to create a crude enclosure in which they dump Veil’s oozy form. Then Alcar attempts a
break enchantment, and while it does seem to lesson the overall level of Chaos that has a hold on Veil, it does not restore her from the form of an ooze, nor does it relieve her of the Chaos curse that continues to change her most days.
“I’ll try again tomorrow,” Alcar declares. “I’m certain, given time, we can make it work. And I’ll do some research to see if there’s a way to be more certain, more effective. Here, have a pie.” He casts
create food and drink and makes a succession of apple pies.
***
10 p.m., the mountainside above the Temple of Elemental Good
I’m going to kill you.
The voice appears in Gerontius’ mind suddenly and without warning. He recognizes it; he has received two other such
sendings before.
Who is it? Why? He puzzles, scratches his head, stays armed, stays wary; but nothing comes at him.
I need to find out about this, he worries, and,
Or am I just going crazy?
***
9/18/370 O.L.G., noon, near the worm holes
Our heroes move in to the valley. Veil has returned to her construct form; but her time as an ooze seems to have taught her nothing. She still thirsts for more Chaos. Alcar waggles his finger at her. “Learn your lesson,” he says sternly. At least he also rid her of the Chaos curse.
Gerontius reports that he saw lots of worm sign but no actual worms while scouting it out. However, when they reach the area he had examined, he exclaims, “Hey, those are new holes!”
“Are you sure?” asks Sybele.
“Of course I’m sure.” The halfling snorts.
“That means they come back here for some reason,” Lillamere remarks. “That means we can wait for them.”
“But there’s only a couple of new holes. Only a couple of them came back,” Gerontius points out.
The party is silent for a moment. Then Sybele asks, “Well, where are the other ones?”
***
7 p.m.
A strange keening sound emerges from the ground. Our heroes tense; after many hours of waiting, could this be what they are after?
Yes.
A huge worm crawls forth from the earth. It looks like it is made of glass. The dying light of the setting sun scintillates and glimmers off of it.
The party is far from its point of emergence at first. However, they start moving in and firing long-range effects immediately. Just as immediately the glass worm shows that it can throw off magic; it completely ignores the dark dweomer of Lillamere’s
crushing fist of spite, although Alcar’s
flame strike does manage to inflict some damage on it. As the thing gets with a couple of hundred feet, however, it spits a spray of glass shards, driving sharp razors of glass into our heroes!
Alcar buzzes by and damages it with a
destruction spell, failing to slay it but certainly inflicting harm. As he gets too close, the light glaring off the thing’s body blinds him! He cries out in dismay, and lands near it, drawing out his mace. Groping for a target, he begins striking it blindly with uncanny accuracy, over and over. It lashes back at him, slicing him with razor sharp glass teeth and bombarding him with sprays of glass.
Lillamere curses as the worm shrugs off his
puncture. He can’t seem to hit it with
anything, damn it! Gritting his teeth angrily, the elven sorcerer slowly builds a
disintegrate up to maximum effect. It takes longer to cast it that way, and it makes his chest feel very full, but the reward is worth it as he finally penetrates the thing’s innate resistance. Although he doesn’t destroy it, a chunk of it is utterly annihilated, and the thing keens again in obvious distress. Then Inoke and Gerontius move in, flanking it. Inoke pounds on it again and again with
Deadly Avalanche, and every time it tries to writhe away from him, Gerontius savagely jabs and pokes it from the other side. Finally, the halfling jams both daggers into it up to the hilt, and the worm gives a last thrashing cry and dies.
“Whew!” says Gerontius, “that one wasn’t nearly as tough as the sky worm thingie, but it could sure take a beating.”
“And give one,” Alcar adds, healing himself. After a few minutes of maintenance on themselves, our heroes check to see if anything else is coming out of the worm’s tunnel. Nothing. So they repair to the Temple of Elemental Good for the evening. Naturally, much discussion ensues about the worms: Do you think they have a lair in the mountains? Where are they coming from? Are they intelligent? How many are there? Are they just in Dorhaus, or all over Cydra? The party discusses the Prophecy of the Worms again, showing their transcription of it to Alcar.
“I’ll
commune with Galador in the morning,” Alcar promises.
“Ask Him if the worms have any treasure,” Gerontius urges.
***
The former Angel of Food is as good as his word.
If we follow the glass worm’s tunnel will we find the center? A center.
Is the force that drives the worms evil? No.
Do the worms have any treasure? No.
Are there worms all over Cydra? Yes.
Is the Temple of Elemental Good safe from the worms at this time? No.
Is Brelana? No.
Is there a way to kill all the worms at once? No.
Is the ‘Hive’ mentioned in the Prophecy of the Worms on Dorhaus? No.
Is Xurkrischis slain? Yes.
Do the forces of Law know the Prophecy of the Worms? No.
Do the worms have a leader? No.
Can all the worms be controlled? No.
Have I done enough in Your name to earn the honor of my backpack? No.
Alcar sighs heavily. He relates that which he has learned that concerns the worms.
“So there aren’t any easy outs,” Lillamere muses.
“We can kill them all, but it might take a long time,” Inoke says slowly.
“Well, we can check out the center behind the glass worm’s tunnel,” suggests Veil.
Lester and Orbius return from gathering supplies at about this point. They are both quite surprised and cautiously happy to see Alcar. They exchange some old stories of the days when they fought beside Stone and Hobbes and Malador and the others... traveling with Dexter and Malford... ahhh, the good old days.
Following the tunnel leads to a worm that is trying to pretend that its gullet is the tunnel our heroes want to enter. A
meteor swarm from Orbius goes down the hatch substantially worse than a party of adventurers would- talk about heartburn!- and the worm finishes learning its lesson at the hands of Lester’s
horrid wilting. Beyond it, the party finds a strange central area with a strange, pulsating growth at its center.
“Whoa,” breathes Inoke. “What is that?”
The growth is easily 50’ in diameter, and it moves and pulses, seemingly at random. For a few fleeting moments, an entrance seems to open up in it.
“We could go inside,” suggests Veil.
“We should prepare first, and find out what we can about it,” Orbius declares. “That might be a very hazardous environment. We might need very specialized survival tactics in there. We don’t know yet. I think we should find out before we do anything hasty.”
The party agrees, and they walk back up the glass worm’s tunnel, mindful for any sign of changes, but it looks the same as when they entered. As they exit, the tunnel, they are deep in conversation, but several of them nonetheless hear a strange, loud whistling sound.
Then there’s fire and shrapnel spraying all about them as, about a mile away, Master Control’s prototype launches its missiles and goes into full combat mode, looking for all the world like a huge metal dragonfly bristling with shrarp pointy things.
Next Time: Our heroes fight a strange metal dragonfly!
*Way back
here.
