Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 7586281" data-attributes="member: 1210">Rorin frowns. “Tracking flying creatures isn't easy.”“Are you good at tracking?” asks Morsado.“No,” Rorin admits.“What kind of ranger isn't good at tracking? Uncle Stranger, what about you?”“I'm an urban ranger,” Rorin protests.“Yes!” Uncle Stranger stuffs a handful of mushrooms in his mouth and starts tracking. “I am amazing at tracking.” Yet his eyes seem strangely unfocused. “I'm the very best tracker! This way!”“Hold on,” Hungus says. “Maybe we should wait until you have a little light.”“Of course!” Stranger Danger chortles. “You are very wise!” With that, he plops down on his back in the grass to stare at the stars. ***One might think that tracking a group of flying creatures would be impossible, and that isn't far from correct. But it isn't completely true. Even flying creatures leave signs- droppings, for instance. Feathers. “Blood drops,” Uncle Stranger continues. “From the heart. And its own wounds. Look here!”Though nobody but Morsado is quite sure they trust Uncle Stranger's tracking- and even Morsado has strong misgivings- the rest of the party follows the mushroom-addled tiefling. There's nothing that anyone else can detect that he is following; perhaps the mushroom visions he sees guide him. Either way, he leads them consistently up hill, going ever further into the hills, heading toward the mountains in the north.  That night, Dzedz and Hungus join Uncle Stranger in his fungus-induced reverie. Morsado just shakes his head. What if those deer-birds come back?But the night passes uneventfully, except for the wheeling of the stars and the pulsing of the ground beneath the hallucinators. ***Whether or not Uncle Stranger is really following anything, late the next afternoon, the party spies one of the deer-birds flying overhead. It spots them, too, and banks sharply, winging back in the direction from which it came.“You see?” Uncle Stranger exclaims. “I told you we were heading the right way!” He gobbles up some more mushrooms.The party hurries in the direction that the creature fled, eventually reaching a flattened hilltop with several large nests in it. In and around the nests are four more of the deer-birds. Rorin looses an arrow and cries out, “Get 'em!”The ensuing battle is quick and deadly. The party focuses its attacks, and almost immediately bring down one of the monsters. Meanwhile Dzedz blasts several others at once with his magic. When the deer-birds begin to fight back, Hungus and Uncle Stranger form a line and prevent them from reaching Dzedz and Morsado. But it's hard to block flying creatures with an open sky to maneuver in. One of them launches itself over their heads and charges at Rorin. Its razor-sharp antlers stab into the ranger's chest, and he is forced to drop his bow and pull out his rapier. A back-and-forth follows, with Rorin jabbing at the monster and then seeking to parry its horns. Meanwhile, a second deer-bird falls after being smacked around by Hungus, scorched by Dzedz, and caught in Morsado's cloud of daggers. The three of them turn to the fourth monster.At the same time, the one that is dancing with Rorin catches him with a terrific jab of its antlers. His belly rips open, and the monster rips its way through most of his chest. With a shriek, the young man falls, bleeding, to the ground.Uncle Stranger manages to stab the other deer-bird hard enough to leave it bleeding from the neck. It shakes its head, and a blow from Hungus' maul connects. Even though it resists the nonmagical damage, it collapses in a heap.Together, the party finishes off the last of the monsters, and then Hungus checks on Rorin, fearing the worst. But he is still alive, albeit barely! Carl Hungus lays hands upon him, and the worst of his wounds close up.Rorin groans and opens his eyes. “Did we win?” He clambers to his feet, looking around at the bodies lying about. “We won.”“We won,” Dzedz confirms.“Then I'd better get to work.” The Butcher of Fandelose draws a dagger.***Carl Hungus' powers are growing. He can hear the Lady of Dragons whispering to him when he sleeps; he can sense her eyes watching him with increasing interest as he becomes more powerful. She grants him ever greater abilities, ever mightier spells. He can ask for more as he proves himself more worthy.He has grown worthy enough to ask for something truly marvelous.The next morning, Carl Hungus sits in prayer, uttering invocations while he makes the sacred signs.“What's he doing?” Uncle Stranger whispers. “I'm not sure,” Morsado replies.Ten minutes later, they are answered when a burst of smoke and brimstone appears. When it dissipates, a fiendish giant goat stands, awaiting its master. “Scrote!” cries Hungus. “You are Scrote M'Goat!”“Bah,” Scrote says disdainfully, sounding nothing like a goat.***Just off the far side of the hill from the nest, the party spies a marble monument. A 6' high statue of a gnome stands atop a plinth, arms akimbo, before the entrance. Obviously larger than life, the gnome stands proudly, wearing an antiquated captain's military dress uniform with a shortsword at his side. The statue was once painted in lifelike hues, but only flecks now remain. The plinth bears a plaque of soft greenstone, but the writing on it has eroded and is hard to read. The party examines the writing carefully and manages to make it out. It says: “Here lies the tomb of Captain Perx. Faithful, steadfast, loyal, with steady hand and clever mind, a good friend to the people of his city and a good soldier to his emperor. 1977 to 2293 S.C. May his eternal rest be peaceful.” Rorin recognizes the name. Perx was a soldier of note, well-known for his kindness, loyalty and intelligence.    The door itself has twelve iron spikes hammered into the ground at its base to keep it shut. Someone has scratched “Beware the dead” in the surface of the door itself. “Interesting,” Dzedz mutters.“I don't really like the dead,” Carl Hungus says. Then he turns at a strange, excited noise from Scrote.Uncle Stranger is acting in a very improper activities with Scrote. “Hey!” Hungus shouts.“No, he likes it,” Stranger Danger the Ranger claims.Scrote looks at Hungus and winks. “Bah,” he says, but in a sexy tone. Everyone stares at Uncle Stranger and Scrote M'Goat. Then looks away.Consenting adults and all that. Fiendish giant goat or not.***The party heads back to Red Bank, intending to return when properly rested and re-equipped (Rorin is nearly out of arrows). But once they are there, Uncle Stranger vanishes into the woods. “I'm not really all that interested in looting the grave of a military hero,” Dzedz says. That leaves Hungus and Rorin; but they are joined by Iron Patriot and a local halfling named Big John, to whom Iron Patriot seems to have some sort of strange attachment. He treats him with obvious affection, sometimes mussing his hair when rambling incomprehensibly at him.***The group removes the spikes from the door and pushes their way inside, though Scrote has to stay behind. Just beyond the door is a hall that opens onto a room, dusty but intact. It has an arched ceiling 10' high and two rows of pillars of pink marble. The walls are painted with images of Perx and his men fighting goblin and kobolds; laughing and celebrating; gambling, drinking and gaming; studying and learning; and helping construct what pcs from Fandelose recognize as Bronze Park. The back wall, where the Bronze Park images are, also contains a strange contraption.Before the party can advance, half a dozen skeletons come clacking out of the shadows from where they lurked behind the pillars. There is a brief battle; though they are outnumbered, the party contains several stalwart warriors, and Big John proves adept with his fists. The skeletons' resistance to slashing and piercing damage doesn't much help against this particular group!Afterward, the party examines the contraption, which proves to be a series of brass wheels within wheels, forming five concentric circles. Each wheel can be spun separately, each turning separately, while above the contraption is a small brass arrow pointing at the wheels and a large blue button. Each wheel is marked with the letters of the Common alphabet, although slightly antiquated versions of several of them. Experimentation reveals that touching one of the wheels causes a clear chime to sound through the area, and a clear voice speaks a riddle. Each ring provides a different riddle. The first is: I feed on death. Choose wisely, and I shall feed you. Choose poorly and sicken and die.“That's a mushroom,” says Rorin immediately.Dzedz nods. “Sure, but what do we do with it?”The second riddle is: I have a face, but no eyes. I speak to you, yet have no mouth. I have leaves, but no roots nor bark.The third: Of no use to one; yet absolute bliss to two. The small boy gets it for nothing. The young man has to lie for it. The old man has to buy it.The fourth: You get many of me, but never enough. After the last one, your life soon will snuff. You may have one of me but one day a year; when the last one is gone, your life disappears. The fifth: A barrel of rainwater weighs twenty pounds. What must you add to make it weigh fifteen?“Hmm,” says Rorin.They fiddle with the wheels at length. “It has to be a five letter word,” Dzedz declares. “It can't be mushroom.”While the others mess around with the wheels, Rorin pokes around the rest of the room. “Hey,” he calls after a few moments, “I found something. There's some kind of mechanism here.” He stands at one of the pillars. Hungus hurries over to try to trick it open, since he is proficient with thieves' tools. After a few minutes, he scowls. “I don't think this will open unless we solve the riddles.”“Maybe there's another way.” Rorin pulls out his sword and sets to work, prying at the mechanism. It takes over an hour, and he ends up bending his blade, but he finally pries it open, revealing a 5' diameter shaft with a ladder that descends about 20' to the middle of another chamber. This room is 30' square, with a 10' high ceiling. The air is filled with a foul charnel odor. Old moldy tapestries hang on the walls, two per wall, flanking the three exit doors and a polished steel statue of the Sword Emperor, which dominates the west wall. As the adventurers descend, four stinking, animate corpses rush out at them from hiding places behind the tapestries. The tomb robbers are caught off guard; the ghouls paralyze Rorin before they can respond. Iron Patriot roars and lays about him with his maul. He gibbers words that nobody can understand. Hungus finishes off one, then another, wounded ghoul. In moments, the adventurers stand triumphant, and Rorin is beginning to twitch again.“That wasn't so bad,” Big John says. The tapestries are too moldy for anyone to discern what was once depicted on them. The statue of the Sword Emperor shows him in an aggressive posture, weapon raised, face fierce. The first of the two flanking doors leads to a chamber that contains only a dry basin. The second has another contraption with concentric metal rings, similar to the one above, but without the lettering, only a colored marking. Carl Hungus suggests that it's a way to re-open the shaft from below, without having to consider the riddles. Neither of those two chambers has any other exits. The third door out of the room with the statue leads to a 15' wide, 15' long entry passage with an 8' high ceiling, leading to a 30' x 30' main chamber with a 12' high ceiling. When the Iron Patriot enters the chamber- he is at the point of the party's formation- four man-sized elegant bronze lanterns, hanging from thick chains, flare to life with a warm yellow glow, and the temperature changes from the typical cool of an underground area to a pleasant, summery warmth. The room's main feature is obvious: a clear sarcophagus containing the skeletal remains of a gnome dressed in rotten finery, with a number of bejeweled items on his person, a short sword at his side and a book on his chest.The party moves very carefully, expecting traps, expecting the corpse to animate- expecting some danger. But there isn't any. They have made their way to the true tomb of Perx, and when they manage to prise open the sarcophagus, they find themselves with a considerable amount of loot, including spell scrolls of grease, blur and hypnotic pattern. More important, they take Perx's sword, a rapier, which Rorin claims. It is clearly a special weapon, but they have no way to identify it at the moment.*Next Time: The Iron Patriot goes to Fandelose! *The Sword of Perx is a unique magical weapon that requires attunement. It grants a +2 bonus to initiative if it's in hand when initiative is rolled and granting its wielding proficiency in Intelligence saving throws. However, when in combat with kobolds or goblins (not other goblinoids), it also gains a +1 bonus to attacks and damage and a +1d6 bonus to critical severity. Rorin learns all that some time later.</blockquote>

Verification