ADVENTURE 33: BIRTH DAY MASSACRE
PC Roster:
Game Session Date: 7 August 2022
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"This is getting ridiculous," griped Xandro dejectedly. "Surely somebody's gotta know where there's someone who's been asleep for a long time and can't be awakened normally!" Since arriving in the village of Basutra, they'd been hitting the normal places - taverns, inns, the constabulary, temples - but they'd had no luck in tracking down the person who Mogo insisted was somewhere in town.
"Maybe we're going about this the wrong way," suggested Alewyth. "We ought to go back to the constabulary and see if there have been any missing person cases recently - maybe the dreamer is somewhere nobody's found them." It was as good an idea as any, but it too bore no fruit.
"Let's go check back in with Mogo," Wakuren decided. "Maybe he can help us fine-tune the location." And thus Scarlie Besker, the half-orc recently hired to look after the group's wagon and associated mounts while they were off adventuring, once again found himself performing one of the stranger functions of his new job: watching over an oil lamp that had been left in the back of the wagon, while one by one his bosses disappeared into it. But once inside the extradimensional space of the lamp, the five dreamwalkers prepared themselves for a mid-day nap, slowing their breathing and turning off all thoughts, allowing sleep to overtake them. One by one, they left their physical bodies and emerged in the Dreamlands, where they were met by their individual moogle guides and ushered over to where Mogo had set up camp in the Hall of Dreams, a series of seemingly endless corridors filled with side-by-side doors as far as the eye could see, each door the access point to an individual dream.
"Any way you can get us any closer to where this next dreamer's supposed to be?" Thurloe asked the humanoid kitten with the bat wings and the pom-pom dangling from a forehead antenna.
"In the town of Basutra, kupo!" Mogo repeated, surprised they hadn't been able to find the dreamer yet. After all, Basutra wasn't that big of a town, as far as human dwelling-places went.
"Let's take a look at the dream - maybe it'll give us a clue or something," suggested Zander Quilson.
"Okay, but I think Xandro's going to be a little embarrassed by this one, kupo!" Mogo replied, opening the door to the dream and fluttering back out of the way.
"What do you mean?" asked the bard.
"You'll see, kupo!"
Frowning in puzzlement, Xandro stepped into the dream and found a trio of humans standing all in a line: a teenaged boy flanked by a blond girl on one side and an older, dark-haired lady on the other. The blonde tugged on the boy's arm and said coquettishly, "Come on, Henry! We can use the barn - nobody will see us!"
"Don't waste your time with that one," answered the 30-year-old woman, tugging on Henry's other arm with equal vigor. "She's just a child - she can't possibly love you the way I do!"
"Like Hell I can't!" spat the blond girl, slipping her blouse up and over her head and rubbing up against Henry. "We can do anything you like," she purred, and Henry had a hard time taking his eyes off her.
But then the older woman turned Henry's head her way with her hand, revealing that her top had also disappeared. "She's just so...inexperienced," she told the young man. "Whereas I can teach you pleasures you've never before imagined."
"Don't be an idiot!" Thurloe yelled at the lad. "See if they'll both go to the barn with you!"
"You're the one being an idiot!" scowled Alewyth, swatting the spellsword on the chest in irritation with the back of her hand. "On the one hand, ew! And on the other, we can't interact with the dream since we're not there physically with the dreamer in the Mortal World."
"I'm just trying to help him make the obviously correct choice," Thurloe observed, gaining him another scowl from the dwarven priestess. Then he looked over at Xandro, who had averted his gaze from the trio in embarrassment, as the two young women were now apparently in a race to show their devotion to Henry by proving which one could strip the fastest. "Go ahead and look," Thurloe teased the bard. "You might learn something."
"Well, we've learned nothing about the dreamer's location," observed Wakuren. "But at least we know we're looking for a young human lad named Henry."
"Do we, though?" asked Alewyth. "Either of the girls could be the dreamer."
"Hmm, true enough," conceded the half-orc. "Okay, I think we've seen enough."
"Hey, speak for yourself!" argued Thurloe, who was willing to give this particular dream a lot more of his attention - all day and night, if it came to that. But Alewyth had opened the door back up and was talking to Mogo. "Can you track the dreamer any closer than 'somewhere in Basutra?'" she asked.
"Well, if one of you wants to stay asleep, I can triangulate between this dream and that of the dreamwalker, kupo," suggested Mogo. Wakuren instantly volunteered and the others woke themselves back up, then exited the magic lamp, startling Scarlie, who never had any idea when they were just going to pop back into existence like that. If not for the fact he hadn't had any alcohol that day (it was still only mid-morning), he'd have assumed he'd had too much to drink and was seeing things.
"Can you hear me, kupo?" asked Mogo, this time the voice coming from Alewyth's enchanted dwarven warhammer, Sjondra. The moogles had recently devised a means by which they could communicate with the dreamwalkers through the dreamstones embedded in the signature items they each carried.
"Loud and clear," Alewyth replied.
"You need to go further north from your present location, kupo!" The others climbed onto the saddles of their respective riding mounts and indicated for Scarlie to follow them. Once again thinking how oddly his life had changed since meeting up with these new bosses, the half-orc climbed back into the seat of the wagon and gave the mules a snap of the reins to get them going.
After a few more course corrections, Mogo eventually declared he couldn't get them any closer than he already had. "It's not that easy tracking you guys from an entirely different plane of existence, kupo!" he declared. "But the dreamer's somewhere close by, kupo!"
"I'll wake up now," Wakuren told the others through Sjondra's dreamstones. "Be out in a bit." And sure enough, in half a minute or so the half-orc had reappeared in the seat beside Scarlie, scaring his fellow half-orc half out of his wits. "I need a drink," Scarlie muttered to himself.
"So, where are we?" Wakuren asked the others, having missed out on the traveling through the town the others had experienced while he slept.
"Fancy part of town," Thurloe replied. "Where the noblemen all have their fancy houses." Their little caravan had ended up at a stone-and-wooden manor house, shaped rather like a squashed "H" when viewed from the top, with the southern wing being two full stories tall and the rest of the house just the one. Across the way stood a carriage house and stables. A few steps onto a front landing in the center of the manor house led to a set of double doors, upon which had been carved the Vesperman family crest: a flying wasp about to sting. "How do we want to do this?"
"What do you mean?" asked Zander.
"I mean," Thurloe explained, "if the dreamer's in there, there's gotta be a reason nobody's reported it. Remember, nobody's been to the temples asking the clerics to awaken anybody they can't wake up themselves. That means there's a reason for keeping it secret."
"Simple embarrassment?" guessed Xandro. "Nobody wanting to admit a member of a noble family could have that sort of thing happen to them?"
"Possibly," admitted Alewyth. "But maybe Wakuren and I should go talk to them. People open up to clerics."
"Fine. We'll stay back here with the animals," Thurloe replied. "I'm sure the human nobility will open right up to a half-orc." It was no skin off his nose, in any case; let the clerics do all the explaining. Alewyth and Wakuren walked up the steps and the priestess knocked loudly on the door. They'd both assumed the doors would be opened by a butler or maid and were surprised when it was instead a pair of armed and armored dwarves who answered.
"Whadda you want, orc?" spat one of them while the other got a good look at Alewyth and spoke with a much more cultured tone. "Why good day to you, Miss," he said. "And how may I help you?" The one who'd snarled at Wakuren noticed the dwarven priestess and all thoughts of him were immediately forgotten; the half-orc might have been invisible for all they paid any attention to him (although he had not, in fact, activated his ring).
Realizing their interest in her, Alewyth played it up, giving them her best smile and batting her eyes as she explained why they had come, painting the dream sickness in broad strokes and emphasizing it had struck many people across the continent from all different walks of life. "We're not sure why the Nightmare King is doing this," she added, "but I'm sure a pair of strong warriors like yourselves can see the obvious advantage of defeating an enemy's plans."
"Oh, absolutely," agreed one of the dwarves. "But why here, specifically? There's nobody here been sleeping any longer than normal."
"Are you sure?" Alewyth prompted.
"Positive," the other dwarf added. "So I'm afraid we can't help you...but you know, we get off shift at twilight. If you wanted to swing by then, we could show you a real good time."
The priestess of Aerik, God of Protection, swallowed any outrage and ignored the suggestion, pressing on with her original goal. "Well," she said, "would it be possible for us to see your Lord? I assume a pair of good-looking, fighting dwarves like you must be his bodyguards, am I right?"
"His personal retinue," bragged the first dwarf. "But Lord Vesperman is expecting company and probably wouldn't want to be disturbed."
"Would you mind checking? For me?" Alewyth battered her eyelashes something fierce, and while it had the desired effect - one of the dwarves sent a human maid to see if he'd take a visit by a priestess of Aerik looking for a trapped sleeper - the end result was not what she had hoped for. "Forgive me, Miss," said the maid, curtsying, "but the Lord is not taking visitors at this time."
"Sorry," replied one of the dwarves. "Remember, though: twilight." And he gave Alewyth a wink no doubt meant to make her weak in the knees as he closed the door in the clerics' faces. Instead, it made her want to spit. "Conceited, strutting rooster!" she snarled. But as she and Wakuren started making their way back to the wagon, Thurloe, still astride his horse Horse, heard a whisper coming from the back of the house. "Pssst!" signaled another maid, waving for the spellsword to come over to talk to her. Curious, Thurloe led Horse her way without bothering to dismount.
"What's up?" he asked her once Horse got to the back corner of the house.
"Mrs. Wiggins, the head housekeeper, wishes to speak with your group!" the maid said in a low voice, looking back behind her as if fearing to be found out. "She thinks she can help you find your dreamer!" Thurloe dismounted from his horse and motioned for the others to join him, leaving Scarlie to come fetch Horse's bridle and lead him back to the wagon with the other mounts.
The maid led the group into the back of the manor house, signaling for silence as she opened the door to the kitchen and from there through an adjoining door leading to a laundry room. They were met by an elderly woman, probably close to 60 summers if she hadn't already passed that age, who introduced herself as Mrs. Wiggins. "I think you might be looking for Lady Angelica," she said without preamble. "We'll sneak you upstairs to see her when Lord Andrus is busy with his business partner, who should be arriving any minute now. We'll wait here until they retire to the brandy room; while it's possible Lord Andrus might step into the kitchen to talk to one of the maids, there's no chance he'll come back here to the laundry room. We can talk, if we keep our voices down."
"What makes you think Lady Angelica is the dreamer?" asked Alewyth. "Has she been asleep for an unusually long time?"
"That's just the thing: none of us knows," Mrs. Wiggins replied. "Lord Andrus has forbidden any of us to see her for the past week or more. He takes all of her meals up to her, and we've not even been allowed to fetch her linen or bedclothes. She's with child, their first," she explained.
"How far along?" Alewyth asked.
"Eight and a half months. And she was right as rain up until we were no longer allowed to tend to her, all excited at her new role as a mother. She said she hoped it was a boy, because Lord Andrus wants a son, but all she wants is a healthy, happy baby, like any good mother."
"Why would her husband want to keep her status a secret?" asked Thurloe. "It doesn't make a lot of sense."
"I quite agree. The maids and I are quite worried about her, not having been able to tend to her as before."
"How would you describe Lord Andrus?" asked Wakuren.
"Very much an aristocrat," answered Mrs. Wiggins. "He wants what he wants and won't take 'no' for an answer. I wouldn't exactly say cruel, but determined. And somewhat cold. He spends much of his time traveling on his various business ventures, and when he's at home he spends a lot of time up in his arcane lab." The housekeeper sour expression said she didn't feel a nobleman should be tinkering around with something like spellcraft.
"What's Mrs. Vesperman like?" Thurloe asked abruptly.
"Lady Angelica," Mrs. Wiggins emphasized, "is a very dutiful wife. As I said, she's looking forward to being a mother, and--"
"No, no," interrupted the spellsword. "I mean, what does she look like?" Mrs. Wiggins went on to describe the lady of the manor, and Thurloe's face took on a smirk as the housekeeper described a dark-haired woman in her early thirties who could definitely have been one of the two women fighting over Henry in the dream. "I think we've figured out whose dream it was," he told the others. He didn't want to say anything out loud in front of the hired help, but it seemed Lady Angelica had been having a fling with this teenaged Henry person - and maybe Lord Andrus found out and was none too pleased.
"He's here!" whispered the maid, who had peeked through the door to the kitchen upon hearing a knocking at the front door. They could hear Lord Andrus's footsteps coming down the stairs from above as he met his guest. As anticipated, they went to the northern wing of the building, to the brandy room just off the dining hall.
"Now, we'll need to be quiet," Mrs. Wiggins advised, looking at Wakuren's metal armor and frowning. "We don't want Lord Andrus hearing you clanking up the stairs."
"That won't be a problem," Wakuren promised, as Thurloe passed over his ring of silent spells to the half-orc and then vanished into the oil lamp. One by one, the others likewise entered the extradimensional space inside the lamp Wakuren held, leaving only him, Mrs. Wiggins, and the young maid. Then he and the lamp vanished as well, when he activated his ring of invisibility. "I'm still here," Wakuren's voice announced quietly, "but I'm going to activate another magic ring that will create a zone of silence all around me. Nobody will be able to see me or hear me as I follow you up the stairs," he promised. "And when we get to Lady Angelica, the others will exit the lamp and we'll see what we can do about waking her up." Then he activated Thurloe's ring and, as promised, a zone of absolute silence surrounded the invisible cleric-paladin of Cal.
The maid went about her duties lest she be missed, while Mrs. Wiggins walked silently up the stairs to the second floor of the southern wing. She walked past two doors on either side of the short hallway and headed for the door straight ahead, making as if to insert a key into the keyhole when Wakuren's invisible hand on her wrist suddenly stopped her; fortunately, her startled shriek was absorbed by the silence spell in effect all around the half-orc. But before he let Mrs. Wiggins open the locked door of the master bedroom, Wakuren cast a detect magic spell and confirmed there were no magical wards upon the door. Releasing the housekeeper's hand, he allowed her to open the door, then he looked inside.
There, on the four-poster bed at the back of the room, lay Lady Angelica in a white nightgown, her belly extended in late pregnancy. Her eyes were closed and she rested peacefully. Looking around the room with his still-active detect magic spell, Wakuren noted a pair of dressers, a writing desk and chair, a makeup table with mirror, and doors presumably to a bathroom and a closet. But there were also magical auras glowing in the half-orc's sight: a zone around the foot of the bed which he took to be the trigger area of an alarm spell, as well as a three-dimensional sculpture of the Vesperman family crest, which Wakuren had no doubt would animate if triggered. This put a few wrinkles on their plan, for there was no simple way to get to Lady Angelica without triggering the alarm spell. It didn't look like they'd be able to perform the ritual in the bedroom - there was no way to ensure Lord Andrus would be involved with his business discussion for the length of time it would take to perform the dream-waking ritual - and if they tried to get Lady Angelica into the extradimensional lamp they'd no doubt trigger the alarm spell and activate the foot-long metal wasp from the Vesperman family crest sculpture.
So, it looked like the plan needed some finessing: he'd have to touch Lady Angelica, get her into the lamp with him, then pop back out, grab up the lamp, and cast a gaseous form spell upon himself and the lamp and head back to the wagon. Then they could put some distance between themselves and the Vesperman estate, performing the ritual from inside the lamp if need be. With that thought in mind, Wakuren - still invisible - crossed the room and opened one of the windows on the far wall, giving himself an easy escape route once in cloud form. However, there were several things Wakuren's hastily-modified plan had failed to take into account. While he'd successfully deduced that was an alarm spell trigger surrounding the bed, stepping into it would not activate the metal wasp from the family crest: it was a wasp construct (and, in fact, the familiar of Lord Andrus Vesperman), it was already aware there was someone in the room (having observed first the door open and then the window) and it had already mentally alerted its master via their shared empathic link, so Wakuren avoiding the area of the alarm spell wasn't going to prevent anything from happening that wasn't already going on.
Wakuren was still in the middle of the magical silence effect so he didn't hear the commotion downstairs as Lord Vesperman called for the dwarves to see his business partner back out the front door and then rushed up the stairs, but he did see the wasp construct animate and attack Mrs. Wiggins, the only visible person who wasn't supposed to be there. It stabbed at her with its abdominal stinger, catching her in the side of the neck, causing her to scream aloud (which was also not heard by Wakuren). But he summoned an air element hippogriff to keep the wasp construct at bay as he stepped forward (alarm spell be damned!), placed the lamp under the bed where it hopefully wouldn't be noticed, put his foot upon it to keep in contact, and mentally activated the command word that whisked both him and Lady Angelica into the extradimensional space inside the lamp.
Once inside, Wakuren deactivated the effects of both rings and gave the other heroes a very brief update of what was going on outside. He was not aware, however, that Lord Andrus was now pushing Mrs. Wiggins aside and stepping through the doorway to his bedroom, where he saw his familiar fighting it out against a hippogriff seemingly made of billowing clouds and an empty bed where his paralyzed wife should be. Nor did the half-orc cleric-paladin know that while one dwarf was stomping up the stairs behind his master, the other one, having gotten rid of the visitor, had activated the pair of dread guards standing in the entry foyer and the three were also heading for the stairs. Likewise, he didn't see Lord Andrus summon a creature of his own, a fiendish giant wasp, to help combat the air element hippogriff Wakuren had called forth to keep the wasp construct at bay.
But even had he been aware of all the commotion outside, the events inside the lamp would likewise have commanded all of his attention - as, indeed, was occurring right now. Lady Angelica, having been placed gently on the floor of the lamp just off the landing platform (because once Wakuren said the command word that would send him back outside the lamp, anyone else on the platform would be coming along for the ride), was at first sleeping as gently as she had been on her own bed. But then her eyes opened, she gave a shudder, and cried out in a closed-mouth gasp as her extended belly began undulating. The clean, white nightgown she wore suddenly sprouted a red dot along her belly, which slowly expanded. Her neck muscles taut, she gasped again in pain, trying to scream but hardly able to move.
Alewyth was beside the pregnant noblewoman in a moment. "Just give her minimal healing," Thurloe suggested, not wanting the dwarven priestess to expend her most powerful spells if a cure minor wounds spell would do. Frowning in puzzlement at the odd request, Alewyth did as suggested but had one of her most powerful spells ready to be converted to a blast of healing energy if needed. The cure minor wounds seemed to stabilize Lady Angelica for a moment, but then the stain started spreading again and a bone-white, triangular head burst through the noblewoman's stomach and nightgown. A massive grub burrowed out of the paralyzed woman's belly, streaked in her own blood.
Five involuntary cries of horror erupted from the heroes' throats at the sight of the giant larva crawling out of its warm-blooded host. Zander fled the room, but it was merely to fetch the chest the night hag who had previously owned the magic lamp had kept; dragging it over to the main chamber, he opened its lid and pointed it in the direction of the massive maggot. "Somebody throw it in!" he said, well aware that by being the one holding the magic chest he wasn't going to be the one to have to touch the larval creature.
As the monster grub crawled completely out of Lady Angelica's body, exposing its full twelve inches of length, Alewyth cast a cure serious wounds spell on the noblewoman's chewed-through body, closing up the hole the maggot had eaten open to make its escape from its unwitting host. Thurloe decided he'd have to be the one to take the plunge, so he set aside his bastard sword, grabbed the slimy, wriggling thing up in his hands, and tossed it into the open chest. As soon as its squishy body hit the chest's interior it started shrinking, until it was a mere one-eighth of its true size. Zander wasted no time in slamming the lid shut and Xandro helped him latch it closed.
Shaken by what he'd seen and now wondering just what kind of arcane experimentation Lord Andrus had been performing on his wife, Wakuren realized time was of the essence and reactivated his ring of invisibility before saying the word that shunted him back out into the master bedroom. Ignoring the melee going on over on the other side of the bed, he bent over, picked up the lamp, and cast a gaseous form spell upon himself before floating out the open window as fast as his nephomorphic body would take him. Once outside, he floated over to the wagon before deactivating his spell and telling Scarlie to drive the wagon further away from the manor house. The half-orc driver nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of a disembodied voice giving him orders, but he quickly recognized the voice as belonging to the only other half-orc of their little group and complied. Wakuren deactivated the ring of invisibility, ensured the lamp was secure in the back of the wagon, and said the word that sent him back inside with the others.
"What's going on out there?" demanded Thurloe. Wakuren did his best to catch them all up to speed. Soon after, the paralyzation that had kept Lady Angelica all but immobile wore off and she looked about her with frightened eyes. "Where am I?" she demanded. "Who are you?" And then, looking down at her ripped and bloody nightgown, "Where is my baby?" Alewyth did what she could to calm her down, explaining that they were good people (showing her the dwarf's holy symbol of Aerik helped there) seeking to save her from terrible danger, and - after explaining what she'd see when they opened the lid - did just that, to expose the shrunken, writhing grub to its erstwhile mother for a moment before snapping the lid back shut.
"I don't understand - why is this happening?" sobbed Lady Angelica, distraught at the thought she wouldn't be the mother of her husband's healthy, human son after all.
"Your husband has been subjecting you to some sort of magical experimentation," hazarded Wakuren, before coming to a sudden realization. "And with you rescued and out of the picture--we've got to go back for Mrs. Wiggins and the maids!" The elderly housekeeper was undoubtedly too old for a normal pregnancy, but if the wizardly nobleman was somehow injecting these grubs in people, she'd serve just as well as anyone else as an incubator....
"I'll tell Scarlie to go back," Wakuren told the others, before shunting back outside to the wagon and giving the poor drunkard another near heart attack. In the meantime, Thurloe led the others in casting their get-ready-for-imminent-combat spells. He cast a mage armor spell upon himself and capped it off with a hit from his wand of shield, while Zander Quilson cast mage armor on himself and haste on the group (while realizing that this time Wakuren wouldn't receive the benefit of that second spell - oh well). Alewyth cast a bless spell on the group, shrugging that Wakuren would be missing out on that one as well. Xandro, lacking anything else to do, took out his Dardolian lute and began strumming its strings, beginning the words to his song of inspirational courage. Then, as Alewyth promised Lady Angelica she'd be safe inside the lamp and tucking her into her own bed, Thurloe joined the two half-orcs outside by the wagon.
By this time, Scarlie had wheeled the wagon around and returned to the side of the Vesperman estate. Thurloe had cooked up a plan and raced off to the back kitchen door, where he fished into his coin purse for a gold piece, which he then placed on the ground behind him but off to the side where it would hopefully catch the eye of anyone opening the door - he was counting on it being one of the dwarven bodyguards, and he was likewise counting on the tales of dwarven greed holding true. In the meantime, Wakuren grabbed the lamp - inside which were still Alewyth, Xandro, and Zander, along with a distraught Lady Angelica - and started peeking through the ground floor windows along the southern wing. He found the maids' room first, opening the window and letting himself in, which frightened three of them before the fourth recognized him and reassured the others he was an ally. She explained to Wakuren they had been locked into their room by a furious Lord Andrus, and he in turn told them the command word to the lamp, holding it out so they could join Lady Angelica in a place of safety. Once they were all inside, he crawled back out the window and continued his explorations until he found Mrs. Wiggins locked in her own room. He did the same with her, getting her safely inside before returning to the maids' room - it was bigger and thus better for his purposes. He popped back inside only long enough to fetch the other three heroes, and then set Xandro Silverstrings to picking the lock of the maids' room so they'd have access to the manor's interior, hopefully without Lord Andrus or his dwarven bodyguards being any the wiser.
Thurloe, however, was putting his own scheme into play. Pounding on the back door to the kitchen, he waited until it opened and a scowling, bearded face appeared. "'Scuse me, sir," Thurloe said in his best impression of an inebriated panhandler, "but would you have any change to spare for a man down on his luck?" He staggered a bit to help sell the concept, and made sure to sway away from the gold piece so it would be in full view of the dwarf. But the dwarf didn't take the bait; rather, he called out, "Beat it, bum!" and slammed the door in Thurloe's face.
The spellsword, realizing subterfuge wasn't going to cut it, kicked the door in as he pulled the bastard sword from its sheath on his back. "And what if I don't?" he taunted the dwarf, who met Thurloe's blade with a dwarven waraxe of his own. Just that quickly, there was a life-or-death combat going on in the Vesperman's massive kitchen area. Thurloe got first blood, but the dwarf scowled it off and ignored the pain, swinging with his axe and slicing the side of Thurloe's arm while calling out the estate was under attack. The second dwarf took a moment to activate the two dread guards once again before heading over to the threat in the kitchen. The animated armor took up defensive stances in the foyer, ready to attack any strangers who might enter. And up at the top of the stairs stood Lord Andrus, his wasp construct familiar hovering protectively before him.
Back in the maids' room, Xandro had made quick work of the lock and had stepped back, casting a heroism spell on Wakuren. Zander crawled out the window to go try his luck with Thurloe at the back door to the kitchen, while Wakuren and Alewyth crept down the central hallway of the south wing, headed for the door to the foyer. Xandro followed, but took a side route through the laundry room, ending up in the kitchen where Thurloe and the first bodyguard were fighting it out, with the second dwarf about to enter the kitchen from the foyer. Then things got even more interesting as a few more combatants entered the fray. Zander cast a scorching ray spell at the dwarf Thurloe was fighting, while Wakuren burst through the door to the foyer and summoned a celestial bison at the foot of the stairs. Alewyth cast a magic circle against evil spell upon herself and stepped into the foyer, Sjondra at the ready. The two dread guards turned to face the bison and attacked. Now one of the dwarves was fighting a losing battle against Thurloe and Zander while the second turned to swipe at the massive, shaggy-furred bison through the door to the kitchen.
From the top of the stairs came the sound of spellcasting, and suddenly a swarm of angry wasps appeared in the foyer, stinging in a frenzy at the bison. The wasp construct familiar took advantage of the attack to fly over the bison, getting itself lost in the swarm (although it was much larger than a normal wasp) long enough to enter the kitchen through the open doorway. It hovered in the doorway to the dining area, observing the progress of the fight in the kitchen and passing along its findings to its master. But the fight didn't last too much longer for the first dwarf, for Zander slew him with another scorching ray. The second dwarf, seeing the futility of trying to fight a bison through a doorway from another room, decided to cast his fate fighting a threat to which he was more accustomed: namely, Thurloe and Zander, and now Xandro as well as the bard came in through the laundry room door, stepping behind Thurloe and continuing his inspirational song of courage on his lute.
The bison, protected from the worst of the wasp swarm's stings by its shaggy fur, spun in place and stabbed at the nearest dread guard with a massive horn, putting a visible dent in the animated armor. Wakuren took the opportunity to squeeze past the bison's hindquarters, entering the wasp swarm for a moment as he did so, and make his way up the stairs to where Lord Andrus stood like a general overseeing the movements of his troops. The half-orc silently vowed to bring the battle directly to this particular general. Channeling positive energy through his body and into his shield, he slammed the wizard with a smiting attack, deciding to fight him on another front at the same time. "We've got your grub trapped in a secure location," he taunted the nobleman. "And your wife is fine, although you probably don't care a whole lot about her, do you? What a pitiful excuse for nobility you turned out to be!"
Wakuren had dripped scorn into every word of his last sentence, but Lord Andrus was fixated on what the half-orc had said before. "What have you done with my son?" he screamed in frustration, his face a mask of living rage. Below him, Alewyth cast a summoning spell of her own and brought forth a fiendish giant praying mantis, which wasted no time in flashing out with its barbed forearms and grabbing at the second dread guard.
Thurloe swigged down a potion of neutralize poison before the remaining dwarven bodyguard crossed the kitchen to face him; he didn't particularly like the look of that mechanical wasp and didn't trust it not to be filled with some sort of virulent venom. And sure enough, the familiar darted forward, headed not for Thurloe but for Zander, having determined the spellcaster was a bigger potential threat to his master. The wasp's clockwork abdomen thrust forward and a metal stinger pierced the elven sorcerer's flesh, pumping in a dose of venom, but Zander gutted it out and avoided the worst of the poison's effects. Then he counterattacked with a shocking grasp spell, learning in the process that the mechanical insect seemed to be particularly vulnerable to electricity - good to know!
The dread guards had now split up, one taking on the bison and the other concentrating on the fiendish mantis. The wasp swarm expanded, some of them continuing to try to sting the celestial bison while others went over to engulf Alewyth within their swarm. The bison continued to ignore the cloud of insects, continuing its attacks upon the dread guard, whose armor now included a few rents completely through the metal, revealing there was nothing inside the armor at all. Alewyth stepped out of the swarm and swung Sjondra into the side of the dread guard engaged in combat with her summoned mantis. The animated constructs continued fighting their current targets - the bison and mantis - apparently not capable of high-level reasoning to determine the optimal foe on which to concentrate their attacks.
Up on the landing past the staircase, Lord Andrus took a step back from the approaching Wakuren and cast a hold person spell on him, but it had no effect. Wakuren pulled back his right arm and summoned up a lightning bolt from his gauntlet of Cal, flinging the javelin of lightning directly into his foe's chest. Down in the kitchen, Thurloe cut a deep gash across the dwarven bodyguard's chest with his bastard sword and then Xandro stepped up and finished the job with a deep stab of his longsword. The dwarf fell to the kitchen floor, dead. The wasp construct then abandoned the kitchen, flying back over the celestial bison's broad back and up the stairs, attacking Wakuren from behind. But Wakuren ignored the poison's effects as well as Zander had earlier.
Lord Andrus stepped into his bedroom and slammed the door shut, leaning against it to prevent the enraged half-orc from pushing his way through. Still infuriated himself about the capture of his grub, he managed to focus on the words of a much-needed stoneskin spell. And then, most of his useful combat spells already having been cast, he saw no more need to remain in his human form and allowed the change to come over him, returning him to his natural guise....
Zander stepped out of the kitchen and into the foyer, casting a lightning bolt spell that took out most of the wasp swarm, as well as both dread guards, all in one fell swoop. "Nice one, Zander!" Alewyth called from the foyer, her battle foe now a collapsed pile of unmoving armor pieces on the floor before her.
Seeing the foes downstairs had been vanquished and there was no way the celestial bison would fit up the staircase, Wakuren casually dismissed him from service and focused his attention on the door before him. Lord Andrus was no doubt expecting him - a dumb, brutish half-orc, and a member of the common class to boot - to go smashing his way through the bedroom door. And though there was a part of him that very much wanted to do that very thing, Wakuren tamped down the impulse and decided to put his reason to bear. He opened the door to his left and sure enough, it was unlocked. He stepped into a spacious bathroom, with a door on the other side that no doubt led into the bedroom. Crossing the room, he opened the other door and stepped into the bedroom...
...and saw, there in the corner of the room, his massive bulk holding closed the main door of the bedroom, a six-limbed humanoid insect, with black and yellow chitin covering its body. Here at last was Lord Andrus Vesperman in his true form: not that of a human, but of a werewasp. Despite the nobleman's wizardly studies, Wakuren instantly realized the grub that had eaten its way out of the body of Lady Angelica wasn't some sort of arcane experiment but the werewasp's true progeny, the next in his line of insectoid generation.
These thoughts and realizations took but a moment, and then Wakuren was back to letting his rage take the wheel. He raced across the distance and slammed his shield into the werewasp, only then realizing the creature was protected by a stoneskin spell. Still, that wouldn't do anything but prolong the inevitable, the half-orc swore to himself. Lord Andrus spun to face Wakuren, abandoning his attempts at keeping the main door closed, and that allowed Alewyth to enter and attack the werewasp with her enchanted dwarven warhammer. And while she was engaging the lord of the manor, her summoned mantis managed to grab hold of the wasp construct in its serrated claws and break it into several pieces.
Thurloe pounded up the stairs behind Alewyth, opting to go through the bathroom to get into the bedroom, as the dwarf was blocking the more direct entrance. He attacked Lord Andrus with his bastard sword, smashing past the stoneskin protection and managing to cut into the werebeast's chitinous armor. With all the action now going on upstairs, Xandro cautiously walked up the steps and entered the bedroom through the bathroom, his lute back out and the song of inspirational courage being played as loudly as he could.
Lord Andrus looked about him and singled Xandro out as the weakest, no doubt due to his lack of heavy armor and the fact he currently had no weapon at hand. But despite lashing out with the claws of his two larger hands (he had a smaller set of limbs in his hybrid form, growing just beneath his longer set of arms, but they had nowhere near the reach and were typically not used in combat), snapping with his serrated mandibles, and jabbing forward with the sharp stinger poking out from the tip of his abdomen, Xandro expertly dodged each attack as it was made, infuriatingly not even missing a beat from his lute-playing - as if the werewasp were not even a big enough threat to cease playing his tune!
Then Zander came up the stairs behind Alewyth and sent a scorching ray firing over her shoulders to strike the werewasp. Wounded as he'd been from the physical attacks that had chipped away at his stoneskin protection, the blasts of flame were enough to push Lord Andrus over the edge and into death. He fell to the floor of his bedroom, all of his plans dashed. But if the whispering wind spell he'd managed to cast before being slain worked as he'd hoped, he might yet have his revenge....
The battle over, the heroes dragged the bodies of the dead outside into the back yard before allowing the women to exit from the lamp back into the manor house. Mrs. Wiggins and the maids had managed to comfort Lady Angelica in the meantime, and she stood regally and asked to be shown the body of her husband. She frowned in puzzlement at the form of the wasp-thing the heroes showed her, but even as a half-human monstrosity she could see enough of Lord Andrus in the shape of the brow to realize, deep down, that all she was being told was true: her husband was never a human but some sort of hybrid insect-thing, and her marriage was never anything but a means by which he'd use her body as an incubator to grow the next generation of his horrid race. "That white grub thing, that chewed its way out of my body...I want it slain," she declared.
"And we will," Alewyth assured her.
"That still leaves us up in the air about the dreamer," Thurloe pointed out. Wakuren, not wanting the spellsword to start describing the intimate details of the dream itself, stepped in and started describing the young man from the dream. "Why, that's Henry," one of the maids piped up after hearing him described, and Mrs. Wiggins added that Henry was a stable boy in the Vesperman employ, but he was inherently lazy and apparently took off about a week ago. "Probably went off to spend time with that farmer's girl, Glorinna Sputney," she opined. A press for details indicated Glorinna was likely the other girl vying for his carnal attentions in the dream.
A quick search of the stables revealed a large, empty area where the carriage was stored and two of the three horse stalls empty (Mrs. Wiggins explained their butler had taken it to town a few hours ago to fetch supplies), and there, hidden behind the bales of hay in the feed stall, the unconscious form of one Henry Baskindale. Thurloe tossed him over his shoulder and plopped him down in the carriage garage, and then Alewyth explained to the women of the manor what they needed to do to awaken him from his dreams. Lady Angelica and the house staff returned to the manor to start setting things right while the five dreamwalkers went about their ritual. In the end, waking Henry required the heroes to convince him to make a choice between the two women with which he was smitten: the unapproachable Lady Angelica (she was far above Henry's station and had no reciprocal feelings for the servant boy - although Thurloe predictably muddied the waters by pointing out she was now a widow and technically back on the market) or Glorinna the farm-girl, who was his own age and from his own common upbringing. Once Henry, in his dream, made it clear he was going to commit himself to Glorinna the dream started vanishing all around them.
Everyone woke up at about the same time, the five heroes sitting in a circle around the confused stable boy. "You might as well go head on over to Glorinna right now," Thurloe suggested, "because your ass is definitely fired from this job."
"Well, I'm glad that at least ended up fairly well for all involved," said Alewyth as she opened the double doors to the carriage house. In doing so, she heard the unmistakable sound of the flapping of leathery wings, looked up, and saw a horse-sized monstrosity coming in for a landing before her. The creature was a strange amalgamation of dragon and insect: large, bulbous, multifaceted eyes, with alternating bands of scales of yellow and brown down its entire flank giving it the appearance of some sort of insect hybrid. Alewyth judged she had enough time to cast another bless spell (as the original had run its course) before the creature arrived, so she did so.
Thurloe saw a draconic shape coming down from the sky, immediately realized it would likely have a breath weapon of some type, and dashed out the back of the carriage shed, running north. Wakuren ran south for the same reason: not wanting to be all bunched up such that one blast of a breath weapon could encompass the entire group. Xandro started back up with his song of inspirational courage as he backed behind the carriage house and stables, while Zander cast haste on the group before they got too far apart, then went out the back of the building in the opposite direction from that which the bard had gone.
And by then the arsalon had landed, spewing forth its breath weapon. Being one of the stranger types of greater drake, its throat sac was coated in a sweet, nectarlike substance that attracted flying insects and this particular arsalon had a hive of wasps living within its throat bladder. With enough pressure to disturb the hive, the creature ensured a swarm of enraged wasps came barreling out of its mouth at full speed, totally encompassing Alewyth and Henry, who still stood in the middle of the empty carriage parking area. They swatted furiously at the stinging insects but the stable boy was quickly overcome, his body swelling by the numerous stings he'd received from the furious insects. He collapsed onto the floor of the shed, unconscious.
Alewyth bent over and picked him up, dragging him out the back way and kicking the doors shut with her feet; they didn't automatically lock but it was enough for her to stop the swarm's advance. Thurloe, in the meantime, had done an about-face and was now charging the arsalon, now that it had disgorged its breath weapon and the spellsword anticipated he'd have a few seconds before the drake could employ it again. (Little did he know it, but the arsalon had a breath weapon generally employed but the one time, for once the angry wasps evacuated their nest inside the arsalon's throat bladder they generally didn't return until the combat was at an end.) His bastard sword came swinging in from the side, cutting deep into the creature's scales.
Wakuren likewise charged the hive drake from the other direction, using the bottom point of his shield as an offensive weapon that stabbed into its side, just behind its right wing. Xandro continued his song, advancing around the smaller out-building so he could see the combat unfold. Zander, a sorcerer, had no access to healing spells but he did have a way to help stabilize Henry and cast a bear's endurance spell upon the unconscious stable boy; the increased vitality helped him overcome the shock to his system from all of the wasp venom coursing through his body.
The arsalon swung to the right and snapped at Wakuren with its fang-filled mouth, trying to claw him at the same time; the half-orc dodged the one attack and allowed the other to slide harmlessly across his shield. The swarm of wasps, prevented by the closed doors in the back from continuing their attacks upon Alewyth and Henry, veered off in the opposite direction and came flying out of the other doors, quickly engulfing Thurloe. Alewyth cast a spiritual weapon spell, sending a warhammer made of solid force energy crashing down upon the arsalon's head while Thurloe did his best to attack the creature while nearly blinded by the dozens, if not hundreds, of individual wasps swarming between him and his intended foe.
Wakuren summoned another javelin of lightning into his raised hand and let it fly, blasting the arsalon's side. Then Zander came stepping up into range, his hands held together before him, thumbs touching, as he verbalized the words to the burning hands spell. A sheet of flames encompassed the wasps covering Thurloe (and singeing the spellsword a bit as well, but Zander was sure Thurloe would be fine with a little collateral damage) and burning the arsalon's head as well. By this time, it had pretty much decided to flee, having answered Lord Andrus's whispering wind call but finding the group waiting for it to be a bit more than it was willing to handle. It turned back the way it had come, flapped its leathery wings, and was soon aloft - but Zander wasn't about to let it escape. A lightning bolt spell soon had the arsalon back on the ground, crashing in an ungainly heap as its life was taken from it by the elf sorcerer's spell.
The creature dead and the few remaining wasps from the initial swarm wandering away now that combat was over, Thurloe looked around and said, "Let's get out of here." They checked on Lady Angelica one last time to ensure she'd be all right, and they were given all of Lord Andrus's alchemical equipment from his lab (she wanted nothing to do with his arcane experiments), the weapons and armor from the dwarven bodyguards, plus a sizable sum in gemstones as a reward for having saved her life and those of her retainers, and then the group was off.
And as per her promise to Lady Angelica, that night before retiring for the evening in the lamp, they dumped the werewasp grub from the magic chest and stabbed it to death.
- - -
I want to note this is the second adventure in a row that the players opted to try the "Trojan Horse" gambit with all but one PC inside the magic lamp while the other one carries it where they need to infiltrate, and neither time has it gone exactly as planned. And I named the adventure after a band my son Logan enjoys, "The Birthday Massacre." (I rather like them as well.) But it seemed fitting.
Also, a note about the campaign: we'll be taking a brief hiatus for six weeks or so, while one of our number undergoes some surgery that will require a bit of extensive healing up afterwards. We'll allow that to run its course and will likely pick the campaign back up in mid-October or so.
- - -
T-shirt worn: My Spider-Man T-shirt, for the most tenuous of reasons. For one thing, there's a spider wasp that lays its eggs in the bodies of paralyzed spiders, allowing the hatching grubs to have a living meal immediately upon hatching (rather like the unfortunate situation in which Lady Angelica found herself). For another, one of the many members of Spider-Man's rogues gallery is a Nazi scientist named "Swarm" whose vaguely humanoid body is made up of a swarm of bees. But mostly, spiders and wasps are both "bugs," which was all the justification I needed. (Plus, had I worn my "DAD: Cleverly Disguised as a Responsible Adult" T-shirt, which was my original idea, it would have potentially spilled the beans about Lord Andrus not being who he seemed to be.)
PC Roster:
Alewyth Putterpye, dwarf priestess of Aerik 7
Thurloe Pulver, human fighter 3/wizard 3/spellsword 1
Wakuren, half-orc cleric of Cal 3/paladin 4
Xandro Silverstrings, human bard 5/rogue 2
Zander Quilson, elf sorcerer 7
Game Session Date: 7 August 2022
- - -
"This is getting ridiculous," griped Xandro dejectedly. "Surely somebody's gotta know where there's someone who's been asleep for a long time and can't be awakened normally!" Since arriving in the village of Basutra, they'd been hitting the normal places - taverns, inns, the constabulary, temples - but they'd had no luck in tracking down the person who Mogo insisted was somewhere in town.
"Maybe we're going about this the wrong way," suggested Alewyth. "We ought to go back to the constabulary and see if there have been any missing person cases recently - maybe the dreamer is somewhere nobody's found them." It was as good an idea as any, but it too bore no fruit.
"Let's go check back in with Mogo," Wakuren decided. "Maybe he can help us fine-tune the location." And thus Scarlie Besker, the half-orc recently hired to look after the group's wagon and associated mounts while they were off adventuring, once again found himself performing one of the stranger functions of his new job: watching over an oil lamp that had been left in the back of the wagon, while one by one his bosses disappeared into it. But once inside the extradimensional space of the lamp, the five dreamwalkers prepared themselves for a mid-day nap, slowing their breathing and turning off all thoughts, allowing sleep to overtake them. One by one, they left their physical bodies and emerged in the Dreamlands, where they were met by their individual moogle guides and ushered over to where Mogo had set up camp in the Hall of Dreams, a series of seemingly endless corridors filled with side-by-side doors as far as the eye could see, each door the access point to an individual dream.
"Any way you can get us any closer to where this next dreamer's supposed to be?" Thurloe asked the humanoid kitten with the bat wings and the pom-pom dangling from a forehead antenna.
"In the town of Basutra, kupo!" Mogo repeated, surprised they hadn't been able to find the dreamer yet. After all, Basutra wasn't that big of a town, as far as human dwelling-places went.
"Let's take a look at the dream - maybe it'll give us a clue or something," suggested Zander Quilson.
"Okay, but I think Xandro's going to be a little embarrassed by this one, kupo!" Mogo replied, opening the door to the dream and fluttering back out of the way.
"What do you mean?" asked the bard.
"You'll see, kupo!"
Frowning in puzzlement, Xandro stepped into the dream and found a trio of humans standing all in a line: a teenaged boy flanked by a blond girl on one side and an older, dark-haired lady on the other. The blonde tugged on the boy's arm and said coquettishly, "Come on, Henry! We can use the barn - nobody will see us!"
"Don't waste your time with that one," answered the 30-year-old woman, tugging on Henry's other arm with equal vigor. "She's just a child - she can't possibly love you the way I do!"
"Like Hell I can't!" spat the blond girl, slipping her blouse up and over her head and rubbing up against Henry. "We can do anything you like," she purred, and Henry had a hard time taking his eyes off her.
But then the older woman turned Henry's head her way with her hand, revealing that her top had also disappeared. "She's just so...inexperienced," she told the young man. "Whereas I can teach you pleasures you've never before imagined."
"Don't be an idiot!" Thurloe yelled at the lad. "See if they'll both go to the barn with you!"
"You're the one being an idiot!" scowled Alewyth, swatting the spellsword on the chest in irritation with the back of her hand. "On the one hand, ew! And on the other, we can't interact with the dream since we're not there physically with the dreamer in the Mortal World."
"I'm just trying to help him make the obviously correct choice," Thurloe observed, gaining him another scowl from the dwarven priestess. Then he looked over at Xandro, who had averted his gaze from the trio in embarrassment, as the two young women were now apparently in a race to show their devotion to Henry by proving which one could strip the fastest. "Go ahead and look," Thurloe teased the bard. "You might learn something."
"Well, we've learned nothing about the dreamer's location," observed Wakuren. "But at least we know we're looking for a young human lad named Henry."
"Do we, though?" asked Alewyth. "Either of the girls could be the dreamer."
"Hmm, true enough," conceded the half-orc. "Okay, I think we've seen enough."
"Hey, speak for yourself!" argued Thurloe, who was willing to give this particular dream a lot more of his attention - all day and night, if it came to that. But Alewyth had opened the door back up and was talking to Mogo. "Can you track the dreamer any closer than 'somewhere in Basutra?'" she asked.
"Well, if one of you wants to stay asleep, I can triangulate between this dream and that of the dreamwalker, kupo," suggested Mogo. Wakuren instantly volunteered and the others woke themselves back up, then exited the magic lamp, startling Scarlie, who never had any idea when they were just going to pop back into existence like that. If not for the fact he hadn't had any alcohol that day (it was still only mid-morning), he'd have assumed he'd had too much to drink and was seeing things.
"Can you hear me, kupo?" asked Mogo, this time the voice coming from Alewyth's enchanted dwarven warhammer, Sjondra. The moogles had recently devised a means by which they could communicate with the dreamwalkers through the dreamstones embedded in the signature items they each carried.
"Loud and clear," Alewyth replied.
"You need to go further north from your present location, kupo!" The others climbed onto the saddles of their respective riding mounts and indicated for Scarlie to follow them. Once again thinking how oddly his life had changed since meeting up with these new bosses, the half-orc climbed back into the seat of the wagon and gave the mules a snap of the reins to get them going.
After a few more course corrections, Mogo eventually declared he couldn't get them any closer than he already had. "It's not that easy tracking you guys from an entirely different plane of existence, kupo!" he declared. "But the dreamer's somewhere close by, kupo!"
"I'll wake up now," Wakuren told the others through Sjondra's dreamstones. "Be out in a bit." And sure enough, in half a minute or so the half-orc had reappeared in the seat beside Scarlie, scaring his fellow half-orc half out of his wits. "I need a drink," Scarlie muttered to himself.
"So, where are we?" Wakuren asked the others, having missed out on the traveling through the town the others had experienced while he slept.
"Fancy part of town," Thurloe replied. "Where the noblemen all have their fancy houses." Their little caravan had ended up at a stone-and-wooden manor house, shaped rather like a squashed "H" when viewed from the top, with the southern wing being two full stories tall and the rest of the house just the one. Across the way stood a carriage house and stables. A few steps onto a front landing in the center of the manor house led to a set of double doors, upon which had been carved the Vesperman family crest: a flying wasp about to sting. "How do we want to do this?"
"What do you mean?" asked Zander.
"I mean," Thurloe explained, "if the dreamer's in there, there's gotta be a reason nobody's reported it. Remember, nobody's been to the temples asking the clerics to awaken anybody they can't wake up themselves. That means there's a reason for keeping it secret."
"Simple embarrassment?" guessed Xandro. "Nobody wanting to admit a member of a noble family could have that sort of thing happen to them?"
"Possibly," admitted Alewyth. "But maybe Wakuren and I should go talk to them. People open up to clerics."
"Fine. We'll stay back here with the animals," Thurloe replied. "I'm sure the human nobility will open right up to a half-orc." It was no skin off his nose, in any case; let the clerics do all the explaining. Alewyth and Wakuren walked up the steps and the priestess knocked loudly on the door. They'd both assumed the doors would be opened by a butler or maid and were surprised when it was instead a pair of armed and armored dwarves who answered.
"Whadda you want, orc?" spat one of them while the other got a good look at Alewyth and spoke with a much more cultured tone. "Why good day to you, Miss," he said. "And how may I help you?" The one who'd snarled at Wakuren noticed the dwarven priestess and all thoughts of him were immediately forgotten; the half-orc might have been invisible for all they paid any attention to him (although he had not, in fact, activated his ring).
Realizing their interest in her, Alewyth played it up, giving them her best smile and batting her eyes as she explained why they had come, painting the dream sickness in broad strokes and emphasizing it had struck many people across the continent from all different walks of life. "We're not sure why the Nightmare King is doing this," she added, "but I'm sure a pair of strong warriors like yourselves can see the obvious advantage of defeating an enemy's plans."
"Oh, absolutely," agreed one of the dwarves. "But why here, specifically? There's nobody here been sleeping any longer than normal."
"Are you sure?" Alewyth prompted.
"Positive," the other dwarf added. "So I'm afraid we can't help you...but you know, we get off shift at twilight. If you wanted to swing by then, we could show you a real good time."
The priestess of Aerik, God of Protection, swallowed any outrage and ignored the suggestion, pressing on with her original goal. "Well," she said, "would it be possible for us to see your Lord? I assume a pair of good-looking, fighting dwarves like you must be his bodyguards, am I right?"
"His personal retinue," bragged the first dwarf. "But Lord Vesperman is expecting company and probably wouldn't want to be disturbed."
"Would you mind checking? For me?" Alewyth battered her eyelashes something fierce, and while it had the desired effect - one of the dwarves sent a human maid to see if he'd take a visit by a priestess of Aerik looking for a trapped sleeper - the end result was not what she had hoped for. "Forgive me, Miss," said the maid, curtsying, "but the Lord is not taking visitors at this time."
"Sorry," replied one of the dwarves. "Remember, though: twilight." And he gave Alewyth a wink no doubt meant to make her weak in the knees as he closed the door in the clerics' faces. Instead, it made her want to spit. "Conceited, strutting rooster!" she snarled. But as she and Wakuren started making their way back to the wagon, Thurloe, still astride his horse Horse, heard a whisper coming from the back of the house. "Pssst!" signaled another maid, waving for the spellsword to come over to talk to her. Curious, Thurloe led Horse her way without bothering to dismount.
"What's up?" he asked her once Horse got to the back corner of the house.
"Mrs. Wiggins, the head housekeeper, wishes to speak with your group!" the maid said in a low voice, looking back behind her as if fearing to be found out. "She thinks she can help you find your dreamer!" Thurloe dismounted from his horse and motioned for the others to join him, leaving Scarlie to come fetch Horse's bridle and lead him back to the wagon with the other mounts.
The maid led the group into the back of the manor house, signaling for silence as she opened the door to the kitchen and from there through an adjoining door leading to a laundry room. They were met by an elderly woman, probably close to 60 summers if she hadn't already passed that age, who introduced herself as Mrs. Wiggins. "I think you might be looking for Lady Angelica," she said without preamble. "We'll sneak you upstairs to see her when Lord Andrus is busy with his business partner, who should be arriving any minute now. We'll wait here until they retire to the brandy room; while it's possible Lord Andrus might step into the kitchen to talk to one of the maids, there's no chance he'll come back here to the laundry room. We can talk, if we keep our voices down."
"What makes you think Lady Angelica is the dreamer?" asked Alewyth. "Has she been asleep for an unusually long time?"
"That's just the thing: none of us knows," Mrs. Wiggins replied. "Lord Andrus has forbidden any of us to see her for the past week or more. He takes all of her meals up to her, and we've not even been allowed to fetch her linen or bedclothes. She's with child, their first," she explained.
"How far along?" Alewyth asked.
"Eight and a half months. And she was right as rain up until we were no longer allowed to tend to her, all excited at her new role as a mother. She said she hoped it was a boy, because Lord Andrus wants a son, but all she wants is a healthy, happy baby, like any good mother."
"Why would her husband want to keep her status a secret?" asked Thurloe. "It doesn't make a lot of sense."
"I quite agree. The maids and I are quite worried about her, not having been able to tend to her as before."
"How would you describe Lord Andrus?" asked Wakuren.
"Very much an aristocrat," answered Mrs. Wiggins. "He wants what he wants and won't take 'no' for an answer. I wouldn't exactly say cruel, but determined. And somewhat cold. He spends much of his time traveling on his various business ventures, and when he's at home he spends a lot of time up in his arcane lab." The housekeeper sour expression said she didn't feel a nobleman should be tinkering around with something like spellcraft.
"What's Mrs. Vesperman like?" Thurloe asked abruptly.
"Lady Angelica," Mrs. Wiggins emphasized, "is a very dutiful wife. As I said, she's looking forward to being a mother, and--"
"No, no," interrupted the spellsword. "I mean, what does she look like?" Mrs. Wiggins went on to describe the lady of the manor, and Thurloe's face took on a smirk as the housekeeper described a dark-haired woman in her early thirties who could definitely have been one of the two women fighting over Henry in the dream. "I think we've figured out whose dream it was," he told the others. He didn't want to say anything out loud in front of the hired help, but it seemed Lady Angelica had been having a fling with this teenaged Henry person - and maybe Lord Andrus found out and was none too pleased.
"He's here!" whispered the maid, who had peeked through the door to the kitchen upon hearing a knocking at the front door. They could hear Lord Andrus's footsteps coming down the stairs from above as he met his guest. As anticipated, they went to the northern wing of the building, to the brandy room just off the dining hall.
"Now, we'll need to be quiet," Mrs. Wiggins advised, looking at Wakuren's metal armor and frowning. "We don't want Lord Andrus hearing you clanking up the stairs."
"That won't be a problem," Wakuren promised, as Thurloe passed over his ring of silent spells to the half-orc and then vanished into the oil lamp. One by one, the others likewise entered the extradimensional space inside the lamp Wakuren held, leaving only him, Mrs. Wiggins, and the young maid. Then he and the lamp vanished as well, when he activated his ring of invisibility. "I'm still here," Wakuren's voice announced quietly, "but I'm going to activate another magic ring that will create a zone of silence all around me. Nobody will be able to see me or hear me as I follow you up the stairs," he promised. "And when we get to Lady Angelica, the others will exit the lamp and we'll see what we can do about waking her up." Then he activated Thurloe's ring and, as promised, a zone of absolute silence surrounded the invisible cleric-paladin of Cal.
The maid went about her duties lest she be missed, while Mrs. Wiggins walked silently up the stairs to the second floor of the southern wing. She walked past two doors on either side of the short hallway and headed for the door straight ahead, making as if to insert a key into the keyhole when Wakuren's invisible hand on her wrist suddenly stopped her; fortunately, her startled shriek was absorbed by the silence spell in effect all around the half-orc. But before he let Mrs. Wiggins open the locked door of the master bedroom, Wakuren cast a detect magic spell and confirmed there were no magical wards upon the door. Releasing the housekeeper's hand, he allowed her to open the door, then he looked inside.
There, on the four-poster bed at the back of the room, lay Lady Angelica in a white nightgown, her belly extended in late pregnancy. Her eyes were closed and she rested peacefully. Looking around the room with his still-active detect magic spell, Wakuren noted a pair of dressers, a writing desk and chair, a makeup table with mirror, and doors presumably to a bathroom and a closet. But there were also magical auras glowing in the half-orc's sight: a zone around the foot of the bed which he took to be the trigger area of an alarm spell, as well as a three-dimensional sculpture of the Vesperman family crest, which Wakuren had no doubt would animate if triggered. This put a few wrinkles on their plan, for there was no simple way to get to Lady Angelica without triggering the alarm spell. It didn't look like they'd be able to perform the ritual in the bedroom - there was no way to ensure Lord Andrus would be involved with his business discussion for the length of time it would take to perform the dream-waking ritual - and if they tried to get Lady Angelica into the extradimensional lamp they'd no doubt trigger the alarm spell and activate the foot-long metal wasp from the Vesperman family crest sculpture.
So, it looked like the plan needed some finessing: he'd have to touch Lady Angelica, get her into the lamp with him, then pop back out, grab up the lamp, and cast a gaseous form spell upon himself and the lamp and head back to the wagon. Then they could put some distance between themselves and the Vesperman estate, performing the ritual from inside the lamp if need be. With that thought in mind, Wakuren - still invisible - crossed the room and opened one of the windows on the far wall, giving himself an easy escape route once in cloud form. However, there were several things Wakuren's hastily-modified plan had failed to take into account. While he'd successfully deduced that was an alarm spell trigger surrounding the bed, stepping into it would not activate the metal wasp from the family crest: it was a wasp construct (and, in fact, the familiar of Lord Andrus Vesperman), it was already aware there was someone in the room (having observed first the door open and then the window) and it had already mentally alerted its master via their shared empathic link, so Wakuren avoiding the area of the alarm spell wasn't going to prevent anything from happening that wasn't already going on.
Wakuren was still in the middle of the magical silence effect so he didn't hear the commotion downstairs as Lord Vesperman called for the dwarves to see his business partner back out the front door and then rushed up the stairs, but he did see the wasp construct animate and attack Mrs. Wiggins, the only visible person who wasn't supposed to be there. It stabbed at her with its abdominal stinger, catching her in the side of the neck, causing her to scream aloud (which was also not heard by Wakuren). But he summoned an air element hippogriff to keep the wasp construct at bay as he stepped forward (alarm spell be damned!), placed the lamp under the bed where it hopefully wouldn't be noticed, put his foot upon it to keep in contact, and mentally activated the command word that whisked both him and Lady Angelica into the extradimensional space inside the lamp.
Once inside, Wakuren deactivated the effects of both rings and gave the other heroes a very brief update of what was going on outside. He was not aware, however, that Lord Andrus was now pushing Mrs. Wiggins aside and stepping through the doorway to his bedroom, where he saw his familiar fighting it out against a hippogriff seemingly made of billowing clouds and an empty bed where his paralyzed wife should be. Nor did the half-orc cleric-paladin know that while one dwarf was stomping up the stairs behind his master, the other one, having gotten rid of the visitor, had activated the pair of dread guards standing in the entry foyer and the three were also heading for the stairs. Likewise, he didn't see Lord Andrus summon a creature of his own, a fiendish giant wasp, to help combat the air element hippogriff Wakuren had called forth to keep the wasp construct at bay.
But even had he been aware of all the commotion outside, the events inside the lamp would likewise have commanded all of his attention - as, indeed, was occurring right now. Lady Angelica, having been placed gently on the floor of the lamp just off the landing platform (because once Wakuren said the command word that would send him back outside the lamp, anyone else on the platform would be coming along for the ride), was at first sleeping as gently as she had been on her own bed. But then her eyes opened, she gave a shudder, and cried out in a closed-mouth gasp as her extended belly began undulating. The clean, white nightgown she wore suddenly sprouted a red dot along her belly, which slowly expanded. Her neck muscles taut, she gasped again in pain, trying to scream but hardly able to move.
Alewyth was beside the pregnant noblewoman in a moment. "Just give her minimal healing," Thurloe suggested, not wanting the dwarven priestess to expend her most powerful spells if a cure minor wounds spell would do. Frowning in puzzlement at the odd request, Alewyth did as suggested but had one of her most powerful spells ready to be converted to a blast of healing energy if needed. The cure minor wounds seemed to stabilize Lady Angelica for a moment, but then the stain started spreading again and a bone-white, triangular head burst through the noblewoman's stomach and nightgown. A massive grub burrowed out of the paralyzed woman's belly, streaked in her own blood.
Five involuntary cries of horror erupted from the heroes' throats at the sight of the giant larva crawling out of its warm-blooded host. Zander fled the room, but it was merely to fetch the chest the night hag who had previously owned the magic lamp had kept; dragging it over to the main chamber, he opened its lid and pointed it in the direction of the massive maggot. "Somebody throw it in!" he said, well aware that by being the one holding the magic chest he wasn't going to be the one to have to touch the larval creature.
As the monster grub crawled completely out of Lady Angelica's body, exposing its full twelve inches of length, Alewyth cast a cure serious wounds spell on the noblewoman's chewed-through body, closing up the hole the maggot had eaten open to make its escape from its unwitting host. Thurloe decided he'd have to be the one to take the plunge, so he set aside his bastard sword, grabbed the slimy, wriggling thing up in his hands, and tossed it into the open chest. As soon as its squishy body hit the chest's interior it started shrinking, until it was a mere one-eighth of its true size. Zander wasted no time in slamming the lid shut and Xandro helped him latch it closed.
Shaken by what he'd seen and now wondering just what kind of arcane experimentation Lord Andrus had been performing on his wife, Wakuren realized time was of the essence and reactivated his ring of invisibility before saying the word that shunted him back out into the master bedroom. Ignoring the melee going on over on the other side of the bed, he bent over, picked up the lamp, and cast a gaseous form spell upon himself before floating out the open window as fast as his nephomorphic body would take him. Once outside, he floated over to the wagon before deactivating his spell and telling Scarlie to drive the wagon further away from the manor house. The half-orc driver nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of a disembodied voice giving him orders, but he quickly recognized the voice as belonging to the only other half-orc of their little group and complied. Wakuren deactivated the ring of invisibility, ensured the lamp was secure in the back of the wagon, and said the word that sent him back inside with the others.
"What's going on out there?" demanded Thurloe. Wakuren did his best to catch them all up to speed. Soon after, the paralyzation that had kept Lady Angelica all but immobile wore off and she looked about her with frightened eyes. "Where am I?" she demanded. "Who are you?" And then, looking down at her ripped and bloody nightgown, "Where is my baby?" Alewyth did what she could to calm her down, explaining that they were good people (showing her the dwarf's holy symbol of Aerik helped there) seeking to save her from terrible danger, and - after explaining what she'd see when they opened the lid - did just that, to expose the shrunken, writhing grub to its erstwhile mother for a moment before snapping the lid back shut.
"I don't understand - why is this happening?" sobbed Lady Angelica, distraught at the thought she wouldn't be the mother of her husband's healthy, human son after all.
"Your husband has been subjecting you to some sort of magical experimentation," hazarded Wakuren, before coming to a sudden realization. "And with you rescued and out of the picture--we've got to go back for Mrs. Wiggins and the maids!" The elderly housekeeper was undoubtedly too old for a normal pregnancy, but if the wizardly nobleman was somehow injecting these grubs in people, she'd serve just as well as anyone else as an incubator....
"I'll tell Scarlie to go back," Wakuren told the others, before shunting back outside to the wagon and giving the poor drunkard another near heart attack. In the meantime, Thurloe led the others in casting their get-ready-for-imminent-combat spells. He cast a mage armor spell upon himself and capped it off with a hit from his wand of shield, while Zander Quilson cast mage armor on himself and haste on the group (while realizing that this time Wakuren wouldn't receive the benefit of that second spell - oh well). Alewyth cast a bless spell on the group, shrugging that Wakuren would be missing out on that one as well. Xandro, lacking anything else to do, took out his Dardolian lute and began strumming its strings, beginning the words to his song of inspirational courage. Then, as Alewyth promised Lady Angelica she'd be safe inside the lamp and tucking her into her own bed, Thurloe joined the two half-orcs outside by the wagon.
By this time, Scarlie had wheeled the wagon around and returned to the side of the Vesperman estate. Thurloe had cooked up a plan and raced off to the back kitchen door, where he fished into his coin purse for a gold piece, which he then placed on the ground behind him but off to the side where it would hopefully catch the eye of anyone opening the door - he was counting on it being one of the dwarven bodyguards, and he was likewise counting on the tales of dwarven greed holding true. In the meantime, Wakuren grabbed the lamp - inside which were still Alewyth, Xandro, and Zander, along with a distraught Lady Angelica - and started peeking through the ground floor windows along the southern wing. He found the maids' room first, opening the window and letting himself in, which frightened three of them before the fourth recognized him and reassured the others he was an ally. She explained to Wakuren they had been locked into their room by a furious Lord Andrus, and he in turn told them the command word to the lamp, holding it out so they could join Lady Angelica in a place of safety. Once they were all inside, he crawled back out the window and continued his explorations until he found Mrs. Wiggins locked in her own room. He did the same with her, getting her safely inside before returning to the maids' room - it was bigger and thus better for his purposes. He popped back inside only long enough to fetch the other three heroes, and then set Xandro Silverstrings to picking the lock of the maids' room so they'd have access to the manor's interior, hopefully without Lord Andrus or his dwarven bodyguards being any the wiser.
Thurloe, however, was putting his own scheme into play. Pounding on the back door to the kitchen, he waited until it opened and a scowling, bearded face appeared. "'Scuse me, sir," Thurloe said in his best impression of an inebriated panhandler, "but would you have any change to spare for a man down on his luck?" He staggered a bit to help sell the concept, and made sure to sway away from the gold piece so it would be in full view of the dwarf. But the dwarf didn't take the bait; rather, he called out, "Beat it, bum!" and slammed the door in Thurloe's face.
The spellsword, realizing subterfuge wasn't going to cut it, kicked the door in as he pulled the bastard sword from its sheath on his back. "And what if I don't?" he taunted the dwarf, who met Thurloe's blade with a dwarven waraxe of his own. Just that quickly, there was a life-or-death combat going on in the Vesperman's massive kitchen area. Thurloe got first blood, but the dwarf scowled it off and ignored the pain, swinging with his axe and slicing the side of Thurloe's arm while calling out the estate was under attack. The second dwarf took a moment to activate the two dread guards once again before heading over to the threat in the kitchen. The animated armor took up defensive stances in the foyer, ready to attack any strangers who might enter. And up at the top of the stairs stood Lord Andrus, his wasp construct familiar hovering protectively before him.
Back in the maids' room, Xandro had made quick work of the lock and had stepped back, casting a heroism spell on Wakuren. Zander crawled out the window to go try his luck with Thurloe at the back door to the kitchen, while Wakuren and Alewyth crept down the central hallway of the south wing, headed for the door to the foyer. Xandro followed, but took a side route through the laundry room, ending up in the kitchen where Thurloe and the first bodyguard were fighting it out, with the second dwarf about to enter the kitchen from the foyer. Then things got even more interesting as a few more combatants entered the fray. Zander cast a scorching ray spell at the dwarf Thurloe was fighting, while Wakuren burst through the door to the foyer and summoned a celestial bison at the foot of the stairs. Alewyth cast a magic circle against evil spell upon herself and stepped into the foyer, Sjondra at the ready. The two dread guards turned to face the bison and attacked. Now one of the dwarves was fighting a losing battle against Thurloe and Zander while the second turned to swipe at the massive, shaggy-furred bison through the door to the kitchen.
From the top of the stairs came the sound of spellcasting, and suddenly a swarm of angry wasps appeared in the foyer, stinging in a frenzy at the bison. The wasp construct familiar took advantage of the attack to fly over the bison, getting itself lost in the swarm (although it was much larger than a normal wasp) long enough to enter the kitchen through the open doorway. It hovered in the doorway to the dining area, observing the progress of the fight in the kitchen and passing along its findings to its master. But the fight didn't last too much longer for the first dwarf, for Zander slew him with another scorching ray. The second dwarf, seeing the futility of trying to fight a bison through a doorway from another room, decided to cast his fate fighting a threat to which he was more accustomed: namely, Thurloe and Zander, and now Xandro as well as the bard came in through the laundry room door, stepping behind Thurloe and continuing his inspirational song of courage on his lute.
The bison, protected from the worst of the wasp swarm's stings by its shaggy fur, spun in place and stabbed at the nearest dread guard with a massive horn, putting a visible dent in the animated armor. Wakuren took the opportunity to squeeze past the bison's hindquarters, entering the wasp swarm for a moment as he did so, and make his way up the stairs to where Lord Andrus stood like a general overseeing the movements of his troops. The half-orc silently vowed to bring the battle directly to this particular general. Channeling positive energy through his body and into his shield, he slammed the wizard with a smiting attack, deciding to fight him on another front at the same time. "We've got your grub trapped in a secure location," he taunted the nobleman. "And your wife is fine, although you probably don't care a whole lot about her, do you? What a pitiful excuse for nobility you turned out to be!"
Wakuren had dripped scorn into every word of his last sentence, but Lord Andrus was fixated on what the half-orc had said before. "What have you done with my son?" he screamed in frustration, his face a mask of living rage. Below him, Alewyth cast a summoning spell of her own and brought forth a fiendish giant praying mantis, which wasted no time in flashing out with its barbed forearms and grabbing at the second dread guard.
Thurloe swigged down a potion of neutralize poison before the remaining dwarven bodyguard crossed the kitchen to face him; he didn't particularly like the look of that mechanical wasp and didn't trust it not to be filled with some sort of virulent venom. And sure enough, the familiar darted forward, headed not for Thurloe but for Zander, having determined the spellcaster was a bigger potential threat to his master. The wasp's clockwork abdomen thrust forward and a metal stinger pierced the elven sorcerer's flesh, pumping in a dose of venom, but Zander gutted it out and avoided the worst of the poison's effects. Then he counterattacked with a shocking grasp spell, learning in the process that the mechanical insect seemed to be particularly vulnerable to electricity - good to know!
The dread guards had now split up, one taking on the bison and the other concentrating on the fiendish mantis. The wasp swarm expanded, some of them continuing to try to sting the celestial bison while others went over to engulf Alewyth within their swarm. The bison continued to ignore the cloud of insects, continuing its attacks upon the dread guard, whose armor now included a few rents completely through the metal, revealing there was nothing inside the armor at all. Alewyth stepped out of the swarm and swung Sjondra into the side of the dread guard engaged in combat with her summoned mantis. The animated constructs continued fighting their current targets - the bison and mantis - apparently not capable of high-level reasoning to determine the optimal foe on which to concentrate their attacks.
Up on the landing past the staircase, Lord Andrus took a step back from the approaching Wakuren and cast a hold person spell on him, but it had no effect. Wakuren pulled back his right arm and summoned up a lightning bolt from his gauntlet of Cal, flinging the javelin of lightning directly into his foe's chest. Down in the kitchen, Thurloe cut a deep gash across the dwarven bodyguard's chest with his bastard sword and then Xandro stepped up and finished the job with a deep stab of his longsword. The dwarf fell to the kitchen floor, dead. The wasp construct then abandoned the kitchen, flying back over the celestial bison's broad back and up the stairs, attacking Wakuren from behind. But Wakuren ignored the poison's effects as well as Zander had earlier.
Lord Andrus stepped into his bedroom and slammed the door shut, leaning against it to prevent the enraged half-orc from pushing his way through. Still infuriated himself about the capture of his grub, he managed to focus on the words of a much-needed stoneskin spell. And then, most of his useful combat spells already having been cast, he saw no more need to remain in his human form and allowed the change to come over him, returning him to his natural guise....
Zander stepped out of the kitchen and into the foyer, casting a lightning bolt spell that took out most of the wasp swarm, as well as both dread guards, all in one fell swoop. "Nice one, Zander!" Alewyth called from the foyer, her battle foe now a collapsed pile of unmoving armor pieces on the floor before her.
Seeing the foes downstairs had been vanquished and there was no way the celestial bison would fit up the staircase, Wakuren casually dismissed him from service and focused his attention on the door before him. Lord Andrus was no doubt expecting him - a dumb, brutish half-orc, and a member of the common class to boot - to go smashing his way through the bedroom door. And though there was a part of him that very much wanted to do that very thing, Wakuren tamped down the impulse and decided to put his reason to bear. He opened the door to his left and sure enough, it was unlocked. He stepped into a spacious bathroom, with a door on the other side that no doubt led into the bedroom. Crossing the room, he opened the other door and stepped into the bedroom...
...and saw, there in the corner of the room, his massive bulk holding closed the main door of the bedroom, a six-limbed humanoid insect, with black and yellow chitin covering its body. Here at last was Lord Andrus Vesperman in his true form: not that of a human, but of a werewasp. Despite the nobleman's wizardly studies, Wakuren instantly realized the grub that had eaten its way out of the body of Lady Angelica wasn't some sort of arcane experiment but the werewasp's true progeny, the next in his line of insectoid generation.
These thoughts and realizations took but a moment, and then Wakuren was back to letting his rage take the wheel. He raced across the distance and slammed his shield into the werewasp, only then realizing the creature was protected by a stoneskin spell. Still, that wouldn't do anything but prolong the inevitable, the half-orc swore to himself. Lord Andrus spun to face Wakuren, abandoning his attempts at keeping the main door closed, and that allowed Alewyth to enter and attack the werewasp with her enchanted dwarven warhammer. And while she was engaging the lord of the manor, her summoned mantis managed to grab hold of the wasp construct in its serrated claws and break it into several pieces.
Thurloe pounded up the stairs behind Alewyth, opting to go through the bathroom to get into the bedroom, as the dwarf was blocking the more direct entrance. He attacked Lord Andrus with his bastard sword, smashing past the stoneskin protection and managing to cut into the werebeast's chitinous armor. With all the action now going on upstairs, Xandro cautiously walked up the steps and entered the bedroom through the bathroom, his lute back out and the song of inspirational courage being played as loudly as he could.
Lord Andrus looked about him and singled Xandro out as the weakest, no doubt due to his lack of heavy armor and the fact he currently had no weapon at hand. But despite lashing out with the claws of his two larger hands (he had a smaller set of limbs in his hybrid form, growing just beneath his longer set of arms, but they had nowhere near the reach and were typically not used in combat), snapping with his serrated mandibles, and jabbing forward with the sharp stinger poking out from the tip of his abdomen, Xandro expertly dodged each attack as it was made, infuriatingly not even missing a beat from his lute-playing - as if the werewasp were not even a big enough threat to cease playing his tune!
Then Zander came up the stairs behind Alewyth and sent a scorching ray firing over her shoulders to strike the werewasp. Wounded as he'd been from the physical attacks that had chipped away at his stoneskin protection, the blasts of flame were enough to push Lord Andrus over the edge and into death. He fell to the floor of his bedroom, all of his plans dashed. But if the whispering wind spell he'd managed to cast before being slain worked as he'd hoped, he might yet have his revenge....
The battle over, the heroes dragged the bodies of the dead outside into the back yard before allowing the women to exit from the lamp back into the manor house. Mrs. Wiggins and the maids had managed to comfort Lady Angelica in the meantime, and she stood regally and asked to be shown the body of her husband. She frowned in puzzlement at the form of the wasp-thing the heroes showed her, but even as a half-human monstrosity she could see enough of Lord Andrus in the shape of the brow to realize, deep down, that all she was being told was true: her husband was never a human but some sort of hybrid insect-thing, and her marriage was never anything but a means by which he'd use her body as an incubator to grow the next generation of his horrid race. "That white grub thing, that chewed its way out of my body...I want it slain," she declared.
"And we will," Alewyth assured her.
"That still leaves us up in the air about the dreamer," Thurloe pointed out. Wakuren, not wanting the spellsword to start describing the intimate details of the dream itself, stepped in and started describing the young man from the dream. "Why, that's Henry," one of the maids piped up after hearing him described, and Mrs. Wiggins added that Henry was a stable boy in the Vesperman employ, but he was inherently lazy and apparently took off about a week ago. "Probably went off to spend time with that farmer's girl, Glorinna Sputney," she opined. A press for details indicated Glorinna was likely the other girl vying for his carnal attentions in the dream.
A quick search of the stables revealed a large, empty area where the carriage was stored and two of the three horse stalls empty (Mrs. Wiggins explained their butler had taken it to town a few hours ago to fetch supplies), and there, hidden behind the bales of hay in the feed stall, the unconscious form of one Henry Baskindale. Thurloe tossed him over his shoulder and plopped him down in the carriage garage, and then Alewyth explained to the women of the manor what they needed to do to awaken him from his dreams. Lady Angelica and the house staff returned to the manor to start setting things right while the five dreamwalkers went about their ritual. In the end, waking Henry required the heroes to convince him to make a choice between the two women with which he was smitten: the unapproachable Lady Angelica (she was far above Henry's station and had no reciprocal feelings for the servant boy - although Thurloe predictably muddied the waters by pointing out she was now a widow and technically back on the market) or Glorinna the farm-girl, who was his own age and from his own common upbringing. Once Henry, in his dream, made it clear he was going to commit himself to Glorinna the dream started vanishing all around them.
Everyone woke up at about the same time, the five heroes sitting in a circle around the confused stable boy. "You might as well go head on over to Glorinna right now," Thurloe suggested, "because your ass is definitely fired from this job."
"Well, I'm glad that at least ended up fairly well for all involved," said Alewyth as she opened the double doors to the carriage house. In doing so, she heard the unmistakable sound of the flapping of leathery wings, looked up, and saw a horse-sized monstrosity coming in for a landing before her. The creature was a strange amalgamation of dragon and insect: large, bulbous, multifaceted eyes, with alternating bands of scales of yellow and brown down its entire flank giving it the appearance of some sort of insect hybrid. Alewyth judged she had enough time to cast another bless spell (as the original had run its course) before the creature arrived, so she did so.
Thurloe saw a draconic shape coming down from the sky, immediately realized it would likely have a breath weapon of some type, and dashed out the back of the carriage shed, running north. Wakuren ran south for the same reason: not wanting to be all bunched up such that one blast of a breath weapon could encompass the entire group. Xandro started back up with his song of inspirational courage as he backed behind the carriage house and stables, while Zander cast haste on the group before they got too far apart, then went out the back of the building in the opposite direction from that which the bard had gone.
And by then the arsalon had landed, spewing forth its breath weapon. Being one of the stranger types of greater drake, its throat sac was coated in a sweet, nectarlike substance that attracted flying insects and this particular arsalon had a hive of wasps living within its throat bladder. With enough pressure to disturb the hive, the creature ensured a swarm of enraged wasps came barreling out of its mouth at full speed, totally encompassing Alewyth and Henry, who still stood in the middle of the empty carriage parking area. They swatted furiously at the stinging insects but the stable boy was quickly overcome, his body swelling by the numerous stings he'd received from the furious insects. He collapsed onto the floor of the shed, unconscious.
Alewyth bent over and picked him up, dragging him out the back way and kicking the doors shut with her feet; they didn't automatically lock but it was enough for her to stop the swarm's advance. Thurloe, in the meantime, had done an about-face and was now charging the arsalon, now that it had disgorged its breath weapon and the spellsword anticipated he'd have a few seconds before the drake could employ it again. (Little did he know it, but the arsalon had a breath weapon generally employed but the one time, for once the angry wasps evacuated their nest inside the arsalon's throat bladder they generally didn't return until the combat was at an end.) His bastard sword came swinging in from the side, cutting deep into the creature's scales.
Wakuren likewise charged the hive drake from the other direction, using the bottom point of his shield as an offensive weapon that stabbed into its side, just behind its right wing. Xandro continued his song, advancing around the smaller out-building so he could see the combat unfold. Zander, a sorcerer, had no access to healing spells but he did have a way to help stabilize Henry and cast a bear's endurance spell upon the unconscious stable boy; the increased vitality helped him overcome the shock to his system from all of the wasp venom coursing through his body.
The arsalon swung to the right and snapped at Wakuren with its fang-filled mouth, trying to claw him at the same time; the half-orc dodged the one attack and allowed the other to slide harmlessly across his shield. The swarm of wasps, prevented by the closed doors in the back from continuing their attacks upon Alewyth and Henry, veered off in the opposite direction and came flying out of the other doors, quickly engulfing Thurloe. Alewyth cast a spiritual weapon spell, sending a warhammer made of solid force energy crashing down upon the arsalon's head while Thurloe did his best to attack the creature while nearly blinded by the dozens, if not hundreds, of individual wasps swarming between him and his intended foe.
Wakuren summoned another javelin of lightning into his raised hand and let it fly, blasting the arsalon's side. Then Zander came stepping up into range, his hands held together before him, thumbs touching, as he verbalized the words to the burning hands spell. A sheet of flames encompassed the wasps covering Thurloe (and singeing the spellsword a bit as well, but Zander was sure Thurloe would be fine with a little collateral damage) and burning the arsalon's head as well. By this time, it had pretty much decided to flee, having answered Lord Andrus's whispering wind call but finding the group waiting for it to be a bit more than it was willing to handle. It turned back the way it had come, flapped its leathery wings, and was soon aloft - but Zander wasn't about to let it escape. A lightning bolt spell soon had the arsalon back on the ground, crashing in an ungainly heap as its life was taken from it by the elf sorcerer's spell.
The creature dead and the few remaining wasps from the initial swarm wandering away now that combat was over, Thurloe looked around and said, "Let's get out of here." They checked on Lady Angelica one last time to ensure she'd be all right, and they were given all of Lord Andrus's alchemical equipment from his lab (she wanted nothing to do with his arcane experiments), the weapons and armor from the dwarven bodyguards, plus a sizable sum in gemstones as a reward for having saved her life and those of her retainers, and then the group was off.
And as per her promise to Lady Angelica, that night before retiring for the evening in the lamp, they dumped the werewasp grub from the magic chest and stabbed it to death.
- - -
I want to note this is the second adventure in a row that the players opted to try the "Trojan Horse" gambit with all but one PC inside the magic lamp while the other one carries it where they need to infiltrate, and neither time has it gone exactly as planned. And I named the adventure after a band my son Logan enjoys, "The Birthday Massacre." (I rather like them as well.) But it seemed fitting.
Also, a note about the campaign: we'll be taking a brief hiatus for six weeks or so, while one of our number undergoes some surgery that will require a bit of extensive healing up afterwards. We'll allow that to run its course and will likely pick the campaign back up in mid-October or so.
- - -
T-shirt worn: My Spider-Man T-shirt, for the most tenuous of reasons. For one thing, there's a spider wasp that lays its eggs in the bodies of paralyzed spiders, allowing the hatching grubs to have a living meal immediately upon hatching (rather like the unfortunate situation in which Lady Angelica found herself). For another, one of the many members of Spider-Man's rogues gallery is a Nazi scientist named "Swarm" whose vaguely humanoid body is made up of a swarm of bees. But mostly, spiders and wasps are both "bugs," which was all the justification I needed. (Plus, had I worn my "DAD: Cleverly Disguised as a Responsible Adult" T-shirt, which was my original idea, it would have potentially spilled the beans about Lord Andrus not being who he seemed to be.)
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