Heroes of Spittlemarch

[Radiating Gnome]

Spire 1: New Allies

While Eli parked the Mystery Machine against a ridge not far from the Spire, the rest of the group packed on their gear. Nikolai and the rest of the Dragoon regulars "volunteered" to stay behind and keep an eye on the ship while the heroes entered the tower and chased down Anathe. Everything seemed groovy.

The five heroes wandered down the slope towards the menacing spire, tucked into a ravine in the side of the wall of the great rift. It was a gruesome place, walls covered with carved gargoyles and other threatening stonework.

There was also the sign of a great battle outside the tower. The tower itself was blasted and charred in spots - it looked as if a couple of fireballs had detonated around the top. There was a single rope that hung down from the very top of the tower - about 300 feet in the air. And, also near the foot of the tower, there was the corpse of a huge monstrosity, a bit like a huge elephant-sized brain, with eyes, wings, and a variety of tentacles.

The group decided to try circling the base of the tower, looking for an entrance. At one point there was a small hut built against the side of the tower, but Pah got a bad feeling about the vines that covered it. They seemed to be vibrating, and there wasn't enough wind to have caused it.

Irk tossed a rock at the hut, but that didn't have any effect.

Uri managed to spot the glint of something shiny up ahead, closer to the vines, and that was enough to push Pah past her skittishness about traps. She skulked forward until she was close enough to hear soft chime-like music coming from the vines. It was peaceful, delicate music that made her feel like just lying down and going to sleep . . .

She shook it off, however, and saw ahead of her the corpses of several others who had not been fortunate enough to shake off the effects of the vine's music. She found a bit of shiny loot, and moved away from the vines as quickly as possible.

This left only one obvious means of entrance to the spire - through the top. A quick shift of items that provided Spider Climb ability was enough get the party up to the top - a couple of Halflings riding on the backs of larger characters.

At the top they found the nest of the great beast that was dead at the bottom of the tower. It looked like it had been hastily looted, and whomever had done it had left behind a pile of gold and silver, which the goonies quickly scooped into Pah's bag of holding.

In the center of the nest there was a hole, about 8' in diameter, that lead to a lower level. The group lowered themselves into the room below, and started to look around.

They were in a small room, with many walls that had collapsed, making it a larger, more irregular chamber. There was a door in sight to the north, and Pah started to move in that direction to check it out when things turned ugly fast.

Vampire spawn attacked, appearing out of clouds of vapor in the room and jumping at poor Pah while the rest of the party looked on. Pah tried to put her back to the wall, shrieking for Irk to come and save her. Irk charged ahead, trying to get to her side, but one of the Vampires turned and stared into Irk's eye.

"Hi there," said the vampire.

Irk gulped. "You're purty."

"Don't let them hurt me." The Vampire said.

"Of course not," said Irk. And things started to look grim.

Then the door that Pah had been working her way towards opened, and out stepped a woman dressed in simple robes. She stepped to one side and cast a small spell at one of the Vampires attacking Pah. Her sidestep made room for a large mountain lion to bound out of the room. The Lion also attacked the vampires. The party, with Irk working against them, but with the help of the two strangers, managed to force the Vampires to retreat, returning to a gaseous form.

While Irk tried to figure out on who's side he was supposed to be on, the others turned and looked at the woman and the mountain lion. She seemed familiar, in ways that didn't make anyone feel any better about things, despite the fact that the Lion and the woman had probably saved the day.

So they got to talking, and Crysalis and her friend Ulrich told them their story . . . .

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Spire 2: Crys and Ulrich

Crys and Ulrich were a pair of fairly-good intentioned mercenary adventures from Perrenland that had been traveling together since they were rookie adventurers. They fell in, most recently, with a dwarf mercenary named Brottkill. Brottkill ran a team of adventurers who were very effective -- they were all survivors of many campaigns and had the scars and stories to prove it. Brottkill was a brute, and purely self-interested, but as long as they were lined up on his side of the fence they were fine. They did some adventuring for hire, mucking about, trying to walk the line as much as possible between their sensibilities and the requirements of the work Brottkill found for them.

And then the letters from Anathe began to arrive. Crys and Ulrich saw a few of them one night, when Brottkill left them out. Anathe wanted to hire Brottkill and the rest of the team to help on a quest -- and to help deal with a troublesome group of "meddlers." Anathe was a dragon priest -- a member of a faith that was also growing in strength in your neck of the woods, but not yet to the point where it was trying to eclipse other faiths.

Crys and Ulrich, along with the rest of Brottkill's team, traveled by ship to Dyvers. It's an impressive city, but what was more impressive was the construction work going on at the time in the temple district. Their new employer, the Dragon Faith, was building a city within the walls of Dyvers, absorbing several blocks into a complex that would be larger and taller than the magister's palace when it was completed.

While their ship approached the port, they were handed unifirm tabards -- crimson with a black claw figure embroidered on the front and back. Brottkill explained that while they were in Dyvers they were member's of the Dragon Faith's official city guard and military unit, the Claws of the Dragon. While wearing the uniform they would have very broad powers to create and enforce their own justice in the city, but they were mostly being provided to allow them to move freely in the city.

Crys and Ulrich were taken to a barracks of sorts, in the heart of the great construction project. Walls were going up everywhere, but the barracks area was one of the first sections of the site that had been completed. They were provided comfortable if spartan living quarters.

The team was only in Dyvers for a few days. They went on a couple of patrols, mostly just long hikes around the city. Most people in the street gave them a lot of space on the street, and there didn't seem to be much trouble going on.

THey met several NPCs that they would be working with in the future. Most importantly, they met Anathe, a Megolomaniac who dressed in white at all times and traveled with a pair of slim, heavily robed attendants that they later discovered were drow assassins. He was passionate about the faith, and was the driving force behind a lot of what was going on in Dyvers -- certainly, there were others in the faith, even some that outranked Anathe, but Anathe was the one who had the strong connection with the dragon Sear, still trapped beneath the earth's crust, who was financing the construction in Dyvers. Anathe had Brottkill and the rest of the team attend a opulent dinner once they arrived -- a dinner which made Crys and Ulrich very uncomfortable. Everything was grand -- the food was spectacular, the room, in the base of a half-constructed tower in the section of the dragon compound they were calling the Nursery (for reasons too chilling to consider). The evil that Anathe wore like an invisible cloak was troublesome enough, but even more problematic was the way the rest of their troupe of companions, including Brottkill, reacted.

They were not bothered.

At dinner they learned from Anathe about the group of meddlers -- the "spittlemarch crowd", and a bit about their capabilities. Now they are calling themselves the Dyvers Dragoons. They have a pathetically small company -- more a squad or platoon -- and some popguns that Anathe dismissed (although you sense a bit of frustration and jealousy there). There are currently four of them -- and their supporters, the alchemist gnome Solen, the Cleric Pavel, and the wizard's Valet, Minimonk. The core members of the group are a Dwarf named Irk -- a terror with an axe that Brottkill was especially interested in, an Elven Arher called Eli, and a pair of halflings, a wizard named Uri and a burglar named Pah. Anathe bitches furiously about them -- about having seen Irk and Eli dead, and still they come back, time and again. They refuse to learn. And now they have a flying ship, which will make things very interesting.

Towards the end of dinner, one of the Drow attendants entered the dining hall and whispered in Anathe's ear. Anathe smiled, ushered the dark figure out of the room, then turned to the rest of the group. "It is time. We need to sail on the midnight tide. Gather your belongings and be ready to go in 30 minutes."

"We must make a long journey -- undertake an important quest for the faith and it's advancement. The flying ship gives the dragoons an advantage in getting to the site -- our advantages are surprise and knowledge, for the dragoons have only begun to try to determine where we are going. They will try to follow, but my agents have taken steps tonight to insure that they are distracted for a few days, if not more. We will face them eventually, of that I am sure, but we need to leave them here, if we can, and slip away tonight.

"As for our mission, I'll tell you more about it tomorrow morning, on the ship.

Their group made it's way back to the barracks and gathered your things, while the regular Claws drank and diced and groaned in their sleep. Crys and Ulrich looked for an opening to try to break away from the group, but almost as if he suspected they might be a problem Brottkill was always on hand, herding them like sheep to the docks, and onto the waiting sloop.

Anathe was only a few minutes behind you, notably traveling without his drow companions, but with a new companion -- a half-dragon he introduced as Eldgrim. And if Crys and Ulrich had a bad feeling in the pit of their stomach before, this made them downright sick. Eldgrim, the son of the great Dragon Sear, was scarred and bent physically, but still strong and fierce, For most of the long journey north across the Nvy Dyv, the great inland lake, he paced the deck of the ship, not sleeping, muttering to himself. The only one who was able to get him to eat was Anathe, who was conciliatory to him but rolled his eyes behind Eldgrim's back. Elgrim was already a loose cannon, and things hadn't begun to get interesting.

It was a pretty terrible journey -- the ship was small and uncomfortable, the company was antisocial at best. The good news was that once they had left port and the journey was well under way, Anathe called all of his hired guns together for a meeting so he could explain the quest.

The bad news was the quest itself. He planned to head deep into the former bandit kingdoms -- now a heavily contested possession of Iuz and his empire -- to the great rift. There, in the great rift, he planned to find, in the ruins of an old temple of an ancient dragon cult, a great wyrm called Ashardalon. It was his intention to make contact with this great wyrm, wake it from its sleep, and bring it out into the world to help the new Dragon Faith to conquer the world. Sear was sending special greetings for Ashardalon in Anathe's care, Anathe was quite sure that it would only be a matter of his being able to speak a few words to the dragon to make it all work out.

Of course, it wasn't going to be easy. Part of what made the trip interested for Crys and Ulrich was that, while Anathe drove his team like crazy, trying to cover ground on the way to the rift, it was not possible to travel as members or employees of the Dragon faith. Iuz has made of himself a demigod, and within the borders of his land he tolerates no other gods.

Luckily the way had been paved. They arrived in port, and the ship, stripped of all markings of the Dragon Faith, was greeted by a young, comley woman named Terressa. Terressa was an agent of Anathe's, and had been traveling the Bandit kingdom for weeks, preparing the way for Anathe and his team.

Their company consisted of 20 riders -- Anathe, Eldgrim, Brottkill, the Crys and Ulrich, and the rest of your team, and twelve hand-picked members of the Claws of the Dragon, each a master with the chose weapon of the claws, the double bladed sword. Anathe was given a map, some notes, and directions by Tereessa, who had struck bargains with local warlords here and there, to aid and speed your travels. Anathe used magical messengers to keep in touch with Terressa as you rode on. Crys and Ulrich gathered, piecing together clues, that Terressa was meeting with a network of spies she had developed, and was keeping an eye out for a flying ship, and plotting with several of the warlrds to try to capture the ship should it appear.

One day, just two days before they would reach your goal at the Nightfang Spire, Crys and Ulrich watched as the usual morning sparrow arrived with a tiny message for Anathe. Anathe, who had shown nothing to the group besides supreme confidence and assurance about the mission, blanched for a second, before recovering himself and putting on what was now clearly a show of bravado.

Brottkill voiced what all were thinking. "News from Terressa?

Anathe grinned. "They're coming. They're here. They made good time to catch up with us, but that doesn't matter. We will beat them to the spire, and be waiting for them, and Ashardalon will make short work of them.

Two days later they arrived at the Spire. Anathe split off half of the group -- ten Claws -- and had them set up a base camp outside the spire. Then, as there seemed to be no way in to the spire except down from the top, the group began to scale the tower.

As they reached the top a tentacle reached out and grabbed on of the two claws traveling with the group, and rended him into meaty chunks in a matter of seconds. A terrible, other-worldly being Crys and Ulrich had never seen before flew out of the shadows at the top of the tower and attacked their party. The team managed to kill the thing, but the battle was fierce, and most, if not all of you were in bad shape after the battle. But Anathe pushed on, eager to meet the dragon. THey scaled the rest of the tower, entered from above, and found themselves in a central room.

And then they attacked from all sides -- Vampires -- mostly vampire spawn, some striking from the shadows, others appearing from clouds of mist right in the middle of their party. Eldgrim, in a panick, turned and breathed fire on one of the vampires next to him, and managed to catch several of your party members in the blast. Everything got crazy and confused, and Crys and Ulrich became separated from the rest of the party. The two friends ducked into a room with a door, shut it, and managed to hide while the fight drifted away down into the tower. Eventually the sounds of fighting died down.

Crys and Ulrich managed to heal each other, set up whatever defenses they could to protect themselves in their room, and holed up, not sure what they were waiting for, but sensing that they should stay right where they were.

Then, about 12 silent hours later, they heard someone else dropping through the hole into the roof into the room beyond, and then the sound of fighting with the vampires.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Spire 3: Back to Business

The group listened to the story that Crys told, while the big cat rolled around on the floor, begging to have it's belly rubbed. Pah and the others were not entirely sure they should trust these two.

"And all that," Pah said, "Puts you on the side of the good guys . . . how?"

But Uri made a good point. "Um, I'm not so sure we're the good guys."

While the group gave that a little thought, trying to figure out what their next move was, the Vampires, this time with reinforcements, reappeared and attacked again.

This time the group managed to be a bit more successful. Irk managed, through a Herculean force of will to resist the charms of the Vampire Vixen that had dominated him earlier, and the Heroes of Spittlemarch fought side by side with the Crys and Ulrich to defeat them, driving them back to a room where their coffins were kept. Once there, they fashioned stakes and drove them through the Vampires, killing them once and for all.

The battle seemed to have settled any question about whether Crys and Ulrich would become members of the party.

Ulrich took the opportunity to transform into his Half-elven natural form and meet the party in person, before taking on the form of a great Grizzly, a form which proved to be very adept at opening doors.

In one of the rooms just off the Vampire Spawn sleeping chamber, the party discovered the Vampire's pantry - a room filled with the bodies of prisoners who had been bled to death slowly. While poking around, Irk discovered one body that was not quite dead - a woman, He roller her over. She was pale and looked drained, with several bite marks on her neck. She looked up at Irk with droopy, lazy eyes. "Aren't you a little short for a Vampire?"

They patched her up a little, and had a chat. She was able to tell them a lot of what was going on, and it didn't exactly make them happy. Apparently there was a Vampire in the spire, named Gulthias, who was obsessed with an ancient Dragon Cult - perhaps he had been a worshiper of it in his previous life - and he was here in the spire working to try to revive the Ancient Dragon Ashardalon. He had apparently harnessed some massive source of necromantic power, and was using that to create undead minions to support him and defend him - the spawn the players had just destroyed were a part of that.

That, combined with the goals of Anathe, could only mean bad things for the world of the living should Anathe and Gulthias meet. Feeling that they must press on, the party helped Yesha, the victim, up through the hole in the ceiling so she could try to make her way down the side of the tower and escape. Then they pressed on.

They encounter many shadows - most of which they handled easily, but a few hits here and there were taking their toll on the party, sapping their strength. Eli had to loosen the string on his bow, because he could no longer pull it at full strength, And Pah was dragging along, pretending that she wasn't feeling as weak as she was.

They found a staircase that lead down, and took it.

On the second level down they picked up the trail of Anathe's group, and followed it through a door into a room full of sarcofogi standing on end. Near the foot of one the corpse of one of Ulrich and Crys's former compatriots lay dead. When they went over to investigate, specters sprang out of the shadows, and the casket at the end of the hall opened, and out stepped a terrifying sight. A mummy-monk, waving a Kama around in a complex Kata of death.

Things got off to a quick start. The party managed to dispatch the Specters, taking a bit more damage from them but surviving. The Mummy was locked in fierce one-on-one combat with the Bear-Ulric, who was holding his own but would need help soon. Once the place was clear of specters the party gathered around the mummymonk, but they found that he moved too quickly, it was too hard to hit him.

It looked as if everything was lost, and then the Mummy slipped and dropped his Kama, which went skittering across the floor. This left him no less dangerous, but it did give the party hope. Bear-Ulric decided to change the combat situation a bit and wrapped the Mummy up in a huge bear hug, hoping to hold him still so the others in the party could pound on him a bit.

But the mummymonk was not going to put up with that. Sensing that things could go quickly bad in this situation, he wrestled around, pressing on hand into the bear's shoulder and another to the top of his Jackal-shaped helmet, speaking a word through gritted teeth, visible through dried, rotted lips.

And then he started to disappear. Ulrich felt himself being pulled along with the Mummy through the gate, but he threw himself back and managed to resist. And in a moment it was over, and the Mummy was gone.

The party, sensing that things were more urgent now that ever, slapped a few healing spells on each other and headed for the door, hoping to catch up to the Mummy before things got really ugly.

And that's where we stopped for the night.


-rg

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Spire 4: Dwarf-Tossing with the Apes

Spire 4: Dwarf-Tossing with the Apes

We left off the previous session with the party about to charge ahead to try to catch up to the Mummy who had teleported away to try to get that Helm of teleportation. They really wanted it badly.

They charged out the door, following the bear’s nose as he tailed the previous Party (Anathe, Eldgrim, Brottkill, etc.). The hall took a sharp turn, and the Ulric/Bear barreled around it and . . . dropped out of sight, falling through a trap door in the floor. Before the others could react, the floor closed up behind him, and there was no sign of the Bear. The tried listening to the floor –figured out what the dimensions of the hole were so they could avoid it themselves, and then tried to figure out how to open it up. They pulled a oak door over, one that the Bear had knocked off it’s hinges, and tried to open the trap door and use the oak door to prop it open.

The door opened, Irk shoved the wooden door into place, and the trap door swung shut again, with enough force to splinter the oak door. While the door had been open there, for a few seconds, those who were in position couldn’t see anything that looked like the bottom of the shaft, or the body of a bear – just a chute that dropped down into darkness.

While they picked splinters of wood out of their hair, they tried to sort out the next plan. They went back to the room full of sarcophagi and found an iron one. Their first idea was to try to use the iron lid to prop the door open, but then Uri got a funny look on his face.

“We could ride down in the coffin. Like a sled, or a log flume ride.”

The others looked around at each other for a moment, most showing obvious misgivings. Then Pah spoke up. “That sounds like FUN!”

Within moments Uri and Pah were sitting in the iron coffin, begging someone to give them a push start, while the rest of the party chewed their lips and tried to come up with a better idea. Soon the others had to step to one side so they could hear each other over the chant “push, push, push” coming from the coffin.

Then, suddenly, Pah grew silent, and placed a hand over Uri’s mouth. “Listen,” she whispered.

In the distance, back up in the upper levels of the dungeon, they could hear a distant squawk. There was some sort of bird up there, and it seemed to be making a lot of noise.

Pah quickly pulled out her pistols and covered the passage behind them. Eli was in position, bow ready, and the others were making similar preparations, but Crys whispered to them. “Be careful. It may be a friend.”

A few minutes later an Eagle hopped through the room full of sarcophagi and sidled up to Crys. “It’s Ulric.”

Ulric, later, in human form, would explain that the pit trap was actually a razor-lined chute that dropped him outside the spire, and he would have falling well over a hundred feet to his death had he not shape-changed into the Eagle form and managed to fly to relative safety. While he had been gliding to safety he had heard an apparently disembodied voice whisper to him “Be more careful.” He would also tell them that he had heard the sound of musket fire coming from the area where they had left Nikolai and the Dragoons with the Mystery Machine.

“Goodbye, Nicky,” said Pah, almost managing to be wistful.

Eli grimaced. “It’s going to be a long walk back to Dyvers. We need that Helmet.”

Pah and Uri were disappointed that there was no reason to try the coffin ride down the pit, but it was clear that they could move on.

It was decided that they should check out the rest of this level before following Anathe’s tracks down the stairs to the third level.

There was one door which was carved with a cacophony of eyes and mouths – a truly gruesome portal that drew Pah’s attention immediately. She and Eli opened that door, and saw a small room, with what looked like a big iron pressure cooker built into the floor. And standing next to the pressure cooker was a slim humanoid figure, with big fangs and an even bigger bow. And the figure had an arrow nocked. Before they could duck out of the way, it fired, taking Eli in the shoulder. The arrow carried with it a charge of cold, and little frozen blood drops hit the ground at Eli’s feet.

They jumped into action – Eli fired off a couple of arrows in return, but before they could act the vampire archer turned to gas and drifted away, out of sight, through cracks in the wall.

The rest of the party charged into the room, looking at Eli, who was poking a toe at the blood icicle on his tunic. The group was quickly distracted from concerns about the return of the Vampire Archer by the contents of the room.

Set in the floor was what looked like a 5-foot wide iron pressure cooker. Given the carvings on the walls and the doors in the area, many of the party members were reluctant to open it.

Pah wasn't reluctant.

Of course, the lid was trapped, and touching it felt a bit like taking one's favorite toaster into the tub for a bath. Bolts of lightning passed through her and into the wall behind her, leaving her panting, standing over the iron lid, hair standing on end, but somehow still alive.

“Hey, Irk,” she said. “C’mere.”

The protection spell spent, Irk was able to touch the lid safely and force it open, This revealed something they didn’t really want to see – a Gibbering Mouther slobbering all over itself at the bottom of a long Iron tube.

This looked like it should have been difficult, but Irk simply walked down the side of the tube – his slippers of spider climb making the wall very much like flat ground for him. Despite the close quarters he was able to slash and bash away at the thing enough, with the help of a few magic missles (the only spells or missle weapons at the party’s disposal that could find their target past the embattled Dwarf.

There was, of course, the wrinkle of the Mouther’s vampirism, but that was quickly dealt with as well.

Wanting to press on rather than take their chances sleeping again, they pressed on down to the next level of the spire.

At that level they found themselves faced with a choice of two doors. The one they chose led to a huge room that looked like it had once been the workroom of a stonecutter. the room appeared to be empty at first, but as they entered the room they spotted a pair of Girallons – huge, four-armed, vicious Gorilla things. The girallons bellowed and attacked the party.

Uri slowed them down a little with some web work, while Irk raced forward to meet them. The rest of the party moved into the room, preparing to back Irk up. Irk, in the first round, discovered just how deadly the Girallons could be – the pummeling and rending he took that round was enough to make him think seriously about backing down.

At about the time Irk was figuring out that he didn’t like getting hit by the rending attacks of the Girallons, things got a bit worse. The other door they had seen at the bottom of the stairs flew open, and another six Girallons – bellowing an answering call to their compatriots – charged towards the rear of the party. Behind them, leading from behind, was the Mummy-monk they had fought earlier, looking for trouble.

Things looked pretty grim. Irk was taking a homeric beating. Ulric couldn’t help much, as he was in human form and unable to shapechange anymore (he was used up for the day). Pah moved around the edges of the fight, but wasn’t able to turn the tide on her own. Minimonk prepared to throw minself away to protect the spellcasters, but it was the spellcasters, Uri and Crys, who saved the day.

Uri started out by slowing things down with a couple of web spells. It was disconvereting to watch the Girallons rip through the web fairly easily, but it was slowing them down, and that much helped. Crys pulled out her Staff of Charm and started trying to make friends with some of the Girallons.

In the end, Uri cast both of his remaining Evards Black Tenatacle spells on the Girallon reinforcements, which worked quite well to take many of them out of the fight – the first spell slowed many of hem down, but with the addition of the second spell, the handful that were getting caught by tentacles were each being held by several.

While the rest of the party fought the few who were not being held by the web and the tentacles, or those who had broken free, Uri spider climbed around over the top of the fight, scrabbling along the ceiling into the room that the mummy had just been in. There he saw a Mohrg coming out of another room to join the fight.

The Mummy and the big Alpha Male Girallon were not in the room when Uri got there. They had taken around route around the fight, and at about that time they appeared on another flank, charging the remains of the party. Irk met the Alpha male’s charge to buy the party some time, but was ripped apart – literally – when all four arms of the huge beast grabbed his limbs and ripped him literally limb from limb. Crys’s charmed Girallons were able to get there the next round and save the rest of the party, teaming up to pummel the Alpha male, then turn their attention on the mummy.

The Mummy did it’s best to avoid the powerful crushing blows from the charmed Girallons, but was getting hit some, and he wasn’t going to be able to stand and fight. Uri, who had scrabbled into the main room again, still on the ceiling, managed to make a flying leap, diving at the Monk’s head and trying to grab the helmet off it’s head. His fingers grasped it momentarily, but as he tried to pull the Mummy pulled his head away and Uri missed. Then, in a flash, the Mummy was gone.

The Girallons made short work of what was left. The Morgh was torn to bits, the last few Girallons squirming in he tentacles were ripped up, along with the tentacles that were holding them.

Then, on the off chance that the Mummy had returned to his sarcophagus room, they charged back up the stairs, Girallons in the lead, and found him there, panting, his wounds already half- closed from the battle a few moments before.

The Girallons charged back in again. This time the Mummy-monk was not able to teleport away before he was torn to pieces again.

The party, with two dead members (one dismembered member) gathered around the torn bits of the mummy and picked up the helmet. Uri put the helmet on anyway, grasped hands with the other party members, thought really hard about the Dragoon compound in Dyvers, and repeated the word they had heard the Mummy say both times he had teleported.

Nothing happened.

There were three stones on the helmet, which some of them remembered being lit with an inner glow when they first spotted the Mummymonk. Now they were all dim.

Pah, Uri, Minimonk, Crys, and Ulric, all battered, bloodied, and spent, looked at each other, holding hands in a circle, clinging to the forms of their fallen comrades, and listened to the creaks and groans of the Spire.

Until next time . . . .

-rg

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Spire 5. Whether 'tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows . . .

Spire 5. Whether 'tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows . . .

The group shuffled into a vacant room, barricaded the door, and tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible for the night. At one point, they heard heavy plodding footsteps moving about in the hall, but after that it was quiet.

When morning came, they found that Eli and Irk were beginning to stink a bit, but the three gems set in the Jackal-head helmet of teleportation were glowing again. Pah donned the helmet, the picked up the bodies and held hands, and Pah thought really hard about the Dragoon Barracks.

And "poof" they were home. Gotta love Teleportation when it works.

Of course, things seemed a bit different in the barracks. There were a couple of dozen young, pimply boys, dressed in Dragoon Tabards, marching around, sparring, and training with a couple of muskets, all under the watchful eye of Pavel.

Once the initial shock of seeing the party appear in the middle of the parade ground wore off, most of the young recruits were very excited to finally meet the Heroes of Spittlemarch, the Dyvers Dragoons . . . and who were those other two, the half-elves . . . anyway, Pavel drove the youngsters back and took the party into Solen's lab, where they could have a private talk.

The long and the short of the situation: Solen was alive, but off on some mission or errand of his own. Pavel had been left behind, and was trying to train some replacement troops. He was appalled to hear that Nikolai was presumed lost, with the Mystery Machine and the rest of the dragoons, but got used to the title of Dragoon Acting Captain pretty quickly.

The party started to pool their resources, and managed to put together enough money and loot to pay for a true resurrection scroll to cast on Irk. Eli, they decided, could wait a bit, while they returned to the spire to raise a bit more cash. (Eli's player was going to miss this session)

Pavel went off to talk to his contacts about the scroll, and the rest of the surviving members of the party mucked around with re-equipping for a return to the spire.

A few hours later, Pavel returned. Later in the day, Irk walked out of the little Dragoon shrine Pavel had erected in the party's absence, and started putting his armor back on. He took the helmet from Pah, the five members of the party that were returning joined hands, and they teleported back into the Spire.

Irk chose the sarcophagus room as his target for the teleportation - t was a room in which they had spent a fair amount of time. They had been gone for all of about 12 hours - not enough time for much to have changed in the spire, at least, not on the levels they entered.

They began to make their way down the spire again, clearing a few specters out of some rooms as they worked their way around.

They discovered a couple of embalming rooms, filled with jars of organs stored in viscous fluid.

"Hey Irk," Uri said. "C'mere. Look. This one's a !"

Irk stared at Uri.

"That's funny," said Uri, holding up the jar.

Irk stared hard at Uri.

Uri pouted and put the jar back on the shelf

Ulric wondered aloud whether the organs might be worth something if sold back in Dyvers.

"I say we let the goo out," said Pah.

The party ignored her, talking about what organs might be worth money.

"I say we destroy them," said Pah, but instead the party decided th keep them, just in case. They yanked Pah's bag of holding away from her, and started stuffing jars into the sack. "Those are all sealed, right?" she asked.

Once the jars were stashed Irk handed the bag back to Pah, who took it back with a hurt look. Then they moved on.

At one point they came to a door covered in runes of protection. A voice called out to them from behind the door. "Hey, you guys, can you hear me? You gotta help me. Get me outta here."

"Why are you in there."

"They put me in here. Come on, you gotta let me out."

The group stood around in front of the door - Uri was trying to make some sense of the wards on the door, while Ulric and Crys explained that the voice they were hearing was not one of their former party members.

While they were debating, they heard heavy footsteps coming from an area they had not investigated. While they bumbled around, trying to figure out what to do about the impending arrival of the heavy-footed something, the voice beyond the door said "Oh, yeah, look out for Mr. Stitches."

Mr. Stitches came around the corner - a massive half-dragon flesh golem. And the party rolled into action.

Ulric went all bearish and tried to face down the Golem, while the spellcasters in the party tried to cast spells on the beast that seemed to just wash off Mr. Stitches like oily rain. Irk, however, had a different plan.

He had picked up a pair of winged boots in one of the minor encounters earlier, and used them to fly around behind the beast, where he swooped in bare-handed and grabbed on to Mr. Stitch's Stubby tail.

And thought long and hard about the bit of corridor where Ulric had fallen through the floor into the nasty chute trap.

And "Piff" they were gone.

Ulric, Chrys, Pah, Uri and Minimonk were all relieved to have Mr. Stitches gone, until they noticed that Irk was gone with him.

Irk and Mr. Stitches appeared over the trap. Mr. Stitches failed many saves in a row - failed to hit with his opportunity attack to try to stop Irk from grabbing him (not technically a save), failed to resist being teleported, failed to avoid falling down the pit, and then tumbled down the chute, taking little cuts from the razors on the way down.

The trap door closed below Irk's hovering boots. Then Irk chugged his way back to the party, who were standing around outside the warded door, trying to figure out what to do next.

Irk told them what he had done. Ulric, still in bear form, had an indea, and started to mime something to the party, scratching out a crude map on the floor.

"What is it, boy?" asked Uri, "Is little Timmy in the well?"

But Irk got the point, and turned around and went back up the spire on his own, flying up to the very top where he could look down at the ground below.

There, pacing back and forth at the base of the spire, was Mr. Stitches.

Irk grabbed a boulder (Player: the feat is called throw anything, right?") and tried to drop it on Mr. Stitches from 300 ' up.

The rock missed. Mr. Stitches looked up at Irk, and made some obscene gestures at him. Irk grabbed another boulder, missing again.

Mr. Stitches looked up at Irk again, scowling at his distant assailant, while Irk grabbed a third rock. Then, suddenly, Mr. Stitches shift his gaze to something over Irk's shoulder, and smiled a toothy, evil smile.

Irk, rock in hand, looked over his shoulder. There was the Vampire Archer, perched on top of a bit of broken battlement, bow in hand. He fired and arrow at Irk, which buried itself and it's bit of stored cold energy, in Irk's thigh.

Irk was faced with a choice, holding a rock, faced with the archer and the enemy below, but he was never one to give up on a plan easily. He turned back to the edge and tossed his rock at Mr. Stitches again, missing for the third time.

The archer fired three shots in rapid succession, each one taking Irk in the back. He slumped against the battlement.

After a while, the rest of the party wondered what had happened to Irk, and found him at the top of the spire, alone, dead. Again.

The good news? The helmet was still there.

Until next time:

-rg

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Not Spire 6: A Deadly Interlude

Not Spire 6: A Deadly Interlude

(Note: for this session half of the players were not able to attend, something we discovered at the last minute, so we ad libbed a bit . . .)

The party climbed the spire again, finding Irk’s dead body – still not even a whole day since he’d been raised from the dead the last time – and the exhausted helmet of teleportation. They hunkered down in the same abandoned room they had hid in the last time, and waited for the dawn to recharge the helmet.

Back at the Dragoon compound, they found themselves once again the object of a great deal of attention from the far-too-young, pimply-faced recruits that were training under Pavel’s watchful eye. Pavel himself walked over to the group, looking at Irk’s corpse, shaking his head with dismay.

Uri scowled back at Pavel. “It was the new guy’s idea.”

Ulric and Crys looked a bit shaken by the experience of the past few days traveling with the dragoons. They explained that they needed to make their way back to the Claw barracks and recover their personal effects – the luggage and gear they had left behind when they headed off to Nightfang Spire.

That left the Halfling trio to deal with raising money to bring Irk back again – and to continue to worry about bringing Eli back. Money was getting very tight for the group – they pawned as much of their loot and gear as they could part with all over town, and managed to get close to what they needed, but it was still not quite enough.

Pah did pull out the jars of organs and embalming goo that they had recovered from the tower. “Do you think these are worth anything.”

Pavel examined the jars skeptically. “What in the heck are they?”

Uri smirked. “You know, when they make the McNuggets . . . “

They set the jars aside and looked for anything else they might sell. Finally Pavel threw in his savings, and pawned a few items to get the cash together to raise Irk one last time.

Some hours later, Irk, just like the last time, hopped up off the table, shrugged out of the shroud he had been wrapped in for the resurrection ceremony, and started to put his battered armor back on.

But Pah stopped him, pressing a probing finger through the small round holes that had been left by the Vampire Archer’s arrows. “Um, Irk, honey? We can’t go back right away.”

She went on to explain that they didn’t want to go back without Ulric and Crys, and didn’t really want to go back again without Eli, either – they had learned to miss the withering support fire from the Elf’s bow. They needed money.

Uri wanted spells. And money.

Pah wanted sparklies.

Minimonk wanted a new begging bowl and some peep show tokens.

It was time to change gears. They decided that the best idea for raising some cash fast was to steal it. Of course, you can’t steal from just anyone – especially when you’re a dragoon, one of the city watch companies. But they figured they could get away with stealing from the Dragonpriests. Anyway, it had been almost a month since they had seen the construction site – where they had killed the Drow assassins and stolen some letters from Anathe’s chambers.

Checking out the area, they saw that most of the construction was now finished – a remarkable feat of engineering just in having built what amounted to a small city in a few short weeks. The new temple itself was a grand, but actually interested the party very little. They were especially interested in Dragontown, the small mercantile district that existed behind the walls of the Dragonpriest Compound. There they found a few shops that struck their fancy – a small jeweler’s shop, a blacksmith, and a magic shop.

They decided to split into two groups, making their way into Dragontown. Uri and minimonk would make their way to the magic shop and case the joint, while Pah would check out the blacksmith and Jeweler, with Irk hanging around as her backup. Uri and Pah used their hats of disguise to conceal their identity, while Irk made do with a heavy cloak and thinking subtle thoughts.

Uri struck up an extended conversation with the magic shop shopkeeper, who had a handful of scrolls available in stock, could prepare some from a longer list, and had sources that could provide almost any. After a bit of talking he also revealed a meager supply of other useful items – a couple of half-spent wands, a quarterstaff, and a few other goodies. There was a back room to the wizard’s shop – much larger than the public area – that Uri assumed held the main of the Wizard shopkeeper’s goods.

Pah, meanwhile, presented herself as the child of some new Halfling nobles. She wanted to buy a sword and have someone show her how to use it because they were cool. The blacksmith, a gruff dwarf named Brottor, wanted nothing more that to get back to his hammering, but the little one kept asking questions, kept needling him, until he finally showed her his store chest of masterkwork weapons. Bored with that, Pah wandered out across the street to the jeweler, where she found nothing but cheap glass costume jewelry.

They returned to the barracks.

Pleased that they had completed some recon work without picking a fight or getting caught, they planned a raid for the early hours of the morning.

This time the plan involved using the helmet of teleportation – which should allow them to hit and run without much trouble. They actually planned three stops – first to teleport into the library in the Dragonpriest’s tower. (This was the tower at which they had fought and killed the two drow assassins weeks before, when the tower was just four stories tall and incomplete.) After seeing what they could in the tower, they would teleport into the wizard’s shop, and steal anything that wasn’t nailed down, make their way into the blacksmith’s shop (which was right next to the magic shop) and then teleport out to safety.

It sounded like a brilliant plan.

Their first stop was the library in the Dragonpriest Tower. They teleported in. Irk did his best to just stand in one place, touching nothing, and holding his breath, so that he would make no noise at all, while they sneaky folk tried to see what they could see.

Pah checked out the stack of books that were out on one of the reading tables. There were a collection of different books, all histories of the Dragon Cult that had built the Spire, and some regional histories of the bandit kingdoms. She started stuffing books into her bag of holding.

Uri, meanwhile, stalked forward to the closed door that had led to Anathe’s private chamber when they were at the Tower last. He found the door unlocked, and although the room was mostly just as they’d left it a few weeks before (Anathe had clearly not managed to return yet) he did find a few sealed letters addressed to him. Uri slipped those letters into his tunic and returned to the main library.

In the center of the tower there was a ten-by-ten opening in the floor and ceiling – the hole led down to the ground floor and up to the sixth, where they had observed a very open balcony, obviously some sort of landing platform. Down below, on the ground floor, they could see very little, except a long, large, lizard-like tail protruding from the shadows.

They decided that they had pushed their luck enough in the tower and all joined hands and teleported to the Magic Shop.

In the magic shop they again mostly tried to stand very still and be quiet. Uri pulled out his wand of detect magic and started waving it around pretty indiscriminately, getting positive results on both the outer door of the store and the door to the back rooms. Pah went over to investigate the door to the back rooms.

Now, in Pah’s defense, magical traps are a lot more difficult to detect and disarm than mechanical ones. It takes a very deft hand and a lot of luck to pull it off. So no one should be surprised that the lightning trap set in the door went off.

The Bolt of lightning nearly caught Pah, but her evasion ability allowed her to avoid damage entirely. Uri, standing behind her with his wand, was not so lucking, taking the bolt full in the chest.

Irk, relieved to finally be rid of the prohibition against making noise, charged the door, now disarmed, and entered the room beyond, where the party could already hear incantations.

Irk crashed through the door with the halflings on his heels to find three figures in the room – a tiny, stinger-tailed Imp chuckling and chattering at them from a corner, an angry mage in a bathrobe casting spells as fast as he could. Oh, and there was the huge Dire Ape taking up most of the room right in front of the party (which had just been summoned by the mage).

Irk went to work on the ape, while Minimonk and the Imp squared off, Pah hit the ceiling and tried to take pot shots at the mage and Uri did his best to to try to bring things to a quiet end.

Uri, still singed by the lightning bolt, was reluctant to take too many risks, so he hung back and tried his Evard’s Black Tentacles , placed to try to grab the Ape and the Mage but not Irk. Uri’s favorite thing about the spell is that it ignores anything smaller than medium size, so the halflings in the group can run around in the forest of writing tentacles without worry. The Ape was too strong for the tentacles, managed to shake them off, but between the deadly pistol fire from above and Irks consistent pounding, the Dire Ape did not last long.

The other mage, however, wasn’t sitting on the sidelines. Irk more than once shook off spell effects that were threatening to turn him into a fuzzy bunny rabbit, and even a few blasts from the wand of hold person that the mage was carrying. But with his familiar and summoned Ape dead, and his spells not making an impression on the party, the mage needed a new plan. He cast invisibility, moved to a trap door in one corner of the room and opened it, but did not go down – he was hoping that one or more of the pcs would think he had gone down the hole. No one took the bait. Then he cast blink on himself, and stepped through the wall and to the street outside his shop, where he started yelling for the Claw City Watch to come to his aid. Then he removed the spell lock on the front door of the store.

While he waited for the city watch to arrive, he kept bopping in to the shop, casting a spell or two and bopping back out. He summoned another dire ape to keep the party busy. Then the watch started to arrive.

While Irk held off the Claws, standing the doorway and cleaving his way through the ranks as the closed in on him, Pah and Uri raided the Wizard’s stash. Pah found a locked, trapped chest at the foot of his bed and settled down in front of it to see what it contained.

Pah, with the distraction of Irk’s massacre of the Claws going on in the background, managed to detect the magical trap on the chest and disarm it THIS TIME WITHOUT SETTING IT OFF (APPLAUSE), open the lock, and started shoving spellbooks, scrolls, potions, and a wand into her bag of holding. Meanwhile, Uri found an Armoire in a corner and stole all the Mage’s clothes. Then the group gathered behind Irk, touched hands, and teleported back to the Dragoon Barracks while the surviving Claws and the mage looked on helplessly.

The next day the short quartet sorted through their loot – a pile of normal scholar’s clothing, mostly clean, a couple of spellbooks, a wand, and some potions. They picked through what the might sell for cash while Uri poured over the spellbooks, trying to figure out what was there, what spells he might be able to scribe into his own spellbook.

While he was poking around in the tomes, he got the odd sense, at one point, that he was being watched, but couldn’t figure out what the source of that feeling was.

The others spent the day pawning items and pestering the raw recruits in the compound. Irk spent a lot of time fingering the holes in his armor, left by the Vampire Archer’s arrows, and sharpening his axe.

When some of the off-duty recruits shuffled into the compound after an evening in the taverns, they told the Goonies about a halfling that had been asking questions about them in the taverns. They got a little nervous, and decided to set up their own internal watch for the evening.

The party had a large communal room on the second floor of the barracks. Pavel, as acting company commander had his own room on that floor, and the rest of the dragoons slept in a large dormitory that took up most of the first floor.

The attack came at about 3 a.m., and started very quietly. Irk heard the gate opening, and slipped downstairs to take a look. He saw the two night guards prone near the gate, and the gate standing open, but no sign of any intruders. He raced back up stairs to awaken the others.

That was when the action picked up a bit. A fireball streaked into the ground floor dormitory through the door that Irk had opened. The blast killed about 2/3 of the mostly sleeping Dragoon Recruits in their bunks. A door opened and an invisible swordsman started hacking his way through the rest of the Dragoons.

Irk had awakened the party, and he and Pah raced downstairs just after the blast, in time to see the invisible whirlwind swordsman taking the place apart. Irk tried tossing a bit of Alchemist’s fire on him to help spot him while Pah perched on the ceiling and took pot shots from above.
Meanwhile, Uri and Minimonk had their hands full on the second floor. Once Pah and Irk left the room, the wall facing the courtyard and gate disappeared in a cloud of ions, and the conjuror and his monk follower heard light footsteps land in the room, the owner obviously invisible.

Uri reacted quickly, with glitterdust, which blinded and outlined the halfling rogue that hand entered the room. Then Uri and Minimonk went to work on him, hacking at him with Rapier and Kama, trying to flank him and take him out while the suddenly frightened rogue tried to escape back out the way he’d come. He called out to his attackers “just return the books and we’ll leave” but Uri and Minimonk pressed their advantage.

In the abattoir that had been made of the ground floor dormitory, the invisible swordsman had finished the recruits, and was dancing around Irk, who slashed about with his axe trying to find something to hit – and connecting occasionally. Between his axe and Pah shooting at anything that looked like it might be a target, they managed to convince the invisible fighter to retreat. As the invisible form headed for the door, Irk, unable to pursue fast enough, threw his greataxe at him, taking a chunk out of him but forcing Irk to switch to a smaller axe for the rest of the fight.

At about the same time the blinded, glitteringly visible rogue managed to drop through the hole in the wall to ground level, where Uri and Minimonk followed him, continuing to flank and abuse him. Then Uri suddenly stood very still, the victim of a hold person spell. The rogue continued to try to escape, and now that they were out in the open he had the help of his other party members, and Minimonk started to be peppered by Magic Missiles. Minimonk tried to press the attack and finish the rogue, but was eventually knocked down by the enemy mage.

Pavel finally made an appearance, running down, assessing the situation, and charging out in the the middle of the compound while casting Invisibility Purge, revealing the entire attacking party – two mages, including the one that had been robbed, the battered hafling, and the swordsman. They were obviously trying to retreat, an effort that was hastened by their sudden loss of their comfortable improved invisibility. Irk, in an attempt to deny their escape, moved to the gate and tried to cut them off, but failed a saving through and ended up held for a few rounds. Uri, recovering from a hold, cast a web on the entrance to try to slow things down. Pah raced around outside, taking shots where she had them, saving Minimonk’s life with a well-timed potion of healing. The rogue, freed from Minimonk by the mage and nearly dead himself, squirted out ahead of the web spell and never looked back, running away. The mage who had been robbed, left with very few spells after the previous fighting and without his spellbooks, could do little more than shoot off his wand of hold person round after round, despite the fact that it wasn’t working very well. He had frozen Irk, and tried to close on him, through the web, to try to finish him off, but it didn’t work – he was slowed by the web, Irk managed to recover, and finished that mage with some axe work.

The swordsman was also impeded by the web, and was finished by Irk and Pah, teaming up to pin him between Irk’s axe and Pah’s deadly sneak attacks. The other mage, obviously the more experience and gifted of the two, cast fly on himself and took off. Once he was out of the range of Pavel’s invisibility purge he was impossible to pursue.

The Goonies look about them at the charred and mangled bodies of the raw recruits, the handful of small fires that the fireball had set in the blankets and bunks, the huge hole in the wall of the second floor, and the bloody ground of the courtyard.

Pah summed up their feelings. “Solen’s gonna be piiiiiisssed.”

-rg

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Cannons on the right of me, Cannons on the left of me . . .

Cannons on the right of me, Cannons on the left of me . . .

As the sun rose over the smoky and bloody Dragoon compound, the party gathered to try to figure out what to do next.

Crys and Ulric showed up a little after dawn, having gathered their personal effects and finished their business with the Claws of the Dragon. At least, as members of the claws.

When they entered the Dragoon compound they found the place a wreck. Charred bodies everywhere, blood and other bodily fluids all over the training grounds, and the barracks were smoldering. And, sitting in a small circle, the rest of the party was talking about what their next move would be.

Once they had been filled in with the full story, and looked down their noses a bit at the halflings, who were getting the blame for most of the trouble the group was in, the group began to take stock. Pavel and Crys started to go over the legal situation carefully.

As the one eyewitness to their burglary attempt at the magic shop was now dead, it would be hard to bring a case against the Goonies at this point. Add to that the fact that the wizard had come after them himself, rather than going to the authorities, it was likely that they would not be able to go to the authorities now and make much of a case. So the Goonies were more than likely not going to have to worry about legal proceedings.

However, the Claws knew who they were, and what had happened. And the dead wizard’s master, the mage who had escaped from the battle, was still out there, as was the rogue. They would not be safe in the Dragoon compound for a while, and as long as they were there they would draw trouble and get more and more young recruits killed. Pavel was of the opinion that the Goonies should make themselves scarce.

Of course, there was the problem of Eli, his dead body still soaking in a tub of brine (to keep it from decaying) and waiting for the party to put together the money they would need for a True Resurrection. Pavel had already thrown in his savings to bring Irk back again, they were not in a position to buy another one right away.

Pavel made some inquiries, and then the compound was visited by an elderly priest, who was leading a small caravan of wagons and carts, all packed to overflowing. The priest, Father Travet, served Pelor, and was one of Pavel’s colleagues in town. Travet told Pavel that they had been forced to close their temple – they had lost too many faithful in the city, their acolytes were being attacked in the streets too frequently, and their guardians were all dead. The city was shifting more and more over to the dragon faith, and smaller faiths were being squeezed out. Travet promised to return, and bring Pelor back to Dyvers, but they needed time to regroup.

He handed Pavel a pair of scrolls. “Take these. I prepared them last night. I won’t ask for payment now – Pelor knows we would probably only lose it to bandits on the road to Greyhawk anyway. Keep your Dragoons fighting the good fight here in Dyvers, and do not forget your debt to Pelor. When we are ready to return, we will call on the Dragoons, and they will come to our aid, and do the things we require.”

The party agreed to those terms, and Travet left. Within a few hours Eli had been revived again. This time he was a bit more disoriented than usual – he had spent nearly a week in the afterlife, among the ancestors of his people, and the decision to allow himself to be drawn back to his body was a tough one. Luckily he didn’t know the sort of trouble the group was in before he got there.

Not that he couldn’t have guessed.

Once Eli was back, dressed, and ready to go again, they decided that they should head back to the spire to try to stop Anathe. They girded their loins, all held hands, and Irk thought really hard about the sarcophagus room.

And with a jolt they were there.

The first thing the noticed was that there was something . . different. The place was still dark, dusty, dank, spooky, and creepy, but at the same time there was something a lot less foreboding about the place. It wasn’t quite so evil, dark, and oppressive.

The next thing Ulric and Eli noticed was that a lot of traffic had moved through the room – many footsteps, some apparently carrying heavy loads, heading for the upper floors of the Spire.

It didn’t take long for the party to put together a theory of what had happened – Anathe, whose agents had stolen the Mystery Machine, and perhaps the denizens of the tower, had packed up their goodies onto the ship and headed out.

While they were openly upset that the bad guys had gotten away, it did make it a bit easier to imagine that their foray into the lower levels of the spire would be a lot less deadly. And that was always a good thing. So they made their way down towards areas they had not yet explored.

They found themselves quickly standing in front of Rhunad’s door. Rhunad, the voice beyond the door, was glad to hear from them. “You’re back!” the small, weasely voice said. “You’ve come back to let me out!”

“Where’s Mr. Stitches?” asked Irk, who had a few things he wanted to give to the Half-Dragon Flesh Golem.

“I think he’s gone,” said Rhunad. “I think just about everyone is gone.”

“But they left you here.”

“Yeah, I’ve been in here for a while.”
“So why should we let you out?”

“I can help you! I know all about this place.”

And so on. They opened the door (after Pah set off a lightning trap protecting it) and they discovered that Rhunad was vulturish humanoid, gaunt and nasty and evil. The party stood in the doorway, well, within earshot of Rhunad, and debated the merits of taking the demon thing on its word. In the end, despite all the misgivings they could muster, they released Rhunad.

Rhunad filled them in on the background of the place – he had been a prisoner for centuries, and had known the cultists that had served Ashardalon, especially Gulthias, who had imprisoned him. He told them about the construction of the tower, about a lot of the little features, and then he told them about the heart.

The Heart of Ashardalon is the mummified and empowered heart of the great wyrm, a potent necromantic artifact, and it was the heart that was the source of a great deal of Gulthias’ special power. The party quickly figured that the heart had been taken out of the tower, and that would explain the shift in atmosphere they had all felt upon their arrival.

So, with Rhunad as their guide, they continued to explore the rest of the tower, finding room after room empty and abandoned. In more than one place they found zombies and other undead inert on the ground, like puppets with their strings cut. There was little or no sign of life.

That is, until they entered a large, semicircular room on the fifth level of the tower. There they found a huge pillar of fire, apparently some sort of furnace for immolating the dead.

That’s what they thought it was until Pah took a few steps into the room, and the fire lashed out at her. They were faced not with a huge magical fire, but a huge fire elemental. That got their attention.

Irk charged in, standing toe to toe with the huge elemental, slashing away with his axe. He was wearing a ring of fire resistance, and that allowed him to stand in and slug it out with the elemental while most of the rest of the party dealt with other problems.

Not that the rest of the party new quite yet that they had other problems. As the rest of the party started to roll into action against the Elemental, the hallway went suddenly black. In the dark, Uri tried to cast a sleet storm into the room with the elemental, to try to take a bit of the heat of it, and found himself being slashed by claws from far too close to his skin.

Rhunad had turned on them, and in the darkness slashed away at the relatively soft underbelly of the party while Irk was left with only Pah for support against the Elemental.
Uri managed to summon a Lantern Archon, who proved to be useless in combat with Rhunad, but whose presence did counter the Darkness. Then Uri spider climbed up the wall to try to escape from Rhunad. Ulric shape shifted into bear form, then realized he would need magic fang to hurt the demon, and shifted back to. Crys turned invisible and moved on ahead to try to help Irk.

Eli had moved ahead into the elemental’s chamber before Rhunad had turned on the party, and he had been trying to offer some archer support for Irk. When Rhunad turned he moved into position to try to help out with him as well.

Uri was feeling pretty confident up on the wall, watching Ulric waffle back and forth from one form to another, until Rhunad flew up into the air and took another big chunk out of him with a brutal slash. He stood his ground on the wall, drew his rapier and tried to defend himself.

Pah, seeing an opportunity, sprang into action, leaving her pistols behind and spider climbing up the wall behind Rhunad, where she could be opposite Uri. She managed a vicious sneak attack with her sword of subtlety before Rhunad noticed her, and the two halflings managed to finish him, exchanging sneak attacks before he had a chance to make an escape.

Irk, meanwhile, had been pounding away at the Elemental like John Henry craving a path through the mountain. Crys had appeared nearby, where she fired off magic missiles repeatedly from cover. She helped, and once Rhunad was dead Eli returned to providing cover fire for Irk, and eventually the huge flame-thing dissipated.

Irk, who felt like he’d been trading blows with the thing for the better part of an hour, sat down in the ash and bellowed for Ulric. “MEDIC!”

The others milled around, got patched up, and dug around in the ashes for some loot. Then they moved on.

They found a pair of shafts that descended down about 150 feet from the floor they were on – a depth that would put them well below the surface outside the spire. Irk flew down to scout, then the rest of the party followed.

They found themselves in a catacomb full of mummified corpses and ash. They poked around, checking out rooms, until they opened a door that revealed a Girallon guard post. Six Girallons stood at the ready – not charging in to fight, but ready for one if the party should attack.

Irk and the others hesitated. There was something different about these Girallons. Each had a crude “E” painted on the fur of his chest with what looked like blood.

Ulric stepped forward and tried a bit of animal empathy with the beasts. One of them stepped forward, and they began to communicate with some crude hand gestures. The Girallon signed that if they put up their weapons he would take them to see “E” (which he signed by pointing to the E on his chest. He also had to trace the E out on the floor to get the point across).

So they sheathed their weapons – Ulric had to leave his magic longspear behind, as there was no way to tuck it away, and then the Girallon spokesman led them through the far door.

They passed through several rooms – a few more guard posts with squads of Girallons, and them a large living chamber with many more, including females and young. As they passed through each room the group of Girallons that followed along behind gathered strength, until the party was no longer able to count them.

Opposite the mouth of a passage that ran south from the Girallon village chamber, there was a large female, wearing a bit more crude adornments than the others, staked out and dead on the floor.

The spokesman lead them down that small passage, where they rounded a soft bend in the passage and were met by something they had not quite expected to see.

There was the predictable crude Girallon throne, the predictable but disturbing courtesan-girallon, fawning over the throne’s occupant, all four arms caressing and stroking him.

But it was the occupant of the throne that stopped everyone in their tracks.

Eldgrim. Half-dragon son of Sear, the dragon that was the mind behind the Dragon Faith. The overseer of the mine work that had been intended to free Sear from the underdark and allow her free passage to the surface. The insane, obsessed old enemy that the party had dropped a mountain on months ago, when they blew up the mines to keep Sear from escaping into the outside world.

Crys and Ulric also knew him – having traveled with him for most of a month on the way to the Spire from Dyvers. They knew him as the obsessive, maniacal, megalomaniac sidekick that Anathe barely kept under control most of the time.

Eldgrim licked his lips with genuine, lecherous pleasure. “Well, look what the ape dragged in.”

-rg

Next update: It has to get easier soon, right?

 

[Radiating Gnome]

How could it get worse?

Eldgrim, being caressed and fondled by a four-armed she-Girallon, snickered to himself and looked at the stricken faces of the party members. “Welcome to my new kingdom.”

He looked at Ulric and Crys. “I can see you’ve fallen in with a bad crowd since I saw you last. Too bad, really. Picking the wrong friends will be the death of you.”

Irk took a moment to casually look around behind the party. There, crowded into the passage, were somewhere between 20 and 30 Girallon faces, jostling for position to see what was going to happen next. The good news, he figured, was that Eldgrim wouldn’t use his breath weapon – it would be too likely to hurt his Girallon followers, too. But, somehow, that seemed like cold comfort to Irk. There were just too many.

Eldgrim laughed again. “You’re just too late, you know. They’re all gone. Anathe has betrayed my mother, taken up with Gulthias, and thanks to your ship they’re on their way back to Dyvers to take over the Dragonfaith. And it’s all your fault. Again.”

Elgrim went off into the long story of Anathe’s betrayal of Sear’s vision for the dragonfaith. It was apparent to some members of the party that Eldgrim, for all his malice, was excited to have an audience for his ramblings that could do more than grunt their incomprehension at him.

Anathe and the others had fought their way into the spire, leaving party members where they fell. Elgrim got separated from the group, and had become miffed that no one had come looking for him. Anathe made it to the core of the spire and then began days to negotiation with Gulthias. Eldgrim did not dismiss the theory that Anathe had been mentally dominated by the vampire lord, but that seemed to matter to him very little. Anathe had come out after nearly a week of talking with Gulthias about the Dragon faith that was sprouting up around the world, but especially in Dyvers, and ideas for making a connection between that new faith and the old cult that Gulthias was the last vestige of. In the end, Anathe and Gulthias send a message to one of Anathe’s agents, a spymistress who had arranged for the capture of the Mystery Machine, and the ship was brought to the top of the spire, where Anathe and Gulthias and most of Gulthias’s servants embarked for Dyvers, taking the long way around the Nyr Dyv to avoid extended travel over open water (which makes vampires edgy).

Part of Gulthias’ luggage was the Heart of Ashardalon. Ashardalon had been a great wyrm centuries ago, but had died. It’s heart had been mummified, and after centuries of dark rites had become imbued with necromantic power, and was now the source of a great deal of Gulthias’ extraordinary power. That power, at the head of an army of faithful dragon worshippers, would more than likely finish the job of driving all other power and faith in Dyvers underground.

But Eldgrim was not really interested in the fate of Dyvers. He was bothered that Anathe had taken up with Gulthias and seemed to have forgotten about the patronage of his mother, Sear, the living red dragon that was financing the current dragon cult. And he had his own plans. There were hints of underdark connections in the catacombs of the spire, and Eldgrim was going to start efforts there to bring his mother up from the depths. He had a community of faithful Girallons to do the work, and most of the opposition had packed up and left, so he was on his own, except that two vampires – the archer Ranar that had already made the party’s life a bit difficult (having killed both Irk and Eli once), and his dwarven companion, Brottkill. The two vampires had been left behind and were making a home in another part of the catacombs, feeding on stragglers from Eldgrim’s tribe.

Eldgrim actually proposed that the party go off and kill the vampires for him – he would hold Pah as a hostage to insure their compliance with his wishes, and send the rest off to go face the two vampires.

No one in the group thought it was a good idea. Eldgrim pressed the idea, and Irk said, “Mind if we talk it over amongst ourselves?”

Eldgrim, feeling cocky, agreed.

“All right, huddle up,” Irk said. He called the others to join him in a huddle. “We’re getting out of here,” he whispered.

“Where to?” asked Eli.

“We can’t go back to Dyvers,” said Ulric, remembering the mess they’d left behind there.

Irk thought for a second, then smiled. “I know . . . “ and he grabbed for hands.

And they blinked away, hearing Eldgrim’s frustrated bellows echoing behind them.

They appeared in Solen’s lab – where they had met him the first time, in his tower on a secluded island in the Nyr Dyv. Solen was there, hard at work, and was startled to see the party suddenly appear. But after hugs and a few introductions, Solen was making waffles for everyone.

The immediate problem was that the Mystery Machine, packed with evil clerics, vampires, and tons of other bad things, was en route to Dyvers. They were pretty sure that they couldn’t take on the passengers of the ship in a stand-up fight (DM: They were right) so they needed some other plan to try to stop them.

They came up with a risky plan. They would teleport on board the ship with a bomb, leave the bomb behind and that would bring the ship down. They were taking risks – teleporting onto a ship that was moving was much more chancy than teleporting to a much more static location. They raided Solen’s lab for all of the powder he had in storage – 170 pounds. They fashioned a crude iron box to hold it, and tested some fuses to try to get delay that would give Irk (the teleporter) time to deliver the bomb and get out before it exploded, without risking that the bomb would be discovered and disarmed before it could go off. They settled on about a 12 second fuse.

They also chose a very specific location on the ship to teleport in to – belowdecks, in a passage between cabins, directly beneath the spelljammer throne that was the magical center of the spelljammer ship’s power.

They made all the preparations they could think of – they had figured that the trip back would take the Mystery Machine a month or so, and while they needed to hurry they had enough time to take a few days for preparation. And then Irk donned the helmet, held the bomb, and gritted his teeth.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

With a slight pop he disappeared. Pah counted out loud to twelve. Then on to twenty. Then she stopped.

When a whole minute had passed, they started yelling for Solen.


Solen pulled out every scrying trick in his book, and could not find Irk. The ship was still there, slowly making its way towards Dyvers, but he couldn’t risk a longer look for fear that his scrying would be discovered.

He was able to trace Irk’s magical path, and saw that he had been diverted, somehow – what should have been an instantaneous trip through the ether seemed to take a sharp turn into the unknown. Solen couldn’t guess where Irk may have ended up, but thought that he might be able to send the party along the same path – blind – to see if they could help him.

No one thought it was a particularly good idea. But no one was willing to give up on Irk, who had always been the bedrock of the party. In the end, with a few macho diversions (Ulric said “He still owes me a magic longspear”) they decided that they needed to try to save Irk.

Solen rummaged around in his lab for a few minutes and found a handful of amber amulets. “These may help me locate you once you reach your destination. There’s a chance I’ll be able to scry your location and find you – but don’t count on it.”

They took a little more time for preparation – not knowing what to expect on the other side – and then Solen sent them on their way.


Irk clutched the bomb to his chest and expected to appear in the familiar hall of the ship in a heartbeat.

Colors swirled around him. He smelled a series of odd scents -- lavender, then sulfur, then a strong earthy sweat. Finally, it seemed as if he was drawing close to his destination.

Irk saw, as if from above, a room -- a large room filled with odd devices and glowing balls of light. He saw two figures in the room. One was a man in a white jacket of some odd cut. He was sitting at a sort of desk that was covered with knobs and buttons and switches. He was working furiously at the controls.

Behind him, in a long leather coat with matching double lightning bolts in silver on his lapel, was a figure shrouded in shadow. What Irk could see clearly was a pair of gray-skinned hands gripping the back of the man's chair with white-knuckled force. Every few seconds the dark figure leaned forward and whispered in the man's ear.

Then he could see that the room was actually just a balcony overlooking a much larger space, which looked like a large, clean, empty warehouse. The mirror that the man seemed so interested in was sitting against the wall of the great warehouse. On the floor of the warehouse were many armed human figures -- soldiers, judging by the uniformity of their dress. They wore daggers on belts and carried odd weapons that looked like clubs, or maybe crossbows without the bow.

Then, suddenly, one of the glowing balls of light exploded, sending a shower of sparks across the room, and Irk felt himself start to drift away from the room, like a ship with its anchor cable cut. Seconds later he passed into the world again, appearing in a simple whitewashed Dairy barn, surrounded by cows that chewed idly on hay. They seemed momentarily surprised by his arrival, but return to the work of chewing in a matter of seconds.

Irk, holding the bomb that should have exploded already in his arms (apparently time had not actually passed while he was going for the weird teleportation ride). He cast about mentally, but could not find the locations he usually teleported to available to him – it was as if the world as he knew it was just in that simple dairy barn. Seeing the fuse burning away, Irk settled for a more pedestrian escape, and threw himself through a stained window in the dark rural night beyond, scrabbling to get a little more distance between himself and the barn before –

boom.

Bits of barn and meaty chunks of cow splattered around Irk as he reached the nearby forest, where he hid himself as best he could in the underbrush and counted fingers and toes. He stayed there, hiding, while the inhabitants of a nearby farmhouse came out to investigate, and were quickly ushered back in by the father, all jabbering in a language that Irk did not understand. Minutes later a horse-drawn pump-wagon appeared – to Irk’s eyes a remarkable feat of engineering, and a handful lf lackluster peasants used it to hose down the last of the shattered ashes of the barn. When only a few wisps of smoke were rising from the skeleton of the barn the wagon and its crew left, leaving the farmer sitting on his porch looking at the wreckage of his barn. Eventually he stood and went back inside.


Next Time: There’s no place like home . . .

 

[Radiating Gnome]

He ain’t heavy, he’s my dwarf, part 1

He ain’t heavy, he’s my dwarf, part 1

So Eli, Uri, Pah, Ulric, Crys, and Minimonk donned the amber amulets that Solen gave them and sent them on their blind teleportation-gate-planeshifty journey on Irks trail. They felt the pull of the currents in the ether, the odd smells, and had some odd visions, and then they found themselves standing in a shallow crater in the soggy midst of a blasted, charred destroyed barn and the bits of dairy cow carcass that had been left behind by a day’s worth of scavengers.

“Well, for one, thing, it looks like Irk was here,” said Uri.

Near the wreck of the barn there was a farmhouse, a road that wound out of sight to the east and west, and a clump of forest near the house. The house looked deserted.

The trackers immediately started looking around for some sign of Irk. The ground around the barn was a muddy mess – the barn fire had been put out by a lot of water, and the ground was still pretty wet. But a little beyond the muddy mess they found some tracks that must have been Irk’s feet. They followed the tracks into the woods and found a spot where he must have hidden for few hours. Then he moved on from there – at first slowly, then running. Joining his tracks on the trail there were four sets of bare human footprints. As Irk’s tracks indicated he’s started to run faster, the human footprints changed in a few strides into wolfprints.

They followed the tracks of the chase to a small clearing where Irk put his back to a tree and fought off the wolves. Judging by the tracks leaving the area of the fight, Irk drove off the wolves, but he was limping as he move away.

Then, a bit later, there was another fight – the wolves had returned, this time with an Ally of some sort, wearing boots, who stood near the fight but didn’t seem to get involved. In this fight Irk fell, but there was no body. There was enough dried blood on the packed earth that it was hard to imagine Irk made a good getaway. The wolf tracks did not leave the scene, but four barefoot sets of human tracks did, and their prints were deeper now. They were carrying a heavy load of some sort.

They followed those barefoot human tracks back to the farmhouse, where they walked right up to the road and disappeared.

The party’s next avenue of investigation was the house. Peeking in the windows at first, and then poking around inside, they found a house that had been ransacked and searched – perhaps a couple of times. Most of the food in the kitchen was gone, the upholstery on the furniture had been slashed and just about everything had been over turned.

There was a library, walls lined with bookshelves, but there were almost no books in the room – a few children’s books, and a reading primer, all in a language that they could not comprehend. A careful searchof the room found a false panel behind one of the bookcases, in which they found another book in a very cryptic language, this one looked like math, but like no math any of them had seen before.

With the downstairs searched they moved upstairs. One of the first things Eli noticed up there was that the floor seemed inordinately high. A little poking around revealed a trap door cut cleverly into the floor. It was locked shut, so Pah set about trying to pick it.

The lock was a simple deadbolt on the other side of the door. Pah looped some wires through the thin gap and started to move the bolt gently out of the way. All of a sudden there was a sqeal – unmistakably the squeal of a young girl – and the bolt was quickly shoved back into place, almost breaking Pah’s tools. Pah tried several more times, each time the bolt was shoved back into place before Pah could get it open. Frustrated, she nodded, and Eli pulled the door open despite the lock, ripping up a few of the floorboards with it.

A young girl, perhaps 8 or ten years old, looked up at the party. She was screaming already, but when she saw the strange faces looking at them – the little halflings, the elf, and the druid (who happened to have chosen Panther form to search the house) she screamed louder, uncontrollably, for many long minutes, while the party tried to calm her down.

Crys, who had been waiting out by the barn, keeping a lookout while the party searched the house, heard the screams and came running. When she saw the girl backed into a corner by the menagerie that was trying to calm her down, she pushed her way through, touched the girl’s arm, and cast Tongues.

The first thing Crys noticed was a powerful drain – she felt her strength sap away as she cast the spell, but she ignored it and turned to talk to the girl.

Once the girl had screamed herself hoarse, she finally allowed herself to be talked to. Crys interpreted for the party, editing some comments out. Her name was Gortie Benecek.

The girl didn’t know a lot about the night before. The barn had exploded. Neighbors had come with a pumpwagon to put out the fire on what was left. Her parents had been very upset. And then they’d heard the truck coming.

“Truck?” Pah asked.

Crys asked, and the little girl explained that trucks were like big cars.

“Cars?” Pah asked.

Crys asked, and the little girl explained that cars were like wagons, but had motors and could go on their own.

“Motors?” Pah asked, but no one got a answer from the girl that made any sense.

When they had heard the truck, her parents had taken her up to the hiding hole and told her to stay there until one of her parents came for her. She waited there, and her parents never came.

She had heard other people in the house – a couple of times – but never her parents.

The girl was able to lay out the rudiments of the history of the place – the Germans were the soldiers in the trucks, they were bad, worse than the Russians who had been here last year after they had invaded. The germans had better tanks, and had been able to defeat the Poles and then the Russians to take over the country.

“Tanks?” asked Pah.

Crys asked, and the girl explained that tanks were like big cars with lots and lots of metal armor and a big cannon on top that spun around and machine guns and tracks not wheels and they were very very scary and bad.

“Hm,” said Pah. “I want a Tank.”

They got a bit more information from the girl – about three different groups of germans. Selinka, the town she lived near, was an R&R station for Wehrmacht soldiers, who wore grey uniforms and crosses. There were lots of them getting drunk and sleeping a lot in Selinka. Then there were the SS, called the Einsatzgruppe, who were supposed to be there keeping order and rounding up all the undesirables. For a while they had been shooting the people they rounded up, but now things were better, they were just being put on trains and taken away by train to relocation camps, so they could be sent away.

“Undesireables?” asked Eli.

Gortie explained that the Germans hated the Jews, and the gypsies, and anyone who was disabled, or weak.

“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure they’re gonna hate us, too,” said Uri.

“Train?” asked Pah.

Gortie described a train and tracks. Pah preferred the idea of a tank.

And then there were the Gestapo, the secret police, who worked with the SS and who everyone was afraid of.

The little girl asked if the Goonies were Roma. When that didn’t mean anything to them, she said, “You know, Gypsies.” They said they were not. She went on to explain that Gypies were very outlandish people, who traveled around in wagons, who had all kinds of different shapes and sizes, much like the Goonies. “Some are really big and fat, some are really small. I saw a boy with a dog face once. And some women with beards.”

“Bearded women?” Uri said. “Irk is HOME.”

 

[Radiating Gnome]

He ain’t heavy, he’s my dwarf, part 2

Part 2

The last thing they did before the spell wore off was to learn a little Polish, which sounded very similar to dwarven. They all learned how to say “Hello,” “Goodbye,” and “Where is the toilet?” On Pah’s insistance, she taught them “I want a tank.” (Potrzebuje Baszta)

Once they were done questioning her, they decided to walk the girl the four miles down the road she had to go to get to her grandparent’s farm. Then they walked back to the farmhouse, reaching it just before dawn. They hunkered down to rest and plan during the daylight.

During the day several watches were disturbed by passing trucks, and even what had to be a tank going by, but hid out with much trouble until one of the sentries spotted someone out in the woods near the house.

Ulric, still in panther form, and Pah, snuck out, circling around to investigate the figure in the woods. They found a young girl dressed in fairly outlandish colors skulking around in the woods. When she saw the party she bolted, but Ulric quickly chased her down and tripped her. They were trying to get her to stop screaming when Crys, the translator, showed up again, cast her spell, felt the sudden fatigue again, and spoke to the girl.

Her name was Resa, and she was very reticent to answer questions. She wanted to know what had happed to the girl in the house. She insisted that she was not a gypsy, and they let her go pretty quickly.

They had figured out that they expected to find the relocation holding center near the train station in the town. They expected to find Irk and little Gortie’s parents. So they just had to get into town, get the prisoners out, and get away. No sweat.

When it became dark, they slipped out of the house and headed for town, parallel to the road, but staying off it. They passed and avoided a guard post at a fork in the road, and moved on towards the town.

Once they had the town in sight they circled around until they found the railroad tracks. They tried to follow the train tracks into town, but saw ahead that there was a pair of guard emplacements on either side of the track where it entered Selinka. The same was true of all of the roads that entered town – a pair of square fortifications made with sandbags, filled with a half-dozen soldiers each. In the end they decided to make their way over the low wall that surrounded the town, hoping to avoid being discovered by the guards.

And they nearly made it, too. But Crys made a helluva racked getting up the wall, and one of the nearby guard posts heard something. A german spotted her and pointed, and things got started.

Eli opened with a quick arrow into the chest of the guard who was pointing at Chrys. Pah, Uri, and Ulric charged the guard post, with the speedy Druid-in-Lion-form getting there first, finishing off the guards who had not been killed by Eli’s arrows.

This particular guard post was matched by on nearby on the other side of a road that entered town. The six guards in that post opened fire with rifles and grenades on the Lion, who took a beating. But Eli and Uri provided cover fire, killing a few, while Pah circled the group and jumped into their midst, slashing about with her sword of subtlety. Minimonk tried to join her, but failed to clear the sandbag wall with his jump, and was shot in the chest by a german guard before Pah managed to finish him off as well.

Pah snatched up a couple more of the Potato-Mashers (boy, does she wish she’d seen how they had worked!). The alarm was up – the town seemed to be coming alive – but the six heroes, having take out all the germans in sight, took off down some dark streets, desperately looking for a place to hide.

Ulric, the druid, was in bad shape, and the spellcasters, who had been casting support spells in the fight, were fatigued, trying to figure out why spellcasting was making them so weary in this world. They finally found an abandoned house, broke in, and hid, breathing heavy and hoping to avoid discovery.

While they rested a few patrols went by their hideaway, but they were not discovered.