Neverwinter Knight
First Post
Fort Spears...can't believe I missed that!
JollyDoc's Kingmaker-Updated 7/4/2011
JollyDoc
Explorer
SUNDAY NIGHT TEASER
1) The heroes leave the life of rulership behind for the open road once more, this time journeying into the unknown territory of tne Nomen Lands
2) Varnhold proves relatively easy to find...and completely abandoned
3) As it turns out, the town is not totally empty. Tungdill's scouting trip of the town's garrison turns up some suspicious characters
4) The groups' attempt at a little friendly diplomacy goes south fast, and an all out brawl ensues between the squatters and the companions
5) Unfortunately, the defeat of the invaders only leaves more questions to be answered...where are the folk of Varnhold??
1) The heroes leave the life of rulership behind for the open road once more, this time journeying into the unknown territory of tne Nomen Lands
2) Varnhold proves relatively easy to find...and completely abandoned
3) As it turns out, the town is not totally empty. Tungdill's scouting trip of the town's garrison turns up some suspicious characters
4) The groups' attempt at a little friendly diplomacy goes south fast, and an all out brawl ensues between the squatters and the companions
5) Unfortunately, the defeat of the invaders only leaves more questions to be answered...where are the folk of Varnhold??
JollyDoc
Explorer
THE VARNHOLD VANISHING
The road called to the rulers of Kardashia once more. After two years of relative peace, the outside world once again conspired to disrupt the new order they were trying to build. If some misfortune had indeed befallen Varnhold, then danger was on their very doorstep, and they had to discover for themselves if their people were at risk. They set out northeast, traversing their own lands while skirting the foothills of the Tors of Levenies. As they reached the northernmost border of their territory, they struck the South Rostland Road, which ran all the way to Restov some sixty miles to the east. Following the trade route soon brought them to the small town of Nivakta’s Crossing. The frontier folk there were wary of strangers, but Mox’s charms and wiles were enough to gather that the town was the point at which Maegar Varn and his companions had crossed into the Dunsward to the south. She was also able to confirm that no word had come from Varnhold in over three weeks.
A well-traveled road led south from Nivakta’s Crossing some 30-40 miles to Varnhold. It took the companions 4 days to make the ride, and as they drew closer to the settlement, they began to pass through worked fields, but all of the farmhouses were abandoned. One after another, they found the same thing…empty houses, but with no signs of violence. Instead, they discovered meals half-eaten, one shoe of a pair…all signs pointing to the owners having left in the midst of their daily activities. Before long, they came in sight of Varnhold itself. There was no sign of life at all.
The first structure they approached, though fairly new, was of poor construction. The clapboard walls had large gaps and its roof sagged alarmingly. Behind the cottage sprawled a mud-filled enclosure and a covered shed. The smell of decay and filth that emanated from the dwelling was horrendous. It didn’t take long to discover the source. Around the muddy pigpen were scattered the rotten, half-eaten corpses of a number of feral hogs, covered in clouds of fat black flies. The far wall of the pen was collapsed, and as the companions looked at the tableau in disgust, a loud snort and squeal sounded from behind the wall. A truly enormous boar, its tusks as long as daggers and bloodstained tromped around the corner. It snorted in anger, shaking its head and pawing the ground when it saw the trespassers. As it lowered its head in preparation to charge, Selena waved her hand absently, and just like that, the beast collapsed in slumber. Davrim walked calmly over and cleanly decapitated it.
A bit further down the main street, they came upon the village tannery, the acrid stench readily identifying the business. A fenced enclosure stood behind it, where three hides that appeared to be those of horses, were stretched upon a drying rack.
“Somethin’ ain’t right about them,” Tungdill squinted his eyes as he looked at the hides. “Looks like part of’em’s missin’ above the withers.”
“They’re centaur hides,” Selena said flatly.
Velox looked at her questioningly. “Really? Are you sure?”
Selena nodded.
“There is definitely more wrong here than we know,” the oracle said.
They passed a brewery before they came to a shallow ford that crossed a branch of the Kiravoy River that bisected the town. On the far side, they came upon what had to be the livery and blacksmith. The long, low building partially surrounded a yard encompassed by a split-rail fence. A sign above a wide, barn-like entrance showed harness for a horse and a blacksmith’s anvil. Despite the abandonment of the village, it appeared that many mounts and a great deal of livestock were left behind, trapped in the livery and yard. A half-dozen horse carcasses, decomposed and ravaged by crows that continued to pick at them, lay sprawled in the yard. Then, as if suddenly aware of fresh meat, the birds rose into the air in a black cloud and flew en masse towards the companions. As they came, Selena hurled a fireball into their midst, immolating hundreds. Mox dispersed the remaining ones with a cloud of green acid that she breathed from her mouth.
“This is pointless,” Davrim muttered as the burning crows fluttered to the ground. “There’s no one here! Scouring the whole town will take hours! Why don’t we just go to the fort and see if any survivors managed to hold up there?”
“Of course,” Mox offered, “if those responsible for the missing townsfolk are still around, it would stand to reason that they too would pick such a defensible location. I don’t favor just marching up there without knowing what we’re getting into.”
“I’ll go,” Tungdill sighed.
“You’ll go where?” Velox asked, his eyes narrowed.
“To th’fort, ya idjit!” the dwarf snapped. “That’s unless you’ve figured out a way t’turn yerself inta an elemental and fly over it t’spy it out.”
“I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Velox shrugged.
“’Zactly!” Tungdill barked. “Best if ya let th’grownups do th’thinkin’ for ya!”
The druid stepped away from the others and began slowly turning in a circle. Gradually, he began to spin faster and faster, until suddenly, he simply vanished into a small, whirling vortex of air and rose quickly into the sky. He sped quickly over the town towards the structure that sat on a low hilltop on the south side. The triangular fortification boasted a palisade of sharpened stakes that left just enough gaps for archers within to fire out upon the surrounding hillsides. The southern corners of the fort both had twin watch platforms, and the northern corner was anchored by a solid-looking blockhouse of sturdy timbers. A thin column of smoke drifted upwards from the center of the compound. Tungdill flew in a lazy circle above the stockade. A flash of sunlight on metal drew his attention to the east watchtower, where he saw several helmets protruding just above the palisade. As he looked closer, however, he saw that they were simply propped atop spears…a ruse! He quickly looked towards the western tower, and saw the same thing…except that one of the helmets moved as he flew past, turning to watch him. It was only then that the druid took note of the source of the smoke from the courtyard. It was a large bonfire with a spit holding a side of beef over it. Turning the spit was a giant! His skin was mottled gray, his head bald, and his ears sharply tapered. Three wolves jumped and capered around him, leaping for morsels that he tossed their way. The giant also looked up as Tungdill passed over, then put his fingers to his mouth and gave a sharp whistle. The druid took that as his signal that he should cut short his scouting mission.
_________________________________________________________
“Maybe they’re not hostile,” Mox mused.
“I ain’t never met a giant that wasn’t!” Tungdill growled.
“I’ve heard of some who are actually quite goodly folk,” Selena shrugged.
“Who just happen to be barricaded inside a fortress overlooking a strangely abandoned town,” Davrim smirked.
“Still,” Mox added, “we shouldn’t go in looking for a fight unless they first offer one. I say we approach calmly, in the open, and try to at least speak with them. If they don’t respond accordingly, then we will have our answer.”
Between Mox and Selena, all of the companions were imbued with the ability to fly, and they quickly took to the air and closed the distance to the stockade. As they approached, however, a solitary figure appeared through a trapdoor atop the blockhouse. It was another giant. In one hand he clutched a long halberd, while in the other, which was raised above his head, he held a large chunk of masonry.
“I guess we have our answer,” Davrim said.
“That’s no giant,” Selena replied. “It’s a spriggan. They’re like evil little gnomes, except they can change themselves into giants as they wish.”
“Charming,” Mox said. “He’s all yours, Davrim.”
“My pleasure,” the inquisitor snarled.
Davrim soared towards the blockhouse, his sword drawn. He nimbly ducked under the spriggan’s whirling polearm, and then drove his blade into the fey’s gut. He prepared to finish it off, but then, from behind him, a jet of smoking acid splashed into the spriggan’s face. Screaming, it tumbled from the roof and down the hill below. Davrim turned to see Mox smirking. Meanwhile, Selena swooped in low towards the building, but as she approached, a volley of arrows flew at her from arrow slits set into the walls. One took her squarely in the thigh, and she quickly veered upwards and over the roof line. When she came within sight of the courtyard, her eyes widened as she saw not one, but four giant spriggans gathered below. Fighting through the pain, she gathered her wits and began an incantation. Around three of the spriggans and two of the wolves, huge black tentacles erupted from the ground, wrapping around them and holding them fast. As Davrim dove for the yard to engage the free spriggan, Mox appeared over the rooftop, and dropped an explosive ball of acid on the trapped creatures, destroying them all.
Velox alighted atop the roof and lifted the trapdoor there. Below it was a shaft with climbing rungs set into the wall. The oracle didn’t waste time climbing. He simply leaped in and allowed himself to fall, breaking his plummet just as he reached the room at the bottom. He wasn’t particularly surprised to find a giant-sized spriggan in the room next to him, but it still took him momentarily aback to be standing waist high against the fey, squeezed into the small guardroom. The spriggan raised his halberd to impale the intruder, but a sudden volley of flashing bolts zipped down from the shaft above and struck him in the eyes, briefly blinding him. Velox lunged forward as Mox drifted down to the floor behind him. He stabbed his sword upwards through the spriggan’s throat, and it instantaneously reverted back to its much less intimidating gnomish form as it died.
In the courtyard, Davrim traded blows with the lone surviving spriggan, while Selena handily put the last of the wolves to sleep. Davrim dealt decisively with his opponent, and then finished off the slumbering wolf as he headed for the main door of the blockhouse. It was locked and barred, but a few kicks and shoulder blows had him through in a matter of moments. He found himself in a narrow hallway, the interior wall lined with more arrow slits.
“Gods!” he shouted as he realized his mistake, and the twang of bowstrings and the hiss of arrows filled the air.
A pair of normal-sized spriggans rushed through the door into the room where Mox and Velox stood, while on the far side of the chamber another door opened. There stood a third fey, but he looked far more intimidating than his companions. He wore a gleaming breastplate, and held a heavy crossbow in one hand and a large, spiked club in the other. Velox quickly lunged towards the pair of spriggans, while Mox exhaled a gout of searing acid at the leader. He cried out in pain as the caustic liquid worked its way beneath his armor and began to eat at his flesh. Velox danced among the smaller fey, whose polearms became entangled together as they desperately tried to stab at the human. The oracle slashed first one, and then the other across the throat, dropping them both. He then shoved Mox behind him just as the leader turned his crossbow upon her. The bolt meant for the baroness glanced harmlessly off of Velox’s mail. Before the spriggan could reload or bring his club to bear, the oracle was upon him. His eyes widened in shock and disbelief as he looked down at the foot of steel buried in his chest. He slid to the floor, his final thoughts being those of regret for ever having brought his people among the humans.
“Do you hear that?” Mox asked.
Velox cocked his head, and heard shouting and crashing sounds coming from the floor below.
“Sounds like Davrim might need some help,” he said.
Davrim, sporting a pair of arrows from his leg, hammered uselessly at the door to the strong room. He was at least out of sight of the arrow slits, but the portal was much heavier and reinforced than the outer one had been. Suddenly, he heard shouts of surprise coming from the room beyond, and when he risked putting his eye to one of the arrow slits, he saw one of the spriggans lying dead at Velox’s feet, and another succumb to a barrage of Mox’s acidic missiles. A third brought his halberd up to ward off the oracle, but a crashing blow from the flat of Velox’s blade to the side of the fey’s head sent it quickly into oblivion.
_________________________________________________________
“Looks like we have our answer as to what happened here,” Davrim said.
He was examining a sword they had pulled from a sack carried by the leader of the spriggans. It was finely crafted and bore the crest of House Varn upon the pommel.
“Don’t be so certain,” Velox said. “You saw how easily we overwhelmed these creatures. I can’t believe they were responsible for the annihilation of a town of two-hundred or more. My guess is that they simply found the sword here, abandoned like everything else.”
“And take a look at this,” Tungdill said.
He held up an exquisitely carved longbow, made of darkwood and ivory that had also been discovered among the spriggan’s possessions.
“It’s centaur make,” the dwarf said, “and not just that neither. ‘Less I miss my guess, this here’s an ancestral relic. No way the centaurs would’a parted with it easy.”
“There’s certainly more here than we are seeing,” Velox agreed. “Let’s have a look around until our prisoner awakens.”
Unlike the other buildings in town, many of the rooms within the blockhouse had been thoroughly ransacked, obviously the work of the spriggans. In one room that looked to have been a small library, they found several pages ripped from a journal or log book. Most of them were mundane correspondences between the village and Restov, but several others mentioned troubles with the Nomen centaur tribe. In still another ruined chamber that looked as if it might have been Varn’s personal quarters, they came upon a wall map that had been ripped to pieces, but together, Tungdill and Stevhan were able to recreate the bulk of it. Numerous sites within two days ride of the town had been marked and bore notes as to the significance of the locations, including warnings about mudmen, spiders, landsharks and rocs. It seemed Varn’s holdings were anything but secure. One final notation, marked some three to four day’s ride from the town clearly bore the name ‘Nomen.’
When nothing of any further value was discovered, the companions returned to the still-unconscious spriggan Velox had managed to subdue. The oracle made sure the creature was bound tightly and wedged into an alcove too small to allow it to grow before he tended the fey’s wounds. His eyes fluttered open, and quickly widened in fear as he saw the big folk gathered round.
“Now you will tell us everything we wish to know,” Mox said as she loomed over the terrified fey. “If you do not, you will meet the same fate as your leader!”
She held up a severed spriggan head for emphasis. Babbling in his own tongue, the spriggan nodded his head furiously.
“What happened here?” Mox asked. “Why was your tribe in this village? What happened to the people that lived here?”
“I…I don’t know, and that’s the truth!” the spriggan stammered in a high-pitched squeak. “Agai,” he nodded at the severed head, “he brought us here! Told us the big folk was gone, and done left all this loot and these fine houses for us! On my oath, they’s gone afore we ever got here!”
Mox studied the pathetic creature a while longer before she nodded in satisfaction.
“I believe you,” she said. “I keep my word. You are free to go, but know that if you ever return to these lands, I shall make a coin purse from your scrotum. Do I make myself clear?”
The spriggan nearly broke his neck from nodding as a large, wet stain appeared on the front of his trousers.
The road called to the rulers of Kardashia once more. After two years of relative peace, the outside world once again conspired to disrupt the new order they were trying to build. If some misfortune had indeed befallen Varnhold, then danger was on their very doorstep, and they had to discover for themselves if their people were at risk. They set out northeast, traversing their own lands while skirting the foothills of the Tors of Levenies. As they reached the northernmost border of their territory, they struck the South Rostland Road, which ran all the way to Restov some sixty miles to the east. Following the trade route soon brought them to the small town of Nivakta’s Crossing. The frontier folk there were wary of strangers, but Mox’s charms and wiles were enough to gather that the town was the point at which Maegar Varn and his companions had crossed into the Dunsward to the south. She was also able to confirm that no word had come from Varnhold in over three weeks.
A well-traveled road led south from Nivakta’s Crossing some 30-40 miles to Varnhold. It took the companions 4 days to make the ride, and as they drew closer to the settlement, they began to pass through worked fields, but all of the farmhouses were abandoned. One after another, they found the same thing…empty houses, but with no signs of violence. Instead, they discovered meals half-eaten, one shoe of a pair…all signs pointing to the owners having left in the midst of their daily activities. Before long, they came in sight of Varnhold itself. There was no sign of life at all.
The first structure they approached, though fairly new, was of poor construction. The clapboard walls had large gaps and its roof sagged alarmingly. Behind the cottage sprawled a mud-filled enclosure and a covered shed. The smell of decay and filth that emanated from the dwelling was horrendous. It didn’t take long to discover the source. Around the muddy pigpen were scattered the rotten, half-eaten corpses of a number of feral hogs, covered in clouds of fat black flies. The far wall of the pen was collapsed, and as the companions looked at the tableau in disgust, a loud snort and squeal sounded from behind the wall. A truly enormous boar, its tusks as long as daggers and bloodstained tromped around the corner. It snorted in anger, shaking its head and pawing the ground when it saw the trespassers. As it lowered its head in preparation to charge, Selena waved her hand absently, and just like that, the beast collapsed in slumber. Davrim walked calmly over and cleanly decapitated it.
A bit further down the main street, they came upon the village tannery, the acrid stench readily identifying the business. A fenced enclosure stood behind it, where three hides that appeared to be those of horses, were stretched upon a drying rack.
“Somethin’ ain’t right about them,” Tungdill squinted his eyes as he looked at the hides. “Looks like part of’em’s missin’ above the withers.”
“They’re centaur hides,” Selena said flatly.
Velox looked at her questioningly. “Really? Are you sure?”
Selena nodded.
“There is definitely more wrong here than we know,” the oracle said.
They passed a brewery before they came to a shallow ford that crossed a branch of the Kiravoy River that bisected the town. On the far side, they came upon what had to be the livery and blacksmith. The long, low building partially surrounded a yard encompassed by a split-rail fence. A sign above a wide, barn-like entrance showed harness for a horse and a blacksmith’s anvil. Despite the abandonment of the village, it appeared that many mounts and a great deal of livestock were left behind, trapped in the livery and yard. A half-dozen horse carcasses, decomposed and ravaged by crows that continued to pick at them, lay sprawled in the yard. Then, as if suddenly aware of fresh meat, the birds rose into the air in a black cloud and flew en masse towards the companions. As they came, Selena hurled a fireball into their midst, immolating hundreds. Mox dispersed the remaining ones with a cloud of green acid that she breathed from her mouth.
“This is pointless,” Davrim muttered as the burning crows fluttered to the ground. “There’s no one here! Scouring the whole town will take hours! Why don’t we just go to the fort and see if any survivors managed to hold up there?”
“Of course,” Mox offered, “if those responsible for the missing townsfolk are still around, it would stand to reason that they too would pick such a defensible location. I don’t favor just marching up there without knowing what we’re getting into.”
“I’ll go,” Tungdill sighed.
“You’ll go where?” Velox asked, his eyes narrowed.
“To th’fort, ya idjit!” the dwarf snapped. “That’s unless you’ve figured out a way t’turn yerself inta an elemental and fly over it t’spy it out.”
“I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Velox shrugged.
“’Zactly!” Tungdill barked. “Best if ya let th’grownups do th’thinkin’ for ya!”
The druid stepped away from the others and began slowly turning in a circle. Gradually, he began to spin faster and faster, until suddenly, he simply vanished into a small, whirling vortex of air and rose quickly into the sky. He sped quickly over the town towards the structure that sat on a low hilltop on the south side. The triangular fortification boasted a palisade of sharpened stakes that left just enough gaps for archers within to fire out upon the surrounding hillsides. The southern corners of the fort both had twin watch platforms, and the northern corner was anchored by a solid-looking blockhouse of sturdy timbers. A thin column of smoke drifted upwards from the center of the compound. Tungdill flew in a lazy circle above the stockade. A flash of sunlight on metal drew his attention to the east watchtower, where he saw several helmets protruding just above the palisade. As he looked closer, however, he saw that they were simply propped atop spears…a ruse! He quickly looked towards the western tower, and saw the same thing…except that one of the helmets moved as he flew past, turning to watch him. It was only then that the druid took note of the source of the smoke from the courtyard. It was a large bonfire with a spit holding a side of beef over it. Turning the spit was a giant! His skin was mottled gray, his head bald, and his ears sharply tapered. Three wolves jumped and capered around him, leaping for morsels that he tossed their way. The giant also looked up as Tungdill passed over, then put his fingers to his mouth and gave a sharp whistle. The druid took that as his signal that he should cut short his scouting mission.
_________________________________________________________
“Maybe they’re not hostile,” Mox mused.
“I ain’t never met a giant that wasn’t!” Tungdill growled.
“I’ve heard of some who are actually quite goodly folk,” Selena shrugged.
“Who just happen to be barricaded inside a fortress overlooking a strangely abandoned town,” Davrim smirked.
“Still,” Mox added, “we shouldn’t go in looking for a fight unless they first offer one. I say we approach calmly, in the open, and try to at least speak with them. If they don’t respond accordingly, then we will have our answer.”
Between Mox and Selena, all of the companions were imbued with the ability to fly, and they quickly took to the air and closed the distance to the stockade. As they approached, however, a solitary figure appeared through a trapdoor atop the blockhouse. It was another giant. In one hand he clutched a long halberd, while in the other, which was raised above his head, he held a large chunk of masonry.
“I guess we have our answer,” Davrim said.
“That’s no giant,” Selena replied. “It’s a spriggan. They’re like evil little gnomes, except they can change themselves into giants as they wish.”
“Charming,” Mox said. “He’s all yours, Davrim.”
“My pleasure,” the inquisitor snarled.
Davrim soared towards the blockhouse, his sword drawn. He nimbly ducked under the spriggan’s whirling polearm, and then drove his blade into the fey’s gut. He prepared to finish it off, but then, from behind him, a jet of smoking acid splashed into the spriggan’s face. Screaming, it tumbled from the roof and down the hill below. Davrim turned to see Mox smirking. Meanwhile, Selena swooped in low towards the building, but as she approached, a volley of arrows flew at her from arrow slits set into the walls. One took her squarely in the thigh, and she quickly veered upwards and over the roof line. When she came within sight of the courtyard, her eyes widened as she saw not one, but four giant spriggans gathered below. Fighting through the pain, she gathered her wits and began an incantation. Around three of the spriggans and two of the wolves, huge black tentacles erupted from the ground, wrapping around them and holding them fast. As Davrim dove for the yard to engage the free spriggan, Mox appeared over the rooftop, and dropped an explosive ball of acid on the trapped creatures, destroying them all.
Velox alighted atop the roof and lifted the trapdoor there. Below it was a shaft with climbing rungs set into the wall. The oracle didn’t waste time climbing. He simply leaped in and allowed himself to fall, breaking his plummet just as he reached the room at the bottom. He wasn’t particularly surprised to find a giant-sized spriggan in the room next to him, but it still took him momentarily aback to be standing waist high against the fey, squeezed into the small guardroom. The spriggan raised his halberd to impale the intruder, but a sudden volley of flashing bolts zipped down from the shaft above and struck him in the eyes, briefly blinding him. Velox lunged forward as Mox drifted down to the floor behind him. He stabbed his sword upwards through the spriggan’s throat, and it instantaneously reverted back to its much less intimidating gnomish form as it died.
In the courtyard, Davrim traded blows with the lone surviving spriggan, while Selena handily put the last of the wolves to sleep. Davrim dealt decisively with his opponent, and then finished off the slumbering wolf as he headed for the main door of the blockhouse. It was locked and barred, but a few kicks and shoulder blows had him through in a matter of moments. He found himself in a narrow hallway, the interior wall lined with more arrow slits.
“Gods!” he shouted as he realized his mistake, and the twang of bowstrings and the hiss of arrows filled the air.
A pair of normal-sized spriggans rushed through the door into the room where Mox and Velox stood, while on the far side of the chamber another door opened. There stood a third fey, but he looked far more intimidating than his companions. He wore a gleaming breastplate, and held a heavy crossbow in one hand and a large, spiked club in the other. Velox quickly lunged towards the pair of spriggans, while Mox exhaled a gout of searing acid at the leader. He cried out in pain as the caustic liquid worked its way beneath his armor and began to eat at his flesh. Velox danced among the smaller fey, whose polearms became entangled together as they desperately tried to stab at the human. The oracle slashed first one, and then the other across the throat, dropping them both. He then shoved Mox behind him just as the leader turned his crossbow upon her. The bolt meant for the baroness glanced harmlessly off of Velox’s mail. Before the spriggan could reload or bring his club to bear, the oracle was upon him. His eyes widened in shock and disbelief as he looked down at the foot of steel buried in his chest. He slid to the floor, his final thoughts being those of regret for ever having brought his people among the humans.
“Do you hear that?” Mox asked.
Velox cocked his head, and heard shouting and crashing sounds coming from the floor below.
“Sounds like Davrim might need some help,” he said.
Davrim, sporting a pair of arrows from his leg, hammered uselessly at the door to the strong room. He was at least out of sight of the arrow slits, but the portal was much heavier and reinforced than the outer one had been. Suddenly, he heard shouts of surprise coming from the room beyond, and when he risked putting his eye to one of the arrow slits, he saw one of the spriggans lying dead at Velox’s feet, and another succumb to a barrage of Mox’s acidic missiles. A third brought his halberd up to ward off the oracle, but a crashing blow from the flat of Velox’s blade to the side of the fey’s head sent it quickly into oblivion.
_________________________________________________________
“Looks like we have our answer as to what happened here,” Davrim said.
He was examining a sword they had pulled from a sack carried by the leader of the spriggans. It was finely crafted and bore the crest of House Varn upon the pommel.
“Don’t be so certain,” Velox said. “You saw how easily we overwhelmed these creatures. I can’t believe they were responsible for the annihilation of a town of two-hundred or more. My guess is that they simply found the sword here, abandoned like everything else.”
“And take a look at this,” Tungdill said.
He held up an exquisitely carved longbow, made of darkwood and ivory that had also been discovered among the spriggan’s possessions.
“It’s centaur make,” the dwarf said, “and not just that neither. ‘Less I miss my guess, this here’s an ancestral relic. No way the centaurs would’a parted with it easy.”
“There’s certainly more here than we are seeing,” Velox agreed. “Let’s have a look around until our prisoner awakens.”
Unlike the other buildings in town, many of the rooms within the blockhouse had been thoroughly ransacked, obviously the work of the spriggans. In one room that looked to have been a small library, they found several pages ripped from a journal or log book. Most of them were mundane correspondences between the village and Restov, but several others mentioned troubles with the Nomen centaur tribe. In still another ruined chamber that looked as if it might have been Varn’s personal quarters, they came upon a wall map that had been ripped to pieces, but together, Tungdill and Stevhan were able to recreate the bulk of it. Numerous sites within two days ride of the town had been marked and bore notes as to the significance of the locations, including warnings about mudmen, spiders, landsharks and rocs. It seemed Varn’s holdings were anything but secure. One final notation, marked some three to four day’s ride from the town clearly bore the name ‘Nomen.’
When nothing of any further value was discovered, the companions returned to the still-unconscious spriggan Velox had managed to subdue. The oracle made sure the creature was bound tightly and wedged into an alcove too small to allow it to grow before he tended the fey’s wounds. His eyes fluttered open, and quickly widened in fear as he saw the big folk gathered round.
“Now you will tell us everything we wish to know,” Mox said as she loomed over the terrified fey. “If you do not, you will meet the same fate as your leader!”
She held up a severed spriggan head for emphasis. Babbling in his own tongue, the spriggan nodded his head furiously.
“What happened here?” Mox asked. “Why was your tribe in this village? What happened to the people that lived here?”
“I…I don’t know, and that’s the truth!” the spriggan stammered in a high-pitched squeak. “Agai,” he nodded at the severed head, “he brought us here! Told us the big folk was gone, and done left all this loot and these fine houses for us! On my oath, they’s gone afore we ever got here!”
Mox studied the pathetic creature a while longer before she nodded in satisfaction.
“I believe you,” she said. “I keep my word. You are free to go, but know that if you ever return to these lands, I shall make a coin purse from your scrotum. Do I make myself clear?”
The spriggan nearly broke his neck from nodding as a large, wet stain appeared on the front of his trousers.
JollyDoc
Explorer
ENEMY MINE
Varnhold was well and truly abandoned. Building after building revealed the same. No bodies, no signs of violence, save where the spriggans had been looting, and ultimately, no real clues as to what had happened to the townsfolk. It was Tungdill who stumbled upon the first promising lead, and that quite by accident. They were investigating a home with cheerful curtains in the windows, and a number of wooden children’s toys lying in the front yard. As the others went through the motions of searching out the house itself, the druid caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. From behind the wood pile, a half-starved calico cat peered out at him, its eyes wide, yellow saucers.
“Well now,” Tungdill said as he squatted down. “What have we here? Here, kitty, kitty.”
He rummaged in his belt pouch until he found a piece of dried jerky. The cat’s ears perked up, and it growled low in its throat. Slowly, it crept forward on its belly and quickly snatched the food from the druid’s hand. It started to back away again, but then its gaze locked with Tungdill’s.
“There,” the dwarf said quietly, “now we have an understanding, don’t we?”
He closed his eyes and chanted under his breath. When he opened them again, the cat still stood, unmoving, in front of him.
“Where are your people?” he asked.
“They left in the red-sun time,” the cat replied. To anyone else listening, the cat would have been simply mewling, but Tungdill understood perfectly. “It was when they heard the new bird song,” the cat continued. “I was busy eating a bit of fish, and did not follow them out. My feeders did not come back, and I am now quite hungry! Do you have more?”
“Found a new friend?” Stevhan asked as he walked up.
“Whatever happened here, happened at sunset,” Tungdill replied as he scooped the cat up in his arms, “and there might have been some sort of music involved.”
“So you’re saying some sort of evil bard was responsible for what happened here?” the ranger asked.
The druid shrugged. “Just sayin’ what the puss told me. I ain’t the brains o’this outfit.”
_______________________________________________________
The last building they came to in the empty town was the inn. It was a two-story structure just off the village commons. A sign above the door depicted a rider clinging to the back of a madly galloping horse with a green mane and a fish tail extending from its hindquarters. The walls were painted a cheerful shade of yellow to complement the red shutters. Scratched into the wood of the front door was a single word… “NOMEN!”
Inside, the common room’s tables were still set with plates of rotting food. In one corner, facing a paper-strewn table, a giant-sized spriggan stood, silent and perfectly still, a book clutched in one hand. The back of his skull was a shattered mess of blood and bone, though his face betrayed no notice of the wound. A shimmering nimbus of amber surrounded the spriggan’s unmoving form.
“Fascinating!” Selena said as she walked slowly around the spriggan. “It’s a Sepia Sigil, a sort of warding spell that puts the target into a prolonged stasis. Unfortunately for this fellow, it doesn’t protect you from physical harm. My guess is that when the spell expires, he’ll be dead before he hits the floor.”
“Tragic,” Mox sneered. “I’m more interested in what the spell was guarding. Let’s have a look.”
The books stacked on the table included an assortment of esoteric titles such as Secrets of the Rashalka Mounds, Iobarian Prehistory, The Centaur Skyles of Central Casmaron, and The Untold Heritage of Taldan Armies of Exploration. Among those works was an incomplete ethnography of the indigenous tribes of the Iobarian steppes, which speculated that a local tribe called the Nomens was actually an offshoot of the greater Rashalka population that broke away and relocated to the Varnhold area some time in the distant past. Mixed in with the books were a number of charcoal sketches of a heavy jade bracelet that bore peculiar markings, attributed by the artist to the premigration Nomen centaurs. It appeared that the owner of the books, as well as the artist, and author of the ethnography, was someone by the name of Maestro Ervil Pendrod.
“I’ve heard of him,” Selena said. “He’s an Iobarian scholar of some renown from Oppara’s Kitharodian Academy. Strange that he should be in such a remote locale.”
The witch found her question answered a moment later when they came upon a letter underneath the entire stack. It was dated two months past, and was addressed to one Maestro Pendrod from Maegar Varn. It described the discovery of a jade bracelet by a man named Willas Gundarson, Varn’s warden, on the banks of a “river of local prominence,” and requested Pendrod’s presence for further study of the artifact.
A further search of the inn revealed that none of the guest rooms had been occupied at the time of the “incident,” save one…that of Ervil Pendrod. Among his personal effects was a small library of further reference works. None were particularly remarkable, but Selena plucked out a particular one that looked to be very old indeed. It was created several centuries past by one Carmyn e’Brothasa, a chronicler of Taldor’s Third Army of Exploration into the north. One passage had been marked by Pendrod:
“And so it was, high upon the Torres and well above the Vale’s stairs, where rises from the high water a stony isle of dire report. Known as Vordakai’s Island to those that do live thereabout, some legend of its name doth come down through the locals. For they speak of a guardian that doth destroy all who would set foot upon its accursed shores. They did name no fewer than a twelvecount of their hero-knights who had left their bones upon its rocky shores over the years after having tested their mettle against its dread warden, ‘til none would any longer go there for fear of its hidden terrors. And the name of this terror was given unto this Island.”
Pendrod had written in the margin of the text alongside the passage.
‘Vordakai…perhaps a Nomen centaur god?’
“It would seem all roads lead to the Nomen,” Velox remarked.
“I agree,” Mox nodded. “I can’t make sense of any of this. We’ll set out at dawn.”
__________________________________________________________
There was nothing to indicate they had crossed into the centaur lands. The landscape looked exactly as it had for the past three days of their travel. Yet, within an hour of setting out from their previous night’s camp, Stevhan spotted a cloud of dust on the horizon, which quickly resolved itself into a warband of a half-dozen or more centaur warriors. They whooped and shouted as they accelerated towards the companions, their faces painted in fearsome patterns, feathered and beaded spears held in their uplifted hands. When they reached the travelers, they begin circling rapidly in ever-diminishing spirals. When they were mere feet away, they reared as one, their forelegs pawing the air. One of them stepped forward and began barking at them in a foreign tongue.
“We don’t understand,” Mox said calmly. “Do you speak Common? We are here on a peaceful overture.”
The centaur scowled angrily.
“I…speak…your tongue,” he said haltingly. “You…not welcome…here!”
“We bring a gift,” Mox said. She nodded at Velox.
The oracle pulled out the bow they’d found among the spriggan leader’s possessions. The centaurs gasped as one and immediately began babbling excitedly.
“You come!” the leader snapped, and then he and his warriors turned and began to gallop away, expecting the trespassers to follow.
The Nomens’ camp sat on a low hillock surrounded by a sea of grass. A large bonfire dominated the center, around which a number of female centaurs danced in a primal rhythm long lost to the civilized soul. A scattering of open-sided hide huts numbering no more than five score were arranged around the hollow, inside which other members of the tribe congregated, ate or slept. Everywhere, the heavily armed and armored centaurs sharpened weapons, tended to gear, or walked patrols, all with a feral economy of movement and sound. These were the true inheritors of an age long gone, when the steppes rang to the thunder of their herds and the fury of their war cries, while the first inklings of civilization clung to shorelines and riverbanks like children to their mothers’ skirts, afraid of the dark wilderness and its wild masters. The entourage escorting the six companions surrounded them as they trotted through the camp. All around, eyes turned to stare at the outsiders with open hostility. They were brought to a large tent erected near the fire, where a noble, savage-looking horsewoman presided over some sort of ritual before a moon-shaped altar. Several minutes passed as she completed her observances before she turned to acknowledge the newcomers. She remained silent, her face impassive as the patrol leader spoke to her in their own tongue, gesturing agitatedly towards the companions. After a few minutes of this, she motioned him silent.
“Why are you here?” she snapped sharply. “Do you seek your own deaths?”
“We have come to beg your assistance,” Mox said as she stepped forward. “I am the Baroness Mox of Kardashia, and we crossed the Torres seeking the answer to a mystery…the vanishing of our sister holding, Varnhold. We come bearing tokens to prove our sincerity.”
Mox nodded to Velox and Tungdill. The dwarf unshouldered his pack and pulled out the tanned centaur hides they’d found in Varnhold. The priestess’s face grew dark, and her hand tightened on her war spear. Then Velox took out the bow, and the change that came over her was instantaneous.
“Skybolt!” she exclaimed. “How did this come into your possession?”
Mox explained their mission and journey up to that point, leaving nothing out. The centaur priestess listened attentively, her brow furrowed in concern.
“I am Aecora Silverfire,” she said when Mox had finished, “War-priestess of the Nomen, and I bid you be welcome in our land. I am sorry to say that I have no knowledge of your vanished holding, though our people bear yours no goodwill. Ages past, the human kingdom of Taldor expanded into the ancestral lands or our people. This led to many wars between your folk and mine. Even as the domain you call Rostland was established, Taldan colonists ripped through our war herds, pushing them to the fringes of our former rangelands, and farther and farther from our traditional homelands. So great were the effects of this war, that much of our lore and identity were lost as well. Yet something that you mentioned in the books you discovered is not unknown to me. According to our traditions, Vordakai is a slumbering warlord form the time of the mother tribes. There is a place to the west called Olah-Kakanket, the Valley of the Dead. It is taboo for our people, but our traditions also dictate that we must watch the valley for signs of disturbances or strange awakenings. Recently, one of our huntresses claimed to have seen a strange and frightful shape lumbering amid the stones of Olah-Kakanket. Perhaps the humans of Varnhold, with their insatiable curiosity and drive to expand and conquer, entered the Valley of the Dead and found their doom. It would be fitting.”
“I see,” Mox nodded. “You have given us much, though you may feel it little. We gratefully return your tribe’s relic, and the remains of your fallen, and thank you for your assistance. Can you tell us how to find this valley?”
“I can indeed,” Aecora said, “though I fear you journey to your own deaths if you go there. Still…,” she hesitated, her eyes downcast, “if it is your intent to undertake this foolish quest, perhaps I might ask a boon of you. The huntress I mentioned before, the one who saw the shape in Olah-Kakanket, she is my daughter, Xamanthe. She is headstrong, and stubborn…like her mother, and when she demanded to know more about the site, information I could not provide, she took upon herself to satisfy her curiosity. That was several days ago, and she has not been heard from since. If you…find her, or find any information as to what has befallen her, I shall be deeply in your debt.”
“If she is there, we will find her,” Mox vowed.
Aecora nodded solemnly. “Now, I’m afraid I must ask you to leave this camp. Though you have proven your merit, I’m afraid that old animosities die hard, and my people would not welcome you here.”
“We understand,” Mox replied. “We thank you again, and hope to meet again on better terms.”
_______________________________________________________
The journey far to the south and west where Aecora said the Valley of the Dead lay was going to be a long one, through lands both unknown and unexplored. The companions were far from home, and completely out of their element. Barely a day out from the Nomen territory, they found themselves in a strange landscape of huge furrows that scarred the grasslands, disrupted here and there by sinkhole-like depressions and mounds of earth and soil.
“This isn’t good,” Stevhan said ominously as he reigned his horse to a halt. “These are bullete burrows.”
“Boo-what?” Davrim asked.
“A land shark, ya idjit!” Tungdill barked.
“Like what was mentioned on Varn’s map,” Velox said.
No more had the words left his mouth, than a deep rumbling began shaking the ground all around them.
“Dismount!” Stevhan ordered. “Clear the horses!”
His companions hastily obeyed, dropping to the ground and swatting the horses on their flanks, sending them scattering. What seemed like only a heartbeat later, the ground around them exploded into a fountain of earth and stone. A creature the size of a cottage erupted, all claws and armored plates, like some hideous amalgam of an armadillo and a leviathan. It leaped straight into the air, its razor claws flailing all around it, tearing into Velox and Mox, who happened to be standing closest to it at the time. Mox was thrown clear, landing heavily on her back and forcing the breath from her lungs. Tungdill stood over her, his hands a blur, the ancient words of the druids upon his tongue. A black cloud formed above the bulette, and an instant later, a shaft of lightning stabbed down, sending electricity coursing over its armored hide. The moment allowed Mox a chance to regain her feat. She began her own spell, opening her mouth and breathing out a stream of acidic bile upon the behemoth. The bullete bellowed and turned towards her, lowering its head to charge. Stevhan lunged in front of her, his sword ricocheting off the beast’s hardened shell. It leaped at him, ripping at him with its fore claws, and snapping its beak-like maw down upon his leg, snapping the bone in half. The ranger felt himself being drawn into the air, but a moment later, another caustic spray struck the beast between the eyes, eating through its skull and into its small brain beneath. It collapsed into a cloud of dirt, opening its mouth to let Stevhan roll free.
__________________________________________________________
Once Velox had tended Stevhan’s wounds, the companions were ready to continue on their trek. Over the course of the next several days, their travels took them through ever more inhospitable lands, every day’s travel bringing greater dangers. They ran afoul of a colony of enormous spiders, and soon after, a band of inept ettercaps that attempted to ensnare them in an ill-conceived ambush. Further south, they skirted the shores of Lake Silverstep, so named for its distinctive claw shape, which legend held was the footprint of an ancient silver dragon. The shoreline of the vast lake was a foul bog of volcanically heated mud, and as the companions waded through the knee-deep sludge, they were assailed by a number of man-shaped creatures apparently formed from the mud itself. After a harrowing touch-and-go battle, they defeated the strange elementals, looking like mud men and women themselves by the time all was said and done.
They began their long climb into the Tors of Levenies near a tall mountain known as Talon Peak. As they made their way slowly up the craggy shoulders of the tor, they spied a lone tower, pointing like a bony finger towards the heavens, sitting atop the mountain. Mox was intrigued. While the ruin might contain some forgotten treasure or lore, she was more interested in the strategic aspects of its location should their kingdom continue its expansion eastward. Via her magics and those of Selena, coupled with Tungdill’s shape-shifting, all six companions took to the air, angling towards the distant summit. They had gone no more than halfway before they saw a vast, dark shape leap from the top of the tower.
“Gods!” Stevhan exclaimed. “It’s a roc!!”
The great bird could easily have carried a full-grown bull elephant in its talons, and when it opened its beak to shriek its challenge, the sound buffeted the companions like a physical force. Velox paused in his flight, hovering in mid-air. His eyes flared with golden light as he summoned the power of Iomedae into his palm. A ray of searing light stabbed out and caught the roc full in its breast, burning through feathers and skin. Still, it continued its dive. As it drew nearer, Mox breathed force an acidic cloud that the bird’s momentum could not avoid. It emerged on the other side a bloodied ruin, yet death was still alive in its eyes. Davrim struggled to draw his bow while simultaneously maintaining his wobbly flight path, but he was too slow. The roc struck him like twenty battering rams, seizing him in one massive claw. It banked, turning sharply on one outstretched wing, then beat both its pinions mightily, straining for altitude with its prey. Davrim tried to free his arms so that he could reach his sword, but it was no use. He was pinned. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of movement. A small owl flapped its wings furiously, keeping pace with the great raptor. Suddenly, it dipped and wheeled away, and Davrim knew that he should cover his eyes. He tried to curl himself into as small a ball as possible. A column of fire roared down from the sky, engulfing the roc, and a moment later Davrim was in free fall. He checked his plummet, and quickly rejoined his friends as the bird’s remains tumbled towards the earth far below.
When the six companions finally reached the summits peak and the tower itself, all they found there were four, very large eggs…
Varnhold was well and truly abandoned. Building after building revealed the same. No bodies, no signs of violence, save where the spriggans had been looting, and ultimately, no real clues as to what had happened to the townsfolk. It was Tungdill who stumbled upon the first promising lead, and that quite by accident. They were investigating a home with cheerful curtains in the windows, and a number of wooden children’s toys lying in the front yard. As the others went through the motions of searching out the house itself, the druid caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. From behind the wood pile, a half-starved calico cat peered out at him, its eyes wide, yellow saucers.
“Well now,” Tungdill said as he squatted down. “What have we here? Here, kitty, kitty.”
He rummaged in his belt pouch until he found a piece of dried jerky. The cat’s ears perked up, and it growled low in its throat. Slowly, it crept forward on its belly and quickly snatched the food from the druid’s hand. It started to back away again, but then its gaze locked with Tungdill’s.
“There,” the dwarf said quietly, “now we have an understanding, don’t we?”
He closed his eyes and chanted under his breath. When he opened them again, the cat still stood, unmoving, in front of him.
“Where are your people?” he asked.
“They left in the red-sun time,” the cat replied. To anyone else listening, the cat would have been simply mewling, but Tungdill understood perfectly. “It was when they heard the new bird song,” the cat continued. “I was busy eating a bit of fish, and did not follow them out. My feeders did not come back, and I am now quite hungry! Do you have more?”
“Found a new friend?” Stevhan asked as he walked up.
“Whatever happened here, happened at sunset,” Tungdill replied as he scooped the cat up in his arms, “and there might have been some sort of music involved.”
“So you’re saying some sort of evil bard was responsible for what happened here?” the ranger asked.
The druid shrugged. “Just sayin’ what the puss told me. I ain’t the brains o’this outfit.”
_______________________________________________________
The last building they came to in the empty town was the inn. It was a two-story structure just off the village commons. A sign above the door depicted a rider clinging to the back of a madly galloping horse with a green mane and a fish tail extending from its hindquarters. The walls were painted a cheerful shade of yellow to complement the red shutters. Scratched into the wood of the front door was a single word… “NOMEN!”
Inside, the common room’s tables were still set with plates of rotting food. In one corner, facing a paper-strewn table, a giant-sized spriggan stood, silent and perfectly still, a book clutched in one hand. The back of his skull was a shattered mess of blood and bone, though his face betrayed no notice of the wound. A shimmering nimbus of amber surrounded the spriggan’s unmoving form.
“Fascinating!” Selena said as she walked slowly around the spriggan. “It’s a Sepia Sigil, a sort of warding spell that puts the target into a prolonged stasis. Unfortunately for this fellow, it doesn’t protect you from physical harm. My guess is that when the spell expires, he’ll be dead before he hits the floor.”
“Tragic,” Mox sneered. “I’m more interested in what the spell was guarding. Let’s have a look.”
The books stacked on the table included an assortment of esoteric titles such as Secrets of the Rashalka Mounds, Iobarian Prehistory, The Centaur Skyles of Central Casmaron, and The Untold Heritage of Taldan Armies of Exploration. Among those works was an incomplete ethnography of the indigenous tribes of the Iobarian steppes, which speculated that a local tribe called the Nomens was actually an offshoot of the greater Rashalka population that broke away and relocated to the Varnhold area some time in the distant past. Mixed in with the books were a number of charcoal sketches of a heavy jade bracelet that bore peculiar markings, attributed by the artist to the premigration Nomen centaurs. It appeared that the owner of the books, as well as the artist, and author of the ethnography, was someone by the name of Maestro Ervil Pendrod.
“I’ve heard of him,” Selena said. “He’s an Iobarian scholar of some renown from Oppara’s Kitharodian Academy. Strange that he should be in such a remote locale.”
The witch found her question answered a moment later when they came upon a letter underneath the entire stack. It was dated two months past, and was addressed to one Maestro Pendrod from Maegar Varn. It described the discovery of a jade bracelet by a man named Willas Gundarson, Varn’s warden, on the banks of a “river of local prominence,” and requested Pendrod’s presence for further study of the artifact.
A further search of the inn revealed that none of the guest rooms had been occupied at the time of the “incident,” save one…that of Ervil Pendrod. Among his personal effects was a small library of further reference works. None were particularly remarkable, but Selena plucked out a particular one that looked to be very old indeed. It was created several centuries past by one Carmyn e’Brothasa, a chronicler of Taldor’s Third Army of Exploration into the north. One passage had been marked by Pendrod:
“And so it was, high upon the Torres and well above the Vale’s stairs, where rises from the high water a stony isle of dire report. Known as Vordakai’s Island to those that do live thereabout, some legend of its name doth come down through the locals. For they speak of a guardian that doth destroy all who would set foot upon its accursed shores. They did name no fewer than a twelvecount of their hero-knights who had left their bones upon its rocky shores over the years after having tested their mettle against its dread warden, ‘til none would any longer go there for fear of its hidden terrors. And the name of this terror was given unto this Island.”
Pendrod had written in the margin of the text alongside the passage.
‘Vordakai…perhaps a Nomen centaur god?’
“It would seem all roads lead to the Nomen,” Velox remarked.
“I agree,” Mox nodded. “I can’t make sense of any of this. We’ll set out at dawn.”
__________________________________________________________
There was nothing to indicate they had crossed into the centaur lands. The landscape looked exactly as it had for the past three days of their travel. Yet, within an hour of setting out from their previous night’s camp, Stevhan spotted a cloud of dust on the horizon, which quickly resolved itself into a warband of a half-dozen or more centaur warriors. They whooped and shouted as they accelerated towards the companions, their faces painted in fearsome patterns, feathered and beaded spears held in their uplifted hands. When they reached the travelers, they begin circling rapidly in ever-diminishing spirals. When they were mere feet away, they reared as one, their forelegs pawing the air. One of them stepped forward and began barking at them in a foreign tongue.
“We don’t understand,” Mox said calmly. “Do you speak Common? We are here on a peaceful overture.”
The centaur scowled angrily.
“I…speak…your tongue,” he said haltingly. “You…not welcome…here!”
“We bring a gift,” Mox said. She nodded at Velox.
The oracle pulled out the bow they’d found among the spriggan leader’s possessions. The centaurs gasped as one and immediately began babbling excitedly.
“You come!” the leader snapped, and then he and his warriors turned and began to gallop away, expecting the trespassers to follow.
The Nomens’ camp sat on a low hillock surrounded by a sea of grass. A large bonfire dominated the center, around which a number of female centaurs danced in a primal rhythm long lost to the civilized soul. A scattering of open-sided hide huts numbering no more than five score were arranged around the hollow, inside which other members of the tribe congregated, ate or slept. Everywhere, the heavily armed and armored centaurs sharpened weapons, tended to gear, or walked patrols, all with a feral economy of movement and sound. These were the true inheritors of an age long gone, when the steppes rang to the thunder of their herds and the fury of their war cries, while the first inklings of civilization clung to shorelines and riverbanks like children to their mothers’ skirts, afraid of the dark wilderness and its wild masters. The entourage escorting the six companions surrounded them as they trotted through the camp. All around, eyes turned to stare at the outsiders with open hostility. They were brought to a large tent erected near the fire, where a noble, savage-looking horsewoman presided over some sort of ritual before a moon-shaped altar. Several minutes passed as she completed her observances before she turned to acknowledge the newcomers. She remained silent, her face impassive as the patrol leader spoke to her in their own tongue, gesturing agitatedly towards the companions. After a few minutes of this, she motioned him silent.
“Why are you here?” she snapped sharply. “Do you seek your own deaths?”
“We have come to beg your assistance,” Mox said as she stepped forward. “I am the Baroness Mox of Kardashia, and we crossed the Torres seeking the answer to a mystery…the vanishing of our sister holding, Varnhold. We come bearing tokens to prove our sincerity.”
Mox nodded to Velox and Tungdill. The dwarf unshouldered his pack and pulled out the tanned centaur hides they’d found in Varnhold. The priestess’s face grew dark, and her hand tightened on her war spear. Then Velox took out the bow, and the change that came over her was instantaneous.
“Skybolt!” she exclaimed. “How did this come into your possession?”
Mox explained their mission and journey up to that point, leaving nothing out. The centaur priestess listened attentively, her brow furrowed in concern.
“I am Aecora Silverfire,” she said when Mox had finished, “War-priestess of the Nomen, and I bid you be welcome in our land. I am sorry to say that I have no knowledge of your vanished holding, though our people bear yours no goodwill. Ages past, the human kingdom of Taldor expanded into the ancestral lands or our people. This led to many wars between your folk and mine. Even as the domain you call Rostland was established, Taldan colonists ripped through our war herds, pushing them to the fringes of our former rangelands, and farther and farther from our traditional homelands. So great were the effects of this war, that much of our lore and identity were lost as well. Yet something that you mentioned in the books you discovered is not unknown to me. According to our traditions, Vordakai is a slumbering warlord form the time of the mother tribes. There is a place to the west called Olah-Kakanket, the Valley of the Dead. It is taboo for our people, but our traditions also dictate that we must watch the valley for signs of disturbances or strange awakenings. Recently, one of our huntresses claimed to have seen a strange and frightful shape lumbering amid the stones of Olah-Kakanket. Perhaps the humans of Varnhold, with their insatiable curiosity and drive to expand and conquer, entered the Valley of the Dead and found their doom. It would be fitting.”
“I see,” Mox nodded. “You have given us much, though you may feel it little. We gratefully return your tribe’s relic, and the remains of your fallen, and thank you for your assistance. Can you tell us how to find this valley?”
“I can indeed,” Aecora said, “though I fear you journey to your own deaths if you go there. Still…,” she hesitated, her eyes downcast, “if it is your intent to undertake this foolish quest, perhaps I might ask a boon of you. The huntress I mentioned before, the one who saw the shape in Olah-Kakanket, she is my daughter, Xamanthe. She is headstrong, and stubborn…like her mother, and when she demanded to know more about the site, information I could not provide, she took upon herself to satisfy her curiosity. That was several days ago, and she has not been heard from since. If you…find her, or find any information as to what has befallen her, I shall be deeply in your debt.”
“If she is there, we will find her,” Mox vowed.
Aecora nodded solemnly. “Now, I’m afraid I must ask you to leave this camp. Though you have proven your merit, I’m afraid that old animosities die hard, and my people would not welcome you here.”
“We understand,” Mox replied. “We thank you again, and hope to meet again on better terms.”
_______________________________________________________
The journey far to the south and west where Aecora said the Valley of the Dead lay was going to be a long one, through lands both unknown and unexplored. The companions were far from home, and completely out of their element. Barely a day out from the Nomen territory, they found themselves in a strange landscape of huge furrows that scarred the grasslands, disrupted here and there by sinkhole-like depressions and mounds of earth and soil.
“This isn’t good,” Stevhan said ominously as he reigned his horse to a halt. “These are bullete burrows.”
“Boo-what?” Davrim asked.
“A land shark, ya idjit!” Tungdill barked.
“Like what was mentioned on Varn’s map,” Velox said.
No more had the words left his mouth, than a deep rumbling began shaking the ground all around them.
“Dismount!” Stevhan ordered. “Clear the horses!”
His companions hastily obeyed, dropping to the ground and swatting the horses on their flanks, sending them scattering. What seemed like only a heartbeat later, the ground around them exploded into a fountain of earth and stone. A creature the size of a cottage erupted, all claws and armored plates, like some hideous amalgam of an armadillo and a leviathan. It leaped straight into the air, its razor claws flailing all around it, tearing into Velox and Mox, who happened to be standing closest to it at the time. Mox was thrown clear, landing heavily on her back and forcing the breath from her lungs. Tungdill stood over her, his hands a blur, the ancient words of the druids upon his tongue. A black cloud formed above the bulette, and an instant later, a shaft of lightning stabbed down, sending electricity coursing over its armored hide. The moment allowed Mox a chance to regain her feat. She began her own spell, opening her mouth and breathing out a stream of acidic bile upon the behemoth. The bullete bellowed and turned towards her, lowering its head to charge. Stevhan lunged in front of her, his sword ricocheting off the beast’s hardened shell. It leaped at him, ripping at him with its fore claws, and snapping its beak-like maw down upon his leg, snapping the bone in half. The ranger felt himself being drawn into the air, but a moment later, another caustic spray struck the beast between the eyes, eating through its skull and into its small brain beneath. It collapsed into a cloud of dirt, opening its mouth to let Stevhan roll free.
__________________________________________________________
Once Velox had tended Stevhan’s wounds, the companions were ready to continue on their trek. Over the course of the next several days, their travels took them through ever more inhospitable lands, every day’s travel bringing greater dangers. They ran afoul of a colony of enormous spiders, and soon after, a band of inept ettercaps that attempted to ensnare them in an ill-conceived ambush. Further south, they skirted the shores of Lake Silverstep, so named for its distinctive claw shape, which legend held was the footprint of an ancient silver dragon. The shoreline of the vast lake was a foul bog of volcanically heated mud, and as the companions waded through the knee-deep sludge, they were assailed by a number of man-shaped creatures apparently formed from the mud itself. After a harrowing touch-and-go battle, they defeated the strange elementals, looking like mud men and women themselves by the time all was said and done.
They began their long climb into the Tors of Levenies near a tall mountain known as Talon Peak. As they made their way slowly up the craggy shoulders of the tor, they spied a lone tower, pointing like a bony finger towards the heavens, sitting atop the mountain. Mox was intrigued. While the ruin might contain some forgotten treasure or lore, she was more interested in the strategic aspects of its location should their kingdom continue its expansion eastward. Via her magics and those of Selena, coupled with Tungdill’s shape-shifting, all six companions took to the air, angling towards the distant summit. They had gone no more than halfway before they saw a vast, dark shape leap from the top of the tower.
“Gods!” Stevhan exclaimed. “It’s a roc!!”
The great bird could easily have carried a full-grown bull elephant in its talons, and when it opened its beak to shriek its challenge, the sound buffeted the companions like a physical force. Velox paused in his flight, hovering in mid-air. His eyes flared with golden light as he summoned the power of Iomedae into his palm. A ray of searing light stabbed out and caught the roc full in its breast, burning through feathers and skin. Still, it continued its dive. As it drew nearer, Mox breathed force an acidic cloud that the bird’s momentum could not avoid. It emerged on the other side a bloodied ruin, yet death was still alive in its eyes. Davrim struggled to draw his bow while simultaneously maintaining his wobbly flight path, but he was too slow. The roc struck him like twenty battering rams, seizing him in one massive claw. It banked, turning sharply on one outstretched wing, then beat both its pinions mightily, straining for altitude with its prey. Davrim tried to free his arms so that he could reach his sword, but it was no use. He was pinned. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of movement. A small owl flapped its wings furiously, keeping pace with the great raptor. Suddenly, it dipped and wheeled away, and Davrim knew that he should cover his eyes. He tried to curl himself into as small a ball as possible. A column of fire roared down from the sky, engulfing the roc, and a moment later Davrim was in free fall. He checked his plummet, and quickly rejoined his friends as the bird’s remains tumbled towards the earth far below.
When the six companions finally reached the summits peak and the tower itself, all they found there were four, very large eggs…
JollyDoc
Explorer
SUNDAY TEASER
The companions continue their journey towards the Valley of the Dead:
1. The cyclopean empire is not quite dead, as a trio of wandering cyclops makes painfully aware.
2. Mox takes a lover
3. Davrim learns the hard way that not all flies are caught with honey
4. The Valley of the Dead is reached, and the pass is not unguarded
5. Mox wakes to a nasty surprise...one which may well cost her soul
The companions continue their journey towards the Valley of the Dead:
1. The cyclopean empire is not quite dead, as a trio of wandering cyclops makes painfully aware.
2. Mox takes a lover
3. Davrim learns the hard way that not all flies are caught with honey
4. The Valley of the Dead is reached, and the pass is not unguarded
5. Mox wakes to a nasty surprise...one which may well cost her soul
A great reason for a delay if there ever was one.
Boy you guys seem to be flying through this campaign. We have reached a point (the beginning of Rivers Run Red) where they can take 10 on most survival checks and succeed, that has helped a little. Kingdom building slows things down now though (we just did the last 3 months by e-mail).
Any secrets or suggestions?
Boy you guys seem to be flying through this campaign. We have reached a point (the beginning of Rivers Run Red) where they can take 10 on most survival checks and succeed, that has helped a little. Kingdom building slows things down now though (we just did the last 3 months by e-mail).
Any secrets or suggestions?
JollyDoc
Explorer
In retrospect, it's probably best to do kingdom building as you go. At the beginning of Varnhold Vanishing, kindgoms size should be around 50. By the beginning of Blood for Blood, should be about 80. We spent one entire session just kingdom building. Can get a little tedious.
JollyDoc
Explorer
“YEA THO’ I WALK”
The journey south dragged on, the gray, cloud-laden winter sky rarely allowing more than a pale, wan light through to the barren landscape below. The companions had seen no sign of human habitation for days, but by no means was the wilderness uninhabited. At one point, as they crossed a narrow valley through the foothills, a large, winged shape glided low above them. The creature had a leonine form, but its head was disturbingly humanoid, and its tail sprouted a cluster of boney barbs, which it promptly flung at its prey as it swooped past. A well-timed lightning bolt from Selena, along with Stevhan’s archery skills, however, prevented a second pass.
A day later, as the group threaded their way through a narrow, high-walled defile, three giant figures stepped from the rocks on all sides. They stood easily ten-feet or more in height, but below their sloped brows, each had only one, blood-shot eye.
“Didn’t the centaurs say something about cyclops?” Davrim asked as he gripped his sword tightly.
“We must be getting close,” Mox replied. “In any event, they don’t look very welcoming. Let’s end this quickly!”
The duchess conjured a ball of caustic green energy between her hands and hurled it towards two of the giants as Davrim rushed forward to engage the third. The two cyclopses writhed beneath the acidic explosion, but as Selena followed up with a fireball of her own, both of the brutes looked directly at her, their eyes showing a brief moment of clarity as they both dodged nimbly away from the conflagration. Davrim struck his opponent with a vicious slash, but the giant seemed hardly to notice. Instead, it gazed unblinkingly at the inquisitor, as if assessing him for weaknesses. Then, moving almost too fast to follow, it swung its massive axe across Davrim’s belly. His eyes went wide as he gaped down at the vicious wound, blood pouring onto the ground. He barely registered the other giants charge towards his companions…specifically Mox and Selena. The witch and the wizard could do nothing to avoid the charge, and each of them was smashed violently aside as the cyclopses leveled their axes. Mox rolled to her back, a spell on her lips. She flung a second acid ball towards the pair, melting the flesh from their bones. As Davrim could only stare blankly at the giant towering over him, his vision going dark, a column of fire roared down from the sky, immolating the cyclops instantly.
“Ya owe me another one, boy,” Tungdill grinned, standing over Davrim as he collapsed.
______________________________________________________
“There’s something I need to tell all of you,” Mox announced suddenly during the middle of the day as they continued to thread their way through the mountains.
The others turned to look at her expectantly.
“When we return to Veritas,” she continued, “there’s someone I need to introduce you to. His name is Avashar, and he is my…protégé.”
“And by ‘protégé,’” Selena smirked, “you mean…?”
“I mean just that,” Mox kept her expression carefully neutral. “He will be my assistant during my official duties, and from time to time he may accompany us on our endeavors as I deem fit. Beyond that…well, that’s none of your concern.”
“The country needs an heir, not a bastard!” Tungdill grumbled.
Mox glared at the dwarf.
“I’ll marry in my own good time,” she said, “but until then, my personal affairs are just that, and I have nothing more to say on the matter!”
The rest of the day’s ride continued in tense silence.
_____________________________________________________
For a time, the game trail the companions had been travelling followed along the rocky banks of the Little Sellen River. At one point the river narrowed as it passed through a gully between two steep hillsides, flowing around an oblong island thick with vegetation. The island was narrow, no more than fifteen-feet at its widest, with the river also narrowing to little over five feet on each side of it. The cliff walls rose steeply in the narrow defile, topping fifty feet or more at their peak.
Davrim took the point as the company was forced to travel single-file along the river bank. His eyes shifted uneasily at their surroundings, imagining the place as perfect for an ambush. Suddenly, as if his suspicions had summoned it, the plants in the center of the island erupted as a huge specimen, an enormous flytrap, reared up, one of its three mouth-like fronds clamping shut over the inquisitor with a loud snap. The others started yelling and shouting as one, panic gripping the horses as they struggled to control the mounts. Stevhan seized his bow, but before he could loose a single arrow, Selena, Mox and Tungdill struck as one. The witch engulfed the island in roiling balls of flame, while Mox opened her mouth wide and exhaled a plume of white-hot fire, and Tungdill called down a holy pyre. In a matter of moments, the island was a smoking ruin, the flytrap a crisp husk in its center. Davrim burst out of the charred frond, scorched, his face blackened with ash, but still alive.
_______________________________________________________
The entrance to the Valley of the Dead, when they finally reached their destination, was marked by a series of posts decorated with bones and skulls. They were spaced every fifty to sixty feet, a wall of warnings erected by the Nomen that ran the entire six-mile opening to the valley. The deeper in the companions moved, the more each of them felt a strange oppression fall over them. Even the wind seemed oddly muted as it flowed through the trees and grass, the birds and insects grew quiet, and the unusually regular crags along the surrounding mountains seemed almost to crouch in expectation.
A mile past the last of the bone totems, the first of the gravestones appeared. The ten-foot-tall stone steles were badly weathered, many partially or wholly collapsed, but each bore strange runes carved into their surfaces. There were literally thousands of them leading to the farthest western point of the valley, where, as the ragged Tors of Levenies rose 300 feet above the surrounding foothills, a crack in the cliff wall allowed a wide stone stairway to wind up into the mountains. There, the companions dismounted, tethering their mounts to graze, and then set their feet upon the oversized risers.
The stairway seemed to go on for miles, winding along a circuitous path higher and higher into the mountains. At one point, as the companions rounded a steep turn, a large shadow detached itself from the deeper darkness several dozen yards further up. At first glance, it appeared to be another cyclops, but as it stepped from the gloom, it became obvious that it was something far more. Its flesh hung from its bones in tatters, its rotting entrails protruding from its open abdomen. It clutched a pitted battleaxe in its hands, ancient bloodstains dried to brown flakes on the blade.
“Back off!” Stevhan cried to Mox and Selena, who were crowded behind him. The ranger loosed a shaft from his bow, sending it straight into the center of the zombie’s chest. It didn’t react at all.
“You should know by now, Warden,” Mox grinned, “I don’t lead from behind!”
The duchess began a choppy chant, then lobbed a ball of greenish-black acid at the horrid abomination. The cyclops bellowed as even more of its flesh dissolved away, then lowered its head and charged. Davrim stepped quickly in front of Mox, and so it was he that caught the full brunt of the zombie attack. The inquisitor spun with the ferocity of the blow, but as he came around, his own blade was in motion, and he hacked into the putrid muscle of the zombie’s neck. Despite its friable appearance, however, the creature’s hide was as thick as stone. Davrim’s blade rebounded off, and struck him in his own forehead. Dazed, he reeled backwards, the cyclops bearing down on him. Suddenly, a flash of fur and fangs sprang over him as Wolf launched itself at the corpse’s throat. The creature, already mortally wounded, did not rise again.
_________________________________________________________
By the time they reached the head of the stairs, it was full dark.
“We’ll set up camp here,” Mox said. “We’re not going any further until we’ve got daylight on our side again.”
The companions bedded down, save for Tungdill and Stevhan, who drew first watch. Despite the sharp eyes of the ranger, and the acute senses of the druid, they never saw the creature until it was already too late. It rose from the darkness like an inky cloud of smoke from which two, pale arms ending in murderous claws extended. Unerringly, as if searching for her in particular, it rushed towards Mox and began savagely tearing at her while she still slumbered.
“No!” Stevhan cried as he drew his sword and charged.
Davrim sprang awake at the sound of the commotion, but as he leaped to his feet the horror back-handed him, sending him sprawling, and then turned its attentions back to Mox, who remained frighteningly still. Stevhan reached the creature and slashed, his blade impacting solidly despite the thing’s incorporeal appearance. A moment later, Davrim returned to the fight, adding his own might to the ranger’s. Then, from two different sides, a blast of fire and lightning struck the apparition, one sent from Selena, the other a fiery serpent courtesy of Tungdill. In an explosion of heat and light, the creature evaporated.
Selena rushed to Mox’s side, and lifter her in her arms. The duchess remained limp, her eyes wide, staring, yet seeing nothing.
“Her mind…,” Selena cried, “it’s gone!”
The journey south dragged on, the gray, cloud-laden winter sky rarely allowing more than a pale, wan light through to the barren landscape below. The companions had seen no sign of human habitation for days, but by no means was the wilderness uninhabited. At one point, as they crossed a narrow valley through the foothills, a large, winged shape glided low above them. The creature had a leonine form, but its head was disturbingly humanoid, and its tail sprouted a cluster of boney barbs, which it promptly flung at its prey as it swooped past. A well-timed lightning bolt from Selena, along with Stevhan’s archery skills, however, prevented a second pass.
A day later, as the group threaded their way through a narrow, high-walled defile, three giant figures stepped from the rocks on all sides. They stood easily ten-feet or more in height, but below their sloped brows, each had only one, blood-shot eye.
“Didn’t the centaurs say something about cyclops?” Davrim asked as he gripped his sword tightly.
“We must be getting close,” Mox replied. “In any event, they don’t look very welcoming. Let’s end this quickly!”
The duchess conjured a ball of caustic green energy between her hands and hurled it towards two of the giants as Davrim rushed forward to engage the third. The two cyclopses writhed beneath the acidic explosion, but as Selena followed up with a fireball of her own, both of the brutes looked directly at her, their eyes showing a brief moment of clarity as they both dodged nimbly away from the conflagration. Davrim struck his opponent with a vicious slash, but the giant seemed hardly to notice. Instead, it gazed unblinkingly at the inquisitor, as if assessing him for weaknesses. Then, moving almost too fast to follow, it swung its massive axe across Davrim’s belly. His eyes went wide as he gaped down at the vicious wound, blood pouring onto the ground. He barely registered the other giants charge towards his companions…specifically Mox and Selena. The witch and the wizard could do nothing to avoid the charge, and each of them was smashed violently aside as the cyclopses leveled their axes. Mox rolled to her back, a spell on her lips. She flung a second acid ball towards the pair, melting the flesh from their bones. As Davrim could only stare blankly at the giant towering over him, his vision going dark, a column of fire roared down from the sky, immolating the cyclops instantly.
“Ya owe me another one, boy,” Tungdill grinned, standing over Davrim as he collapsed.
______________________________________________________
“There’s something I need to tell all of you,” Mox announced suddenly during the middle of the day as they continued to thread their way through the mountains.
The others turned to look at her expectantly.
“When we return to Veritas,” she continued, “there’s someone I need to introduce you to. His name is Avashar, and he is my…protégé.”
“And by ‘protégé,’” Selena smirked, “you mean…?”
“I mean just that,” Mox kept her expression carefully neutral. “He will be my assistant during my official duties, and from time to time he may accompany us on our endeavors as I deem fit. Beyond that…well, that’s none of your concern.”
“The country needs an heir, not a bastard!” Tungdill grumbled.
Mox glared at the dwarf.
“I’ll marry in my own good time,” she said, “but until then, my personal affairs are just that, and I have nothing more to say on the matter!”
The rest of the day’s ride continued in tense silence.
_____________________________________________________
For a time, the game trail the companions had been travelling followed along the rocky banks of the Little Sellen River. At one point the river narrowed as it passed through a gully between two steep hillsides, flowing around an oblong island thick with vegetation. The island was narrow, no more than fifteen-feet at its widest, with the river also narrowing to little over five feet on each side of it. The cliff walls rose steeply in the narrow defile, topping fifty feet or more at their peak.
Davrim took the point as the company was forced to travel single-file along the river bank. His eyes shifted uneasily at their surroundings, imagining the place as perfect for an ambush. Suddenly, as if his suspicions had summoned it, the plants in the center of the island erupted as a huge specimen, an enormous flytrap, reared up, one of its three mouth-like fronds clamping shut over the inquisitor with a loud snap. The others started yelling and shouting as one, panic gripping the horses as they struggled to control the mounts. Stevhan seized his bow, but before he could loose a single arrow, Selena, Mox and Tungdill struck as one. The witch engulfed the island in roiling balls of flame, while Mox opened her mouth wide and exhaled a plume of white-hot fire, and Tungdill called down a holy pyre. In a matter of moments, the island was a smoking ruin, the flytrap a crisp husk in its center. Davrim burst out of the charred frond, scorched, his face blackened with ash, but still alive.
_______________________________________________________
The entrance to the Valley of the Dead, when they finally reached their destination, was marked by a series of posts decorated with bones and skulls. They were spaced every fifty to sixty feet, a wall of warnings erected by the Nomen that ran the entire six-mile opening to the valley. The deeper in the companions moved, the more each of them felt a strange oppression fall over them. Even the wind seemed oddly muted as it flowed through the trees and grass, the birds and insects grew quiet, and the unusually regular crags along the surrounding mountains seemed almost to crouch in expectation.
A mile past the last of the bone totems, the first of the gravestones appeared. The ten-foot-tall stone steles were badly weathered, many partially or wholly collapsed, but each bore strange runes carved into their surfaces. There were literally thousands of them leading to the farthest western point of the valley, where, as the ragged Tors of Levenies rose 300 feet above the surrounding foothills, a crack in the cliff wall allowed a wide stone stairway to wind up into the mountains. There, the companions dismounted, tethering their mounts to graze, and then set their feet upon the oversized risers.
The stairway seemed to go on for miles, winding along a circuitous path higher and higher into the mountains. At one point, as the companions rounded a steep turn, a large shadow detached itself from the deeper darkness several dozen yards further up. At first glance, it appeared to be another cyclops, but as it stepped from the gloom, it became obvious that it was something far more. Its flesh hung from its bones in tatters, its rotting entrails protruding from its open abdomen. It clutched a pitted battleaxe in its hands, ancient bloodstains dried to brown flakes on the blade.
“Back off!” Stevhan cried to Mox and Selena, who were crowded behind him. The ranger loosed a shaft from his bow, sending it straight into the center of the zombie’s chest. It didn’t react at all.
“You should know by now, Warden,” Mox grinned, “I don’t lead from behind!”
The duchess began a choppy chant, then lobbed a ball of greenish-black acid at the horrid abomination. The cyclops bellowed as even more of its flesh dissolved away, then lowered its head and charged. Davrim stepped quickly in front of Mox, and so it was he that caught the full brunt of the zombie attack. The inquisitor spun with the ferocity of the blow, but as he came around, his own blade was in motion, and he hacked into the putrid muscle of the zombie’s neck. Despite its friable appearance, however, the creature’s hide was as thick as stone. Davrim’s blade rebounded off, and struck him in his own forehead. Dazed, he reeled backwards, the cyclops bearing down on him. Suddenly, a flash of fur and fangs sprang over him as Wolf launched itself at the corpse’s throat. The creature, already mortally wounded, did not rise again.
_________________________________________________________
By the time they reached the head of the stairs, it was full dark.
“We’ll set up camp here,” Mox said. “We’re not going any further until we’ve got daylight on our side again.”
The companions bedded down, save for Tungdill and Stevhan, who drew first watch. Despite the sharp eyes of the ranger, and the acute senses of the druid, they never saw the creature until it was already too late. It rose from the darkness like an inky cloud of smoke from which two, pale arms ending in murderous claws extended. Unerringly, as if searching for her in particular, it rushed towards Mox and began savagely tearing at her while she still slumbered.
“No!” Stevhan cried as he drew his sword and charged.
Davrim sprang awake at the sound of the commotion, but as he leaped to his feet the horror back-handed him, sending him sprawling, and then turned its attentions back to Mox, who remained frighteningly still. Stevhan reached the creature and slashed, his blade impacting solidly despite the thing’s incorporeal appearance. A moment later, Davrim returned to the fight, adding his own might to the ranger’s. Then, from two different sides, a blast of fire and lightning struck the apparition, one sent from Selena, the other a fiery serpent courtesy of Tungdill. In an explosion of heat and light, the creature evaporated.
Selena rushed to Mox’s side, and lifter her in her arms. The duchess remained limp, her eyes wide, staring, yet seeing nothing.
“Her mind…,” Selena cried, “it’s gone!”
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