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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kid Charlemagne" data-source="post: 768" data-attributes="member: 93">Shadow Springs, Vokal Mountains, December 22nd, AE 419The party digs in a little way from the town walls and watches.  The gates facing the south road are open and  intact, but some of the buildings inside the walls appear badly burnt.  A few wisps of smoke rise from various spots inside the town.Aris casts invisibility on himself, and goes to check things out.  He climbs over the wall and makes his way towards what appears to be the town hall, and sees only signs of scavenging wolves.  There are dead dwarves.  He is just about to report back when a large, hulking figure steps out of an abandoned tavern, and walks over to the town hall.“An ogre,” Aris notes.  He tries to get up to the door and slip in before it closes, but can’t quite make it; he catches the door before it latches, and tries to open it slowly, betting that anyone inside would think it was the stiff, cold wind.  Just as he is about to slip inside, though, a large, strong hand reaches out and grabs the door handle, slamming the door shut.  “Watch the door you idiot!  It’s freezing out there!”  a gruff voice yells.The door latches.  Aris decides to get back to the party before anyone notices the footsteps appearing in the snow where he walks.  He explains to the others what he saw.The party approaches town, and sneaks over the wall, approaching the tavern cautiously.  They hit the Tavern and the Town Hall at the same time, facing ogres in each place.  The ogres go down fairly quickly, but when Reanna steps out from the Town Hall, she is hit by an arrow that explodes on contact into a small fireball!“That’s MY bow!” Batista yelps.Batista’s main magic item before he was kidnapped was a magical bow.  With the bow came three arrows; one was red-fletched and would make a 6d6 fireball once per day; another was white fletched and cast faerie fire on its target; and the third was black fletched, and created a sphere of darkness that only the bow-wielder could see in.  Each arrow was usable once per day, and would reappear in the quiver of he who held the bow at dawn the next day.They quickly pinpoint the area the arrows are coming from; the bell tower on the Town Hall.  Reanna and Batista start making their way up inside the building, Jalea starts climbing up the outside.  More arrows rain down on them before they get under cover.  Just as Jalea gets up to the top of the belltower, the unknown archer (who appears human) jumps down to the roof of the Town Hall.  He slips part way down the icy roof, but catches himself before falling into the street.“Those are my boots!”  The half-elven Ranger screams.  “You b#stard!”The chase is on; the archer appears to have no place to go, and is now being pursued by the whole party.  He runs towards a grove of trees, drawing his sword as he runs.  He runs into the grove, and directly into an oak tree there!  Reanna checks the tracks to make sure she saw what she thinks she just saw; the tracks lead up to the tree and stop.  She sticks a dagger into the tree half-heartedly, but just manages to get tree sap all over her dagger.“Nice trick,” she says.  The party spreads out and starts looking for other people.  Other than a few hungry wolves that avoid the group, they see no one.The party surveys the town.  There are dozens of dead humans and dwarves in town, and most of them have been pretty thoroughly gnawed on by the wolves.  Identification of the dead, or even of the cause of death, seems a pipe dream.  Luckily, however, there is some other evidence to point to a cause of the destruction.  There is a long swath of burned ground, nearly 100 feet long down the center of the main street.  Many horribly burned dwarves lie in its path.  This, and the other burnt buildings, seem to suggest the attack of a Dragon, probably a Red Dragon.“I’m not so certain about that,” Jovah says.  “You’d think that someone would have managed to survive the attack, and run off to tell the tale.”“And besides,” Aris says.  “That guy had Batista’s bow.  That means that this has something to do with the Ranger kidnappings.  Considering that, I’m guessing this Dragon thing is misdirection to fool the casual observer.”They keep searching the town till night fall, hoping to find more clues.  As day turns to night, and the temperature plummets, they take refuge in the tavern where they fought the ogres.  The open gates allowing access to the town are closed, blocking the wolves’ access to the town.  Watches are divied up, and on the middle watch, Aris is awakened by Jalea.“Hey,” the elf-scout whispers.  “I found something.  Come check this out!”“Can’t it wait till morning, Jalea?”“No, this might be important.”Jalea takes Aris down to the first floor, where he had been searching the premises to pass time while watching for activity.  Behind the bar, under a woven-straw mat, is a trap door.  Jalea opens it up and shows Aris the dug out passageway underneath.“It looks like this goes a long ways east.  Maybe under the town walls.  Someone might have escaped this way. And check this out.”  Jalea lowers his lantern into the hole.There are dwarven runes inscribed on the stone wall of the passageway.  They are painted on, and appear to be relatively new, compared to the dusty passageway.“I don’t read dwarvish,” Aris says.  “But Jovah might.  If not he can cast a spell to figure it out.”  He closes the trapdoor, and puts the mat back in place.“Keep it closed.  Keep watch down here, and don’t go down there until morning!”The next morning they check it out.  Jovah casts tongues and reads the inscription:To any survivors: we will assemble at the Sky Temple.  Meet us there.“Ok, so what’s a Sky Temple?” Batista asks.Reanna starts walking down the corridor. “They left some tracks.  I can follow them, at least for now.”They follow Reanna down the long, dank passage. It is about five feet by five feet, and runs almost a quarter of a mile.  It emerges outside of the town walls, and Reanna follows the tracks until they come out from cover of trees.  Then, the snow obscures the tracks.“I can extrapolate where they were headed from what I’ve seen so far,”  the Ranger says.  “I might not be right, but it’s the best we can do.  Let’s go.”The party begins to climb up into the mountains.  Soon, the Rangers find a narrow path, leading up even higher.   As they continue up the narrow path, Jalea pauses.“Do you see that?” he says, peering through the sunlight glinting off the snow.  Up ahead, and heading towards them, is a group of 6 large figures, and one smaller one.  The small one stops, draws back a bow and fires an arrow, high into the sky.  At this distance it is nearly impossible to hit a target, and the arrow lands a good sixty foot uphill from the partyAnd explodes.This causes a small avalanche, and the party is covered up to their armpits.  They have to spend all their effort just getting out, and the large figures, which turn out to be more ogres, are upon them!The smaller, human figure (who turns out to be the archer again!) arrives in the midst of the party, leaping into action with a prodigious jump, and slicing into Batista.Brennen, Gavin, and Reanna are making extremely fast work of the Ogres.  The archer soon realizes that he’s in trouble, and begins angling for an escape route.  Two of the ogres try to break for it, and are punctured by crossbow bolts from further uphill!  Gavin looks up to see three dwarves emerging from a small cave, already reloading their crossbows.  Gavin gives the dwarves a thumbs-up.The archer makes a break for it, jumping down the mountainside, losing his balance and tumbling, with the only thing to stop him a gnarled old tree.“You’re not getting away again!”  Aris yells, and levels a lightning bolt at the fleeing archer.  It catches him about 10 feet away from the tree, and knocks him clear away from it, sending him plummeting over a cliff in addition to the electrical damage.  Batista rushes over to make sure he’s not getting up, and he isn’t.The dwarves come rushing down the path towards the party.We saw you fighting the ogres, and we figured we had to help!” one yells out. “They were searching for us, but we thought that with two groups, we could take them on!”Jovah dusts off the remaining snow from the avalanche, and turns to greet them.“We’ve been looking for you, or anyone else from Shadow Springs,” he says.“Well, then you’ve found us,” the dwarf replies.  “Welcome to the Sky Temple.  My name is Vekkoth.”</blockquote>

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