LowNote's story: Beginning at the End

[LowNote]

THE PRESENT: (Loren Brackson)

As Loren Brackson stared into the scrying pool and studied the dragon he was about to kill, his thoughts went back to the divination. How old is Sec'r, the great blue of Red Sands? 957 years old. Should we confront Sec'r in his lair, does he have any allies who would come to his aid? No. Sec'r's lair was well hidden; a single cavern without entrance or exit inside one of the thousand stone pillars that dotted the Red Sands Desert. Loren had been seeking it on and off for years, but little could hide from his magic today, and nothing at all could hide from a god. If Sec'r is not alone in his lair, who accompanies him? Save for his familiar and possessions, the dragon is alone. What is his familiar? An elemental of earth.

It will be in the walls... no in the pillar directly beneath him. Close enough to share spells but untouched by the anti-magic. Simon's thoughts came to him over the mind link. I agree. What else? More or less spherical cavern around... sixty feet in diameter, maybe a foot of water at the bottom... twenty feet high pillar, twenty feet wide, twenty feet wide dragon on top of it. We'll be in range of its mouth where ever we are, but stick near the wall and we'll miss the anti-magic. My wish will end it, or Snoz's will. Traps? No... although lots of jagged edges and loose rubble along the walls. They look clawed. And that water must be there for something. The water isn't magical, it's probably to spread his lightning, which won't be a problem anyway. Loren had lost track of all the wards laid on him, but electricity was taken care of several times over.

Any magic at all? That was Snoz, the other rogue. No, not outside the field. Sec'r's two rings and necklace aren't going to be for ornamentation. Not to mention the hoard he's laying on. The altar hanging from the ceiling should be radiating... perhaps it is shielded. The altar was to Bol, domains law and wealth, the same deity that the two dwarven hierophants next to him worshiped, the same deity who had been answering their questions.

Does Sec'r have any qualities which are unusual or unnatural for a 957 year old blue dragon? No. Have you changed your position on our confrontation? I am as before. I shall not oppose or aid. Seek neither my miracles nor my servants. Loren snorted. If there was ambivalence in heaven, there was none here on earth. It didn't matter anyway, since the hierophants couldn't bring angles Loren had brought one himself. Minythinon, a Solar of Olympus, stood behind Loren. A year ago he been at Minythinon's call, and now the Solar was at his.

The dragon had found the sensor. Loren. Sec'r. A pleasure, even under these circumstances. Loren fought back a wave of melancholy; once Sec'r had terrified him, awed him, saved him, and now the dragon was going to die. We almost fought a year ago. Should have. It would have been a glorious battle. Now... You and your companions have grown terrifyingly strong, as some mortals do. Your allies and servants as well. Once I was counted among that company, why not again? Will you yield? Sec'r started to speak, but instead paused. Twenty heart beats passed in silence before a sneer jumped up on Sec'r's oversized mouth. No.

As Loren began the teleport his foresight reveled the dragon would target him first, suppress Loren's wards, Loren's fire elemental guard, and snatch the mage in his jaws. Loren grinned, five little words would fix that: I wish Sec'r's anti-magic ended. Five champions, three cohorts, an angle, and an elemental vanished and reappeared in the scrying pool. Flying near the ceiling Loren watched Sec'r's head turn toward him. Loren drew a breath to make his wish and choked: there was no air in the cavern! Staring down into Sec'r's knowing eyes, Loren barely noted the green rays of a dimensional anchor lancing out from Bol's altar as his thoughts flew back the start of the road which brought the mage to this place.

Next update: The Past

 

[DrNilesCrane]

Great start - I like seeing how you're using the high level magic!
The cavern without air suddenly gave me an idea for my own campaign... [evil chuckle]

 

[LowNote]

DM Note: Thank you, I’m happy you like it. My five players and I spent over a year in this campaign, always meaning to post the log but never actually getting around to it. Now that we have finished, we’ve agreed to write the story before starting a new campaign. Hopefully structuring it as a flashback from the final act will let me spice up any slow parts with high level combat. Working from both ends toward the middle will nicely hide Something Important™ that happened there for dramatic effect. Here is the next installment.

THE PAST: (Loren Brackson)

The story began, as the bards say they often do, with the death of a great many kobolds. Thankfully Loren wasn’t the one who had to go through the tedium of killing them. Instead he’d stood in the courtyard of White Sand’s new church of Bol with fifteen other “independent contractors” hoping for a job cleaning up the aftermath. Once confined to dwarven holds, the church of Bol in the last decade had aggressively expanded into human territories by peddling life insurance. Simply put, if you could afford it (and the church of Bol offered innumerable payment plans), and died, the priests would bring you back, no questions asked. Sometimes that meant digging corpses out of some gods forsaken ruin idiots and s poked around in for fun. That’s where Loren hoped to come in.

One of the two dwarves standing atop the temple steps cleared his throat. Brackson, Loren, please approach the podium. Driftwood, Snoz, please approach the podium. No surname, Simon, please approach the podium. That will be all for today, the rest of you may return tomorrow.

A Halfling and a Human respectively mounted the steps beside Loren. They looked and smelled like wharf-rats. Simon gave Loren the hairy eyeball. Gutter trash. Loren returned a sneer. The human looked about to make something of it when the dwarves started to speak. The Greenhand, Laserous Greenhand, Patriarch of the Greenhand family has asked the church of Bol to fulfill its contractual agreement to safeguard the life of his family and restore his daughter Sara, who has been divined dead in Morning Mist, to extance. We offer you three gentlemen a provisional class C license to aid in the recovery of her remains within ten days. Morning Mist were old elf ruins two days north of the city state that were popular among adventurers seeking… adventure. Payment upon success shall be fifty gold coins and one hundred celestial credits. The dwarf meant Bol Bucks, church currency toward an employee’s resurrection, liquefiable for one quarter value.

Loren gave the pair a closer look. Bright eyes sat above brushed beards which covered beer bellies. Both had the scales with gold symbol of Bol on their tunics. They looked the type of dwarves that would happily inform you of your ineligibility due to illegibility of the third triplicate copy of your seventh reference on your second place of residence and happily give you a mouth full of hairy knuckles if you complained.

We will lead the expedition, the first dwarf finished. I am Eryk and this is my sister Mydia, of clan Mankiller, pleasure to make your acquaintance.