Here's a chunk of prologue to the big battle I've been talking about. There will be another to follow in the next several days and then I'll begin posting the "Fight to (almost) end all Fights".
Shadows of the Past
Although the party spend several days recovering from the seemingly endless trials of the Temple of Bane, they were not idle. Speaks With Stone and Raven both spent much of their time in communion with the higher powers from which they derived their magic. Both felt that with the battle against the force of evil and corruption on the horizon, they needed to seek insight to magics that would aid them in that endeavor.
(One of my house rules is that if Divine spellcasters want any of the spells from the splatbooks, they have to meditate on the spell for 1 day per spell level and then make a spellcraft check (DC 15 + 2xSpell Level). If they are successful, they can add the spell to their spell list. If not, they can try again after gaining a level or take on a quest (difficulty based on the level of the spell they seek) significant to their deity in order to be granted access to the spell. During the downtime, Speaks With Stone got the Feathers spell and Briar Web. Raven spent time doing this too but I can’t recall what spells he got. I’ll post them later if we remember.)
The group also discussed where to go next. Greatroot informed them that the Dark Druids appeared to be massing an army of undead, comprised largely of skeletal Gnolls and Ogres. He could not be precise about the numbers involved, but his avian informants reported that there were “too many to count” (how high the average sparrow could count was left to speculation). What they planned to do with this army was anybody’s guess, but it was surely not going to be pleasant.
But the group also acknowledged that they were now in possession of an item of great importance: The Journal of Titus Pontius Macer. That book held a lot of information about what happened during the Bane War and some of it was very sensitive. They needed to find a safe place to put it with someone they felt they could trust. After some discussion, they decided that the best place for it to be put in the possession of the dwarven “Record Keepers”, the sect of Moradin worshipers whose responsibility was to preserve knowledge and see to it that it was properly safeguarded.
The closest known group of Record Keepers were those who had traveled through Glynden in the recent past and then headed west to join the dwarven enclave that sought to recapture the Stone Tooth from the vile clutches of the Duergar. Heretofore, this journey would have been out of the question because the distance involved would have forced the party to spend a minimum of a month in travel to the Stone Tooth and back and that was too long to leave the Dark Druids to work their sinister plans unmolested. But Speaks now had a rapid means of travel available in the form of his Feathers spell. He could transform the entire party into birds and they could fly to the Stone Tooth in the matter of a few days.
Bidding farewell to Great Root and promising a quick return to battle the Dark Druids, Speaks and his companions gathered their gear and in moments were soaring above the Darkwood headed west toward the Fodor River. Three days later they spotted the distant shape of the Stone Tooth looming in the distance and casting a long shadow over the cold, glacial plains of the north. The sight filled Speaks with sorrow because when he had last lay eyes on the mountain, it had been in the company of Rhys and Krase. But he pushed aside his sadness and focused on the task at hand.
He had been feeling very conflicted of late. Clearly there were some event in the past that cast the Druids in a very poor light. Did any of the Druids who had trained him know about these things? Probably not considering how hard those involved in the Bane War had worked to suppress any link between the Druids and the Cult.
And what about these reports of a sect of Druids tasked to kill any who threatened to uncover these dire secrets. Were they still active or had they died out over the years when it became obvious that nobody remembered any Druid involvement with the Cult of Bane? How many more innocents were killed by those Druid assassins just because they had seen something that might threaten the favor the Druids had garnered among the Imperial elite?
Without question unearthing Macer’s journal was putting his whole order in a precarious situation. But what if the contents were true? The whole thing was shocking and uncomfortable. But there was nothing to be done for it now. Speaks was not going to involve himself in any cover up of past deeds. He had not participated in them and neither had any of his mentors to the best of his knowledge. Any ancient evils committed by the Druids were just that: Ancient. And that did not outweigh the good that they had done since then.
And it did not outweigh the good that he and his companions were trying to do now.
NEXT: East on a Cold Wind
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