Hi everyone!
My wife and I are back from New Zealand, where we had an incredible time. We hiked, rode horses, swam with dolphins, saw yellow-eyed penguins, toured the Cadbury chocolate factory, hiked some more, saw several Lord of the Rings filming locations, sea-kayaked, met super-nice people, and ate lots of good meals.
Piratecat and KidCthulhu picked us up from the airport and drove us home, which you'd think was a nice thing to do. And it was nice. But it paled before the really nice thing that they did. We invited them inside for a few minutes, and when I walked through the door I immediately noticed a yummy smell. "What is that?" I wondered out loud.
"Lemon bread," said KidCthulhu, smirking.
The two of them had made us lemon-bread, and provided us with garlic bread and cheese to eat. (There was no food in our house.) And oranges. And they had brought more bread, ham and cheese to have for lunch the next day.
And they had left us flowers, one bunch on the kitchen table, and another in our bedroom. And they had cleaned our kitchen and bathrooms!, that included chiselling away some truly nasty stuff from the back of our fridge and from the stove top. And they had replaced all the burned out lightbulbs in the house. And they had folded the end of the toilet paper roll into a point, as they do in fancy hotels.
AND they left us the extended Two Towers, which we watched the very next day!
Best. Friends. Ever.
Anyhow, I've gone long enough without updating the Story Hour. Here's an update!
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 201
The rank stench of dead beast has become commonplace.
“Once you’ve smelled a stink-wiggle,” comments Ernie, “nothing else ever really smells bad.”
While Morningstar ponders and prays on the subject of hallow and resurrection spells, Flicker picks through the congealed loot they saw when they first arrived.
“Hey guys, look at this!”
The halfling picks up a small blue cube, prods it, and is instantly surrounded by a 10’ cube of faint ice-blue light. The wizards perk up and examine the effect. Dranko walks through the light with no difficulty; Aravis and Kibi think it’s some kind of elemental resistance. Flicker taps the cube again and lowers the field.
Grey Wolf casts detect magic on the rest of the pile and finds a number of magical items mixed in with the old remains. There’s a cross-section of petrified tree with a leather strap; a ring of twisted gold and silver wire; a small golden eagle’s claw; a small silver crown set with six rubies and eight clear glass gems; the blue cube; four candles in a cloth bag; a longsword with a skull near the hilt; a faintly-glowing halberd; and an empty silver scroll tube.
Dranko motions to the sword.
“Grey Wolf, it’s a less-evil replacement for your current longsword.”
Kay has been examining the remains; she thinks the loot once belonged to four humanoids, some elvish and some human. Lots of the bones have been ground to dust or chewed up.
Her face wrinkles with something akin both to confusion and deep thought. The others watch curiously as she stands after a minute, draws a blade, walks over to the nearest huge beast corpse, and starts carving into the body.
“Whatcha doing, Kay,” asks Morningstar, not entirely certain she wants to know the answer.
“I want to look at its stomach,” says the ranger.
“Er,” says Dranko, “we have a Leomund’s Secure Shelter if you’d rather sleep in that…”
“Do you think it ate an Eye of Moirel?” asks Morningstar.
“No, no… it’s just that, after looking around some, I can’t figure out what they eat. They didn’t live on those four poor people for the past few decades.”
She hacks her way in, disappearing into a disgusting mass of bloody viscera.
“The Black Circle certainly has been known to keep things in stasis, and let them out later,” says Morningstar.
“If you need a “clean” cantrip after this, don’t come running to me!” says Dranko.
A while later Kay emerges, covered with gore. She’s no less confused than when she went in.
“Huh. As far as I can tell, they weren’t eating anything. They must have been awfully hungry. But they seemed strong, not like something that was starving to death. Maybe things can’t starve to death here. Or maybe they just have an incredibly fast and clear digestive system.”
She looks doubtful.
* *
The Company undertakes a methodical search of the caverns. Kibilhathur moves slowly, almost gingerly, wondering at a strange feeling that has come over him. When he first arrived in Green Valley he felt a strange power in the world, running through the trees and rocks and even the air around him. After the battle against the beasts, the power has suffused his being with an energized tingling. He feels taut with it. There is some potential locked in his body that is just waiting for permission to be loosed. He tells the others what he feels.
“Maybe you have something like a Yrimpa?” says Morningstar.
“I don’t think so!” Scree thinks to Kibi with disdain.
Kibi tries to use the power to bring forth what he wants most at that moment: a cask of ale. What he gets instead is a spray of water from behind as Dranko hoses him with the Decanter of Endless Water.
“Use that thing on Kay,” Kibi growls.
They keep searching. The cavern system is enormous, with huge stalactites and stalagmites. Scales and bits of skin have been scraped here and there on rocky out-juttings. There are a few piles of old, hardened beast droppings, one of which the party must prevent Dranko from taking as a souvenir. Kay stoops to examine a couple of them, and thinks that they’re at least a year old. After some chiseling and more close examination she thinks that, for a short time at least, the beasts consumed their own excrement.
“You can do that?” asks Dranko, enchanted.
“NO!” comes a resounding chorus of responses.
Kay thinks again that the beasts must have been terribly hungry.
After a few hours, having gone for over a mile in various directions, the Company is satisfied that they have explored the entire cave complex. (Dranko has scrawled “Welcome to Blackhope Dungeons” on the walls in a few places.) At the end of a downward sloping tunnel there is a wide pool of water along with signs that the beasts often visited it. That belies the “beasts were in stasis until recently” theory. Beyond the pool is the “edge” of the cave, across which, like the end of the forest outside, they cannot pass.
There are no conventional exits or entrances, but they have found another glowing blue portal. Kay finds evidence that the beasts occasionally visited the area around it, though not nearly as often as they frequented either the watering hole or the portal through which the Company entered. This second portal glows blue like the other, a fixed rectangle seven feet high and three feet wide, too small for the beasts to fit through.
“It’s like the Beastiary, but on a bigger scale,” muses Morningstar.
“How do they get new guardian things in here?” wonders Ernie.
“This is creepy,” says Morningstar.
There is much puzzlement.
* *
With the exploration complete, Morningstar now turns her full attention to the matter of One Certain Step. She starts by casting speak with dead on the piece of the body that has the head and some lung. The paladin’s dead eyes flicker open. Morningstar just wants to make this as brief as possible.
“Step, this is Morningstar. Would you like to come back?”
Sound burbles up from Step’s open mouth.
“Yeeeeeessssssss.”
To be sure, she asks one more time.
“We would like to resurrect you. We will bring you back. Have you completed your task?”
The words push themselves out from the lifeless lungs.
“I must come back!”
“Very well then,” says Morningstar. She quickly ends the spell and turns away. Step’s eyes close again.
Satisfied, the cleric of Ell maps out a triangular section of a large cave that she will use as an area to hallow At each corner she places a holy symbol of one of the Company’s deities: Yondalla, Delioch, Pikon. She invites Kay, Dranko and Ernie to pray, while she does the same, sitting cross-legged in the center of the triangle as she casts.
While the priests do their work, the wizards set about identifying their newfound loot, and then follows discussion about the best way to divvy things up. There’s a ring of protection +3 for Kay, a small shield +3 for Flicker, and Grey Wolf takes the sword which is a longsword +3, undead bane that can also cast restoration 1/day. Other goodies include: a cube of frost resistance (Morningstar); a crown of combustion with six charges remaining, that allows the user to cast a heretofore unknown spell called paroxysm of fire* (Dranko); a talisman of arcane extension, 5 charges, that increase the duration of any spell (Kibi); a quickscroll tube, that allows spells on scrolls placed inside to be cast as if quickened (Ernie). Thehalberd +2 will be given to the folk of Green Valley, and the candles of invocation tuned to neutral evil are destroyed.
Before bed, Kibi (as he typically does) casts energy buffer on himself. As he casts he begins to tremble as the power surges through his body; he feels like all he has to do is “let go,” and… something… will happen. He doesn’t know what. Grey Wolf sees the expression on Kibi’s face and takes a step back.
“I’m going to let go, guys!” announces Kibi. Everyone else scampers away.
Energy surges from his feet to his head as he casts the spell, a surge both from without and within, but nothing extraordinary happens. The rest of the Company looks at him expectantly, but after a few seconds the dwarf just shrugs.
“Oh. Well, never mind. But I’ll try again and see what happens.”
He uses his Earth Mage power of xorn movement and again feels the surge of power, but again there is no obvious effect. (Though as he swims effortlessly through the rock Kibi notes that he can better understand his surroundings through temperature and vibrations. He can sense where the rock is more dense, and where there are air or water pockets, and where his friends are standing on the surface.)
Kibi pops back up to the surface. Whatever he let loose now occurs each time he casts a spell or uses an innate ability. He casts an experimental mirror image and this time the power infuses the spell itself; the mirror image goes off immediately, as if quickened. The dwarf is well pleased.
Ernie, with tongues cast on him, leaves the caves to talk with the Green Valley villagers still camped outside. To the hunter Reyn he says,
“We don’t think there’s anything else monster-y in the cave, but we’re going to need some quiet time to pray for the soul of friend who died in the battle. Would you mind staying away for another couple of days? Then we’re going to explore deeper into the cave. There’s a door…”
“There’s a door?!?!”
“We don’t know what’s beyond it,” says Ernie hastily.
“Can we investigate? Do you think it’s safe now? Many of us are eager to explore anything that is not our valley.”
“I think it’s reasonably safe., but like I said…”
“Oh, yes, we’ll give you a few days. We’ll stay here. If you come out with news that something has changed, we’ll send someone back to the village to tell Tog.”
As one final matter before bed, Aravis casts true seeing and peers closely at the “edge of the world” inside the caverns. He sees it as an opaque dark gray curtain. The blue portals look just the same as they do to normal eyes.
“Welcome back to the Bottle,” mutters Grey Wolf.
The Company falls asleep to the soft, distant sound of Morningstar chanting in the darkness.
* *
After a evening’s worth of sleep, the others wake to find Morningstar still in a praying trance. With some hours yet before she finishes, Dranko sets about repairing the many rents in Step’s abused armor. The others spend their time wandering through the caves, or stopping to offer their own prayers near to where Morningstar is casting.
At last she finishes the hallow. The ground within the triangle becomes a black somehow deeper than the general blackness around it. Morningstar uses the daylight power of her shield, and to her surprise it lights up the entire hallowed area for a moment before shrinking back down it its normal size. She feels a holy comfort, as though she sits in an Ellish temple.
She looks up to find Snokas standing nearby, cradling the head and torso of One Certain Step.
“Where you want him?” her cohort asks.
She motions for him to set down the body in the center of the hallowed triangle. Morningstar prepares the components for a resurrection, closes her eyes, and offers up two prayers before casting the spell. To Ell, she prays:
Dark Lady, I hope my vision is clear and not clouded by my friendship with the paladin One Certain Step. It seems to me that he is needed for our task and his spirit wishes to return, and that by taking this step I continue in my role as a child of darkness and also of the light. I pray that in this, as in all things, your Grace and my faith will help me to see clearly though I walk in sacred Darkness.
Then to Kemma, Kivian Goddess of the Sun, she offers a second prayer.
I know that your loyal servant One Certain Step had some reservations about being resurrected by a servant of Ell. It was his feeling that if he still had a work to do in your service, he wanted me to try to bring him back.
I am a servant of the Darkness and my heart and soul belong to Ell. Ell has named me a child of the Light as well as a child of the Dark, and I have done my best to be both. Day must follow Night and Night must follow Day. The contrast strengthens both.
One Certain Step has shown me that there is honor in not only enduring Light as a necessary balance to Darkness, but in accepting it. In watching Step’s devotion to you, I have even begun to appreciate the beauty that resides in the Day.
If One Certain Step is needed to continue his work in your name, then I pray you find me an adequate vessel to revive him.
Morningstar spends ten minutes in casting her potent spell, sprinkling the body with holy water and diamond dust. Her own body becomes darker and darker as the magic gathers, while Step’s remains grow increasingly bright. As the spell nears its end Morningstar is just a dark silhouette and Step is a form of solid light. His glowing torso elongates into a man’s shape. When the glow subsides, Step is whole.
Morningstar expects there will be some delay before Step is awake and conscious, and all are surprised when the paladin of Kemma sits up very suddenly, his eyes wide.
“It’s okay,” says Morningstar soothingly. “You…”
“When I died, what did you see?” interrupts Step, his voice agitated.
Several voices break out at once to describe it.
“It was a soft, shimmering, glowing light, that trailed the…pieces of your… corpse.”
Dejected but not surprised. Step turns to Morningstar.
“I’m afraid I must ask a small amount more from you,” he says.
“I can do it,” says Morningstar.
“I will need atonement, but now I must pray. Excuse me.”
And to everyone’s further surprise, Step closes his eyes and begins to pray.
Quietly, Morningstar asks, “Do you mean the actual miracle of atonement, granted though our Gods?”
“I think so,” answers Step, his eyes still closed. “I must pray some more. I apologize for being brusque. I owe you my life, obviously.”
“Whatever you need,” says Morningstar.
Step prays for another hour, almost seeming not to breathe. His eyes open and he speaks to the others, who have not left his side.
“I have not followed the code of my Goddess properly.”
When Kibi attempts to object, Step cuts him off.
“I don’t wish to discuss the details. But I did learn something in the afterlife. Why I must die here, I think. That is why I need atonement, and to better myself.”
“Just one statement, and I’ll shut up,” says Dranko. “If you won’t discuss the details, how the hell are we going to help you do things properly?”
“I must do it without your help!” says Step.
“But if it’s us that’s… you know, leading you down…”
“Have you been led astray?” asks Ernie.
“That is exactly the problem,” admits Step.
“That we’ve led you astray?” asks Kibi.
“No, I did not mean it that way,” says Step, reddening slightly and searching for words. “I have… when a holy warrior of Kemma dies, he leaves behind Illumination that he has earned in life, that is equal to how he has comported himself, to how he has followed his code and served his Goddess. I believe there will be a place where that light – my light – will be necessary. What you saw from me will not be sufficient.”
“Oh. But we feel you’re sufficient,” says Ernie assuringly.
“And I thank you. But, meaning no offense, I am held to a higher standard.”
“I understand that,” says Ernie.
“Well, if you’ve been stealing party treasure, can we have it back?” says Dranko.
“I did not steal!” Step responds angrily.
“That was a joke! I’m sorry!” says Dranko.
“Dranko,” says Ernie, “remember the rule about the recently bereaved? I think it applies in this case.”
“Oh, that’s right!” says Dranko. “Ernie comforts them. I don’t.”
“We’ll do whatever we can to help,” says Morningstar. “Certainly your body glowed very brightly as you were being resurrected.”
“Your doing,” says Step curtly.
“Maybe Kemma felt you still needed your holy light, and so kept it from all leaking out,” Ernie suggests.
Despite himself, Step is amused for a moments and cracks a smile.
“Perhaps,” he says gently. “But I did go to the afterlife, however briefly. My experiences there I will not discuss. But I have come to a certain understanding as a result. It will be sufficient that I die at the right time, having atoned for my sins.”
“When that day comes, will you want to be brought back from the dead again?” asks Morningstar.
“I don’t know,” Step answers gravely. “If I have restored my soul properly, I expect not.”
Preemptively, Ernie pipes up, “No, Dranko, You don’t get all of his stuff.”
Step stands and smiles, bowing to Morningstar.
“While life remains in me I am in your debt.”
“Here, have a tusk!” says Dranko, motioning to one of the huge tusks into which he’s been carving scrimshaw.
“I do not wish to be reminded,” Step grimaces. “The last time I saw that, it was the last thing I saw, as it protruded from my chest!”
“Yeah, I still have nightmares about anvils,” says Ernie sympathetically.
Kibi casts shrink item on the tusk to make it possible to transport, but the power that surges through him floods the spell with extra power. Instead of reducing the tusk to one twelfth its size, he shrinks it down to 1/144th, affecting it twice. Now it’s only half-an-inch long!
Finally finished with their business in the cave, the Company marches down to the blue glowing portal, prepared to continue on their quest for a third Eye of Moirel. They cast some spells, take deep breaths, and plunge through the gateway into a new unknown.
…to be continued…
* - readers of Sepulchrave’s Story Hour may recognize this; no spoilers please!
More regular backups would be a good idea too, idiot. 
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