carborundum
Adventurer
I reckon Sagiro will be a bit busy til Cardhunter launches (this week? )
Then updates-a-gogo!
One can always hope
Then updates-a-gogo!
One can always hope
-
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Sagiro's Story Hour: The FINAL Adventures of Abernathy's Company (FINISHED 7/3/14)
- Thread starter Sagiro
- Start date
LightPhoenix
First Post
Card Hunter goes live this Thursday midnight EDT. After that I'm guessing naps-a-gogo, then updates.
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
It hasn't been Card Hunter eating most of my time, though we're obviously excited that we're so close to shipping. Rather it's been a combination of family vacations, dealing with kids' back-to-school stuff, reading novels, and working on the novelization of this very story. (Now over 80k words, and I've hardly scratched the surface!). But the Story Hour is not forgotten, and I continue to chip away at it, bit by bit.
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 366
Onward and Downward
Dranko wastes no time. He activates his boots of haste, shifts to a better defensive position, and annihilates one of the floating robed creatures with a salvo of perfectly-placed whip strikes. The thing drops into a mangled heap, its long wooden staff clattering to the floor.
Each of these things has such a staff which, like their faces, crawls with squidgy black lesions, the telltale mark of Adversary blood infection. One of the monsters glides forward and taps Aravis gently with his staff. Aravis vanishes. His voice, annoyed, still sounds over the telepathic bond. “Ah, crap. I’m in a tunnel somewhere. A long tunnel.”
“I thought teleportation didn’t work down here,” says Flicker.
“That may be,” says Aravis, “but that thing just managed it. But if I can be teleported to wherever I am, I should be able to get myself back.”
A second of the infected creatures stares at Dranko, who feels the horrid burning of sympathetic black lesions rising to his own skin. Then it touches its staff to his chest, and he can feel intelligence draining from his mind. Also, the interior of temple disappears, and he finds himself transported high up on the path they had already traversed, not far from where they emerged from the hole through the Iron Barrier.
“They did something to me!” he complains over the mind-link. His brain doesn’t seem to be working correctly. “What’s that word? Tumbleport? I think they tumbleported me. Er, I’m having some trouble thinking about words.”
Yet another of the foul things taps Kibi with its staff, and the dwarf reappears directly outside the temple. His head feels muzzy, like he’s trying hard to come fully awake.
Ernie pulls out his holy symbol and holds it forward, invoking the name of Yondalla as he tries to turn the Essence-infused undead. They flinch, very slightly, but are otherwise unharmed. “Oh, crud,” Ernie mutters. “I think I was supposed to cross my fingers or something. I haven’t turned undead in a while!”
Grey Wolf decides he wants nothing to do with these robed menaces and their brain-sucking forced-teleportation staves. He changes into a dragon, flies upward, and circles, getting ready to breathe. Such a contingency doesn’t occur to Flicker; he stabs the closest foe repeatedly with a dagger, though with some misgivings about having lost Dranko as a flanking buddy. His target doesn’t drop, and he feels the wrongness of Essence flowing from it like a poison.
Kibi is still plenty smart. He casts effulgent epuration, surrounding himself with twenty silver discs. So girded, he runs back into the temple doorway and quickens an empowered coldfire. This strikes two of his enemies, but while they do suffer some damage, it’s not severe. These things have some resistance to fire. But there is a strange side-effect to his spell. Where the burst of magical energy detonated, the little light-motes that provide illumination here in the Underdark are completely wiped out. A strange black sphere of un-light now hangs in the temple interior, almost like a solid object itself, and only slowly do the light-motes along its edges start to drift inward to re-illuminate the gap.
Morningstar also tries turning, imploring Ell to smite her foes, but again the monsters resist. Sighing, she quickens a divine favor.
Aravis tries to teleport back, but it fails. “Wait,” he complains. “I can’t teleport back, even though I was teleported here? Damn it” He adds a few more curses about the injustice of the universe’s inner workings, while Dranko dashes back down the stairs toward the temple below.
The corrupted priests press in upon the Company. Ernie resists their attempt to teleport him away, but suffers terrible damage from their pulsing black lesions. Morningstar and Flicker are sapped of intellect and sent elsewhere – Morningstar to an upper floor of the temple (where she can see Grey Wolf’s draconic form wheeling around almost at eye-level), and Flicker to the wide cavern outside.
Ernie busts out his ultimate weapon against the undead – mass heal – and catches two of the enemy in its net. One is nearly blasted to pieces, leaving it with protruding bones and leaking sludgy black fluid. The second is badly damaged, though not so thoroughly as the first. And of course he himself is healed of his wounds. Seeing that one of his enemies could almost be felled with harsh language, he finishes it off with a quickened holy smite.
Grey Wolf dive-bombs and breathes on the enemy, but they dodge nimbly away from the center of his acid cone, and worse, their energy resistance extends to acid as well. Bostock, subsumed into Grey Wolf’s dragon form, is still able to communicate. They’re not resistant to steel, he says, obviously frustrated. But like Kibi’s spell before it, Grey Wolf’s dragon breath has left a wide cone of darkness slashed through the ambient light of the temple interior.
Kibi foregoes the energy attacks this time around and casts summon monster IX, calling into being a pack of five greater earth elementals. Two of these immediately move to grapple Kibi’s enemies, while the remaining ones pound them with boulder-fists. Dranko rushes into the room just in time to see this happen; he charges forward, whip cracking, and tears chunks of moribund flesh from one of the corrupted monsters’ bones.
Morningstar downs a potion of fly and swoops from her high balcony to rejoin the fight, just as the two grappling elementals vanish, teleported to who-knows-where. The newly-free undead stare at Dranko and Ernie, their black pustules squirming along their skin and causing similar lesions to form and burst on their victims’ faces. Ernie fights down the horror and returns fire with searing light, but his target is nimble and dodges the ray. Grey Wolf retains his dragon form, but since his breath weapon has proved ineffectual, he goes for the bite instead. He is spared learning what a mouthful of Essence-infected undead tastes like, as the agile creature ducks under Grey Wolf’s closing jaws.
Kibi still has three elementals left. He instructs two of them to grapple the undead, and once they have done so, the third punches one of their heads right off its shoulders.
Only one enemy now remains, and it doesn’t last much longer. Morningstar burns a hole through its stomach with a darkbeam, and Dranko rips it apart with a barrage of whip-cracks. Its infected staff clatters to the floor.
/*/
Even before the Company can catch its collective breath, a massive sound echoes all around the temple and the cavern surrounding it, a wrenching-metal sound, like a huge iron barrel is buckling beneath an indescribable weight. This grows louder over a handful of seconds, and then finishes with a thunderous slamming, as though a metal giant the size of a ship had pounded its fists together.
Dranko rushes outside to look, expecting maybe that one of the remaining two stalactites has broken off, but they are both still hanging above the temple. He thinks the sound may have come from the stairs down which they descended, and runs off to investigate. The others follow.
There is no more hole, burned through Yulan’s shell with Adversary blood. The sound they heard was the Iron Barrier re-sealing itself, leaving only a thin, ragged seam behind. If a return to the surface world seemed doubtful before, now all doubt has been erased.
Over the mind-link they hear Aravis’s voice. “I’ve come to a door. I think it leads into the cavern with the welcome temple, the one you all are in. The door I’m looking at is locked, chained and barred from this side. And there are four glyphs carved into it, which I can read thanks to Parthol’s translator beads. They mean ‘Danger,’ ‘Warning’, ‘Stop’ and ‘Death.’
He casts knock, so that he can return to his friends, all the while grumbling that Adversary blood allowed the enemy creatures to teleport others, in apparent violation of the rules of the Underdark. Once all are gathered, Morningstar uses a wand of restoration to cure everyone of the intelligence drain inflicted by the dead priests.
/*/
With freedom to search the rest of the temple free of distraction, the Company discovers a richly-appointed room on the upper story. In the back of this chamber is a statue, a tall woman sculpted of black rock, her hands raised, palms up. She is humanoid, though not human, and the hands of the statue match closely the many hands they have seen ornamenting the lower temple and the walls outside.
In the center of the room is a table, on which rests a cushion. There is a round indentation in the pillow, where a heavy circlet must have rested for generations.
Next to the cushion is a severed head, of the same race as those creatures the party just fought. And stacked behind the statue in the back, in a reeking heap, are twenty more bodies. Most are wearing priestly robes, and all of their clothes are made of an odd, stiff cloth. Each has a hole burned into its chest.
The Company’s hatred of Meledien at this moment is difficult to overstate.
Morningstar casts speak with dead on the head upon the cushion. Its answers are barely audible, coming in rasping groans.
“I’m sorry we’re late. We are the seven you were waiting for. What were you supposed to give to us?”
Circlet of Yavin.
“Who was Yavin?”
One of the Sister Gods.
“What was the Circlet of Yavin supposed to do for us?”
Guide you.
“Why were we the ones supposed to receive it?”
Prophecy of Yavin.
“Was there anything else you were supposed to give us?”
No.
“Is there anywhere else we can find the Prophecy of Yavin?”
It is well-known… oral tradition.
“No one in your temple survived. How should we put your people to rest?”
Burn.
Thinking that perhaps this head was left by their enemies to convey some message, Morningstar grits her teeth and asks,
“Is there anything else you were supposed to tell us?”
They said, “it’s already over.”
“Where was the Circlet supposed to guide us?”
The place where you will fulfill your destiny.
“If you were us, where would you head next?”
Kessedth.
The others, listening to the head speak, hear only a guttural gibberish, scattered sub-vocalizations and coughed-up snippets, but Morningstar can divine their meaning. That’s because even the poor decapitated priest is speaking partly with sound and partly in thoughts, but only Morningstar hears the thought-portions of the answers.
The answers only confirm the Company’s fears; this Temple and everything in it was dedicated to them, and housed an artifact meant to guide them to where they would, presumably, save the world. But that has all been derailed by Meledien, Tarsos and Seven Dark Words, who now have the Circlet of Yavin to go along with their six-month head start.
Due diligence leads them to explore the remainder of the temple. In a desk drawer, along with a pen and pot of dried-up ink, Flicker discovers several high-quality diamonds and sapphires, along with four or five gray crystal fragments. A second drawer holds over twenty square mithril chits. The halfling guesses the total is worth at least ten thousand gold pieces, and Dranko rejoices that at least some good has come from their arrival.
Kibi strokes his beard. “We should have brought twigs and branches and normal cloth with us. Imagine how valuable they’d be to someone down here.”
Before leaving the temple, the Company makes a pile of the slain priests, and burns them, uttering prayers to the Sister God Yavin. The dust-mote lights drift away from the flames.
/*/
They leave the Cavern of the Temple by the door Aravis has discovered, its chains and locks and bars now in a pile on the ground. Dranko crosses out the existing glyphs and adds his own: the symbol meaning “safe.”
The tunnel leading away from the cavern starts out wide and high, with a floor worn smooth, especially down its center. Soon enough, though, it becomes lower, narrower, and filled with twists and turns. Always it heads downward, usually gently but sometimes precipitously, though in the latter places, ladders or ropes or even stairs have been built in to make it easier to navigate the steep drops.
Taking a page from Dranko’s book, Ernie licks one of the ‘wooden’ ladders and detects a faint taste of fungus.
An hour into their journey, the dust motes begin to grow dim. It’s not that they’re entering a darker area; even the lights behind them are darkening. Aravis makes the connection first; that somewhere miles above them, the sun is setting. Kibi stone shapes the ground flat, in an area large enough to support Aravis’s secure shelter. Soon enough the light-motes have winked out, leaving them in darkness. All of them can still hear faint whispers whenever it’s quiet, the murmur of thought-voices that could be just outside the shelter or a hundred miles distant.
They sleep, spending their first night beneath Yulan’s Barrier. It passes without incident. They wake to find the light-motes are brightening once more.
For hours the next day they follow the tunnel as it winds and bends downward and (Kibi thinks) eastward. At one stretch it widens out and the ground becomes flat; there are several barrels and bags here, and a large crate pushed against one tunnel wall.
>>
Piratecat: “I click on them!”
Sagiro: “They burst open, except for one barrel, which explodes!”
>>
Flicker pries open a barrel and finds it full of musty water topped with a layer of scum. The crates contain moldy food, including something which looks suspiciously like an apple. After casting a purifying orison on it, Dranko takes a bite. It’s not an apple, though the taste is reminiscent. It’s tart, slightly bitter, and not wholly unpleasant.
Morningstar casts a thought capture. It’s difficult to translate what she finds, so alien are the thought processes of the Underdark natives, but she thinks she understands the sentiment well enough: it’s someone eager to see the temple where the saviors are prophesied to arrive.
“I hope there’ll still be someone alive to save,” says Dranko. The next living creature they see down here will be the first.
After another night in a secure shelter, Grey Wolf decides to speed up the journey by casting a phantom steed for everyone in the Company. Their progress improves markedly. Every ten miles or so is another flattened and widened length of tunnel stocked with food and drink; some of these have moldy straw pallets as well. By the time they arrive at a second door at the far end of the tunnel, Kibi thinks they’ve descended another mile and a half below where the temple waited.
Like the door far above, this one is locked. Kibi casts knock, and they hear the sounds of bars, chains and locks falling away. Flicker slowly pushes the door open, and they step out onto a high and wide ledge overlooking a large natural cavern which is home to a little town. There are eight buildings clustered below, through which runs a little stream. Several tunnels lead out from the cavern. The far wall is more vertical than the others, and is covered with something multicolored that glistens in the light of the motes.
There is no sign of movement down in the town, but as they fly their mounts downward they detect no stench of death, which is something of a relief.
“Anyone here?” calls Dranko. His voice echoes but is not answered.
The shimmering wall turns out to be a vertical garden, growing fungus in parti-colored varieties. A system of pumps and pipes brings water to the top of the wall, where it sheets down over the sprouting mushrooms. Even Ernie is not familiar with the types.
Three buildings stand out, larger than the rest. The one at the far end of the cavern is probably a temple, judging from the huge carved black hands that adorn its walls. A second is an old general store, its crumbling shelves stocked with moldy food, boots, ropes, water skins and climbing equipment. Kicked under the counter are two gray crystal chits and three mithril squares. There is no blood or other sign of violence, and no indications of a hasty evacuation. The Company speculates that this was a town that supplied pilgrims headed to the Cavern of Arrival. It’s no wonder that it’s been abandoned.
The third large building was once a two-story inn. The party wanders through its rooms and halls; the beds are made of a wood-like hard fungus, and the mattresses stuffed with something similar to, but not exactly, feathers.
Grey Wolf, under the influence of enhanced senses, hears a sound coming from one of the rooms at the end of the second-floor hallway.
It sounds like snoring.
…to be continued…
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 366
Onward and Downward
Dranko wastes no time. He activates his boots of haste, shifts to a better defensive position, and annihilates one of the floating robed creatures with a salvo of perfectly-placed whip strikes. The thing drops into a mangled heap, its long wooden staff clattering to the floor.
Each of these things has such a staff which, like their faces, crawls with squidgy black lesions, the telltale mark of Adversary blood infection. One of the monsters glides forward and taps Aravis gently with his staff. Aravis vanishes. His voice, annoyed, still sounds over the telepathic bond. “Ah, crap. I’m in a tunnel somewhere. A long tunnel.”
“I thought teleportation didn’t work down here,” says Flicker.
“That may be,” says Aravis, “but that thing just managed it. But if I can be teleported to wherever I am, I should be able to get myself back.”
A second of the infected creatures stares at Dranko, who feels the horrid burning of sympathetic black lesions rising to his own skin. Then it touches its staff to his chest, and he can feel intelligence draining from his mind. Also, the interior of temple disappears, and he finds himself transported high up on the path they had already traversed, not far from where they emerged from the hole through the Iron Barrier.
“They did something to me!” he complains over the mind-link. His brain doesn’t seem to be working correctly. “What’s that word? Tumbleport? I think they tumbleported me. Er, I’m having some trouble thinking about words.”
Yet another of the foul things taps Kibi with its staff, and the dwarf reappears directly outside the temple. His head feels muzzy, like he’s trying hard to come fully awake.
Ernie pulls out his holy symbol and holds it forward, invoking the name of Yondalla as he tries to turn the Essence-infused undead. They flinch, very slightly, but are otherwise unharmed. “Oh, crud,” Ernie mutters. “I think I was supposed to cross my fingers or something. I haven’t turned undead in a while!”
Grey Wolf decides he wants nothing to do with these robed menaces and their brain-sucking forced-teleportation staves. He changes into a dragon, flies upward, and circles, getting ready to breathe. Such a contingency doesn’t occur to Flicker; he stabs the closest foe repeatedly with a dagger, though with some misgivings about having lost Dranko as a flanking buddy. His target doesn’t drop, and he feels the wrongness of Essence flowing from it like a poison.
Kibi is still plenty smart. He casts effulgent epuration, surrounding himself with twenty silver discs. So girded, he runs back into the temple doorway and quickens an empowered coldfire. This strikes two of his enemies, but while they do suffer some damage, it’s not severe. These things have some resistance to fire. But there is a strange side-effect to his spell. Where the burst of magical energy detonated, the little light-motes that provide illumination here in the Underdark are completely wiped out. A strange black sphere of un-light now hangs in the temple interior, almost like a solid object itself, and only slowly do the light-motes along its edges start to drift inward to re-illuminate the gap.
Morningstar also tries turning, imploring Ell to smite her foes, but again the monsters resist. Sighing, she quickens a divine favor.
Aravis tries to teleport back, but it fails. “Wait,” he complains. “I can’t teleport back, even though I was teleported here? Damn it” He adds a few more curses about the injustice of the universe’s inner workings, while Dranko dashes back down the stairs toward the temple below.
The corrupted priests press in upon the Company. Ernie resists their attempt to teleport him away, but suffers terrible damage from their pulsing black lesions. Morningstar and Flicker are sapped of intellect and sent elsewhere – Morningstar to an upper floor of the temple (where she can see Grey Wolf’s draconic form wheeling around almost at eye-level), and Flicker to the wide cavern outside.
Ernie busts out his ultimate weapon against the undead – mass heal – and catches two of the enemy in its net. One is nearly blasted to pieces, leaving it with protruding bones and leaking sludgy black fluid. The second is badly damaged, though not so thoroughly as the first. And of course he himself is healed of his wounds. Seeing that one of his enemies could almost be felled with harsh language, he finishes it off with a quickened holy smite.
Grey Wolf dive-bombs and breathes on the enemy, but they dodge nimbly away from the center of his acid cone, and worse, their energy resistance extends to acid as well. Bostock, subsumed into Grey Wolf’s dragon form, is still able to communicate. They’re not resistant to steel, he says, obviously frustrated. But like Kibi’s spell before it, Grey Wolf’s dragon breath has left a wide cone of darkness slashed through the ambient light of the temple interior.
Kibi foregoes the energy attacks this time around and casts summon monster IX, calling into being a pack of five greater earth elementals. Two of these immediately move to grapple Kibi’s enemies, while the remaining ones pound them with boulder-fists. Dranko rushes into the room just in time to see this happen; he charges forward, whip cracking, and tears chunks of moribund flesh from one of the corrupted monsters’ bones.
Morningstar downs a potion of fly and swoops from her high balcony to rejoin the fight, just as the two grappling elementals vanish, teleported to who-knows-where. The newly-free undead stare at Dranko and Ernie, their black pustules squirming along their skin and causing similar lesions to form and burst on their victims’ faces. Ernie fights down the horror and returns fire with searing light, but his target is nimble and dodges the ray. Grey Wolf retains his dragon form, but since his breath weapon has proved ineffectual, he goes for the bite instead. He is spared learning what a mouthful of Essence-infected undead tastes like, as the agile creature ducks under Grey Wolf’s closing jaws.
Kibi still has three elementals left. He instructs two of them to grapple the undead, and once they have done so, the third punches one of their heads right off its shoulders.
Only one enemy now remains, and it doesn’t last much longer. Morningstar burns a hole through its stomach with a darkbeam, and Dranko rips it apart with a barrage of whip-cracks. Its infected staff clatters to the floor.
/*/
Even before the Company can catch its collective breath, a massive sound echoes all around the temple and the cavern surrounding it, a wrenching-metal sound, like a huge iron barrel is buckling beneath an indescribable weight. This grows louder over a handful of seconds, and then finishes with a thunderous slamming, as though a metal giant the size of a ship had pounded its fists together.
Dranko rushes outside to look, expecting maybe that one of the remaining two stalactites has broken off, but they are both still hanging above the temple. He thinks the sound may have come from the stairs down which they descended, and runs off to investigate. The others follow.
There is no more hole, burned through Yulan’s shell with Adversary blood. The sound they heard was the Iron Barrier re-sealing itself, leaving only a thin, ragged seam behind. If a return to the surface world seemed doubtful before, now all doubt has been erased.
Over the mind-link they hear Aravis’s voice. “I’ve come to a door. I think it leads into the cavern with the welcome temple, the one you all are in. The door I’m looking at is locked, chained and barred from this side. And there are four glyphs carved into it, which I can read thanks to Parthol’s translator beads. They mean ‘Danger,’ ‘Warning’, ‘Stop’ and ‘Death.’
He casts knock, so that he can return to his friends, all the while grumbling that Adversary blood allowed the enemy creatures to teleport others, in apparent violation of the rules of the Underdark. Once all are gathered, Morningstar uses a wand of restoration to cure everyone of the intelligence drain inflicted by the dead priests.
/*/
With freedom to search the rest of the temple free of distraction, the Company discovers a richly-appointed room on the upper story. In the back of this chamber is a statue, a tall woman sculpted of black rock, her hands raised, palms up. She is humanoid, though not human, and the hands of the statue match closely the many hands they have seen ornamenting the lower temple and the walls outside.
In the center of the room is a table, on which rests a cushion. There is a round indentation in the pillow, where a heavy circlet must have rested for generations.
Next to the cushion is a severed head, of the same race as those creatures the party just fought. And stacked behind the statue in the back, in a reeking heap, are twenty more bodies. Most are wearing priestly robes, and all of their clothes are made of an odd, stiff cloth. Each has a hole burned into its chest.
The Company’s hatred of Meledien at this moment is difficult to overstate.
Morningstar casts speak with dead on the head upon the cushion. Its answers are barely audible, coming in rasping groans.
“I’m sorry we’re late. We are the seven you were waiting for. What were you supposed to give to us?”
Circlet of Yavin.
“Who was Yavin?”
One of the Sister Gods.
“What was the Circlet of Yavin supposed to do for us?”
Guide you.
“Why were we the ones supposed to receive it?”
Prophecy of Yavin.
“Was there anything else you were supposed to give us?”
No.
“Is there anywhere else we can find the Prophecy of Yavin?”
It is well-known… oral tradition.
“No one in your temple survived. How should we put your people to rest?”
Burn.
Thinking that perhaps this head was left by their enemies to convey some message, Morningstar grits her teeth and asks,
“Is there anything else you were supposed to tell us?”
They said, “it’s already over.”
“Where was the Circlet supposed to guide us?”
The place where you will fulfill your destiny.
“If you were us, where would you head next?”
Kessedth.
The others, listening to the head speak, hear only a guttural gibberish, scattered sub-vocalizations and coughed-up snippets, but Morningstar can divine their meaning. That’s because even the poor decapitated priest is speaking partly with sound and partly in thoughts, but only Morningstar hears the thought-portions of the answers.
The answers only confirm the Company’s fears; this Temple and everything in it was dedicated to them, and housed an artifact meant to guide them to where they would, presumably, save the world. But that has all been derailed by Meledien, Tarsos and Seven Dark Words, who now have the Circlet of Yavin to go along with their six-month head start.
Due diligence leads them to explore the remainder of the temple. In a desk drawer, along with a pen and pot of dried-up ink, Flicker discovers several high-quality diamonds and sapphires, along with four or five gray crystal fragments. A second drawer holds over twenty square mithril chits. The halfling guesses the total is worth at least ten thousand gold pieces, and Dranko rejoices that at least some good has come from their arrival.
Kibi strokes his beard. “We should have brought twigs and branches and normal cloth with us. Imagine how valuable they’d be to someone down here.”
Before leaving the temple, the Company makes a pile of the slain priests, and burns them, uttering prayers to the Sister God Yavin. The dust-mote lights drift away from the flames.
/*/
They leave the Cavern of the Temple by the door Aravis has discovered, its chains and locks and bars now in a pile on the ground. Dranko crosses out the existing glyphs and adds his own: the symbol meaning “safe.”
The tunnel leading away from the cavern starts out wide and high, with a floor worn smooth, especially down its center. Soon enough, though, it becomes lower, narrower, and filled with twists and turns. Always it heads downward, usually gently but sometimes precipitously, though in the latter places, ladders or ropes or even stairs have been built in to make it easier to navigate the steep drops.
Taking a page from Dranko’s book, Ernie licks one of the ‘wooden’ ladders and detects a faint taste of fungus.
An hour into their journey, the dust motes begin to grow dim. It’s not that they’re entering a darker area; even the lights behind them are darkening. Aravis makes the connection first; that somewhere miles above them, the sun is setting. Kibi stone shapes the ground flat, in an area large enough to support Aravis’s secure shelter. Soon enough the light-motes have winked out, leaving them in darkness. All of them can still hear faint whispers whenever it’s quiet, the murmur of thought-voices that could be just outside the shelter or a hundred miles distant.
They sleep, spending their first night beneath Yulan’s Barrier. It passes without incident. They wake to find the light-motes are brightening once more.
For hours the next day they follow the tunnel as it winds and bends downward and (Kibi thinks) eastward. At one stretch it widens out and the ground becomes flat; there are several barrels and bags here, and a large crate pushed against one tunnel wall.
>>
Piratecat: “I click on them!”
Sagiro: “They burst open, except for one barrel, which explodes!”
>>
Flicker pries open a barrel and finds it full of musty water topped with a layer of scum. The crates contain moldy food, including something which looks suspiciously like an apple. After casting a purifying orison on it, Dranko takes a bite. It’s not an apple, though the taste is reminiscent. It’s tart, slightly bitter, and not wholly unpleasant.
Morningstar casts a thought capture. It’s difficult to translate what she finds, so alien are the thought processes of the Underdark natives, but she thinks she understands the sentiment well enough: it’s someone eager to see the temple where the saviors are prophesied to arrive.
“I hope there’ll still be someone alive to save,” says Dranko. The next living creature they see down here will be the first.
After another night in a secure shelter, Grey Wolf decides to speed up the journey by casting a phantom steed for everyone in the Company. Their progress improves markedly. Every ten miles or so is another flattened and widened length of tunnel stocked with food and drink; some of these have moldy straw pallets as well. By the time they arrive at a second door at the far end of the tunnel, Kibi thinks they’ve descended another mile and a half below where the temple waited.
Like the door far above, this one is locked. Kibi casts knock, and they hear the sounds of bars, chains and locks falling away. Flicker slowly pushes the door open, and they step out onto a high and wide ledge overlooking a large natural cavern which is home to a little town. There are eight buildings clustered below, through which runs a little stream. Several tunnels lead out from the cavern. The far wall is more vertical than the others, and is covered with something multicolored that glistens in the light of the motes.
There is no sign of movement down in the town, but as they fly their mounts downward they detect no stench of death, which is something of a relief.
“Anyone here?” calls Dranko. His voice echoes but is not answered.
The shimmering wall turns out to be a vertical garden, growing fungus in parti-colored varieties. A system of pumps and pipes brings water to the top of the wall, where it sheets down over the sprouting mushrooms. Even Ernie is not familiar with the types.
Three buildings stand out, larger than the rest. The one at the far end of the cavern is probably a temple, judging from the huge carved black hands that adorn its walls. A second is an old general store, its crumbling shelves stocked with moldy food, boots, ropes, water skins and climbing equipment. Kicked under the counter are two gray crystal chits and three mithril squares. There is no blood or other sign of violence, and no indications of a hasty evacuation. The Company speculates that this was a town that supplied pilgrims headed to the Cavern of Arrival. It’s no wonder that it’s been abandoned.
The third large building was once a two-story inn. The party wanders through its rooms and halls; the beds are made of a wood-like hard fungus, and the mattresses stuffed with something similar to, but not exactly, feathers.
Grey Wolf, under the influence of enhanced senses, hears a sound coming from one of the rooms at the end of the second-floor hallway.
It sounds like snoring.
…to be continued…
Last edited:
carborundum
Adventurer
Good grief - that sounded like a tough fight (for 20th level characters)!
And I'm shaking my fist at Meredien in sympathy, guys
PS: Weird - got no notification of this update, found it by happy chance!
And I'm shaking my fist at Meredien in sympathy, guys
PS: Weird - got no notification of this update, found it by happy chance!
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 367
Q & A
Slowly, Ernie opens the door from behind which the snoring is coming. There is (unsurprisingly) someone asleep in a bed, a creature of the same race as the doomed priests from the Temple. His skin is a mossy green, heavily wrinkled. He is eight feet tall and broad-shouldered, but the bed is sized for his kind. Grey Wolf pokes his head in and sees a staff leaning up against the wall next to the bed, but there is no sign of armor or weapons.
Grey Wolf casts mage hand and taps the sleeping figure on the shoulder. The tall man’s eyes open; he blinks a few times and sits up slightly, looking confused.
“Hello,” says Ernie from the doorway.
“We’re the saviors,” Dranko adds. “Sorry we’re late.”
“Not sure I would have opened with that,” Grey Wolf grumbles.
“Sorry to wake you,” says Kibi. “But you’re the first living being we’ve seen down here.”
The creature sits up fully, his body folding and unfolding in ways that are just slightly wrong due to his odd physiology. He speaks in a strange tongue that is translated into heavily accented common by Parthol’s stones.
“You are… late.”
“We’re not late,” says Ernie. “Just those jerks were here first.”
The creature looks at them askance and cocks his head. It’s tricky for the members of the Company to make themselves understood; they are talking too much, and garbling the thought-parts of their speech. When the native creature had spoken, it was mostly subvocalizing, but he was also thinking what he was saying, directly, and employing a rudimentary form of telepathy to augment that. But Parthol’s beads are up to the task of mimicking this odd half-thought communication.
“You are very late. But better late than never. So, you have come from the Temple, then?”
“Yeah,” says Dranko. “We’ve put all your people to rest.”
“Then you have dealt, I trust, with the creatures.” He looks at them carefully with green, oversized eyes. “Seven from Outside,” he intones, as if reciting something from memory. “And here you are, seven from the Outside.”
“I’m Ernie.”
“I am Toq.”
Toq stands up and stretches. His arms are freakishly long.
“Is this Kessedth?” asks Kibi.
“Yes. And what is your name?”
“I’m Kibilhathur Bimson.”
“He’s the opener,” says Dranko.
“Is that important?”
The Company has by now all moved into the room, and they introduce themselves to Toq one by one. They make sure to stress that the temple is now safe for visitors.
Toq makes some odd clicking noises in his throat. “But now there is no reason to go, because you are here. I suppose the most devout may wish to see the place, but there is no longer the chance of meeting you coming down.”
“Were you expecting us at a particular time?” asks Kibi.
“Everyone had a different guess,” Toq replies. “For 900 years people have been guessing.”
“What did the legends say we were going to do?” asks Ernie.
“Yavin’s Prophecy,” says Toq. “Yavin is the Sister God of…” Here he speaks a word that Parthol’s stones find difficult to translate, but more-or-less means ‘she who solves problems peacefully.’ “The Prophecy of Yavin is very simple,” Toq continues. “That deep in the heart of the Underdark is that which will mean the end of all things, all life. But seven from the outside will come to set things right. That is all there is.”
Kibi nods. “And the Circlet will take us?”
“It has been waiting there for you for almost a thousand years.”
“Well, it’s not there now,” says the dwarf.
“So,” says Dranko, “if you had a circlet like that, and someone stole it, and it was supposed to tell you where to go next… where would you go next?”
“I don’t know,” says Toq. “A group of many pilgrims went up, one came back, saying something horrible had happened, and everyone was dead, and the Circlet was gone. But no one ever attacked the town.”
“Wait a minute,” says Ernie. “If no one attacked, but the only way down from the temple is through Kessedh, where did Meledien and Tarsos go?
“They must have disguised themselves, or snuck through at night,” says Dranko.
“Next we sent an armed force up to the temple,” said Toq. “None of them came back either, so we locked the doors, added the glyphs, and sent out warnings that people should stay far away from this place. After that, slowly, one by one, the inhabitants of Kessedth, many of whom have been my friends for a long time, left to go elsewhere. Mostly to Emmenth. Now it is only me. I thought someone should stay behind. The danger did not seem so great, as the creatures in the temple did not seem interested in traveling all this way. The doors were locked and sealed, and I have plenty of food and water, thanks be to Yavin.”
“For your steadfastness, may you be blessed with long life and great riches and peace,” said Dranko.
“That is very nice,” said Toq.
“Are you a priest of your people?” asked Morningstar.
“I am a farmer-priest. I tend to my gardens.”
“”Anything else you can tell us?” asked Dranko.
“Yes,” said Toq. “We did see one stranger, but she did not come from up, but from down. Not a Zeraphin like myself, and not one of the Stribe. She was of a race I had not seen, and she asked about the temple, and whether someone had come from there. She was… arrogant, I would say. Disrespectful.”
“Did she wear red armor?” asked Morningstar.
“No, but her skin was red, and horns curved out of her head like a macoot. She radiated power, and an unconcern for us. But when we told her no one had come from the temple, she lost interest, and she left, in the direction of the Crystal Wood.”
Dranko raised an eyebrow. “Crystal wood?”
“That tunnel there goes to the Crystal Wood, but there are no riches left there to be harvested.”
“And she hasn’t come back?”
“No… that was two months ago.”
Aravis draws pictures of Rosetta and of Meledien, but Toq shakes his head when he looks at them.
“Who are the Stribe?” asks Morningstar.
“They are… how do you say… bugs. But we do trade with them. They are not hostile. Not very communicative. They have thriving cities.”
“So we’ve got you, the Stribe, and red-skin lady. Anyone else?” asks Dranko.
“The Stribe and the Zeraphin are the only races who live in this region. There are others, I’m sure, far off in other directions, but we do not know them.”
“Are there any predators we should know about?”
“Ah, yes,” says Toq. “Living in the darkness and tunnels. You should be careful of the peshovar. They are very big. Hard shell. Tail with big ball on the end. Teeth in the front. They stay away from civilized areas, and I have not seen one in a long time, but they sometimes prowl the dark tunnels and caves.”
Dranko gestures to the shining dust motes in the air. “Do you know what the light is made out of?”
“It is light,” says Toq. “It is not made out of anything.”
“Our light comes from a huge ball of fire in the sky,” says Morningstar.
“Sky?”
“Imagine there was no ceiling,” says Dranko, “and open air just went up and up and up…”
“That sounds horrible!” Toq exclaims.
“I could show you…” says Morningstar.
“Show me what’s it like without a roof? No!”
“It’s wonderful,” says Morningstar.
“No! I think perhaps you are not yet speaking our language correctly.”
“We find having a roof always over our head to be… confining,” says Morningstar. “Constricting.”
“Speak for yourself!” Kibi grumbles.
“We find it comforting to know, to understand the boundary of the world,” says Toq.
They talk for a while longer about cultural and racial differences between the surface world and the Underdark, before the Company turns the conversation to the local Gods, purported to walk among mortals.
“There are two Sister Gods,” Toq explains. “Yavin and Wlaqua. Do not have truck with Wlaqua. She is a Goddess of …” Again, the translation is spotty, but it comes across as “she who solves problems with violence.”
“We solve problems with violence,” Ernie points out.
“So you serve Yavin,” says Morningstar.
“Yes. Almost all of the Zeraphim and the Stribe do, though here and there you may find a bad seed who reveres Wlaqua.”
“Are there other Gods?” asks Dranko.
“The Sister Gods would not allow other Gods. I shudder to think what they would do if they found any.”
Aravis tries not to look as nervous as this suggestion makes him feel.
“Have you ever seen Yavin walking around?” Dranko asks.
“Alas, it has never been my good fortune to see Yavin. But She will sometimes manifest in people, when she feels it appropriate. Here in the Outward North, Yavin is ascendant. But I understand that as you go south and down, you will reach places where Wlaqua is more influential.”
“So worship is not divided among races?” asks Ernie.
“No, it is personal, though I imagine most races are naturally inclined to worship one or the other.”
“Do you have a creation myth?” asks Morningstar. “How the Sisters came to be here?”
“They were once like us,” says Toq, “but they grew in strength, and then found a source of great power, and ascended to Godhood. At first there was great strife between them, but as neither could destroy the other, they reached an accord.”
“And where did they find a source of divine power?” asks Ernie.
“The legends do not say. But it is my belief that the earth itself… we call it Abernia… endowed them with the power.”
“Have you noticed anything strange happening in the past few months?” asks Kibi. “On the surface, our fish are dying.”
“That is happening in places here, too,” says Toq. “Strange deaths of sea creatures, that correspond with earthquakes, which are happening more frequently than usual.”
“What we are supposed to do, will stop that,” says Kibi.
There are several tunnels that lead out of the village of Kessedth, and the Company asks Toq about where they go.
“If you go that way,” says Toq, pointing to the nearest tunnel, “you will have to duck under. The tunnel has only recently been built. It goes directly to the Stribe capital of Keshem, where I think there is a Leaping Circle.”
That gets the party’s attention. He must be talking about the teleportation circles Parthol had mentioned.
“Where does it lead to?” asks Dranko.
Toq shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably another Stribe city. I do know that the Stribe restrict its use greatly.”
He points to the next tunnel. “That way takes you to the Croaking Oracle. I have never actually seen it, and I don’t intend to. I have no questions I want answered badly enough.”
“Is there a price?” asks Ernie.
“I don’t think there is a price you have to pay, but if you want better answers, it prefers you bring a live Stribe to eat. It is a big toad. It likes to eat insects. It sits in the middle of the Pressing Lake. It is said to have perfect knowledge of all things in the Underdark.”
“Could we bring it a peshovar?” asks Dranko.
“That is not an insect. It is more of a reptile,” says Toq.
The Company is not happy about feeding the toad a sentient creature, but figure they might be able to feed it something else. Toq tells them the Croaking Oracle is not far, maybe a week’s walk to get to Pressing Lake. The oracular toad is said to live on an island in the middle of the lake.”
Before conferring on which of these place to go next, Dranko asks about the gray crystal chits.
“Ah, those are khet chips,” says Toq. Dranko then shows the mithril squares. “Those are bits,” says Toq. “Ten bits to a khet.”
“Wait,” says Ernie. “the crystal is more valuable than the mithril?”
“Of course,” says Toq. “Mithril is commonplace. Not quite as commonplace as those other gems…” here he points to the diamonds and sapphires in Dranko’s palm, the ones found at the Temple of Arrival. “The khet only come from crystal khet trres, that grow in groves around the Underdark, very slowly. If you own one and control the growing of them, it is good for your people, but they circulate about.”
Dranko looks crestfallen. “So, the emeralds and sapphires and diamonds…”
“They are pretty,” says Toq. He points to a sapphire in Dranko’s hand, one probably worth five hundred gold pieces on the surface. “That is probably worth half a khet, to someone who wants to use it for a craft of some kind.”
Dranko takes off his gem-studded helm of brilliance, for which he paid tens of thousands of gold pieces not long ago. “What would you say this is worth, then?”
Toq looks it over. “Not a great deal. But the craftsmanship is nice.”
Dranko tries not to cry.
…to be continued…
Q & A
Slowly, Ernie opens the door from behind which the snoring is coming. There is (unsurprisingly) someone asleep in a bed, a creature of the same race as the doomed priests from the Temple. His skin is a mossy green, heavily wrinkled. He is eight feet tall and broad-shouldered, but the bed is sized for his kind. Grey Wolf pokes his head in and sees a staff leaning up against the wall next to the bed, but there is no sign of armor or weapons.
Grey Wolf casts mage hand and taps the sleeping figure on the shoulder. The tall man’s eyes open; he blinks a few times and sits up slightly, looking confused.
“Hello,” says Ernie from the doorway.
“We’re the saviors,” Dranko adds. “Sorry we’re late.”
“Not sure I would have opened with that,” Grey Wolf grumbles.
“Sorry to wake you,” says Kibi. “But you’re the first living being we’ve seen down here.”
The creature sits up fully, his body folding and unfolding in ways that are just slightly wrong due to his odd physiology. He speaks in a strange tongue that is translated into heavily accented common by Parthol’s stones.
“You are… late.”
“We’re not late,” says Ernie. “Just those jerks were here first.”
The creature looks at them askance and cocks his head. It’s tricky for the members of the Company to make themselves understood; they are talking too much, and garbling the thought-parts of their speech. When the native creature had spoken, it was mostly subvocalizing, but he was also thinking what he was saying, directly, and employing a rudimentary form of telepathy to augment that. But Parthol’s beads are up to the task of mimicking this odd half-thought communication.
“You are very late. But better late than never. So, you have come from the Temple, then?”
“Yeah,” says Dranko. “We’ve put all your people to rest.”
“Then you have dealt, I trust, with the creatures.” He looks at them carefully with green, oversized eyes. “Seven from Outside,” he intones, as if reciting something from memory. “And here you are, seven from the Outside.”
“I’m Ernie.”
“I am Toq.”
Toq stands up and stretches. His arms are freakishly long.
“Is this Kessedth?” asks Kibi.
“Yes. And what is your name?”
“I’m Kibilhathur Bimson.”
“He’s the opener,” says Dranko.
“Is that important?”
The Company has by now all moved into the room, and they introduce themselves to Toq one by one. They make sure to stress that the temple is now safe for visitors.
Toq makes some odd clicking noises in his throat. “But now there is no reason to go, because you are here. I suppose the most devout may wish to see the place, but there is no longer the chance of meeting you coming down.”
“Were you expecting us at a particular time?” asks Kibi.
“Everyone had a different guess,” Toq replies. “For 900 years people have been guessing.”
“What did the legends say we were going to do?” asks Ernie.
“Yavin’s Prophecy,” says Toq. “Yavin is the Sister God of…” Here he speaks a word that Parthol’s stones find difficult to translate, but more-or-less means ‘she who solves problems peacefully.’ “The Prophecy of Yavin is very simple,” Toq continues. “That deep in the heart of the Underdark is that which will mean the end of all things, all life. But seven from the outside will come to set things right. That is all there is.”
Kibi nods. “And the Circlet will take us?”
“It has been waiting there for you for almost a thousand years.”
“Well, it’s not there now,” says the dwarf.
“So,” says Dranko, “if you had a circlet like that, and someone stole it, and it was supposed to tell you where to go next… where would you go next?”
“I don’t know,” says Toq. “A group of many pilgrims went up, one came back, saying something horrible had happened, and everyone was dead, and the Circlet was gone. But no one ever attacked the town.”
“Wait a minute,” says Ernie. “If no one attacked, but the only way down from the temple is through Kessedh, where did Meledien and Tarsos go?
“They must have disguised themselves, or snuck through at night,” says Dranko.
“Next we sent an armed force up to the temple,” said Toq. “None of them came back either, so we locked the doors, added the glyphs, and sent out warnings that people should stay far away from this place. After that, slowly, one by one, the inhabitants of Kessedth, many of whom have been my friends for a long time, left to go elsewhere. Mostly to Emmenth. Now it is only me. I thought someone should stay behind. The danger did not seem so great, as the creatures in the temple did not seem interested in traveling all this way. The doors were locked and sealed, and I have plenty of food and water, thanks be to Yavin.”
“For your steadfastness, may you be blessed with long life and great riches and peace,” said Dranko.
“That is very nice,” said Toq.
“Are you a priest of your people?” asked Morningstar.
“I am a farmer-priest. I tend to my gardens.”
“”Anything else you can tell us?” asked Dranko.
“Yes,” said Toq. “We did see one stranger, but she did not come from up, but from down. Not a Zeraphin like myself, and not one of the Stribe. She was of a race I had not seen, and she asked about the temple, and whether someone had come from there. She was… arrogant, I would say. Disrespectful.”
“Did she wear red armor?” asked Morningstar.
“No, but her skin was red, and horns curved out of her head like a macoot. She radiated power, and an unconcern for us. But when we told her no one had come from the temple, she lost interest, and she left, in the direction of the Crystal Wood.”
Dranko raised an eyebrow. “Crystal wood?”
“That tunnel there goes to the Crystal Wood, but there are no riches left there to be harvested.”
“And she hasn’t come back?”
“No… that was two months ago.”
Aravis draws pictures of Rosetta and of Meledien, but Toq shakes his head when he looks at them.
“Who are the Stribe?” asks Morningstar.
“They are… how do you say… bugs. But we do trade with them. They are not hostile. Not very communicative. They have thriving cities.”
“So we’ve got you, the Stribe, and red-skin lady. Anyone else?” asks Dranko.
“The Stribe and the Zeraphin are the only races who live in this region. There are others, I’m sure, far off in other directions, but we do not know them.”
“Are there any predators we should know about?”
“Ah, yes,” says Toq. “Living in the darkness and tunnels. You should be careful of the peshovar. They are very big. Hard shell. Tail with big ball on the end. Teeth in the front. They stay away from civilized areas, and I have not seen one in a long time, but they sometimes prowl the dark tunnels and caves.”
Dranko gestures to the shining dust motes in the air. “Do you know what the light is made out of?”
“It is light,” says Toq. “It is not made out of anything.”
“Our light comes from a huge ball of fire in the sky,” says Morningstar.
“Sky?”
“Imagine there was no ceiling,” says Dranko, “and open air just went up and up and up…”
“That sounds horrible!” Toq exclaims.
“I could show you…” says Morningstar.
“Show me what’s it like without a roof? No!”
“It’s wonderful,” says Morningstar.
“No! I think perhaps you are not yet speaking our language correctly.”
“We find having a roof always over our head to be… confining,” says Morningstar. “Constricting.”
“Speak for yourself!” Kibi grumbles.
“We find it comforting to know, to understand the boundary of the world,” says Toq.
They talk for a while longer about cultural and racial differences between the surface world and the Underdark, before the Company turns the conversation to the local Gods, purported to walk among mortals.
“There are two Sister Gods,” Toq explains. “Yavin and Wlaqua. Do not have truck with Wlaqua. She is a Goddess of …” Again, the translation is spotty, but it comes across as “she who solves problems with violence.”
“We solve problems with violence,” Ernie points out.
“So you serve Yavin,” says Morningstar.
“Yes. Almost all of the Zeraphim and the Stribe do, though here and there you may find a bad seed who reveres Wlaqua.”
“Are there other Gods?” asks Dranko.
“The Sister Gods would not allow other Gods. I shudder to think what they would do if they found any.”
Aravis tries not to look as nervous as this suggestion makes him feel.
“Have you ever seen Yavin walking around?” Dranko asks.
“Alas, it has never been my good fortune to see Yavin. But She will sometimes manifest in people, when she feels it appropriate. Here in the Outward North, Yavin is ascendant. But I understand that as you go south and down, you will reach places where Wlaqua is more influential.”
“So worship is not divided among races?” asks Ernie.
“No, it is personal, though I imagine most races are naturally inclined to worship one or the other.”
“Do you have a creation myth?” asks Morningstar. “How the Sisters came to be here?”
“They were once like us,” says Toq, “but they grew in strength, and then found a source of great power, and ascended to Godhood. At first there was great strife between them, but as neither could destroy the other, they reached an accord.”
“And where did they find a source of divine power?” asks Ernie.
“The legends do not say. But it is my belief that the earth itself… we call it Abernia… endowed them with the power.”
“Have you noticed anything strange happening in the past few months?” asks Kibi. “On the surface, our fish are dying.”
“That is happening in places here, too,” says Toq. “Strange deaths of sea creatures, that correspond with earthquakes, which are happening more frequently than usual.”
“What we are supposed to do, will stop that,” says Kibi.
There are several tunnels that lead out of the village of Kessedth, and the Company asks Toq about where they go.
“If you go that way,” says Toq, pointing to the nearest tunnel, “you will have to duck under. The tunnel has only recently been built. It goes directly to the Stribe capital of Keshem, where I think there is a Leaping Circle.”
That gets the party’s attention. He must be talking about the teleportation circles Parthol had mentioned.
“Where does it lead to?” asks Dranko.
Toq shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably another Stribe city. I do know that the Stribe restrict its use greatly.”
He points to the next tunnel. “That way takes you to the Croaking Oracle. I have never actually seen it, and I don’t intend to. I have no questions I want answered badly enough.”
“Is there a price?” asks Ernie.
“I don’t think there is a price you have to pay, but if you want better answers, it prefers you bring a live Stribe to eat. It is a big toad. It likes to eat insects. It sits in the middle of the Pressing Lake. It is said to have perfect knowledge of all things in the Underdark.”
“Could we bring it a peshovar?” asks Dranko.
“That is not an insect. It is more of a reptile,” says Toq.
The Company is not happy about feeding the toad a sentient creature, but figure they might be able to feed it something else. Toq tells them the Croaking Oracle is not far, maybe a week’s walk to get to Pressing Lake. The oracular toad is said to live on an island in the middle of the lake.”
Before conferring on which of these place to go next, Dranko asks about the gray crystal chits.
“Ah, those are khet chips,” says Toq. Dranko then shows the mithril squares. “Those are bits,” says Toq. “Ten bits to a khet.”
“Wait,” says Ernie. “the crystal is more valuable than the mithril?”
“Of course,” says Toq. “Mithril is commonplace. Not quite as commonplace as those other gems…” here he points to the diamonds and sapphires in Dranko’s palm, the ones found at the Temple of Arrival. “The khet only come from crystal khet trres, that grow in groves around the Underdark, very slowly. If you own one and control the growing of them, it is good for your people, but they circulate about.”
Dranko looks crestfallen. “So, the emeralds and sapphires and diamonds…”
“They are pretty,” says Toq. He points to a sapphire in Dranko’s hand, one probably worth five hundred gold pieces on the surface. “That is probably worth half a khet, to someone who wants to use it for a craft of some kind.”
Dranko takes off his gem-studded helm of brilliance, for which he paid tens of thousands of gold pieces not long ago. “What would you say this is worth, then?”
Toq looks it over. “Not a great deal. But the craftsmanship is nice.”
Dranko tries not to cry.
…to be continued…
Last edited:
carborundum
Adventurer
Beautiful. Every offhand reference says "this is a living world" and sets my curiosity bone a jiggling. Hats off to Sagiro
