Sagiro's Story Hour: The FINAL Adventures of Abernathy's Company (FINISHED 7/3/14)
- Thread starter Sagiro
- Start date
HA HA. I'll show you wiseguys! I'm TOTALLY going to Become, just to teach you people a lesson! HA! THAT'LL SHOW YOU!
Of course, that might be very bad. And Dranko just needs to figure out what that means.
Anyways, Everett, showing that you are a person of breeding and taste, you never liked Dranko to begin with.
I take great umbrage at that! I appreciate ALL of the party members. Even the -- um. The half-breed... the one who likes to do the... jumping... and, uh, is sort of, kind of, a little bit of a cleric... and... uhm... hmmmm...
/goes to make a sandwich.
carborundum
Adventurer
You mean that ugly guy that moons around Morningstar? He's not a party member! He's just, I don't know, like the village idiot that everyone politely tolerates.
/looks away during the dribbling
/looks away during the dribbling
steeldragons
Steeliest of the dragons
No no, guys. PC's talking about that one who's kinda tall...He helps out Flicker sometimes. Pff! Not like he needs it. That halfling's a frickin' badass genius legend! But the one that holds the torch for Flick when he's pickin' all the locks...ya know...with the...that hair that's kinda...like...you know?
Can I get anyone some more coffee? Flicker? Morningstar? Kibi, Aravis? 'Nuther scone, Ernie? Yes I know, Greywolf, two sugars. <wink> I remember. Back in a jiff.
/heads to the kitchen.
Can I get anyone some more coffee? Flicker? Morningstar? Kibi, Aravis? 'Nuther scone, Ernie? Yes I know, Greywolf, two sugars. <wink> I remember. Back in a jiff.
/heads to the kitchen.
Neurotic
I plan on living forever. Or die trying.
OF course you will. Heroes already became, one is a god, two are their god champions, others are almost there. You will be like them...eventually...you know...when you are more like them, do some heroic deeds, BECOME FAMOUS, make contacts among right people, get noticed, save the world couple of times...things like that.
It just takes patience
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
It struck me as interesting that Dranko is the only one without an intimate connection to his God. In fact, I don't think we have ever seen an adventuring champion or embodiment of Delioch, the hand of healing. Except for the ones seduced by the Black Circle, of course, but I'm not entirely sure that counts. Delioch always struck me as a distant God. I have no idea what my character would have been like if that weren't the case.OF course you will. Heroes already became, one is a god, two are their god champions, others are almost there. You will be like them...eventually...you know...when you are more like them, do some heroic deeds, BECOME FAMOUS, make contacts among right people, get noticed, save the world couple of times...things like that.
It just takes patience
Probably excommunicated, honestly. Dranko's tendency to dislike people in authority never manifested against a faceless, serene deity. He has a much worse record against very powerful entities with strong personalities.
I think it's Neil Gaiman who said that all heroes become gods if you keep them going long enough.
The only one? I don't recall that Grey Wolf has an intimate connection to any God. Nor Kibi, though he has the discipline of Earth Mage, which is something similar..
Dranko does say, at times, in his (rare) more serious moments, that he loves Delioch -- either about Delioch or speaking to the God directly... but we have no conception at all of what the persona of Delioch is like. We have a very strong conception of what Ell is like, gleaned hither and thither throughout the campaign... we have some idea of what Yulan is like, or at least what Yulan represents, because of the character of Ula... we have some idea of the halfling god that Ernie and Yoba follow (though the God's name escapes me right now)... but we have no idea whatsoever about Delioch, and we certainly never saw a champion of Delioch; THAT, pardon the irony, I'm sure I would have remembered.
The only one? I don't recall that Grey Wolf has an intimate connection to any God. Nor Kibi, though he has the discipline of Earth Mage, which is something similar..
Piratecat said:
Dranko does say, at times, in his (rare) more serious moments, that he loves Delioch -- either about Delioch or speaking to the God directly... but we have no conception at all of what the persona of Delioch is like. We have a very strong conception of what Ell is like, gleaned hither and thither throughout the campaign... we have some idea of what Yulan is like, or at least what Yulan represents, because of the character of Ula... we have some idea of the halfling god that Ernie and Yoba follow (though the God's name escapes me right now)... but we have no idea whatsoever about Delioch, and we certainly never saw a champion of Delioch; THAT, pardon the irony, I'm sure I would have remembered.
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 373
Silhouettes
“Are you okay?”
Ernie rushes over to Dranko’s side. The half-orc half sits and half falls to the stone floor. “No… no…”
While the others crowd around in concern, Dranko relates his unusual experience.
“You understood the voices?” asks Kibi. “Doesn’t that mean you’re crazy?”
Morningstar glares at the dwarf. “What are you becoming?” she asks Dranko.
“I don’t know.” Dranko sounds miserable. “But I bet it’s something to do with tentacles.”
“Maybe you’re becoming famous!” Flicker offers brightly.
“They were all whispering my name,” says Dranko.
“Maybe that’s where all your fame went,” says Kibi.
Dranko shakes his head. “I’m thinking now that the person who plucks whatever-it-is out of my brain, is going to get transformed into a Far Realms entity himself.”
“And you’re not supposed to let it break out before it’s supposed to,” says Morningstar.
“I don’t know what’s happening!” Dranko bemoans. “So I don’t know how to stop it.”
“Maybe they’re warning you,” Ernie suggests. “In case you feel something… bubbling up inside you.”
Kibi walks to the cavern wall – the place they’re in is of modest size, roughly circular and twenty feet across – and concentrates. “I think we’re about a mile lower than the stribe Leaping Circle,” he says. He also feels a faint but unmistakable thrumminess, the comforting feeling of ambient Earth Magic.
Speaking of the stribe, a half dozen of the insectoid creatures approach rapidly from a tunnel mouth. The stone around the Company rises up and forms into a filigree of close-set bars, entrapping them quickly and efficiently. After all, the stribe here at the Leaping Circle’s arrival point have never seen humans, and this place is the source of their people’s wealth. Fortunately Loo’oofin has accompanied them, and quickly explains to the other stribe that the Company’s presence here is sanctioned.
The party is soon introduced to Ta’aabin, a stribe in some position of authority. They ask him about Meledien, Tarsos and Seven Dark Words.
“They did come this way,” says Ta’aabin. “They fled into where the… live.” Here the translation becomes garbled; they think the ambiguous word is something between a shadow and a silhouette. (It’s an unusual concept for those living in the Underdark, where there generally are no shadows, due to the light being diffuse and even.)
“What are… they?” asks Ernie.
“We do not have a name for them. We cannot see them clearly, but they are dangerous.”
Dranko immediately suspects Null Shadows. “Do they leave black scars on your body when they touch you?”
“They do not leave any marks. When we went that way, we were not harmed, but were attacked. They dulled us, but we recovered. They made the thinking hard.”
That doesn’t sound like Null Shadows, but the Company recalls that there were more than one variety of those cauldron-created monstrosities. Morningstar, remembering that Null Shadows prefer to target casters, asks if some of the stribe are more proficient at stone shaping magic.
“We are all shaping the stone. By practice one gets more shape. Practice, practice.”
“Then the things target everyone equally?” asks Morningstar.
“Everyone who has gone into their territory. Which we no longer.”
Ta’aabin clacks its mandibles. “Perhaps you will find your three enemies… dulled.”
“That would be very nice,” Erie agrees.
“Could there be a Leaping Circle beyond… whatever it is?” asks Kibi.
“We do not know. We do not get that far. We become dulled by the silhouettes.”
“But you must get your khet chips back to the stribe somehow,” says Kibi. “Are there other ways out?”
“Beyond the khet forest, there are hot ways. Hot ways to hotness. Bubbling rock lava. We create stone bridges to cross, then continue on to home. It is a long journey, three months, very dangerous, on schedule. 200 stribe come through Circle, to guard Khet shipment back to homeland. ”
Dranko asks to see the Khet forest. A hundred yard tunnel from the arrival cave empties into what looks like a forest of purple crystal trees, which rise up into the sea of light motes. They are not trees in the conventional sense, but they do have a rough correspondence; trunks and branches, leaves and roots, all made of crystal. The leaves are tiny khet chips, which are being harvested by dozens of stribe that swarm up and down the trunks.
There is little debate about which way to go. If Meledien & Co. braved the mind-dulling silhouettes, so must the Company. While the party conveys their thanks to Loo’oofin, a small orange flame appears in their midst, at head height. The stribe all take hasty steps away from it.
“Do you know what that is?” asks Loo’oofin. Not waiting for an answer, the stribe quickly cause a stone pillar to rise from the ground and surround the flame, but not before the party hears sounds coming from it, very faintly. Dranko thinks it might have been voices.
Ernie grumbles. “I bet anytime we go anywhere, they have some way to use that to know we’re here.”
“I wonder if we can do something about it,” Kibi muses. “Maybe dispelling it before it has time to send any information?”
After a few more seconds there is a soft whoosh, and when the stribe retract the stone, the flame is gone.
“How are they doing that?” asks Dranko angrily. If it was a glyph left behind by Seven Dark Words, Dranko didn’t see it beforehand with his always-on detect magic. The party does recall that Tarsos and Meledien stole the Spear of Cava from Naslund, an artifact of a God of Fire. It’s a weapon that can burn out the souls of those it kills; who knows what other abilities it could have?
The stribe take the Company to the tunnel which leads to where the intelligence-draining silhouettes live. Morningstar suggests having non-magical weapons ready, in case these things really are a form of Null Shadow.
Loo’oofin bids them farewell. “If you find those who preceded you, please dis-head them.”
“We will dis-headen them,” Dranko agrees.
“Works for me,” adds Grey Wolf.
At the last minute Dranko produces a spool of thread from his pack and offers it to Loo’oofin in return for khet chips. Gems may be worth little down here, but true wooden objects may have inflated value.
“What type of fungus is it?” asks Loo’oofin.
“It’s not, It’s wood.”
“Ah, it is a surface world artifact. What does it do?”
“You, uh, you wind things around it.”
“Do you have enough to build something out of it? Like a house?”
Dranko admits that he does not.
“Then it is no more than a curiosity. But I am curious to give you ten khet chips.”
Dranko autographs it before handing it over. “From the saviors…”
This little transaction is interrupted by a sizzling noise from Aravis. His skin quickly becomes overdrawn with glowing lines, his eyes flash to star-fields, and he vanishes. Pewter meows resignedly and jumps up onto Dranko’s shoulder. It seems that Belshikun has “borrowed” Aravis again.
Grey Wolf summons up a mount for everyone, and they head off. It’s slow going; the tunnel meanders in all three dimensions, requiring slow-motion aerobatics to negotiate. Within a few minutes the party notices that the light motes are growing dim even though it’s not evening, and are taking on a greenish cast. What’s particularly strange is that as their bodies (and those of their steeds) move through the light-mote field, the motes turn back to white. Whatever has made them green, is undone by physical contact.
A shadow flickers on the wall, which is odd because there are no shadows down here. They see another a minute later.
“We’re just going to say this once!” Dranko calls out. “If you attack us unprovoked and try to eat our brains, we will completely and utterly destroy you!”
Even the movement of his lips turns the light motes around his mouth from green to white.
A few minutes later, having seen several more wall-shadows dart past, as might be cast by fast-flying bats in more conventional light, the Company arrives at a fork in the tunnel. One way bends leftward and down, the other upward and right. Grey Wolf sniffs the air with his enhanced senses; it smells different than the tunnels elsewhere, rich and damp, though there’s no sight our sound of water.
Kibi tries to get a sense from the stone around him if one way is better than the other, but finds he’s having trouble concentrating. Dranko searches the openings of both branches in a more conventional method, and discovers that on one wall of the leftward tunnel, something has nicked the stone, disturbing a thin coat of lichen. Someone was here, and brushed the wall with an elbow or sword hilt.
They head that way, and soon the flickering silhouettes on the wall become faster and more numerous. Every person in the Company finds it harder and harder to stay mounted, as they forget the nuances of proper riding form. Grey Wolf, the best rider in the group, actually falls of his mount and can’t figure out how or why it happened.
Dranko looks down and can’t remember the name of the creature he’s riding. He hopes it’s friendly.
Kibi wonders if he could cast repulsion to repel the shadow-creatures, but when he thinks about it, it seems hopelessly complicated. Wouldn’t create water or spiritual hammer be better? But… are those even wizdrish spelgs?
“Morningstar,” says Dranko. “Can you cast pristastic circle?”
Morningstar can’t understand him. What’s-his-name is speaking gibberish.
They are in a khet forest, surrounded by… creatures? Oh, right, they’re called “stribe.” Each member of the Company feels as though they’ve just woken up, having had an unpleasant dream in which they forgot everything they ever knew. Over the course of minutes they recover their lost intellect, and try to recall what happened. The remember going down that tunnel, and finding a mark on the wall, and the light motes being green but changing to white as they moved through them. And then… something? Silhouettes on the walls?
Dranko rubs his chin and finds an additional day’s growth of stubble. He hails the nearest stribe.
“What just happened?” he demands.
“You were dulled.”
“How did you find us?”
“You wandered back here.”
“How long ago did we leave?”
“Yesterday. You wandered back, and you slept. Now you are unslept. How do you feel?”
Ernie stands and stretches. “I don’t like things messing around with my thoughts and memories. We deal with the Black Circle often enough.”
“I’m guessing it has something to do with the light,” says Dranko. “If we can stop the light from changing for us, maybe they’ll leave us alone?”
“Maybe we could wipe out the lights with magic first,” suggests Kibi. “Maybe that will prevent the silhouettes from dulling us.”
They discuss various options, ranging from dimension door to mass xorn movement to creating a flaming sphere and letting it roll ahead of them, wiping out the lights. They wonder out loud how Meledien & Co. managed to get through.
The Flaming Sphere plan has a simple appeal. Back into the tunnel they go, and when the motes begin to turn green, Grey Wolf casts his spell, using a magic item to extend its duration. As expected, the ball of fire wipes out the motes as it rolls along, but it’s not big enough to erase them all. Within a few steps the shadows start to flicker on the walls, faster and in greater numbers than before. Bewilderment and befuddlement set in less than thirty seconds later, and then they’re back in the khet forest, waking in confusion. Another day has passed.
Plan B is more involved, but much more successful.
First, Morningstar takes the group into Ava Dormo, leaving Flicker behind to watch their bodies. (And with a warning not to try stealing any of the stribe’s khet chips.) Thankfully this region of the Dreamscape is uninhabited, lacking both crazed militaristic dream-kobolds, and intelligence-sapping wall shadows. The light motes are here (dreaming themselves?), and are green as in the waking world, but nothing here drains their minds.
The downside here is that there are no marks from the Evil Trio to follow, but that turns out to be only a minor nuisance. Though it takes several hours, they are able to map out the entirety of the tunnel maze that contains off-color motes. There are many branches and odd subterranean topography, but ultimately the majority of the different routes double back on one another or join up later on. If the green-lit regions can be described as one extended complex, there turn out to be only three distinct tunnels leading out of it. Only one of these goes significantly downward, while the others are either level with the khet forest or at a slightly higher elevation.
Having scouted the entire area, Grey Wolf and Kibi apply their superhuman intellects and near-eidetic memories to creating a 3D model of the tunnels, instructing some helpful stribe who stone-craft it to their specifications. With this model, they plot a vector that will take them from the khet forest straight through the rock to meet the lowest of the three egresses, without once intersecting any of the silhouette-infested tunnels.
When they’re ready to go, Kibi casts mass xorn movement on the party, and uses his natural sense of subterranean location and direction to identify this vector in real life. The others will follow in his wake. If he goes 4100 feet, downward at approximate six degrees, and rightward 21 degrees from a true northward facing, they should emerge into the lowermost tunnel beyond the off-colored light motes.
Ernie casts a spell to increase their movement rate (thus minimizing the risk that the spell will run out too soon, which would be bad), and off they go, plunging into the stone, and wondering again how the Evil Trio bypassed this unusual obstacle*. It’s dark and warm, and the others find it disorienting, but Kibi burrows with confidence. Earth Magic surrounds him. Scree from time to time suggests tiny course corrections, as the elemental is particularly sensitive to his surroundings and can sense when they’re near the open tunnels. When Kibi thinks they should have arrived, they find they have missed their target after all, but Scree is not concerned. He goes on a quick scouting trip through the rock, and comes back a few minutes later announcing they’re only off course by forty feet or so, which is astoundingly accurate given they’ve come almost a full mile in a straight line. Following Scree, the Company soon pops into an wide and open tunnel, through its ceiling. The light motes are white, and no silhouettes are in evidence.
Dranko immediately makes another search of the area, and with his finely honed sleuthing skills discovers more subtle signs that other have passed this way – tiny scuffs in the floor, and old scratches in the lichen at elbow or shoulder height. That’s evidence enough for them that Meledien and her friends have come this way, albeit months ago.
They continue down the tunnel; it widens and narrows, dips and drops, sometimes taking them through small clusters of uneven caves or over precipitous plunges. Then, from somewhere ahead they hear… music? As they progress, the sound resolves into something like a woodwind instrument, still very faint, but playing a melody. After a final sharp bend in the tunnel the music grows louder, and some fifty feet down they see the tunnel opens into a wider space. Slowly they creep forward to investigate.
The tunnel ends, high in the wall of the largest cavern they’ve yet seen in the Underdark. Far below them stretches a vast and beautiful city of deep blue crystal, bristling with spires and minarets, dotted here and there with wide domes and rising towers. Even from hundreds of feet up they cannot see its entirety; it recedes into the distance, the whole of it illuminated by the motes.
In all that vastness, the only sign of life is the music, a beautiful, haunting melody from something akin to an oboe, drifting upward to their ears.
…to be continued…
(*) The party’s puzzlement at how the bad guys bypassed this challenge led to the following exchange at the table:
Piratecat: “I wonder how Meledien got past those things. Why didn’t they turn stupid, wander out, and get killed by the stribe?”
DM: “They’re Black Circle. Maybe they used their vast divinatory powers to learn about the nature of the challenge before tackling it.”
Piratecat: “I thought you said Divinations don’t work well down here.”
DM: “Yours don’t.”
Piratecat: “Let the record show I’m flipping off the DM”
Silhouettes
“Are you okay?”
Ernie rushes over to Dranko’s side. The half-orc half sits and half falls to the stone floor. “No… no…”
While the others crowd around in concern, Dranko relates his unusual experience.
“You understood the voices?” asks Kibi. “Doesn’t that mean you’re crazy?”
Morningstar glares at the dwarf. “What are you becoming?” she asks Dranko.
“I don’t know.” Dranko sounds miserable. “But I bet it’s something to do with tentacles.”
“Maybe you’re becoming famous!” Flicker offers brightly.
“They were all whispering my name,” says Dranko.
“Maybe that’s where all your fame went,” says Kibi.
Dranko shakes his head. “I’m thinking now that the person who plucks whatever-it-is out of my brain, is going to get transformed into a Far Realms entity himself.”
“And you’re not supposed to let it break out before it’s supposed to,” says Morningstar.
“I don’t know what’s happening!” Dranko bemoans. “So I don’t know how to stop it.”
“Maybe they’re warning you,” Ernie suggests. “In case you feel something… bubbling up inside you.”
Kibi walks to the cavern wall – the place they’re in is of modest size, roughly circular and twenty feet across – and concentrates. “I think we’re about a mile lower than the stribe Leaping Circle,” he says. He also feels a faint but unmistakable thrumminess, the comforting feeling of ambient Earth Magic.
Speaking of the stribe, a half dozen of the insectoid creatures approach rapidly from a tunnel mouth. The stone around the Company rises up and forms into a filigree of close-set bars, entrapping them quickly and efficiently. After all, the stribe here at the Leaping Circle’s arrival point have never seen humans, and this place is the source of their people’s wealth. Fortunately Loo’oofin has accompanied them, and quickly explains to the other stribe that the Company’s presence here is sanctioned.
The party is soon introduced to Ta’aabin, a stribe in some position of authority. They ask him about Meledien, Tarsos and Seven Dark Words.
“They did come this way,” says Ta’aabin. “They fled into where the… live.” Here the translation becomes garbled; they think the ambiguous word is something between a shadow and a silhouette. (It’s an unusual concept for those living in the Underdark, where there generally are no shadows, due to the light being diffuse and even.)
“What are… they?” asks Ernie.
“We do not have a name for them. We cannot see them clearly, but they are dangerous.”
Dranko immediately suspects Null Shadows. “Do they leave black scars on your body when they touch you?”
“They do not leave any marks. When we went that way, we were not harmed, but were attacked. They dulled us, but we recovered. They made the thinking hard.”
That doesn’t sound like Null Shadows, but the Company recalls that there were more than one variety of those cauldron-created monstrosities. Morningstar, remembering that Null Shadows prefer to target casters, asks if some of the stribe are more proficient at stone shaping magic.
“We are all shaping the stone. By practice one gets more shape. Practice, practice.”
“Then the things target everyone equally?” asks Morningstar.
“Everyone who has gone into their territory. Which we no longer.”
Ta’aabin clacks its mandibles. “Perhaps you will find your three enemies… dulled.”
“That would be very nice,” Erie agrees.
“Could there be a Leaping Circle beyond… whatever it is?” asks Kibi.
“We do not know. We do not get that far. We become dulled by the silhouettes.”
“But you must get your khet chips back to the stribe somehow,” says Kibi. “Are there other ways out?”
“Beyond the khet forest, there are hot ways. Hot ways to hotness. Bubbling rock lava. We create stone bridges to cross, then continue on to home. It is a long journey, three months, very dangerous, on schedule. 200 stribe come through Circle, to guard Khet shipment back to homeland. ”
Dranko asks to see the Khet forest. A hundred yard tunnel from the arrival cave empties into what looks like a forest of purple crystal trees, which rise up into the sea of light motes. They are not trees in the conventional sense, but they do have a rough correspondence; trunks and branches, leaves and roots, all made of crystal. The leaves are tiny khet chips, which are being harvested by dozens of stribe that swarm up and down the trunks.
There is little debate about which way to go. If Meledien & Co. braved the mind-dulling silhouettes, so must the Company. While the party conveys their thanks to Loo’oofin, a small orange flame appears in their midst, at head height. The stribe all take hasty steps away from it.
“Do you know what that is?” asks Loo’oofin. Not waiting for an answer, the stribe quickly cause a stone pillar to rise from the ground and surround the flame, but not before the party hears sounds coming from it, very faintly. Dranko thinks it might have been voices.
Ernie grumbles. “I bet anytime we go anywhere, they have some way to use that to know we’re here.”
“I wonder if we can do something about it,” Kibi muses. “Maybe dispelling it before it has time to send any information?”
After a few more seconds there is a soft whoosh, and when the stribe retract the stone, the flame is gone.
“How are they doing that?” asks Dranko angrily. If it was a glyph left behind by Seven Dark Words, Dranko didn’t see it beforehand with his always-on detect magic. The party does recall that Tarsos and Meledien stole the Spear of Cava from Naslund, an artifact of a God of Fire. It’s a weapon that can burn out the souls of those it kills; who knows what other abilities it could have?
The stribe take the Company to the tunnel which leads to where the intelligence-draining silhouettes live. Morningstar suggests having non-magical weapons ready, in case these things really are a form of Null Shadow.
Loo’oofin bids them farewell. “If you find those who preceded you, please dis-head them.”
“We will dis-headen them,” Dranko agrees.
“Works for me,” adds Grey Wolf.
At the last minute Dranko produces a spool of thread from his pack and offers it to Loo’oofin in return for khet chips. Gems may be worth little down here, but true wooden objects may have inflated value.
“What type of fungus is it?” asks Loo’oofin.
“It’s not, It’s wood.”
“Ah, it is a surface world artifact. What does it do?”
“You, uh, you wind things around it.”
“Do you have enough to build something out of it? Like a house?”
Dranko admits that he does not.
“Then it is no more than a curiosity. But I am curious to give you ten khet chips.”
Dranko autographs it before handing it over. “From the saviors…”
This little transaction is interrupted by a sizzling noise from Aravis. His skin quickly becomes overdrawn with glowing lines, his eyes flash to star-fields, and he vanishes. Pewter meows resignedly and jumps up onto Dranko’s shoulder. It seems that Belshikun has “borrowed” Aravis again.
Grey Wolf summons up a mount for everyone, and they head off. It’s slow going; the tunnel meanders in all three dimensions, requiring slow-motion aerobatics to negotiate. Within a few minutes the party notices that the light motes are growing dim even though it’s not evening, and are taking on a greenish cast. What’s particularly strange is that as their bodies (and those of their steeds) move through the light-mote field, the motes turn back to white. Whatever has made them green, is undone by physical contact.
A shadow flickers on the wall, which is odd because there are no shadows down here. They see another a minute later.
“We’re just going to say this once!” Dranko calls out. “If you attack us unprovoked and try to eat our brains, we will completely and utterly destroy you!”
Even the movement of his lips turns the light motes around his mouth from green to white.
A few minutes later, having seen several more wall-shadows dart past, as might be cast by fast-flying bats in more conventional light, the Company arrives at a fork in the tunnel. One way bends leftward and down, the other upward and right. Grey Wolf sniffs the air with his enhanced senses; it smells different than the tunnels elsewhere, rich and damp, though there’s no sight our sound of water.
Kibi tries to get a sense from the stone around him if one way is better than the other, but finds he’s having trouble concentrating. Dranko searches the openings of both branches in a more conventional method, and discovers that on one wall of the leftward tunnel, something has nicked the stone, disturbing a thin coat of lichen. Someone was here, and brushed the wall with an elbow or sword hilt.
They head that way, and soon the flickering silhouettes on the wall become faster and more numerous. Every person in the Company finds it harder and harder to stay mounted, as they forget the nuances of proper riding form. Grey Wolf, the best rider in the group, actually falls of his mount and can’t figure out how or why it happened.
Dranko looks down and can’t remember the name of the creature he’s riding. He hopes it’s friendly.
Kibi wonders if he could cast repulsion to repel the shadow-creatures, but when he thinks about it, it seems hopelessly complicated. Wouldn’t create water or spiritual hammer be better? But… are those even wizdrish spelgs?
“Morningstar,” says Dranko. “Can you cast pristastic circle?”
Morningstar can’t understand him. What’s-his-name is speaking gibberish.
They are in a khet forest, surrounded by… creatures? Oh, right, they’re called “stribe.” Each member of the Company feels as though they’ve just woken up, having had an unpleasant dream in which they forgot everything they ever knew. Over the course of minutes they recover their lost intellect, and try to recall what happened. The remember going down that tunnel, and finding a mark on the wall, and the light motes being green but changing to white as they moved through them. And then… something? Silhouettes on the walls?
Dranko rubs his chin and finds an additional day’s growth of stubble. He hails the nearest stribe.
“What just happened?” he demands.
“You were dulled.”
“How did you find us?”
“You wandered back here.”
“How long ago did we leave?”
“Yesterday. You wandered back, and you slept. Now you are unslept. How do you feel?”
Ernie stands and stretches. “I don’t like things messing around with my thoughts and memories. We deal with the Black Circle often enough.”
“I’m guessing it has something to do with the light,” says Dranko. “If we can stop the light from changing for us, maybe they’ll leave us alone?”
“Maybe we could wipe out the lights with magic first,” suggests Kibi. “Maybe that will prevent the silhouettes from dulling us.”
They discuss various options, ranging from dimension door to mass xorn movement to creating a flaming sphere and letting it roll ahead of them, wiping out the lights. They wonder out loud how Meledien & Co. managed to get through.
The Flaming Sphere plan has a simple appeal. Back into the tunnel they go, and when the motes begin to turn green, Grey Wolf casts his spell, using a magic item to extend its duration. As expected, the ball of fire wipes out the motes as it rolls along, but it’s not big enough to erase them all. Within a few steps the shadows start to flicker on the walls, faster and in greater numbers than before. Bewilderment and befuddlement set in less than thirty seconds later, and then they’re back in the khet forest, waking in confusion. Another day has passed.
Plan B is more involved, but much more successful.
First, Morningstar takes the group into Ava Dormo, leaving Flicker behind to watch their bodies. (And with a warning not to try stealing any of the stribe’s khet chips.) Thankfully this region of the Dreamscape is uninhabited, lacking both crazed militaristic dream-kobolds, and intelligence-sapping wall shadows. The light motes are here (dreaming themselves?), and are green as in the waking world, but nothing here drains their minds.
The downside here is that there are no marks from the Evil Trio to follow, but that turns out to be only a minor nuisance. Though it takes several hours, they are able to map out the entirety of the tunnel maze that contains off-color motes. There are many branches and odd subterranean topography, but ultimately the majority of the different routes double back on one another or join up later on. If the green-lit regions can be described as one extended complex, there turn out to be only three distinct tunnels leading out of it. Only one of these goes significantly downward, while the others are either level with the khet forest or at a slightly higher elevation.
Having scouted the entire area, Grey Wolf and Kibi apply their superhuman intellects and near-eidetic memories to creating a 3D model of the tunnels, instructing some helpful stribe who stone-craft it to their specifications. With this model, they plot a vector that will take them from the khet forest straight through the rock to meet the lowest of the three egresses, without once intersecting any of the silhouette-infested tunnels.
When they’re ready to go, Kibi casts mass xorn movement on the party, and uses his natural sense of subterranean location and direction to identify this vector in real life. The others will follow in his wake. If he goes 4100 feet, downward at approximate six degrees, and rightward 21 degrees from a true northward facing, they should emerge into the lowermost tunnel beyond the off-colored light motes.
Ernie casts a spell to increase their movement rate (thus minimizing the risk that the spell will run out too soon, which would be bad), and off they go, plunging into the stone, and wondering again how the Evil Trio bypassed this unusual obstacle*. It’s dark and warm, and the others find it disorienting, but Kibi burrows with confidence. Earth Magic surrounds him. Scree from time to time suggests tiny course corrections, as the elemental is particularly sensitive to his surroundings and can sense when they’re near the open tunnels. When Kibi thinks they should have arrived, they find they have missed their target after all, but Scree is not concerned. He goes on a quick scouting trip through the rock, and comes back a few minutes later announcing they’re only off course by forty feet or so, which is astoundingly accurate given they’ve come almost a full mile in a straight line. Following Scree, the Company soon pops into an wide and open tunnel, through its ceiling. The light motes are white, and no silhouettes are in evidence.
Dranko immediately makes another search of the area, and with his finely honed sleuthing skills discovers more subtle signs that other have passed this way – tiny scuffs in the floor, and old scratches in the lichen at elbow or shoulder height. That’s evidence enough for them that Meledien and her friends have come this way, albeit months ago.
They continue down the tunnel; it widens and narrows, dips and drops, sometimes taking them through small clusters of uneven caves or over precipitous plunges. Then, from somewhere ahead they hear… music? As they progress, the sound resolves into something like a woodwind instrument, still very faint, but playing a melody. After a final sharp bend in the tunnel the music grows louder, and some fifty feet down they see the tunnel opens into a wider space. Slowly they creep forward to investigate.
The tunnel ends, high in the wall of the largest cavern they’ve yet seen in the Underdark. Far below them stretches a vast and beautiful city of deep blue crystal, bristling with spires and minarets, dotted here and there with wide domes and rising towers. Even from hundreds of feet up they cannot see its entirety; it recedes into the distance, the whole of it illuminated by the motes.
In all that vastness, the only sign of life is the music, a beautiful, haunting melody from something akin to an oboe, drifting upward to their ears.
…to be continued…
(*) The party’s puzzlement at how the bad guys bypassed this challenge led to the following exchange at the table:
Piratecat: “I wonder how Meledien got past those things. Why didn’t they turn stupid, wander out, and get killed by the stribe?”
DM: “They’re Black Circle. Maybe they used their vast divinatory powers to learn about the nature of the challenge before tackling it.”
Piratecat: “I thought you said Divinations don’t work well down here.”
DM: “Yours don’t.”
Piratecat: “Let the record show I’m flipping off the DM”
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