NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 6030405" data-attributes="member: 726">First -- Shieldhaven, thanks for your thoughtful (and positive!) review.  I appreciate you taking the time to write it, and I'm glad you enjoyed playing.To any other Story Hour readers who have played Choice of the Star Captain, please remember to leave a star-rating on whatever website or app store you acquired it from.  Ratings (and better yet, short reviews) help get games noticed, and mine is a bit sparse in that department at the moment.  (The ratings are good; there just aren't that many.)To Everett:  at this point in the story, no one knows over what lands or people King Farazil reigns.  Does he just call himself that?  Is he really King of something?  Who knows?  To everyone: here's an update!Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 347Many As One“Hi, Eddings.”The Company files into the Greenhouse, freshly teleported home from Ula’s island.Dranko drops into a chair and lights a cigar.  “We have to go someplace that we’re never coming back from,” he tells the butler.Eddings smiles indulgently.  “Ah.  And is this one substantially different from the many other places you warned me you might not be coming back from?  Given your descriptions of previous adventures, I have developed an unshakable faith that you will return from just about any excursion, no matter how perilous.”“This one might be different,” says Ernie.“Well, I suppose we’ll see,” says Eddings./*/For some time the party talks about how they might find and assault the Sharshun base of operations in the Greatwood.  Various ideas are discussed and discarded.  Morningstar finally sighs and gives up. “So,” she says, “as usual, the plan is ‘get ‘em?’”“We need Abernathy to give us advice,” says Ernie plaintively.Into the seconds of silence that follow Ernie’s comment, Dranko speaks. “I miss Abernathy.”“I don’t,” says Aravis.Everyone turns to stare at him.  “I never met him!” he explains.“But you would have missed him,” says Flicker, “if you had…”He’s interrupted by an earthquake.   No, not the magical kind; this is an honest to goodness temblor, albeit a mild one.  The windows rattle for about fifteen seconds, and the trophy case swings open.  Eddings deftly catches a flatworm tooth before it can drop to the floor.  Then, as suddenly as the tremor began, it’s over.  The Company can hear some shouting in the streets, but it’s unlikely that the city suffered any serious structural damage.  Dranko casts omen of peril to find out if he’ll be in danger during the next hour.  The answer is LOW.  But still, it’s an alarming occurrence, for the reason that there has never been an earthquake, even a mild one, recorded in the history of Tal Hae.The excitement of the quake soon passes, and the Company is left once again with the daunting task of recovering the Watcher’s Kiss from the Sharshun.  To delay the decision-making further, they decide to quickly investigate the bad smell blowing off the Mouth of Nahalm into the city of Sand’s Edge.  (They’re pretty certain that one of the Ventifact Colossi has died, but it can’t hurt to be certain!)  They teleport together to Sand’s Edge and immediately their nostrils are filled with the reek of dead turtle.  For completeness sake they fly out over the desert, figuring they can located the morbidund creature by smell, but what they discover is worse than any of them had imagined.  The smell grows strong whenever they approach any of the hardened-sand mountains that accrete on the great turtles’ shells. It’s not just one of the Colossi that has died.  It’s all of them.Morningstar wants answers.  Still on the back of one of the turtle-islands, and ignoring the reek, she casts commune.Ell, did we kill the turtles?NODid they die of natural causes?NODid Octesian kill them?NOAre all the Ventifact Colossi dead?YESWere the Sharshun behind the turtles’ death?NOWas the Black Circle responsible for the death of the turtles?YES, INDIRECTLYIs the fact that the return of the Adversary is drawing closer, responsible for the death of the turtles?PROBABLYIs the departure of the Gods responsible for the death of the turtles?NOIs the death of the turtled related to the recent earthquakes?YESHave we met the person responsible for the death of the turtles?IN AN INDIRECT WAY.Were the turtles intentionally killed?NOWas their death a symptom of the ‘thorn in Abernia’s side?’PROBABLYDoes their death pose a threat to the people of Sand’s Edge?SOME, FROM DISEASEIs continuing on our quest to get the Watcher’s Kiss, and then dealing with the thorn in Abernia’s side, the best way to deal with this threat?PROBABLE, BUT UNCERTAINWhen last I asked about going into the Greatwood and confronting Darkeye, I was told we weren’t ready to face her.  Is now the time?YOUR READINESS NO LONGER MATTERSIs Darkeye related to Grey Wolf?I CANNOT SEE CLEARLYDo you sense an Eye of Moirel in the Greatwood?NOIs there Earth Magic in the Greatwood?YESIs seeking the cause of the earthquakes more important than finding the Watcher’s Kiss?BOTH ARE NECESSARYBefore departing from Sand’s Edge, Dranko has Morningstar cast a sending to Tomnic, requesting priests be sent that can cast cure disease.  Morningstar sends another one to Ozilinsh:  All Ventifact Colossi dead.  Related to earthquakes and Thorn in Abernia’s side somehow. Headed to Sharshun HQ to get Watcher’s Kiss. Morningstar./*/The first stop on the mission to find Darkeye and obtain the Watcher’s Kiss is the Shadow Chaser, finest inn in Verdshane.  It was one of the first places the Company visited in the employ of Abernathy, and later was the command center in the Battle of Verdshane, where Naradawk was prevented from making ingress to Abernia.They teleport directly into the common room, and the sudden appearance of their heavily–armed group causes a great commotion of chairs sliding back and weapons being drawn.“It’s okay!” calls a woman’s voice from the back.  “Everyone, they’re friends!” “Hello, Minya!” Ernie greets their friend, the owner of the Shadow Chaser, with a wave and a grin.  “We haven’t seen you since the war,” says Minya with an affected frown.  “You might have stopped by now and then to say hello.”“We’ve been busy,” says Ernie.The Company sits at a table, orders a great quantity of food and drink, and starts discussing how they might go about finding the Sharshun’s long-hidden fortress in a forest spanning ten thousand square miles. Many have combed those woods over the years, and none have found any sign of the place.  Divinations have been tried, and all have come up empty; it has been long assumed that the Sharshun’s dwelling is shielded from such magics.Hours pass.  Ideas are conjured and discarded and new ones take their place, only to be discarded as well.  Finally Ernie cracks the problem’s shell.“Darkeye’s fortress is hidden now,” he muses.  “But what about back when the Emperor was in charge?”Running with that idea, Grey Wolf casts limited wish. “I wish I had a map of all major settlements in the Greatwood at the time of Emperor Naloric’s reign.”There, in front of him, appears such a map.  He only has time for the briefest of glances before the anti-divinatory magic of the present day erases it, leaving him with a blank white page – but that one glance was enough.  Being a wizard of mighty intellect, Grey Wolf can recall with near perfect clarity the locations of four clearly marked dots on the map, and he quickly draws them in the locations he remembers, on their own current map of Harkran.  (The largest of these dots was placed on Verdshane itself, presumably marking the Emperor’s one-time capital of Kinnet Vulthani.)  Aravis chooses one of the smaller dots arbitrarily, the one close to the little town of Dunheth.  He casts vision on that dot, hoping for some clue about the settlement that once occupied that location.   Even better than a clue, he gets nothing at all – as if some outside force is preventing his spell from functioning!“Found it,” he says with a smile.And that is all well and good, but now the question on all of their minds is: have these magical end-arounds somehow  alerted the Sharshun that the Company is zeroing in on them?/*/Soon they are wind-walking above the trees toward Dunheth.  In a little over an hour Grey Wolf stops, figuring they’re close to the spot indicated by their short-lived map’s incriminating dot.  Nothing about the tree canopy seems suspect, so they spend an hour flying in a random pattern centered on that spot, frequently dropping through the leaves to ground level as part of the search.  They find no unusual features of the forest, no dwellings, no people.  Their telepathic bond stays active throughout, an indication that they have not wandered into the volume of a Divination Sink.Kibi does make one discovery.  This patch of forest is thrumming with a strong undercurrent of Earth Magic.  He feels it each time his boots touch the ground.  The Company feels this is a strong signal that they’re on the right track, given the historic connection between Darkeye, the Sharshun, and the Eyes of Moirel.They enact the second part of their search plan.  Kibi uses wish to spoof commune with nature, imploring Abernia to give up its secrets concerning buildings, people, and powerful unnatural creatures within the spell’s 19-mile range.There are no people, that is certain.There is one building, 5 miles to the north-west.There are several powerful unnatural creatures, either insect or arachnid,  just over 12 miles to the south.They first inspect the building, but find that it’s merely an empty hunter’s cabin, abandoned for years and fast succumbing to nature’s encroachment.  Kibi thinks the hum of Earth Magic is weaker here than where he cast his commune with nature.  That leaves the insects as their only lead.  As the Company wind walks above the treetops, Kibi can feel his sense of Earth Magic growing stronger and fainter at the same time: stronger, because he feels he’s getting closer to its source, but weaker because he’s flying and gaseous.  Before long he loses its sense altogether and is forced to land and solidify, and once his feet touch the ground the vibrations of Earth Magic course through him.  He confirms again that both the location of the insects and the source of the Earth Magic are in the same direction, and they launch back into the air.  Ten minutes later they stop, having reached the approximate location indicated by Kibi’s commune with nature.  They descend through the thick leafy ceiling, and find that the forest here is quite sparse on the ground, with occasional clearings and trunks spaced far apart.  The spreading branches are thick with spider webs, which gives the heroes a good sense of what to expect, but there is no sign of any spiders, or of a fortress or other dwelling.Kibi and the others land in a clearing and become solid.  Kibi feels the source of the Earth Magic is quite close now, and he’s more or less on top of where he detected the spiders.  Dranko peers through the trees in the direction Kibi thinks the Earth Magic is coming from.An enormous man-sized spider appears in the air above him.  He blinks. Dranko can see invisible at will, and the spider was not invisible.  One moment it wasn’t there, and the next moment it was.  Then he hears his friends crying out in alarm, as seven more huge arachnids pop into existence and drop from  the trees around them, filling the air with a sudden cacophony of hissing and chittering.  Hardly even thinking about it, Dranko lashes out at the nearest spider with his whip.  The creature is larger than a sheep, red-skinned, with glowing red eyes and knife-sharp mandibles.  Its front two legs are tipped with deadly claws.  Three whip-snaps later and the creature is a pulped mass of ex-arachnid.Grey Wolf quickens a true strike, channels a maximized acid orb into Bostock, and steps into a swing at a second spider.  Acid gushes from the point of impact and the spider is nearly dissolved.  It staggers back, its mandibles melting in its mouth.  It tries to strike back, but its mushy pincers squish against Grey Wolf’s armor to no effect. Morningstar chants and saves and casts darkbeam, sending out beams of black energy that strike six of the seven spiders (missing only the badly wounded one, now cringing behind a tree).  Three of these are dazed by the beams, chittering madly.One of the spiders still with control over its faculties manages to land a bite and claw on Morningstar, but its damage is minimal.   A second attacks Ernie but all of its pointy bits are foiled by the halfling’s plate.  Assuming there are only the eight of these things, there doesn’t seem to be much to worry about.Flicker hefts one of his new magically-returning daggers and flips it nonchalantly at the mostly-melted spider.  It thunks into the creature’s last functioning eye, then quivers and returns whistling to Flicker’s waiting hand.  “This is a piece of…” he begins.  But he is interrupted; the surviving spiders – even the dazed ones – all stand up on their hind legs, and from deep in their throats their frenzied clicking becomes eerily synchronous.  Their color changes, turning a deeper crimson; their hairy hides bulge grotesquely as their bodies enlarge to the size of donkeys; the wounds from Morningstar’s beams knit and heal; and their mandibles sprout extra barbs.They understand immediately, and Ernie yells what they’re all thinking.“It’s a spider Seki!”…to be continued…</blockquote>

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