Richard II
First Post
Delemental said:Here's an update, though I'm sure it will be lost amidst the flood of 4E posts...
Nope, your faithful readers will find it. Assuming they're not at GenCon themselves.
Tales of the Legacy - Concluded
Nope, your faithful readers will find it. Assuming they're not at GenCon themselves.
Delemental
First Post
They arrived, nearly exhausted, at the site of the cultist’s fortress just before midnight. The structure was still under construction; the palisade wall was mostly complete, as was the first floor of the keep. Several other buildings were in various stages of completion, as was the outer wall surrounding the entire complex. Yuri and Osborn were sent to do reconnaissance, while the others caught their breath.
They returned after about an hour. “Well, we know that all those missing people from the villages are here. They’ve got the elderly working as guards and carpenters, going day and night.” Osborn reported. “And there is some religious symbolism incorporated into the keep – sort of.”
“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?” Arrie asked.
“There’s a black cat’s tail nailed to every ninth board on the wall,” he said with disgust. “Nine is a sacred number for Ladta.”
“What else did you see?” Arrie asked.
“The children are there too,” Yuri said. “They’re inside the keep, chanting.”
“Chanting what?”
“It’s some sort of ritual or prayer,” Osborn said. “There’s one adult with them, leading the chanting. I really can’t tell what its purpose is – maybe some sort of consecration or warding, given the number of people involved. It has elements of a Ladtan devotion, but its been twisted – like they refer to Ladta as the ‘One True Goddess’, which isn’t at all part of her teachings. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a lot of formal training in this sort of thing.”
“How long would it take you to get back there?” Tolly asked.
“About ten minutes, why?”
“Once you’re inside, I can scry on you and use that to help identify the purpose of the ritual,” he said.
“They were chanting in Anarchic,” Osborn said. “You don’t speak the language.”
“Scrying doesn’t permit me to hear the target anyway,” Tolly said, “but I’ll be able to see the motions they make, the materials they use, any symbols or diagrams they have.”
“It’d be a lot easier with a telepathic bond,” Osborn commented.
“I just checked on him,” Autumn said. “Kyle’s still out of commission.”
“The scrying will take an hour to prepare,” Tolly said. “Rest, and then make your way back to the keep. Stay there about fifteen minutes, then come back.”
An hour passed, and found Tolly staring into a silver basin filled with blessed water, staring at the images inside. He muttered and mumbled to himself as the scene shifted and changed with Osborn’s movements, but he refrained from commenting until Osborn was back with the rest of the group.
“It’s definitely a type of warding,” he explained. “They’re placing a combination of a zone of anarchy and a forbiddance on the altar. Once it’s complete, it will be difficult for us to enter. However, they are making a number of mistakes in the ritual.”
“I could hear them having to start over more than once,” Osborn said. “And I noticed something else weird that I missed before. All of the kids have both ears pierced.”
“Obviously something the cultists did,” Arrie said, “but why?”
“No idea. I suggest we find out.”
“But let’s rest now, and go later,” Autumn suggested. “We should be fresh when we go in.”
The night passed, and the party woke up just before dawn. “How should we approach?” Arrie asked quietly.
“We could fly in,” Autumn suggested.
“No, you can fly in.”
“I could as well,” Tolly said, “if Kupa carries me.”
The dragon just stared at Tolly. “What are you going to give me?”
Tolly’s lips pursed at the unexpected demand. “Since you are following me, let’s say I won’t charge you for any healing.”
“Let’s say I don’t care about that,” Kupa replied.
“Very well,” Tolly said curtly. “You can explain your unwillingness to serve to Ardara.”
“It’s a couple of hundred yards between the outer wall and the palisade,” Yuri said. “There are buildings in between for cover.”
We should try to avoid being seen,” Arrie said. “I don’t know if the old folks guarding the place are being coerced into serving or not, but either way I’d rather not have to carve my way through them.”
They eventually decided on a multi-pronged approach. After casting a few preparatory spells, Tolly crawled into Osborn’s portable hole, and the hin made a stealthy approach to the keep, running from building to building. Arrie and Yuri took much the same approach, though Arrie made use of her psionic powers to make extradimensional hops through the area, while Yuri did more physical hopping. Autumn opted for an aerial approach, dropping directly behind the inner wall after circling around behind the hills. Kupa and Rupert were left to guard both the camp and Kyle, who was brought out of the portable hole and left in a tent. Kupa was instructed to take the catatonic wizard to Vargas if they did not return.
Miraculously, the Legacy managed to penetrate the outer perimeter of the complex without being seen, and made their way inside the keep from various entrances. Soon they could all see what Osborn had; a group of fifteen to twenty young children, arranged randomly around the room and chanting. Two adults, dressed in full plate, also occupied the room; one was the cultist who had been leading the chanting the night before, the other stood off to one side, watching. The cultist leading the prayers had several chakram hanging from his belt, which was not an unusual sight on a Ladtan priest. But these chakram had serrated edges, another abnormality which only added to suspicion that this cult had been somehow corrupted. The cultist at the end of the room was armed with a fairly normal looking longsword and shield, but the engravings on his armor told Autumn that he was a member of the crusader sect known as the Anarchs, who were devoted to spreading disorder. No one in the room seemed to be aware of the party’s presence.
Their attack was swift and brutal. Arrie ran in to engage the anarch, and Yuri and Autumn moved toward the priest in the middle of the room, but were intercepted by two figures in breastplates, wielding spiked chains, who charged out from a nearby alcove. Osborn opened up his portable hole and released Tolly, his body formed of living iron and followed by a bright mote of divine energy that hovered over his head. Tolly immediately made his way to where the other priest stood in the middle of the room.
“In Ardara’s name, I declare you false!” he shouted, and attempted to imprison the priest. But the spell failed to capture him, and the man laughed.
“Your bitch-goddess has no power over me, Ardaran!” he sneered. Ignoring Tolly, he instead cast a spell at Autumn, summoning a translucent chakram made of divine energy that began to slash at her.
Meanwhile, Arrie and the anarch traded vicious blows, any one of which would have felled lesser warriors. The anarch, who was as proficient with his shield as he was with his blade, slammed the shield into Arrie’s face, sending her stumbling back long enough for him to shift toward the center of the room and slash at Tolly. Tolly cried out as the blade’s chaotic energies pulsed through him, reacting to his own orderly nature. In response Tolly tried to implode the anarch, but was unsuccessful. Arrie took advantage of the brief respite to down a healing potion, and then went after the anarch again.
Yuri and Autumn each squared off against one of the two new combatants, who were pointing at them and shouting curses. Yuri felt a sudden wave of unease, a lack of confidence that showed in her attacks. Her movements seemed to be just a little bit too slow to get into position, her spear thrusts just a little too shaky to strike true. Autumn, apparently, was not affected, as she sliced into one of the men with enough force to shatter bones. Osborn, who recognized the two new warriors as hexblades, threw daggers at the one fighting Yuri, but his blades were just a bit off target.
“Foul heretics!” Yuri shouted, frustrated at the inexplicable decline in her skills.
Both hexblades briefly touched rods hanging from their belts and muttered spells, and then attacked again. Autumn was struck by a spiked chain several times, but in the midst of the flurry the hexblade reached out and touched her arm, draining her vitality and absorbing it for himself. The other hexblade, seeing that Yuri was at a disadvantage, began to target Osborn with both steel and spell, though only the former managed to do any damage.
Bleeding from several wounds caused by both the hexblade and the priest’s spiritual weapon, Autumn’s face grew red with fury. “Enough!” she shouted, and slammed her falchion into the hexblade with unnatural power, rupturing organs inside him. The hexblade gasped in pain and his defenses faltered, and he was barely able to cast a spell, vanishing. Tolly, who had prepared a true seeing spell before the battle, could see that the hexblade was not gone, only invisible. He reached out a hand and touched him. For the others in the room, there was a sudden strangled cry from out of nowhere, a wet, popping noise, and then the sound of a body crumpling to the floor.
Arrie spared a moment from her battle with the anarch to look around the room. The children were milling about uncertainly; they had moved out of the way of the battle, but showed no signs of trying to escape. Why don’t they run? she wondered.
The Ladtan cult priest tried to dispel Tolly’s iron body, but as the spell came at him, the mote of light over his head flared to life, intercepting the spell and turning it back on the priest.
“Your faith is weak, heretic,” Tolly said.
“We shall see,” he replied, as he reached out and healed the remaining hexblade, who was now pursuing Osborn around the chamber. Yuri ran past both the hexblade and the priest, jabbing her spear at each as she sprinted by, but the curse that afflicted her caused her to miss the priest entirely, and only strike a glancing blow on the hexblade.
The priest laughed at the Sargian’s failed attack, and laughed again when he saw the anarch charge into Arrie, practically impaling her on his blade. “It seems that the One True Goddess favors our cause,” he mocked. “You have yet to even strike me.”
“That changes now!” shouted Autumn, as she leapt in and struck the priest across the back with Faithful Avenger, sending a shock wave of holy power across the room. It passed over the children without harm, but the anarch cried out as the power burned his flesh. Autumn’s triumphant grin turn to a stare of horror as she saw that her blow had done little damage to the priest. Instead, bolts of red lightning shot out from the priest and struck a half-dozen of the children nearby, who screamed in pain as gashes identical to the ones that Autumn had made on the cultist appeared on their backs. The children collapsed, and appeared dead. Everyone immediately backed away from the priest, as if he had suddenly burst into flames.
Osborn, who had seen the entire event, had also noticed that the earrings being worn by the children had glowed red when Autumn’s blow fell. “Children!” he shouted, “Take off the earrings!” They made no move to comply. Still calling out to them, Osborn renewed his attack on the hexblade, who had turned invisible like his former companion. But thanks to Osborn’s magical blindfold, which he had donned before battle, he could sense the hexblade’s presence without seeing him, and several daggers found a home in the body of his curse-spewing enemy. Tolly, similarly immune to the hexblade’s illusion, struck him with another implosion, but he resisted.
Arrie and the anarch circled each other, both leaving a ring of blood on the wooden floor. “I tire of fighting you,” the anarch said suddenly, and without warning he turned and charged at Autumn, his sword blazing with chaos-fire. The end of the blade struck the sentinel in the chest, burning its way through her armor, through her chest, and emerging from the other side, between her wings. Gurgling, Autumn staggered back against the wall, alive only by sheer will.
A terrible scream echoed in the room, from more than one person. Yuri was the first to rush in, her anger finally overcoming the power of the hex as she struck at the anarch again and again. “Faithless son of a bitch!” she screamed as she pressed the attack. The anarch turned to meet her assault, and then screamed as Autumn staggered up from behind and landed a devastating blow of her own. “I will not be vanquished so easily!” she spat at him.
A few feet away, the hexblade leapt from Tolly to Osborn, landing blows on each even as he tried unsuccessfully to avoid Osborn’s daggers. Tolly kept his concentration on the priest, though he was now wary of the unholy power he wielded over the children. He saw Arrie come up from behind and strike the priest across the back of his knees with Anyweapon, sending him tumbling to the ground. Tolly attempted to use his last implosion on the rogue Ladtan, hoping the sudden power would kill the priest before he could transfer his wounds to the children. But the priest easily resisted the spell, and in response dropped a flame strike on Tolly and Osborn, as well as a few of the children. The charred corpses of the kids dropped to the ground with a sickening crunch. Those who watched the horrible scene saw wispy, translucent forms rise up from each corpse, and then suddenly get pulled down into the ground below the keep.
Arrie held her weapon on the priest, waiting for him to rise. “Run!” she shouted at the children still milling about. “Why don’t you run?” But she could see the glazed stares of fanatics reflected on each young face, and knew her pleas were falling on deaf ears.
The hexblade came around and slashed at Arrie, hoping to draw her away from his master. But she stood her ground, and instead Osborn rolled past her and flung four daggers at him, which managed to find their mark. Still running, the hexblade staggered and hit the ground, dead before he came to a stop.
“That’s two of your people dead, priest,” Arrie shouted. “Surrender now!”
“No, my dear,” he cackled, “instead let’s even the score, shall we?”
The priest reached out and grabbed at Arrie. Instinctively she jabbed at him with her weapon before she could stop herself, cutting into his flesh. Red lightning arced, and two children fell over dead. His spell went off, sending waves of negative energy into her that tried to tear her soul out of her body. She hung on, barely, but the spell left her shaken and weak.
“Yes,” she heard the priest mutter, as his eyes darted toward the two ghostly forms being sucked into the ground from the dead children, “yes, more souls for the Soul Well. It must be fed!”
“That will be quite enough!” Tolly bellowed, as he picked up the priest and pulled him to his chest, pinning his arms to his sides to keep him from casting any more spells. Arrie, seeing her chance, willed Anyweapon to take the form of a mancatcher, and used it to hold the priest in place. But the cultist only laughed again, and easily slipped out of Tolly’s grip and the mancatcher’s arms, aided by magic.
Autumn and Yuri closed in on the anarch. With both hexblades dead, Yuri could feel the curse starting to lift, though it still hampered her actions. The anarch stepped back, and using his sword as a defensive device to ward off his enemies’ blades, slammed his shield into the ground. The earth rippled from the impact, sending waves out in all directions. Autumn barely kept her feet, but Yuri was knocked down, though thanks to years of acrobatic training she was back on her feet again in seconds. Autumn hit the anarch with another bone-splintering strike, but he held on defiantly, seemingly unconcerned with the damage.
“What unholy power is keeping you on your feet?” Yuri cried out.
With two of his allies on each opponent, Osborn decided to try to get the children to safety. He stood atop the altar in the center of the room and held up his holy symbol of Ladta. “Come with me!” he shouted at them. “Follow me in the name of the True Goddess!” Some of the children looked at him, and seemed uncertain what to do. A few began to walk toward him as he made his way toward a door.
“No!” shouted the priest. “Come to me, children! They are leading you astray!” He reached out again and touched Arrie, sending more necromantic power into her and stripping away her life force. But this time Tolly intervened with power of his own, repairing the damage that had been caused to Arrie’s soul. The anarch shoved his way past Yuri and Autumn and charged Arrie, hoping to help the priest eliminate one foe. Still woozy from the priest’s assaults, Arrie was only barely able to avoid his blade. Suddenly, his sword began to blaze with chaos-fire again, and he raised it up to strike Arrie down.
And then Yuri was there.
Stab.
“You!”
Stab.
“Will!”
Stab.
“Not!”
Stab.
“Win!”
Yuri pulled her longspear out of the bloody chunk of meat that had once been an anarch, and stepped over it as it fell to the floor.
Now the Legacy was faced with only one opponent, but one they dared not harm. Arrie was first to act, pulling out a pair of bolas and hurling them at the priest, tying up his legs and sending him crashing to the ground again. Tolly hit the priest with one dispelling after the other, stripping away his defensive spells. Yuri dropped her longspear and switched to a flail, which she used to land blows meant to incapacitate rather than kill. With no blood being drawn, the red lightning did not come again, except for one short burst when Autumn struck the priest with the flat of Faithful Avenger and the holy energies of the blade reached out to scorch the evil cleric’s flesh. Even Osborn, who could see he was making little progress with the brainwashed children, rushed into the melee, drawing a seldom-used short sword and clubbing at the heretic with it.
Desperate, and seeing that the party could overwhelm him, the priest cast another spell. A blast of frigid cold filled the room, drawing all of the heat out of the air and into the priest, who seemed revitalized even as everyone else suffered. The sudden shock struck Yuri and Osborn the hardest, and Autumn, who was already on her last legs, succumbed to the cold, the damage to her body too much. She would have fallen then, if not for the fortunate fate spell that Tolly had placed on her before the battle had even begun. Her wounds closed, and her lungs filled with air.
A few of the children in the room fell dead, frozen in place. As their souls lifted from their bodies and were sucked into the ground, they all felt a disturbance in the earth beneath them, like a small tremor.
The party renewed their efforts to render the priest unconscious. Blows rained down on him from all sides, but he stubbornly refused to succumb. Finally, as he prepared to cast another spell, Osborn pulled out a sap and hit him at the base of the skull. The priest blinked, and his pupils went wide. Before he collapsed, senseless, he muttered one final phrase, punctuated by a low rumble emanating from beneath their feet.
“The Soulkeeper comes!”
They returned after about an hour. “Well, we know that all those missing people from the villages are here. They’ve got the elderly working as guards and carpenters, going day and night.” Osborn reported. “And there is some religious symbolism incorporated into the keep – sort of.”
“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?” Arrie asked.
“There’s a black cat’s tail nailed to every ninth board on the wall,” he said with disgust. “Nine is a sacred number for Ladta.”
“What else did you see?” Arrie asked.
“The children are there too,” Yuri said. “They’re inside the keep, chanting.”
“Chanting what?”
“It’s some sort of ritual or prayer,” Osborn said. “There’s one adult with them, leading the chanting. I really can’t tell what its purpose is – maybe some sort of consecration or warding, given the number of people involved. It has elements of a Ladtan devotion, but its been twisted – like they refer to Ladta as the ‘One True Goddess’, which isn’t at all part of her teachings. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a lot of formal training in this sort of thing.”
“How long would it take you to get back there?” Tolly asked.
“About ten minutes, why?”
“Once you’re inside, I can scry on you and use that to help identify the purpose of the ritual,” he said.
“They were chanting in Anarchic,” Osborn said. “You don’t speak the language.”
“Scrying doesn’t permit me to hear the target anyway,” Tolly said, “but I’ll be able to see the motions they make, the materials they use, any symbols or diagrams they have.”
“It’d be a lot easier with a telepathic bond,” Osborn commented.
“I just checked on him,” Autumn said. “Kyle’s still out of commission.”
“The scrying will take an hour to prepare,” Tolly said. “Rest, and then make your way back to the keep. Stay there about fifteen minutes, then come back.”
An hour passed, and found Tolly staring into a silver basin filled with blessed water, staring at the images inside. He muttered and mumbled to himself as the scene shifted and changed with Osborn’s movements, but he refrained from commenting until Osborn was back with the rest of the group.
“It’s definitely a type of warding,” he explained. “They’re placing a combination of a zone of anarchy and a forbiddance on the altar. Once it’s complete, it will be difficult for us to enter. However, they are making a number of mistakes in the ritual.”
“I could hear them having to start over more than once,” Osborn said. “And I noticed something else weird that I missed before. All of the kids have both ears pierced.”
“Obviously something the cultists did,” Arrie said, “but why?”
“No idea. I suggest we find out.”
“But let’s rest now, and go later,” Autumn suggested. “We should be fresh when we go in.”
The night passed, and the party woke up just before dawn. “How should we approach?” Arrie asked quietly.
“We could fly in,” Autumn suggested.
“No, you can fly in.”
“I could as well,” Tolly said, “if Kupa carries me.”
The dragon just stared at Tolly. “What are you going to give me?”
Tolly’s lips pursed at the unexpected demand. “Since you are following me, let’s say I won’t charge you for any healing.”
“Let’s say I don’t care about that,” Kupa replied.
“Very well,” Tolly said curtly. “You can explain your unwillingness to serve to Ardara.”
“It’s a couple of hundred yards between the outer wall and the palisade,” Yuri said. “There are buildings in between for cover.”
We should try to avoid being seen,” Arrie said. “I don’t know if the old folks guarding the place are being coerced into serving or not, but either way I’d rather not have to carve my way through them.”
They eventually decided on a multi-pronged approach. After casting a few preparatory spells, Tolly crawled into Osborn’s portable hole, and the hin made a stealthy approach to the keep, running from building to building. Arrie and Yuri took much the same approach, though Arrie made use of her psionic powers to make extradimensional hops through the area, while Yuri did more physical hopping. Autumn opted for an aerial approach, dropping directly behind the inner wall after circling around behind the hills. Kupa and Rupert were left to guard both the camp and Kyle, who was brought out of the portable hole and left in a tent. Kupa was instructed to take the catatonic wizard to Vargas if they did not return.
Miraculously, the Legacy managed to penetrate the outer perimeter of the complex without being seen, and made their way inside the keep from various entrances. Soon they could all see what Osborn had; a group of fifteen to twenty young children, arranged randomly around the room and chanting. Two adults, dressed in full plate, also occupied the room; one was the cultist who had been leading the chanting the night before, the other stood off to one side, watching. The cultist leading the prayers had several chakram hanging from his belt, which was not an unusual sight on a Ladtan priest. But these chakram had serrated edges, another abnormality which only added to suspicion that this cult had been somehow corrupted. The cultist at the end of the room was armed with a fairly normal looking longsword and shield, but the engravings on his armor told Autumn that he was a member of the crusader sect known as the Anarchs, who were devoted to spreading disorder. No one in the room seemed to be aware of the party’s presence.
Their attack was swift and brutal. Arrie ran in to engage the anarch, and Yuri and Autumn moved toward the priest in the middle of the room, but were intercepted by two figures in breastplates, wielding spiked chains, who charged out from a nearby alcove. Osborn opened up his portable hole and released Tolly, his body formed of living iron and followed by a bright mote of divine energy that hovered over his head. Tolly immediately made his way to where the other priest stood in the middle of the room.
“In Ardara’s name, I declare you false!” he shouted, and attempted to imprison the priest. But the spell failed to capture him, and the man laughed.
“Your bitch-goddess has no power over me, Ardaran!” he sneered. Ignoring Tolly, he instead cast a spell at Autumn, summoning a translucent chakram made of divine energy that began to slash at her.
Meanwhile, Arrie and the anarch traded vicious blows, any one of which would have felled lesser warriors. The anarch, who was as proficient with his shield as he was with his blade, slammed the shield into Arrie’s face, sending her stumbling back long enough for him to shift toward the center of the room and slash at Tolly. Tolly cried out as the blade’s chaotic energies pulsed through him, reacting to his own orderly nature. In response Tolly tried to implode the anarch, but was unsuccessful. Arrie took advantage of the brief respite to down a healing potion, and then went after the anarch again.
Yuri and Autumn each squared off against one of the two new combatants, who were pointing at them and shouting curses. Yuri felt a sudden wave of unease, a lack of confidence that showed in her attacks. Her movements seemed to be just a little bit too slow to get into position, her spear thrusts just a little too shaky to strike true. Autumn, apparently, was not affected, as she sliced into one of the men with enough force to shatter bones. Osborn, who recognized the two new warriors as hexblades, threw daggers at the one fighting Yuri, but his blades were just a bit off target.
“Foul heretics!” Yuri shouted, frustrated at the inexplicable decline in her skills.
Both hexblades briefly touched rods hanging from their belts and muttered spells, and then attacked again. Autumn was struck by a spiked chain several times, but in the midst of the flurry the hexblade reached out and touched her arm, draining her vitality and absorbing it for himself. The other hexblade, seeing that Yuri was at a disadvantage, began to target Osborn with both steel and spell, though only the former managed to do any damage.
Bleeding from several wounds caused by both the hexblade and the priest’s spiritual weapon, Autumn’s face grew red with fury. “Enough!” she shouted, and slammed her falchion into the hexblade with unnatural power, rupturing organs inside him. The hexblade gasped in pain and his defenses faltered, and he was barely able to cast a spell, vanishing. Tolly, who had prepared a true seeing spell before the battle, could see that the hexblade was not gone, only invisible. He reached out a hand and touched him. For the others in the room, there was a sudden strangled cry from out of nowhere, a wet, popping noise, and then the sound of a body crumpling to the floor.
Arrie spared a moment from her battle with the anarch to look around the room. The children were milling about uncertainly; they had moved out of the way of the battle, but showed no signs of trying to escape. Why don’t they run? she wondered.
The Ladtan cult priest tried to dispel Tolly’s iron body, but as the spell came at him, the mote of light over his head flared to life, intercepting the spell and turning it back on the priest.
“Your faith is weak, heretic,” Tolly said.
“We shall see,” he replied, as he reached out and healed the remaining hexblade, who was now pursuing Osborn around the chamber. Yuri ran past both the hexblade and the priest, jabbing her spear at each as she sprinted by, but the curse that afflicted her caused her to miss the priest entirely, and only strike a glancing blow on the hexblade.
The priest laughed at the Sargian’s failed attack, and laughed again when he saw the anarch charge into Arrie, practically impaling her on his blade. “It seems that the One True Goddess favors our cause,” he mocked. “You have yet to even strike me.”
“That changes now!” shouted Autumn, as she leapt in and struck the priest across the back with Faithful Avenger, sending a shock wave of holy power across the room. It passed over the children without harm, but the anarch cried out as the power burned his flesh. Autumn’s triumphant grin turn to a stare of horror as she saw that her blow had done little damage to the priest. Instead, bolts of red lightning shot out from the priest and struck a half-dozen of the children nearby, who screamed in pain as gashes identical to the ones that Autumn had made on the cultist appeared on their backs. The children collapsed, and appeared dead. Everyone immediately backed away from the priest, as if he had suddenly burst into flames.
Osborn, who had seen the entire event, had also noticed that the earrings being worn by the children had glowed red when Autumn’s blow fell. “Children!” he shouted, “Take off the earrings!” They made no move to comply. Still calling out to them, Osborn renewed his attack on the hexblade, who had turned invisible like his former companion. But thanks to Osborn’s magical blindfold, which he had donned before battle, he could sense the hexblade’s presence without seeing him, and several daggers found a home in the body of his curse-spewing enemy. Tolly, similarly immune to the hexblade’s illusion, struck him with another implosion, but he resisted.
Arrie and the anarch circled each other, both leaving a ring of blood on the wooden floor. “I tire of fighting you,” the anarch said suddenly, and without warning he turned and charged at Autumn, his sword blazing with chaos-fire. The end of the blade struck the sentinel in the chest, burning its way through her armor, through her chest, and emerging from the other side, between her wings. Gurgling, Autumn staggered back against the wall, alive only by sheer will.
A terrible scream echoed in the room, from more than one person. Yuri was the first to rush in, her anger finally overcoming the power of the hex as she struck at the anarch again and again. “Faithless son of a bitch!” she screamed as she pressed the attack. The anarch turned to meet her assault, and then screamed as Autumn staggered up from behind and landed a devastating blow of her own. “I will not be vanquished so easily!” she spat at him.
A few feet away, the hexblade leapt from Tolly to Osborn, landing blows on each even as he tried unsuccessfully to avoid Osborn’s daggers. Tolly kept his concentration on the priest, though he was now wary of the unholy power he wielded over the children. He saw Arrie come up from behind and strike the priest across the back of his knees with Anyweapon, sending him tumbling to the ground. Tolly attempted to use his last implosion on the rogue Ladtan, hoping the sudden power would kill the priest before he could transfer his wounds to the children. But the priest easily resisted the spell, and in response dropped a flame strike on Tolly and Osborn, as well as a few of the children. The charred corpses of the kids dropped to the ground with a sickening crunch. Those who watched the horrible scene saw wispy, translucent forms rise up from each corpse, and then suddenly get pulled down into the ground below the keep.
Arrie held her weapon on the priest, waiting for him to rise. “Run!” she shouted at the children still milling about. “Why don’t you run?” But she could see the glazed stares of fanatics reflected on each young face, and knew her pleas were falling on deaf ears.
The hexblade came around and slashed at Arrie, hoping to draw her away from his master. But she stood her ground, and instead Osborn rolled past her and flung four daggers at him, which managed to find their mark. Still running, the hexblade staggered and hit the ground, dead before he came to a stop.
“That’s two of your people dead, priest,” Arrie shouted. “Surrender now!”
“No, my dear,” he cackled, “instead let’s even the score, shall we?”
The priest reached out and grabbed at Arrie. Instinctively she jabbed at him with her weapon before she could stop herself, cutting into his flesh. Red lightning arced, and two children fell over dead. His spell went off, sending waves of negative energy into her that tried to tear her soul out of her body. She hung on, barely, but the spell left her shaken and weak.
“Yes,” she heard the priest mutter, as his eyes darted toward the two ghostly forms being sucked into the ground from the dead children, “yes, more souls for the Soul Well. It must be fed!”
“That will be quite enough!” Tolly bellowed, as he picked up the priest and pulled him to his chest, pinning his arms to his sides to keep him from casting any more spells. Arrie, seeing her chance, willed Anyweapon to take the form of a mancatcher, and used it to hold the priest in place. But the cultist only laughed again, and easily slipped out of Tolly’s grip and the mancatcher’s arms, aided by magic.
Autumn and Yuri closed in on the anarch. With both hexblades dead, Yuri could feel the curse starting to lift, though it still hampered her actions. The anarch stepped back, and using his sword as a defensive device to ward off his enemies’ blades, slammed his shield into the ground. The earth rippled from the impact, sending waves out in all directions. Autumn barely kept her feet, but Yuri was knocked down, though thanks to years of acrobatic training she was back on her feet again in seconds. Autumn hit the anarch with another bone-splintering strike, but he held on defiantly, seemingly unconcerned with the damage.
“What unholy power is keeping you on your feet?” Yuri cried out.
With two of his allies on each opponent, Osborn decided to try to get the children to safety. He stood atop the altar in the center of the room and held up his holy symbol of Ladta. “Come with me!” he shouted at them. “Follow me in the name of the True Goddess!” Some of the children looked at him, and seemed uncertain what to do. A few began to walk toward him as he made his way toward a door.
“No!” shouted the priest. “Come to me, children! They are leading you astray!” He reached out again and touched Arrie, sending more necromantic power into her and stripping away her life force. But this time Tolly intervened with power of his own, repairing the damage that had been caused to Arrie’s soul. The anarch shoved his way past Yuri and Autumn and charged Arrie, hoping to help the priest eliminate one foe. Still woozy from the priest’s assaults, Arrie was only barely able to avoid his blade. Suddenly, his sword began to blaze with chaos-fire again, and he raised it up to strike Arrie down.
And then Yuri was there.
Stab.
“You!”
Stab.
“Will!”
Stab.
“Not!”
Stab.
“Win!”
Yuri pulled her longspear out of the bloody chunk of meat that had once been an anarch, and stepped over it as it fell to the floor.
Now the Legacy was faced with only one opponent, but one they dared not harm. Arrie was first to act, pulling out a pair of bolas and hurling them at the priest, tying up his legs and sending him crashing to the ground again. Tolly hit the priest with one dispelling after the other, stripping away his defensive spells. Yuri dropped her longspear and switched to a flail, which she used to land blows meant to incapacitate rather than kill. With no blood being drawn, the red lightning did not come again, except for one short burst when Autumn struck the priest with the flat of Faithful Avenger and the holy energies of the blade reached out to scorch the evil cleric’s flesh. Even Osborn, who could see he was making little progress with the brainwashed children, rushed into the melee, drawing a seldom-used short sword and clubbing at the heretic with it.
Desperate, and seeing that the party could overwhelm him, the priest cast another spell. A blast of frigid cold filled the room, drawing all of the heat out of the air and into the priest, who seemed revitalized even as everyone else suffered. The sudden shock struck Yuri and Osborn the hardest, and Autumn, who was already on her last legs, succumbed to the cold, the damage to her body too much. She would have fallen then, if not for the fortunate fate spell that Tolly had placed on her before the battle had even begun. Her wounds closed, and her lungs filled with air.
A few of the children in the room fell dead, frozen in place. As their souls lifted from their bodies and were sucked into the ground, they all felt a disturbance in the earth beneath them, like a small tremor.
The party renewed their efforts to render the priest unconscious. Blows rained down on him from all sides, but he stubbornly refused to succumb. Finally, as he prepared to cast another spell, Osborn pulled out a sap and hit him at the base of the skull. The priest blinked, and his pupils went wide. Before he collapsed, senseless, he muttered one final phrase, punctuated by a low rumble emanating from beneath their feet.
“The Soulkeeper comes!”
Delemental
First Post
Kyle’s eyes closed. When they opened again, the swirls of colors had almost completely vanished, though there was still a slight sheen, like oil on the surface of a pond. He stood up and emerged from the tent. Kupa and Rupert sat just outside, and looked up as he emerged.
“Where?” was all he said.
Kupa tuned his head and pointed out across the hill. Kyle saw the beginnings of a fortified wooden village a few hundred yards away. A partially-completed keep sat in the center, and smoke billowed from a large hole in the roof.
Kyle quickly cast a few spells, and then vanished.
* * *
The rumbling under their feet intensified, and there was a noticeable swelling in the floor near the center of the room. Osborn quickly unrolled his portable hole and unceremoniously dumped the unconscious priest inside, just before the earth exploded. Everyone was thrown back as a monstrosity arose from the newly formed pit, accompanied by the stench of rotting flowers.
The creature was large and bulbous, about the size of a wagon, and looked like a huge misshapen head. Instead of hair, several atrophied, spindly arms waved about, tremulous fingers pointing in all directions. As it floated upward, they saw that instead of a body, the creature’s underside was little more than a mass of tentacles and stalks. Four steel chains were attached to the underside of the huge head, tethered to the ground below with razor sharp spikes, as though trying to keep it from escaping. Orbiting the soulkeeper’s body were three black orbs.
Osborn was the first to act, hurling a dagger at the soulkeeper’s hideous body. The dagger bounced off harmlessly, not even leaving a scratch. Tolly then tried to cast destruction, but the spell fizzled before it even reached the creature. A shotput thrown by Arrie passed through the soulkeeper harmlessly, and a blow by Autumn that would have cut a normal man in half did little more than cause the beast to jiggle slightly. Finally, Yuri ran up and thrust her spear at the soulkeeper, and although it connected solidly, the wound it left was barely more than a scratch, which quickly scabbed over.
“Oh dear,” Osborn said.
* * *
Two men, slightly stooped with age, stood vigilantly by the main entrance to the keep, their spears firmly in hand. They’d heard some strange, terrible noises coming from inside, the sounds of a fierce battle and the cries of several children. But these men had been charged by their high priest to remain on guard and defend the keep from intruders, and they intended to do their duty. Any less would show a lack of respect to Ladta. So much depended on her and her priests – could they do no less?
There was a sudden popping noise, and a man appeared directly in front of them. He was large, and wore midnight blue robes. The door to the keep faced east, toward the rising sun, and so the man was silhouetted again the dawn. His eyes, however, seemed faintly luminescent. Slowly, the two guards raised their weapons.
“Move,” he growled. “Now.” The crystal sphere on the end of the staff he held began to glow.
Faced with the reality of a hundred and forty pounds of old man with a spear against two hundred and thirty pounds of angry archmage, both guards wisely allowed common sense to override devotion.
The soulkeeper floated in midair, almost seeming as though it hadn’t even noticed the party was there, assailing it with its most potent attacks. Tolly threw spell after spell which it simply ignored, and the blows of their various weapons did nothing but leave minor injuries. The soulkeeper glanced at Yuri and attempted to charm her, but fortunately her ring countered it.
Yuri, who had attacked the soulkeeper again with little effect, screamed in frustration. “Fine!” she yelled. “If I can’t hit you…” She turned and jabbed her longspear into one of the black orbs, sending a viscous, inky fluid spraying everywhere. The orb burst open, and suddenly the soulkeeper whirled on her, looking as perturbed as a giant gelatinous face could look. It hit her with another spell, and suddenly Yuri was frozen in place. With an awful noise, the chains holding the soulkeeper in place pulled free, and began waving around in all directions.
A figure appeared in the doorway of the chamber, surrounded by a crackling aura of electricity.
“Soulkeeper!” Kyle shouted. “You couldn’t defeat me before, and now you stand no chance!” Two bolts of lightning arced out from his fingertips, striking each of the two remaining orbs.
The others quickly got the idea. Autumn continued to slash at the soulkeeper, trying to distract it, while Arrie began targeting one of the black orbs. A few moments later Yuri joined in, after Tolly dismissed the spell that held her. Osborn moved up behind Autumn and used a healing wand to tend to her wounds, to make sure she stayed on her feet against the soulkeeper’s attacks. Enraged, the soulkeeper lashed out with its four chains, knocking Autumn, Osborn, Yuri and Arrie to the ground.
Tolly surrounded the soulkeeper with a blade barrier to try and keep it in place, while Kyle surrounded one of the orbs with a resilient sphere, cutting it off. Kyle had seen the same thing that Tolly had been seeing; each of the orbs was connected by a string of energy to the soulkeeper. But Kyle had seen their purpose; the orbs fed a protective field around the creature that negated most physical and magical energies. Until the field was down, the soulkeeper was virtually invulnerable.
Arrie’s spiked chain whipped around the last orb, and pulled it apart. The soulkeeper shuddered and howled, and Kyle saw that the protective field was gone. Yuri was already taking advantage, thrusting her longspear into the now much more vulnerable nightmare. Strangely-colored fluids poured out of the wounds she left. The soulkeeper tried to paralyze her again, but this time she shook off the enchantment. It then started to float away, ignoring Tolly’s blade barrier, but it wasn’t nearly fast enough. Between Kyle’s lightning, Autumn’s falchion, Arrie’s chain, and Yuri’s longspear, the creature had no chance.
It was Yuri who struck the final blow, screaming as she thrust the shaft of the spear halfway through the soulkeeper. It exploded in a burst of soul-destroying energy that lanced through everyone in the room, leaving them wounded but felling none of them. A torrent of freed souls shot upward out of the creature’s body like a geyser, blasting off the roof and hurling themselves into the sky, where they soon vanished as they made their way to the Shadow Plane.
The Legacy picked themselves up and gathered together, wary of the broken floorboards and crumbling ceiling.
“Kyle!” Autumn shouted happily. “You’re back!”
“Of course,” he said. “I was just waylaid, that’s all.”
“By what?”
“By that,” he replied, pointing at the hole where the soulkeeper had emerged. “After I completed my spell, it sensed my presence in the Dream Realm and came after me. I’ve been fighting a battle of wills against it for the past day or so.”
“If that’s the case,” Tolly said, “what took you so long?”
“It was persistent,” Kyle answered. “But at least the spell works. I’ll just have to find a way to account for the proximity of soul-consuming nightmares.”
“Oh, is that all,” Yuri laughed.
“Well, that’s all well and good,” Arrie said, “but right now we have a bunch of displaced orphans to worry about.”
The Legacy walked out of the ruined keep into the morning sunlight. The villagers, at least the elderly, had already gathered around, though none of them were carrying their spears. The children were still hiding, though the fact that they were hiding in large groups made them easy to find. The party moved around and gathered everyone together, making sure to remove the earrings from the children’s ears.
“Let me deal with this,” Osborn said.
Tolly seemed to bristle a little, then relaxed. “I suppose that makes sense, though I’m not used to deferring to a lesser priest.”
Osborn turned and glared at Tolly. “A ‘lesser’ priest?”
Tolly turned slightly red. “I meant less experienced. You’ve not been ordained as long.”
Osborn continued to glare. “I think you need to go away now.”
Tolly paused, and then, nodding, he strode away toward their camp. Yuri accompanied him, just to make sure he wasn’t alone if the crowd got ugly.
When he was gone, Osborn walked over to an overturned crate and climbed atop it.
“Is there any among you who speak for the rest?”
“What do you mean?” one man at the front asked. “What do you want of us?”
“I wish to know who will take care of you.”
“The Fatemaster took care of us,” an old woman shouted from the back.
“The man who brought you here was no true priest,” Osborn said. He held aloft his holy symbol. “I am a true priest of Ladta, and my companions and I have put an end to his heresy and freed you all.”
“Then you have doomed us all!” a man cried out. “The One True Goddess needs the souls of the faithful to maintain the balance! The Fatemaster told us this!”
“He lied!” Osborn shouted. “He lied to serve his own ends, and used you! All souls contribute to the balance, not just those faithful to Ladta, and they do not need to be sacrificed to serve that end! Ladta has never accepted the sacrifice of sentients!”
A murmur rippled through the crowd. Then the old man in front who had first spoken raised his voice again.
“How are we to know your words are any more true than his?” he asked. “All I see is a hin with an engraving of a cat. Can you show us that you truly speak for Ladta?”
Osborn thought for a moment, and then, reverently holding his holy symbol, he raised his arms into the air.
“Ladta,” Osborn intoned, shouting into the morning air, “can you show these people a sign that they have been misled?”
There was a long, expectant silence. Osborn felt the relic coin in his pocket vibrate slightly, and grow slightly warm. He waited patiently, and then from the back of the crowd he heard a cry – not of fear, but of delight.
The crowd turned and saw a young girl, no more than seven, cradling a small gray and white kitten. Other children began to call out with joy as more kittens appeared, running out from behind houses and fences to leap into the waiting arms of the kids.
Suddenly, Osborn felt his relic coin grow warm again, and he felt a definite sensation of pulling. Trusting his instinct, he followed the sensation, waling slowly through the town accompanied by a small group of local villagers.
Osborn followed the urging until he reached a nondescript spot near the center of the village, a few yards from a large egg-shaped boulder.
“Bring me a shovel,” Osborn said. Soon someone handed him a child-sized spade, which was sized perfectly for him. He began to dig, and after digging only a few inches down, his spade hit into a hard wooden surface.
Quickly expanding his hole, Osborn soon uncovered a very old strongbox, one that had obviously been there for decades. After it was pulled out of the hole, he pried it open, and a mound of silver coins, green with age, spilled across the ground.
“I believe this should be more than enough to help all of you find your way to other relatives, or establish a new settlement if you wish,” Osborn said proudly, standing up and gesturing for the displaced villagers to take their share. “It was lucky that this was found here.”
As the villagers began to gather up coins, Osborn felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up into the face of the man who had challenged his authority. “It seems I owe you an apology,” he said. “Your faith seems genuine. How could we have been led astray?”
“I will tell you that story in good time,” Osborn said.
The Fatemaster of Ladta tumbled out of the portable hole, and found himself surrounded by six people, none of them friendly. He knew all of their faces, except for one, a wizard in blue robes.
One of them, the hin who pretended at true faith, crouched down in front of him. “Explain yourself,” he said.
The Fatemaster was only too happy to educate these heathens on the path of salvation that had been revealed to him. He lectured them on the proper acts of faith required to save all of them from certain destruction, and how sacrifice was required so that the Soulkeeper could deliver the souls of the faithful to Ladta via the Soul Well in order to maintain the balance of powers.
Inexplicably, when he was finished none of them were moved by his words.
“How exactly did Ladta tell you all of this?” the wizard asked.
“She revealed it to me in a dream,” he said reverently.
The wizard sighed. “Well, now we know that some of them are actively seeking out people in the real world to corrupt.”
“One more thing to worry about,” sighed the Ardaran priest.
“What should we do with him?” asked the aasimar, nudging the Fatemaster rudely with her boot.
“He’s nuts,” said the Sargian woman. “I’d think the answer was fairly obvious.” She held up the end of her long spear and pointed it at him.
“Leave him to me,” said the hin. He stood up, and pulled a coin from his pocket. No, not just any coin… a sacred relic of Ladta! For such a thing to be in the hands of a heretic…
The Fatemaster watched as the coin began to glow brightly, obviously reacting to the presence of a true believer. The hin pressed the relic to the Fatemaster’s forehead…
The Legacy watched as the insane pawn of the Soulkeeper slowly vanished into the distance, his meandering path taking him far away from the lives of the villagers he had used.
“I still think killing him would have been better,” Yuri said.
“He has been stripped of all divine power by Ladta,” Osborn said, “and the mark he bears will tell all of my faith what he has done. His life will be far from easy.”
“Well, that’s over with, then,” said Arrie. “Now where?”
“Back to Dagger Rock, for a start,” Osborn said. “I’ll have Grog send some people out this way. These people will need help getting back on their feet.” The hin looked back at the fortified village. “Besides, for all his faults that crazy priest did pick a good defensible location. It may come in handy one day.”
----------------------------
Sadly, it may be some time before the next update appears. A good chunk of our gaming group has vacations scheduled this month, so we won't be playing much, and one of our players (Autumn's player) is wanting to get some experience in the DM chair, so she's going to be running us through Ruins of Greyhawk on rotation with the Aelfenn game and my Mutants and Masterminds game.
“Where?” was all he said.
Kupa tuned his head and pointed out across the hill. Kyle saw the beginnings of a fortified wooden village a few hundred yards away. A partially-completed keep sat in the center, and smoke billowed from a large hole in the roof.
Kyle quickly cast a few spells, and then vanished.
* * *
The rumbling under their feet intensified, and there was a noticeable swelling in the floor near the center of the room. Osborn quickly unrolled his portable hole and unceremoniously dumped the unconscious priest inside, just before the earth exploded. Everyone was thrown back as a monstrosity arose from the newly formed pit, accompanied by the stench of rotting flowers.
The creature was large and bulbous, about the size of a wagon, and looked like a huge misshapen head. Instead of hair, several atrophied, spindly arms waved about, tremulous fingers pointing in all directions. As it floated upward, they saw that instead of a body, the creature’s underside was little more than a mass of tentacles and stalks. Four steel chains were attached to the underside of the huge head, tethered to the ground below with razor sharp spikes, as though trying to keep it from escaping. Orbiting the soulkeeper’s body were three black orbs.
Osborn was the first to act, hurling a dagger at the soulkeeper’s hideous body. The dagger bounced off harmlessly, not even leaving a scratch. Tolly then tried to cast destruction, but the spell fizzled before it even reached the creature. A shotput thrown by Arrie passed through the soulkeeper harmlessly, and a blow by Autumn that would have cut a normal man in half did little more than cause the beast to jiggle slightly. Finally, Yuri ran up and thrust her spear at the soulkeeper, and although it connected solidly, the wound it left was barely more than a scratch, which quickly scabbed over.
“Oh dear,” Osborn said.
* * *
Two men, slightly stooped with age, stood vigilantly by the main entrance to the keep, their spears firmly in hand. They’d heard some strange, terrible noises coming from inside, the sounds of a fierce battle and the cries of several children. But these men had been charged by their high priest to remain on guard and defend the keep from intruders, and they intended to do their duty. Any less would show a lack of respect to Ladta. So much depended on her and her priests – could they do no less?
There was a sudden popping noise, and a man appeared directly in front of them. He was large, and wore midnight blue robes. The door to the keep faced east, toward the rising sun, and so the man was silhouetted again the dawn. His eyes, however, seemed faintly luminescent. Slowly, the two guards raised their weapons.
“Move,” he growled. “Now.” The crystal sphere on the end of the staff he held began to glow.
Faced with the reality of a hundred and forty pounds of old man with a spear against two hundred and thirty pounds of angry archmage, both guards wisely allowed common sense to override devotion.
* * *
The soulkeeper floated in midair, almost seeming as though it hadn’t even noticed the party was there, assailing it with its most potent attacks. Tolly threw spell after spell which it simply ignored, and the blows of their various weapons did nothing but leave minor injuries. The soulkeeper glanced at Yuri and attempted to charm her, but fortunately her ring countered it.
Yuri, who had attacked the soulkeeper again with little effect, screamed in frustration. “Fine!” she yelled. “If I can’t hit you…” She turned and jabbed her longspear into one of the black orbs, sending a viscous, inky fluid spraying everywhere. The orb burst open, and suddenly the soulkeeper whirled on her, looking as perturbed as a giant gelatinous face could look. It hit her with another spell, and suddenly Yuri was frozen in place. With an awful noise, the chains holding the soulkeeper in place pulled free, and began waving around in all directions.
A figure appeared in the doorway of the chamber, surrounded by a crackling aura of electricity.
“Soulkeeper!” Kyle shouted. “You couldn’t defeat me before, and now you stand no chance!” Two bolts of lightning arced out from his fingertips, striking each of the two remaining orbs.
The others quickly got the idea. Autumn continued to slash at the soulkeeper, trying to distract it, while Arrie began targeting one of the black orbs. A few moments later Yuri joined in, after Tolly dismissed the spell that held her. Osborn moved up behind Autumn and used a healing wand to tend to her wounds, to make sure she stayed on her feet against the soulkeeper’s attacks. Enraged, the soulkeeper lashed out with its four chains, knocking Autumn, Osborn, Yuri and Arrie to the ground.
Tolly surrounded the soulkeeper with a blade barrier to try and keep it in place, while Kyle surrounded one of the orbs with a resilient sphere, cutting it off. Kyle had seen the same thing that Tolly had been seeing; each of the orbs was connected by a string of energy to the soulkeeper. But Kyle had seen their purpose; the orbs fed a protective field around the creature that negated most physical and magical energies. Until the field was down, the soulkeeper was virtually invulnerable.
Arrie’s spiked chain whipped around the last orb, and pulled it apart. The soulkeeper shuddered and howled, and Kyle saw that the protective field was gone. Yuri was already taking advantage, thrusting her longspear into the now much more vulnerable nightmare. Strangely-colored fluids poured out of the wounds she left. The soulkeeper tried to paralyze her again, but this time she shook off the enchantment. It then started to float away, ignoring Tolly’s blade barrier, but it wasn’t nearly fast enough. Between Kyle’s lightning, Autumn’s falchion, Arrie’s chain, and Yuri’s longspear, the creature had no chance.
It was Yuri who struck the final blow, screaming as she thrust the shaft of the spear halfway through the soulkeeper. It exploded in a burst of soul-destroying energy that lanced through everyone in the room, leaving them wounded but felling none of them. A torrent of freed souls shot upward out of the creature’s body like a geyser, blasting off the roof and hurling themselves into the sky, where they soon vanished as they made their way to the Shadow Plane.
The Legacy picked themselves up and gathered together, wary of the broken floorboards and crumbling ceiling.
“Kyle!” Autumn shouted happily. “You’re back!”
“Of course,” he said. “I was just waylaid, that’s all.”
“By what?”
“By that,” he replied, pointing at the hole where the soulkeeper had emerged. “After I completed my spell, it sensed my presence in the Dream Realm and came after me. I’ve been fighting a battle of wills against it for the past day or so.”
“If that’s the case,” Tolly said, “what took you so long?”
“It was persistent,” Kyle answered. “But at least the spell works. I’ll just have to find a way to account for the proximity of soul-consuming nightmares.”
“Oh, is that all,” Yuri laughed.
“Well, that’s all well and good,” Arrie said, “but right now we have a bunch of displaced orphans to worry about.”
The Legacy walked out of the ruined keep into the morning sunlight. The villagers, at least the elderly, had already gathered around, though none of them were carrying their spears. The children were still hiding, though the fact that they were hiding in large groups made them easy to find. The party moved around and gathered everyone together, making sure to remove the earrings from the children’s ears.
“Let me deal with this,” Osborn said.
Tolly seemed to bristle a little, then relaxed. “I suppose that makes sense, though I’m not used to deferring to a lesser priest.”
Osborn turned and glared at Tolly. “A ‘lesser’ priest?”
Tolly turned slightly red. “I meant less experienced. You’ve not been ordained as long.”
Osborn continued to glare. “I think you need to go away now.”
Tolly paused, and then, nodding, he strode away toward their camp. Yuri accompanied him, just to make sure he wasn’t alone if the crowd got ugly.
When he was gone, Osborn walked over to an overturned crate and climbed atop it.
“Is there any among you who speak for the rest?”
“What do you mean?” one man at the front asked. “What do you want of us?”
“I wish to know who will take care of you.”
“The Fatemaster took care of us,” an old woman shouted from the back.
“The man who brought you here was no true priest,” Osborn said. He held aloft his holy symbol. “I am a true priest of Ladta, and my companions and I have put an end to his heresy and freed you all.”
“Then you have doomed us all!” a man cried out. “The One True Goddess needs the souls of the faithful to maintain the balance! The Fatemaster told us this!”
“He lied!” Osborn shouted. “He lied to serve his own ends, and used you! All souls contribute to the balance, not just those faithful to Ladta, and they do not need to be sacrificed to serve that end! Ladta has never accepted the sacrifice of sentients!”
A murmur rippled through the crowd. Then the old man in front who had first spoken raised his voice again.
“How are we to know your words are any more true than his?” he asked. “All I see is a hin with an engraving of a cat. Can you show us that you truly speak for Ladta?”
Osborn thought for a moment, and then, reverently holding his holy symbol, he raised his arms into the air.
“Ladta,” Osborn intoned, shouting into the morning air, “can you show these people a sign that they have been misled?”
There was a long, expectant silence. Osborn felt the relic coin in his pocket vibrate slightly, and grow slightly warm. He waited patiently, and then from the back of the crowd he heard a cry – not of fear, but of delight.
The crowd turned and saw a young girl, no more than seven, cradling a small gray and white kitten. Other children began to call out with joy as more kittens appeared, running out from behind houses and fences to leap into the waiting arms of the kids.
Suddenly, Osborn felt his relic coin grow warm again, and he felt a definite sensation of pulling. Trusting his instinct, he followed the sensation, waling slowly through the town accompanied by a small group of local villagers.
Osborn followed the urging until he reached a nondescript spot near the center of the village, a few yards from a large egg-shaped boulder.
“Bring me a shovel,” Osborn said. Soon someone handed him a child-sized spade, which was sized perfectly for him. He began to dig, and after digging only a few inches down, his spade hit into a hard wooden surface.
Quickly expanding his hole, Osborn soon uncovered a very old strongbox, one that had obviously been there for decades. After it was pulled out of the hole, he pried it open, and a mound of silver coins, green with age, spilled across the ground.
“I believe this should be more than enough to help all of you find your way to other relatives, or establish a new settlement if you wish,” Osborn said proudly, standing up and gesturing for the displaced villagers to take their share. “It was lucky that this was found here.”
As the villagers began to gather up coins, Osborn felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up into the face of the man who had challenged his authority. “It seems I owe you an apology,” he said. “Your faith seems genuine. How could we have been led astray?”
“I will tell you that story in good time,” Osborn said.
* * *
The Fatemaster of Ladta tumbled out of the portable hole, and found himself surrounded by six people, none of them friendly. He knew all of their faces, except for one, a wizard in blue robes.
One of them, the hin who pretended at true faith, crouched down in front of him. “Explain yourself,” he said.
The Fatemaster was only too happy to educate these heathens on the path of salvation that had been revealed to him. He lectured them on the proper acts of faith required to save all of them from certain destruction, and how sacrifice was required so that the Soulkeeper could deliver the souls of the faithful to Ladta via the Soul Well in order to maintain the balance of powers.
Inexplicably, when he was finished none of them were moved by his words.
“How exactly did Ladta tell you all of this?” the wizard asked.
“She revealed it to me in a dream,” he said reverently.
The wizard sighed. “Well, now we know that some of them are actively seeking out people in the real world to corrupt.”
“One more thing to worry about,” sighed the Ardaran priest.
“What should we do with him?” asked the aasimar, nudging the Fatemaster rudely with her boot.
“He’s nuts,” said the Sargian woman. “I’d think the answer was fairly obvious.” She held up the end of her long spear and pointed it at him.
“Leave him to me,” said the hin. He stood up, and pulled a coin from his pocket. No, not just any coin… a sacred relic of Ladta! For such a thing to be in the hands of a heretic…
The Fatemaster watched as the coin began to glow brightly, obviously reacting to the presence of a true believer. The hin pressed the relic to the Fatemaster’s forehead…
* * *
The Legacy watched as the insane pawn of the Soulkeeper slowly vanished into the distance, his meandering path taking him far away from the lives of the villagers he had used.
“I still think killing him would have been better,” Yuri said.
“He has been stripped of all divine power by Ladta,” Osborn said, “and the mark he bears will tell all of my faith what he has done. His life will be far from easy.”
“Well, that’s over with, then,” said Arrie. “Now where?”
“Back to Dagger Rock, for a start,” Osborn said. “I’ll have Grog send some people out this way. These people will need help getting back on their feet.” The hin looked back at the fortified village. “Besides, for all his faults that crazy priest did pick a good defensible location. It may come in handy one day.”
----------------------------
Sadly, it may be some time before the next update appears. A good chunk of our gaming group has vacations scheduled this month, so we won't be playing much, and one of our players (Autumn's player) is wanting to get some experience in the DM chair, so she's going to be running us through Ruins of Greyhawk on rotation with the Aelfenn game and my Mutants and Masterminds game.
Delemental
First Post
The Memory of What Could Have Been
I'm baaack!
We'll warm up with a little piece of fiction written by Autumn's player, based on email roleplay sessions she had with various characters. We have played an actual game as well, which will be written up very soon.
---------------------------------
Autumn sat on the bench in the small garden, looking into a little pool nearby, trying to work her memories into what is and what could have been, but felt like it was, and the confusion it created in her heart. She felt like she should be with both Kyle and Tolly and it was all a mess. She needed to find some kind of quiet to figure out her feelings and thoughts on the whole affair.
She reflected on the problem at hand, going over it in her mind as she had done countless other times since their recent encounter with the leShay. When time had been altered, all of a sudden she was married to Tolly and they had loved each other as fiercely as she and Kyle did – though at the time she had no way to compare, for in that altered version of history Kyle had never come to be. But the memory of the love was crueler by far, and it was a bizarre experience to all of a sudden have your memories rearranged so utterly. The look on Tolly’s face had been heartbreaking. For he knew as well as she the love they shared.
And now has no love of his own to fall back on, she reminded herself.
What to do? Kyle is the one she chose. Not Tolly. But what she had experienced, though not meant to be, was no less real. She thought long and hard and did her best to listen to her feelings too but they were more screwed up and confused and made the order of her mind fall into chaos. She needed help. If she couldn’t resolve this, then her entire extended family – the Legacy – would be thrown into imbalance.
Autumn stood up, and made her way out of the garden and back to the Happy Half-Ogre, where they were all staying while Osborn concluded his business. Just as she was rounding the corner to go up the stairs, she almost ran full on into Tolly. His cheeks reddened as he looked on her and she knew that her blood was rising just with the sudden and unwelcomed flood of could have been, memories of intimate times with this man. Flustered, she quickly muttered an apology and continued past him.
Arrie sat meditating in her room as a huffing and puffing Autumn burst into her sanctuary. She went straight for Arrie’s bed and plopped down and started to cry into her hands as her wings wrapped around her in a protective manner.
Arrie sat silently, knowing what troubled her sister, but allowing her the time to find her own words.
In between sobs, Autumn managed to get out a few of those words. “Stupid time traveling, timeline altering, emotional memory changing situation!” she wailed, “How am I supposed to face two men that I’ve loved with all my heart, knowing that to choose one is both right and wrong?”
Ari watched Autumn for a moment, thinking. She uncurled her limbs and got up from the floor, sliding onto the bed next to her sister. She stroked Autumn's long silken hair and wracked her brain for some way to give the aasimar some peace.
"In the end, it is your decision how to approach this situation. It’s your emotion and your relationship to the two men. I can point out for you some things that may help..." She trailed off as desire crystallized into understanding within her mind. With so much death and turmoil, the mantle of repose she had created with her belief became foremost in her mind.
Autumn stilled a bit but tears still ran down her cheeks. "Arrie?"
Arrie smiled gently. "Will you trust me for a moment, humor me?"
Autumn frowned. "You know I trust you." She gave a hiccup that trailed off into a sniffle.
The warrior psychically imparted calm to her sister's troubled mind, filling the air with the scent of jasmine. She held that pattern in her own mind as she spoke, hoping to give Autumn a few moments of clarity in which to consider her situation.
"Consider the men in question. Is there anything that you feel you could speak with Kyle about that he would not respond foremost out of love for you? If you were to explain all of this to him, what might the consequences be? How many of those consequences do you really feel would be negative?
“And consider also Tolly. He is wise enough that his goddess entrusts him with some of her most powerful prayers and secrets. If you approached him as someone seeking the wisdom of his Earth Mother because her heart is in turmoil, would he not search his heart to find words of wisdom for you?"
Ari slipped off the bed and wetted a small cloth in the wash-basin, handing it to Autumn. "Have I helped?"
Autumn got up with a determined look on her face, taking a moment to wipe her face with the washcloth. “Yes.”
Kyle looked up from his book when he heard the door open. Autumn looked like she had been crying, and was emotionally wrung dry. She sat on the bed next to him and looked at him with haunted eyes.
“Kyle, we need to talk.”
Nodding, he set the book aside and gave her his full attention. He, like Arrie, knew what was troubling his wife, but unlike the others, he had not experienced the alteration in time and memory, for in the altered version if history his family line had been eradicated.
“When we went to fix the past and time was altered,” Autumn began, “you didn't exist, for any of us. That’s why when we got back we didn't know who you were right away. Then our memories of the correct timeline got written back into us. We can still remember the alternative but it is strange like a story told to us long ago, but not gone or forgotten.” She knew, of course, that Kyle had already been told all of this, but she found she had to say it anyway.
“There were many things that were different, and things that happened there that never came to be, but the change that affected me the most was that I was married to Tolly.”
She sighed. “I have been struggling with this odd situation and my feelings on my marriage to both you and Tolly. I needed to talk to you and tell you the whole story so you know why I have been distant recently. I plan to talk to Tolly as well and work things out between us as well.”
"Oh. Well, I guess I can see where that makes sense... if I didn't exist, then naturally you and Tolly..." Kyle paused for a moment, looking tense and troubled.
"Do you have feelings for him?"
“Yes. I can’t forget giving my heart to him in this other reality and remembering this other reality like it never happened. It happened. It felt like a real lifetime even if it feels odd and off somehow. It’s still there in the back of my mind. I have been struggling with this since we got back.”
Autumn paused. “I’m glad to be able to finally talk to you about this. I love you and that has not changed, I married you here and now, not Tolly. I’m going to talk to Tolly and work out this relationship turmoil so that we are not causing an upset to our family and friends.”
Kyle put his arms around Autumn and embraced her. "Tell me when you speak to him,” he said as he released her, “I'll probably need to be ready for any blowback."
Autumn placed her hands on his face and looked him straight in the eyes. "Kyle, I am going to talk to Tolly after we are done talking. I’m with you, not him. I’m going to talk to him to make sure that this is clearly understood with both of us."
Kyle took Autumn's hands in his."Yes, but how do you feel about Tolly?"
The question threw Autumn a little. Hadn’t he just asked her that?
"Everything you experienced in that other version of time was real, even if it no longer exists. You have two different versions of your life story now, both equally valid even if one feels like a childhood story to you. I can't pretend that it doesn't affect the way you feel. But neither can I feel any sort of anger or disappointment in either of you. Had the two of you started some sort of intimate relationship in the version of time that I know, then of course I would be upset. But you fell in love with Tolly in a world where I never was, so how can I consider that a betrayal?”
Kyle stood up and crossed the room to sit in the windowsill, glancing down at the street below. “I don't fear you leaving me, or secretly seeking his company. Who you are as a person hasn’t changed, and neither has Tolly, and I know neither of you would do that. What I fear is that the two of you will try to pretend that nothing has changed, to deny what happened and the emotions that has created in you, covering them up vows and promises and understandings. If you do that, then I fear that the consequences would be even worse than if this had just been a simple affair."
“That is why I must talk to Tolly,” Autumn said. Standing, she kissed Kyle and went out the door.
Several minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and Arrie stepped inside. Kyle had moved back to the bed with his book. “That was quicker than I expected.”
Kyle shrugged, this time not setting his book aside. “Right now I’m not the one she needs to have a long talk with. My part in all this right now is to be the calm one. There’s enough turmoil between the two of them already without me adding to it.”
Arrie grinned. “I must be rubbing off on you.”
“Don’t let Autumn catch you. That’s all we need in this situation.”
Arrie rolled her eyes, and looked around. “Why is there nothing sharp or heavy nearby to throw at you?”
“Because I’m a very smart man.”
They both shared a laugh, though it died quickly. “Seriously,” Arrie said. “You okay?”
“Terrified,” Kyle said, “but how is that different from any other day?”
* * *
Finding Tolly was a little harder then anticipated. Autumn had to resort to flying over Dagger Rock to locate him. Once she spotted him lying in a field of reeds by the river she flew over to him, landing quietly next to him. She slipped her hand into his, resting next to his body as if it belonged there.
“Tolly, we need to talk about what happened. We can’t ignore that we remember being married to each other and shared a powerful love.”
"No, dear one, we cannot.” He spoke without opening his eyes or turning toward her. “But we also must remember that that was not this reality, and here, well, you know who you chose. My feelings are unchanged, there or here, but Kyle is a brother-in-arms. I cannot betray him, no matter the cost to me."
Tolly reluctantly released Autumn's hand, and then half rose and rolled to his side, gazing at Autumn lying next to him. He raised his hand to her face, cupping her delicate chin. "You are his lawful wife, Autumn. Not mine. I would betray my faith, his friendship, and your trust, all in one act. The painful part is I am not sure it wouldn’t be worth it.” He lingered for a moment, then suddenly stood up, sending panicked waterfowl screeching and flapping away.
“Please, don't follow me." Tolly turned and slowly walkee away, headed further along the river.
In a soft choked sob, only loud enough for Tolly to hear, came the words.
“I love you Tolly.”
There was a pause. Slowly, Autumn got to her feet.
“Please don’t walk away from me, I need you to help me sort through this.” Tears fell from her eyes
as she watched him walk away from her.
Tolly stopped. Without turning, he spoke to her. "But what can we do? We shared a lifetime, but not in this life. He is the best of friends. You are the one I fell in love with. You married Kyle. All we can be is friends, Autumn."
Tolly turned; his eyes shone. "I cannot betray your oath. It would be denying everything that I am, and then would you even want me? A betrayer of his own faith? We have to be friends, and no more. Close, but not as lovers - only as family."
He threw his hands to the sky, limned with divine energy. "And now, I have the ability to bring him back from death’s grasp, as I have brought you back before, and I would be obliged to do so, by my oath as a priest, and my place as a friend. I would die for any of you, and I have, but I will not betray myself. No matter how much I want to." He dropped to his knees in the earth.
"What else can we do, love?"
Autumn’s heart, breaking under the strain of loving two very different men, beat fearfully in her chest.
Her promise to Bail became painfully real, as she knew that if she were to fall, Tolly would call for her, not knowing she will not come to him again should she die once more.
The weight of it all crashing down around her, she fell to her knees in anguish. The wind rustling the tall reeds surrounding the embankment of the river pulled loose one of her feathers, catching the up current and moving off down the river. The lone feather moves past Tolly just barely caressing his cheek as it floats on by. Autumn, crying softly into her hands, her wings move to wrap protectively around her, does not see the feather’s touch, does not see Tolly’s fingers rise up and linger on that spot.
“We must only be friends,” she said at last. “I would never ask you to betray anyone, let alone yourself, my love.” She looked up with great sadness in her eyes. “Know this; my love will not fade with time for I have lived two lives, one with you and this one with Kyle.” She swallowed, and then looked up at him.
“When I die, Tolly, do not come for me again, I will not be able to answer your call. I have made a vow to Bail that I will stay with him the next time I go to his embrace.”
Tolly slowly, slowly moved closer. "Bail is a God of Trade, Autumn. Always remember. Yours is not the only deal." Tolly moved up, easing inside the wings' embrace. "Cry, but then we must move on. I cannot promise I will not come for you. I can promise I will do all I can to prevent the need."
She moved into him and cried, letting out everything in her. They embraced for what seemed an eternity, Autumn talking about all of her fears, desires, old times, and anything that came to mind amongst raking sobs.
Finally, they separated, though they did not let go of each other. "Come, we must clean up, and regain our composure,” Tolly said. “We have much to do. The weight of the world rests on shoulders such as ours." He smiled wanly. "And we will go forth, and love each other, and Kyle, and Arrie, Osborn, and Lanara, and the world will bow to us."
It took a long time for the tears to slow, and Autumn, overwhelmed and exhausted by it all, just rested in his arms for quite some time.
I'm baaack!
We'll warm up with a little piece of fiction written by Autumn's player, based on email roleplay sessions she had with various characters. We have played an actual game as well, which will be written up very soon.
---------------------------------
Autumn sat on the bench in the small garden, looking into a little pool nearby, trying to work her memories into what is and what could have been, but felt like it was, and the confusion it created in her heart. She felt like she should be with both Kyle and Tolly and it was all a mess. She needed to find some kind of quiet to figure out her feelings and thoughts on the whole affair.
She reflected on the problem at hand, going over it in her mind as she had done countless other times since their recent encounter with the leShay. When time had been altered, all of a sudden she was married to Tolly and they had loved each other as fiercely as she and Kyle did – though at the time she had no way to compare, for in that altered version of history Kyle had never come to be. But the memory of the love was crueler by far, and it was a bizarre experience to all of a sudden have your memories rearranged so utterly. The look on Tolly’s face had been heartbreaking. For he knew as well as she the love they shared.
And now has no love of his own to fall back on, she reminded herself.
What to do? Kyle is the one she chose. Not Tolly. But what she had experienced, though not meant to be, was no less real. She thought long and hard and did her best to listen to her feelings too but they were more screwed up and confused and made the order of her mind fall into chaos. She needed help. If she couldn’t resolve this, then her entire extended family – the Legacy – would be thrown into imbalance.
Autumn stood up, and made her way out of the garden and back to the Happy Half-Ogre, where they were all staying while Osborn concluded his business. Just as she was rounding the corner to go up the stairs, she almost ran full on into Tolly. His cheeks reddened as he looked on her and she knew that her blood was rising just with the sudden and unwelcomed flood of could have been, memories of intimate times with this man. Flustered, she quickly muttered an apology and continued past him.
Arrie sat meditating in her room as a huffing and puffing Autumn burst into her sanctuary. She went straight for Arrie’s bed and plopped down and started to cry into her hands as her wings wrapped around her in a protective manner.
Arrie sat silently, knowing what troubled her sister, but allowing her the time to find her own words.
In between sobs, Autumn managed to get out a few of those words. “Stupid time traveling, timeline altering, emotional memory changing situation!” she wailed, “How am I supposed to face two men that I’ve loved with all my heart, knowing that to choose one is both right and wrong?”
Ari watched Autumn for a moment, thinking. She uncurled her limbs and got up from the floor, sliding onto the bed next to her sister. She stroked Autumn's long silken hair and wracked her brain for some way to give the aasimar some peace.
"In the end, it is your decision how to approach this situation. It’s your emotion and your relationship to the two men. I can point out for you some things that may help..." She trailed off as desire crystallized into understanding within her mind. With so much death and turmoil, the mantle of repose she had created with her belief became foremost in her mind.
Autumn stilled a bit but tears still ran down her cheeks. "Arrie?"
Arrie smiled gently. "Will you trust me for a moment, humor me?"
Autumn frowned. "You know I trust you." She gave a hiccup that trailed off into a sniffle.
The warrior psychically imparted calm to her sister's troubled mind, filling the air with the scent of jasmine. She held that pattern in her own mind as she spoke, hoping to give Autumn a few moments of clarity in which to consider her situation.
"Consider the men in question. Is there anything that you feel you could speak with Kyle about that he would not respond foremost out of love for you? If you were to explain all of this to him, what might the consequences be? How many of those consequences do you really feel would be negative?
“And consider also Tolly. He is wise enough that his goddess entrusts him with some of her most powerful prayers and secrets. If you approached him as someone seeking the wisdom of his Earth Mother because her heart is in turmoil, would he not search his heart to find words of wisdom for you?"
Ari slipped off the bed and wetted a small cloth in the wash-basin, handing it to Autumn. "Have I helped?"
Autumn got up with a determined look on her face, taking a moment to wipe her face with the washcloth. “Yes.”
* * *
Kyle looked up from his book when he heard the door open. Autumn looked like she had been crying, and was emotionally wrung dry. She sat on the bed next to him and looked at him with haunted eyes.
“Kyle, we need to talk.”
Nodding, he set the book aside and gave her his full attention. He, like Arrie, knew what was troubling his wife, but unlike the others, he had not experienced the alteration in time and memory, for in the altered version if history his family line had been eradicated.
“When we went to fix the past and time was altered,” Autumn began, “you didn't exist, for any of us. That’s why when we got back we didn't know who you were right away. Then our memories of the correct timeline got written back into us. We can still remember the alternative but it is strange like a story told to us long ago, but not gone or forgotten.” She knew, of course, that Kyle had already been told all of this, but she found she had to say it anyway.
“There were many things that were different, and things that happened there that never came to be, but the change that affected me the most was that I was married to Tolly.”
She sighed. “I have been struggling with this odd situation and my feelings on my marriage to both you and Tolly. I needed to talk to you and tell you the whole story so you know why I have been distant recently. I plan to talk to Tolly as well and work things out between us as well.”
"Oh. Well, I guess I can see where that makes sense... if I didn't exist, then naturally you and Tolly..." Kyle paused for a moment, looking tense and troubled.
"Do you have feelings for him?"
“Yes. I can’t forget giving my heart to him in this other reality and remembering this other reality like it never happened. It happened. It felt like a real lifetime even if it feels odd and off somehow. It’s still there in the back of my mind. I have been struggling with this since we got back.”
Autumn paused. “I’m glad to be able to finally talk to you about this. I love you and that has not changed, I married you here and now, not Tolly. I’m going to talk to Tolly and work out this relationship turmoil so that we are not causing an upset to our family and friends.”
Kyle put his arms around Autumn and embraced her. "Tell me when you speak to him,” he said as he released her, “I'll probably need to be ready for any blowback."
Autumn placed her hands on his face and looked him straight in the eyes. "Kyle, I am going to talk to Tolly after we are done talking. I’m with you, not him. I’m going to talk to him to make sure that this is clearly understood with both of us."
Kyle took Autumn's hands in his."Yes, but how do you feel about Tolly?"
The question threw Autumn a little. Hadn’t he just asked her that?
"Everything you experienced in that other version of time was real, even if it no longer exists. You have two different versions of your life story now, both equally valid even if one feels like a childhood story to you. I can't pretend that it doesn't affect the way you feel. But neither can I feel any sort of anger or disappointment in either of you. Had the two of you started some sort of intimate relationship in the version of time that I know, then of course I would be upset. But you fell in love with Tolly in a world where I never was, so how can I consider that a betrayal?”
Kyle stood up and crossed the room to sit in the windowsill, glancing down at the street below. “I don't fear you leaving me, or secretly seeking his company. Who you are as a person hasn’t changed, and neither has Tolly, and I know neither of you would do that. What I fear is that the two of you will try to pretend that nothing has changed, to deny what happened and the emotions that has created in you, covering them up vows and promises and understandings. If you do that, then I fear that the consequences would be even worse than if this had just been a simple affair."
“That is why I must talk to Tolly,” Autumn said. Standing, she kissed Kyle and went out the door.
Several minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and Arrie stepped inside. Kyle had moved back to the bed with his book. “That was quicker than I expected.”
Kyle shrugged, this time not setting his book aside. “Right now I’m not the one she needs to have a long talk with. My part in all this right now is to be the calm one. There’s enough turmoil between the two of them already without me adding to it.”
Arrie grinned. “I must be rubbing off on you.”
“Don’t let Autumn catch you. That’s all we need in this situation.”
Arrie rolled her eyes, and looked around. “Why is there nothing sharp or heavy nearby to throw at you?”
“Because I’m a very smart man.”
They both shared a laugh, though it died quickly. “Seriously,” Arrie said. “You okay?”
“Terrified,” Kyle said, “but how is that different from any other day?”
* * *
Finding Tolly was a little harder then anticipated. Autumn had to resort to flying over Dagger Rock to locate him. Once she spotted him lying in a field of reeds by the river she flew over to him, landing quietly next to him. She slipped her hand into his, resting next to his body as if it belonged there.
“Tolly, we need to talk about what happened. We can’t ignore that we remember being married to each other and shared a powerful love.”
"No, dear one, we cannot.” He spoke without opening his eyes or turning toward her. “But we also must remember that that was not this reality, and here, well, you know who you chose. My feelings are unchanged, there or here, but Kyle is a brother-in-arms. I cannot betray him, no matter the cost to me."
Tolly reluctantly released Autumn's hand, and then half rose and rolled to his side, gazing at Autumn lying next to him. He raised his hand to her face, cupping her delicate chin. "You are his lawful wife, Autumn. Not mine. I would betray my faith, his friendship, and your trust, all in one act. The painful part is I am not sure it wouldn’t be worth it.” He lingered for a moment, then suddenly stood up, sending panicked waterfowl screeching and flapping away.
“Please, don't follow me." Tolly turned and slowly walkee away, headed further along the river.
In a soft choked sob, only loud enough for Tolly to hear, came the words.
“I love you Tolly.”
There was a pause. Slowly, Autumn got to her feet.
“Please don’t walk away from me, I need you to help me sort through this.” Tears fell from her eyes
as she watched him walk away from her.
Tolly stopped. Without turning, he spoke to her. "But what can we do? We shared a lifetime, but not in this life. He is the best of friends. You are the one I fell in love with. You married Kyle. All we can be is friends, Autumn."
Tolly turned; his eyes shone. "I cannot betray your oath. It would be denying everything that I am, and then would you even want me? A betrayer of his own faith? We have to be friends, and no more. Close, but not as lovers - only as family."
He threw his hands to the sky, limned with divine energy. "And now, I have the ability to bring him back from death’s grasp, as I have brought you back before, and I would be obliged to do so, by my oath as a priest, and my place as a friend. I would die for any of you, and I have, but I will not betray myself. No matter how much I want to." He dropped to his knees in the earth.
"What else can we do, love?"
Autumn’s heart, breaking under the strain of loving two very different men, beat fearfully in her chest.
Her promise to Bail became painfully real, as she knew that if she were to fall, Tolly would call for her, not knowing she will not come to him again should she die once more.
The weight of it all crashing down around her, she fell to her knees in anguish. The wind rustling the tall reeds surrounding the embankment of the river pulled loose one of her feathers, catching the up current and moving off down the river. The lone feather moves past Tolly just barely caressing his cheek as it floats on by. Autumn, crying softly into her hands, her wings move to wrap protectively around her, does not see the feather’s touch, does not see Tolly’s fingers rise up and linger on that spot.
“We must only be friends,” she said at last. “I would never ask you to betray anyone, let alone yourself, my love.” She looked up with great sadness in her eyes. “Know this; my love will not fade with time for I have lived two lives, one with you and this one with Kyle.” She swallowed, and then looked up at him.
“When I die, Tolly, do not come for me again, I will not be able to answer your call. I have made a vow to Bail that I will stay with him the next time I go to his embrace.”
Tolly slowly, slowly moved closer. "Bail is a God of Trade, Autumn. Always remember. Yours is not the only deal." Tolly moved up, easing inside the wings' embrace. "Cry, but then we must move on. I cannot promise I will not come for you. I can promise I will do all I can to prevent the need."
She moved into him and cried, letting out everything in her. They embraced for what seemed an eternity, Autumn talking about all of her fears, desires, old times, and anything that came to mind amongst raking sobs.
Finally, they separated, though they did not let go of each other. "Come, we must clean up, and regain our composure,” Tolly said. “We have much to do. The weight of the world rests on shoulders such as ours." He smiled wanly. "And we will go forth, and love each other, and Kyle, and Arrie, Osborn, and Lanara, and the world will bow to us."
It took a long time for the tears to slow, and Autumn, overwhelmed and exhausted by it all, just rested in his arms for quite some time.
Richard II
First Post
Yay, more story, even if it was sad. And does the line about loving lanara foreshadow her return? Lanara's a lot more fun than the dragoon.
Delemental
First Post
Richard II said:Yay, more story, even if it was sad. And does the line about loving lanara foreshadow her return? Lanara's a lot more fun than the dragoon.
Don't know for sure when she'll be back, but I agree with you. I think that in the minds of the group, Lanara's absence is only temporary, so I don't think we consider the idea of her not returning some day.
Guess it depends on when Lanara's player decides she's ready to bring her back.
Delemental
First Post
Heart of the Mountain
It only took a day for Osborn to conclude his business in Dagger Rock, mostly because he was able to send messages back and forth to Grog as the party made their way back from the remote village, and by the time they arrived most of the arrangements were finished. After a few last-minute instructions, Osborn set about helping the rest of the Legacy prepare for their next journey.
“Where is this monastery, exactly?” Yuri asked, as she packed her belongings.
“I know how to get there,” Tolly explained, “but not the exact location. It’s in a rather forbidding part of the mountains south of Targeth.”
“Well, at least it’s nearly summer,” Arrie commented, “so the journey will be a little easier.”
“Not as easy as a teleport,” Kyle commented.
“But with far less risk of having my parts rearranged,” Arrie finished.
They departed the next morning, riding fresh horses provided by Grog. They crossed the hilly country quickly, and within three days were coming upon the jagged peaks that formed the border between Targeth and the Dwarven Confederates. They left their horses at a small outpost that was friendly to the Shadow General, and made their way on foot into the mountains. It was the end of the month of Canith, and with only a month to go until Midsummer the weather was warm and pleasant. Most of the snow had receded from the mountains, except for the peaks, but the streams and rivers flowing down from those peaks were still strong and swollen, creating barriers that the Legacy had to overcome with a combination of creativity, experience, and a dose of magic when necessary. Fortunately, they did not experience any significant warping of their spells. The only significant injury sustained was by Tolly, who gave himself a hernia trying to move a large boulder off the trail. It was quickly healed, the boulder transmuted to mud, and the party was on their way.
Another slight delay occurred when the party was accosted by a tribe of stone giants, demanding payment for passage. They briefly considered refusing, but when the giants’ toll ended up being only a couple of hundred gold coins, they decided to simply pay the toll and be on their way to more important business. After that, they only had to deal with the weather, as they rose higher into the mountains where it was still bitterly cold.
Seven days after entering the mountains, Tolly began to see dwarven runes carved into rocks along the trail. “The monastery is close,” he announced. “Another day’s journey at most. Since we have no idea why the church of Ardara lost contact with this monastery, I suggest that we be prepared for anything.”
“We’re not going to have any problems with these monks, are we?” Kyle asked. “I mean, because of your recent disagreements with the church.”
“These monks live here to hone their faith away from the distractions of the world,” Tolly said. “They have little interest in politics. However, they can be a bit insular, and slow to accept differences. This is one situation where it may be good that Lanara’s not among us. Regardless of how charming she is, the presence of a cansin worshipper of Feesha would likely rub them the wrong way.”
By the time they stopped to make camp, it was obvious that they were getting close to some sort of settlement. The path they had followed had widened into something like an actual road, though one that had never been touched by a wagon or cart of any kind. There were signs that some brush had been cleared, and that some effort had been made at gathering the meager amount of wood found this high up. Wary of what they might find ahead, the Legacy made camp well off the trail, and kept signs of their presence to a minimum.
They arrived at the monastery early the next morning, approaching the area under an iron-gray sky. Two large, ornately carved stone doors were set into the side of the mountain; clearly designed to keep out even the worst winter storm, and possibly even hungry stone giants. But there was no sign of activity, and one of the stone doors stood slightly ajar. Drifting snow had piled up in front of the opening.
Autumn began to move forward, but Osborn put up a hand to stop her. “Let me check it out first,” he said, before turning invisible and moving forward. Creeping up quietly toward the door, he saw immediately that no one had moved in or out of the door in some time. But from somewhere inside, he could see a very faint, flickering glow, and he could hear the sound of shallow, ragged breathing.
Ending his invisibility, Osborn motioned the others forward. As they approached, the ragged breath drew in. “Is someone there?” a weak voice cried out.
They pushed open the doors, and walked into a scene of carnage. Dozens of bodies, stiff with the cold, lay scattered throughout the large open space just beyond the stone doors. Many of the corpses were dressed in the plain brown robes of Ardaran monks, and were all humans or dwarves, but many others wore more traditional attire, but came in much less traditional forms. Among the bodies were half-giants, maenads, and xeph, as well as humans and various planet-touched and element-touched races. Many of the dead were carrying crystals, or bore strange tattoos; all it took was a nod from Kyle to confirm what kind of energy was emanating from those devices.
“This one is alive,” Osborn called out.
Tolly walked over and knelt at the side of a young, pale human, propped up against a stone pillar. His blonde, curly hair was matted with dried blood. A large tome lay open across his lap, and a quill pen was still clutched in his fingers. A small, stubby candle sat next to a vial of ink, both nearly depleted. The man looked up at Tolly, and then, with trembling hands, picked up the book in both hands and handed it to him.
“Tell them we tried,” he said weakly, and then said no more.
* * *
“It’s an adventurer’s journal,” Tolly said, reading through the pages of the large book as the others sorted through the bodies. “This man – Pepin was his name – was apparently some sort of servant or hired henchman for a group of adventurers loyal to Aran, who hail from an Underdark village called Tal Jashar*. He kept a detailed record of their journey. He apparently stayed alive, mostly through sheer force of will, just to make sure that someone would get this.”
“What happened here?” Yuri asked. “The Ardaran church lost contact with this place weeks ago, but these people died relatively recently.”
“It began just after the start of the month,” Tolly said, skimming through the lines of dense dwarven writing. “These adventurers came across information that Kristyan was still pursuing divine relics, since Silko’s apotheosis was incomplete. They tracked a group of Kristyan’s psions to this monastery, but arrived too late to stop the initial attack. The survivors indicated that their communications were being intercepted for some time – the attackers were gathering intelligence before the assault.”
“So, they must have come back,” Autumn commented.
“No, they never left. After killing the monks, Kristyan’s men went deep into the mountain, into the deep chambers of the monastery. They emerged again after these adventurers arrived – apparently fleeing in terror.”
“Fleeing from what?” Kyle asked.
Tolly frowned. “The journal does not say. Something in the mountain’s depths apparently managed to decimate the psions and sent them running. There was another battle here when they emerged, which resulted in the scene you see here. Kristyan’s forces had been weakened enough by whatever is down there that these adventurers were able to eliminate them, though obviously at great cost.”
There was a moment of respectful silence for the fallen heroes. “What now?” Osborn asked at last.
“The monks and the adventurers from Tal Jashar should receive a proper burial,” Tolly said, “and Kristyan’s people should be thrown off the nearest cliff. After that, we need to address the situation down below.”
“What is down there, anyway?” Kyle asked.
“I don’t know,” Tolly admitted. “But it’s clearly of great importance, and the security of this monastery has been compromised. As a member of the church, it is my duty to make sure that whatever these monks were guarding does not end up in the wrong hands.”
“Well, we’re with you,” Autumn said. “But exactly what kind of death-traps do Ardarans use to protect their relics?”
“Bludgeoning and crushing, mostly,” he replied matter-of-factly. “And suffocation. Suffocation is common.”
“What a lovely place,” Yuri quipped. “Let’s go, shall we?”
The party completed the grim business of tending to the dead, and then gathered together and proceeded down the long, dark tunnel at the back of the cavern-like main chamber. They passed a number of rooms carved out of the stone, used as living quarters for the monks who had once populated this place. After a while, however, the walls became rougher, and the light sconces fewer and farther between.
Eventually, they emerged into a large chamber which looked more like a natural cavern than a man-made one. Roughly oval in shape, half the room was nothing more than a plain rock floor, featureless except for a single altar upon which rested an ingot of strange metal. The back half of the chamber dropped away into a deep pit, and dozens of metal spikes could be seen protruding from the ground below. A single door sat on the far wall on the other side of the pit, but it was level with the floor above, rather than the floor of the pit.
The moment that everyone entered, the tunnel they had come through seemed to collapse in on itself, irising shut.
“That doesn’t look so good, Tolly,” Yuri said.
“It’s typical,” Tolly said, his attention focused on the metal ingot on the altar. The metal was unlike any he had ever seen; it was a dark alloy, somewhat like cold iron, but the surface of the metal seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen this object before, perhaps in a dream he’d had long ago. He resolved to take the ingot with them when they returned from recovering the relic.
Osborn was already examining the altar. “Clever,” he said. “Two traps, one pretty obvious, and the other hidden much better. I almost missed it myself.” A few minutes later, Osborn declared that both traps were disabled.
“There’s also some writing on the altar,” Osborn said. “I can’t read it.”
They all went around to look at the inscription, which was written in Terran. Tolly translated it.
“My thunder comes before the lightning; My lightning comes before the clouds; My rain dries all the land it touches. What am I?”
There was only a moment’s pause. “A volcano,” Kyle and Tolly said simultaneously.
With a grinding sound, a narrow stone bridge extended from the edge of the pit, across to the door in the far wall. The bridge was barely six inches wide, but seemed solid.
As the Legacy turned to proceed across the bridge, Kupa cleared his throat. The young dragon had been silent most of the time they’d been in the monastery. “Well?” he asked Tolly.
“Well, what?”
“Aren’t you going to take the relic?”
Tolly looked back at the metal ingot. “That’s the relic?” Kupa nodded.
Slowly, Tolly reached out and grasped the ingot. As his hands closed around it, the metal suddenly shifted, briefly taking the form of a slender blade before resuming its shape. Tolly stood with his hand around it for a moment, his eyes distant, and then came back to his senses.
“Most interesting,” he said.
“What is it?” Kyle asked.
“It’s an ingot of soulsteel,” Tolly said, “said to be the first metal ever created, when the One and the Four were young.” Tolly concentrated on the metal for a moment, and it shaped itself into an exact replica of Tolly’s own maul.
“Well then,” Arrie said, “if the monks left their relic out in the open like that, then one wonders what can be found further in.”
“I think we need to find out,” Osborn said, pulling out a rope.
They crossed the narrow bridge with little difficulty; Osborn went across and set a guide line, and Autumn flew behind each person as they crossed to support them if they wavered. The door opened into a short hallway which ended in a blank wall, but as soon as everyone was in the hallway, the door behind them vanished, and another one appeared at the end.
“This is going to get rather tedious,” Yuri complained.
“At least we don’t have to worry about getting lost,” Kyle said.
“The easiest way to follow the law is to have only one choice,” Tolly said.
The door emerged into a large, rectangular room, over two hundred feet across and about half that amount in depth. Two stone pillars, about waist high, sat near the middle of the room, about fifty feet apart. A sphere of purple stone sat on top of each pillar, pulsing every few seconds with an inner light. As expected, once everyone had crossed into the room the door vanished. What was slightly less expected was when two iron golems walked through the walls on either side of the room and began advancing into the middle. At the same time, small vents opened up along the wall near the floor, and water began rushing into the room.
As the party moved into combat, it quickly became apparent that these were no ordinary constructs. They were larger and more powerful than typical iron golems, and had a disconcerting tendency to repair the damage being caused by the Legacy, the dents and gashes slowly filling themselves in. Arrie and Autumn each chose a golem to fight, relying on their tried and true tactics of hitting something until it stopped moving. Yuri assisted Arrie, leaping into the air and driving her adamantium spear into the golem’s chest, and then pushing off with her legs to land several feet away. Tolly cast a spell on Osborn’s sword so that he could strike the huge constructs more effectively; the hin then moved to support Autumn. Tolly was about to cast another spell, when a noise behind him caught his attention. He moved out of the way as a panel opened up in the wall and a jet of flames shot out across the room. Several other panels opened around the room, and flames began to shoot out at random. Occasionally the jets of fire would touch one of the golems, accelerating its regeneration.
Kyle and Kupa took a few moments to analyze the purple orbs in the center of the room, watching as they pulsed every few seconds. Their analysis was sped up considerably when Tolly attempted to use a greater stone shape to trap one of the golems; one of the orbs flashed out of sequence just as Tolly finished the spell, and the magical energies dissipated.
“They’re dispelling magic!” Kyle warned. “Stay out of range!”
“Easy for you to say!” shouted Autumn, who was running out of maneuvering room. The golem had been focusing on Autumn, pounding her repeatedly with metallic fists.
Kupa inhaled sharply, and then spit acid, carefully controlling the stream of caustic liquid so that it actually split in two, with each stream coating one of the orbs. They immediately started to sizzle and warp, and seconds later one of the orbs shattered. The other one followed soon after, but not before it had activated one last time and caught Autumn, stripping away a defensive spell Tolly had placed earlier.
Kyle blasted one golem with a lightning bolt to slow it down, while Arrie transformed Anyweapon into a massive sword that would allow her to make more effective attacks, at the same time using a psionic power to allow her feet to cling to the walls, getting her up out of the rising water. Tolly finally entered the fray, coming to the aid of Arrie and Yuri. He struck the golem with the maul he’d formed from the soulsteel, and to his surprise discovered that the wounds he caused did not repair themselves. Between the three of them, they managed to finally do enough damage to get the golem to stop moving, though they could tell it was slowly repairing itself.
On the other side of the room, things were not quite as good. Autumn had been severely battered, and was on her last legs despite utilizing maneuvers that restored her inner strength. Sending his familiar Violet to land briefly on his wife’s shoulder, Kyle completed a desperate spell, draining his own life force to give to her. Seeing the situation, Arrie activated her cloak, and instantly traded places with Autumn. Arrie began attacking the other golem as Tolly quickly healed the aasimar.
“Mother will kill me if I let you die before you give her a grandchild!” Arrie shouted across the room.
Kyle paused. “…yeah, that’s something I can’t do through Violet.”
Finally, they managed to bring down the second golem. Tolly quickly used a series of spells in rapid succession, burying the golems in stone to buy them some more time, and keep them from being hit by jets of fire. The water was still rushing into the room, and was now up to mid-thigh on most of them. Osborn was almost chin deep.
“Look for something to open a door out of here!” he shouted. The party began searching the room quickly.
Osborn was able to find what he was looking for; a pair of mechanisms on the pedestals that the orbs had been sitting on. Unfortunately, the dragon’s acid had partially melted the controls.
“Can you make it work?” Tolly asked.
“I’ll try,” Osborn said, as Tolly handed him his necklace of adaptation.
It took quite a while, but Osborn was finally able to work around the ruined mechanisms enough to trigger them. The flow of water stopped, and began to drain away, even as the flame jets disappeared into the walls. Within moments, the floor was uncovered, and a doorway appeared in the far wall. The two mounds of stone under which the golems were buried were beginning to shake and crumble even as the Legacy dashed through the exit.
“Ardara is such a lovely hostess,” Yuri gasped, as they paused in the plain corridor beyond to heal their wounds and wring out soaking wet clothing. “I really must send her an invitation to my next cotillion.”
“You’re just being petulant,” Arrie teased.
“I’m just surprised she knows the word ‘cotillion’,” Kyle commented.
“I really like it here, actually,” Kupa said.
“Guess we should move on,” said Osborn, as he shouldered his pack again. “Only one way to go anyway.” Sure enough, the door behind them had vanished, as had the others.
-------------------------------
* The dead adventuring party making a cameo appearance here is a group that we made up to play as an alternate party, back during our GM's long hiatus from the main campaign. The idea was to give us a chance to let other people run a game in the world. We only ever played one adventure, though. Pepin, by the way, was my character.
It only took a day for Osborn to conclude his business in Dagger Rock, mostly because he was able to send messages back and forth to Grog as the party made their way back from the remote village, and by the time they arrived most of the arrangements were finished. After a few last-minute instructions, Osborn set about helping the rest of the Legacy prepare for their next journey.
“Where is this monastery, exactly?” Yuri asked, as she packed her belongings.
“I know how to get there,” Tolly explained, “but not the exact location. It’s in a rather forbidding part of the mountains south of Targeth.”
“Well, at least it’s nearly summer,” Arrie commented, “so the journey will be a little easier.”
“Not as easy as a teleport,” Kyle commented.
“But with far less risk of having my parts rearranged,” Arrie finished.
They departed the next morning, riding fresh horses provided by Grog. They crossed the hilly country quickly, and within three days were coming upon the jagged peaks that formed the border between Targeth and the Dwarven Confederates. They left their horses at a small outpost that was friendly to the Shadow General, and made their way on foot into the mountains. It was the end of the month of Canith, and with only a month to go until Midsummer the weather was warm and pleasant. Most of the snow had receded from the mountains, except for the peaks, but the streams and rivers flowing down from those peaks were still strong and swollen, creating barriers that the Legacy had to overcome with a combination of creativity, experience, and a dose of magic when necessary. Fortunately, they did not experience any significant warping of their spells. The only significant injury sustained was by Tolly, who gave himself a hernia trying to move a large boulder off the trail. It was quickly healed, the boulder transmuted to mud, and the party was on their way.
Another slight delay occurred when the party was accosted by a tribe of stone giants, demanding payment for passage. They briefly considered refusing, but when the giants’ toll ended up being only a couple of hundred gold coins, they decided to simply pay the toll and be on their way to more important business. After that, they only had to deal with the weather, as they rose higher into the mountains where it was still bitterly cold.
Seven days after entering the mountains, Tolly began to see dwarven runes carved into rocks along the trail. “The monastery is close,” he announced. “Another day’s journey at most. Since we have no idea why the church of Ardara lost contact with this monastery, I suggest that we be prepared for anything.”
“We’re not going to have any problems with these monks, are we?” Kyle asked. “I mean, because of your recent disagreements with the church.”
“These monks live here to hone their faith away from the distractions of the world,” Tolly said. “They have little interest in politics. However, they can be a bit insular, and slow to accept differences. This is one situation where it may be good that Lanara’s not among us. Regardless of how charming she is, the presence of a cansin worshipper of Feesha would likely rub them the wrong way.”
By the time they stopped to make camp, it was obvious that they were getting close to some sort of settlement. The path they had followed had widened into something like an actual road, though one that had never been touched by a wagon or cart of any kind. There were signs that some brush had been cleared, and that some effort had been made at gathering the meager amount of wood found this high up. Wary of what they might find ahead, the Legacy made camp well off the trail, and kept signs of their presence to a minimum.
They arrived at the monastery early the next morning, approaching the area under an iron-gray sky. Two large, ornately carved stone doors were set into the side of the mountain; clearly designed to keep out even the worst winter storm, and possibly even hungry stone giants. But there was no sign of activity, and one of the stone doors stood slightly ajar. Drifting snow had piled up in front of the opening.
Autumn began to move forward, but Osborn put up a hand to stop her. “Let me check it out first,” he said, before turning invisible and moving forward. Creeping up quietly toward the door, he saw immediately that no one had moved in or out of the door in some time. But from somewhere inside, he could see a very faint, flickering glow, and he could hear the sound of shallow, ragged breathing.
Ending his invisibility, Osborn motioned the others forward. As they approached, the ragged breath drew in. “Is someone there?” a weak voice cried out.
They pushed open the doors, and walked into a scene of carnage. Dozens of bodies, stiff with the cold, lay scattered throughout the large open space just beyond the stone doors. Many of the corpses were dressed in the plain brown robes of Ardaran monks, and were all humans or dwarves, but many others wore more traditional attire, but came in much less traditional forms. Among the bodies were half-giants, maenads, and xeph, as well as humans and various planet-touched and element-touched races. Many of the dead were carrying crystals, or bore strange tattoos; all it took was a nod from Kyle to confirm what kind of energy was emanating from those devices.
“This one is alive,” Osborn called out.
Tolly walked over and knelt at the side of a young, pale human, propped up against a stone pillar. His blonde, curly hair was matted with dried blood. A large tome lay open across his lap, and a quill pen was still clutched in his fingers. A small, stubby candle sat next to a vial of ink, both nearly depleted. The man looked up at Tolly, and then, with trembling hands, picked up the book in both hands and handed it to him.
“Tell them we tried,” he said weakly, and then said no more.
* * *
“It’s an adventurer’s journal,” Tolly said, reading through the pages of the large book as the others sorted through the bodies. “This man – Pepin was his name – was apparently some sort of servant or hired henchman for a group of adventurers loyal to Aran, who hail from an Underdark village called Tal Jashar*. He kept a detailed record of their journey. He apparently stayed alive, mostly through sheer force of will, just to make sure that someone would get this.”
“What happened here?” Yuri asked. “The Ardaran church lost contact with this place weeks ago, but these people died relatively recently.”
“It began just after the start of the month,” Tolly said, skimming through the lines of dense dwarven writing. “These adventurers came across information that Kristyan was still pursuing divine relics, since Silko’s apotheosis was incomplete. They tracked a group of Kristyan’s psions to this monastery, but arrived too late to stop the initial attack. The survivors indicated that their communications were being intercepted for some time – the attackers were gathering intelligence before the assault.”
“So, they must have come back,” Autumn commented.
“No, they never left. After killing the monks, Kristyan’s men went deep into the mountain, into the deep chambers of the monastery. They emerged again after these adventurers arrived – apparently fleeing in terror.”
“Fleeing from what?” Kyle asked.
Tolly frowned. “The journal does not say. Something in the mountain’s depths apparently managed to decimate the psions and sent them running. There was another battle here when they emerged, which resulted in the scene you see here. Kristyan’s forces had been weakened enough by whatever is down there that these adventurers were able to eliminate them, though obviously at great cost.”
There was a moment of respectful silence for the fallen heroes. “What now?” Osborn asked at last.
“The monks and the adventurers from Tal Jashar should receive a proper burial,” Tolly said, “and Kristyan’s people should be thrown off the nearest cliff. After that, we need to address the situation down below.”
“What is down there, anyway?” Kyle asked.
“I don’t know,” Tolly admitted. “But it’s clearly of great importance, and the security of this monastery has been compromised. As a member of the church, it is my duty to make sure that whatever these monks were guarding does not end up in the wrong hands.”
“Well, we’re with you,” Autumn said. “But exactly what kind of death-traps do Ardarans use to protect their relics?”
“Bludgeoning and crushing, mostly,” he replied matter-of-factly. “And suffocation. Suffocation is common.”
“What a lovely place,” Yuri quipped. “Let’s go, shall we?”
The party completed the grim business of tending to the dead, and then gathered together and proceeded down the long, dark tunnel at the back of the cavern-like main chamber. They passed a number of rooms carved out of the stone, used as living quarters for the monks who had once populated this place. After a while, however, the walls became rougher, and the light sconces fewer and farther between.
Eventually, they emerged into a large chamber which looked more like a natural cavern than a man-made one. Roughly oval in shape, half the room was nothing more than a plain rock floor, featureless except for a single altar upon which rested an ingot of strange metal. The back half of the chamber dropped away into a deep pit, and dozens of metal spikes could be seen protruding from the ground below. A single door sat on the far wall on the other side of the pit, but it was level with the floor above, rather than the floor of the pit.
The moment that everyone entered, the tunnel they had come through seemed to collapse in on itself, irising shut.
“That doesn’t look so good, Tolly,” Yuri said.
“It’s typical,” Tolly said, his attention focused on the metal ingot on the altar. The metal was unlike any he had ever seen; it was a dark alloy, somewhat like cold iron, but the surface of the metal seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen this object before, perhaps in a dream he’d had long ago. He resolved to take the ingot with them when they returned from recovering the relic.
Osborn was already examining the altar. “Clever,” he said. “Two traps, one pretty obvious, and the other hidden much better. I almost missed it myself.” A few minutes later, Osborn declared that both traps were disabled.
“There’s also some writing on the altar,” Osborn said. “I can’t read it.”
They all went around to look at the inscription, which was written in Terran. Tolly translated it.
“My thunder comes before the lightning; My lightning comes before the clouds; My rain dries all the land it touches. What am I?”
There was only a moment’s pause. “A volcano,” Kyle and Tolly said simultaneously.
With a grinding sound, a narrow stone bridge extended from the edge of the pit, across to the door in the far wall. The bridge was barely six inches wide, but seemed solid.
As the Legacy turned to proceed across the bridge, Kupa cleared his throat. The young dragon had been silent most of the time they’d been in the monastery. “Well?” he asked Tolly.
“Well, what?”
“Aren’t you going to take the relic?”
Tolly looked back at the metal ingot. “That’s the relic?” Kupa nodded.
Slowly, Tolly reached out and grasped the ingot. As his hands closed around it, the metal suddenly shifted, briefly taking the form of a slender blade before resuming its shape. Tolly stood with his hand around it for a moment, his eyes distant, and then came back to his senses.
“Most interesting,” he said.
“What is it?” Kyle asked.
“It’s an ingot of soulsteel,” Tolly said, “said to be the first metal ever created, when the One and the Four were young.” Tolly concentrated on the metal for a moment, and it shaped itself into an exact replica of Tolly’s own maul.
“Well then,” Arrie said, “if the monks left their relic out in the open like that, then one wonders what can be found further in.”
“I think we need to find out,” Osborn said, pulling out a rope.
They crossed the narrow bridge with little difficulty; Osborn went across and set a guide line, and Autumn flew behind each person as they crossed to support them if they wavered. The door opened into a short hallway which ended in a blank wall, but as soon as everyone was in the hallway, the door behind them vanished, and another one appeared at the end.
“This is going to get rather tedious,” Yuri complained.
“At least we don’t have to worry about getting lost,” Kyle said.
“The easiest way to follow the law is to have only one choice,” Tolly said.
The door emerged into a large, rectangular room, over two hundred feet across and about half that amount in depth. Two stone pillars, about waist high, sat near the middle of the room, about fifty feet apart. A sphere of purple stone sat on top of each pillar, pulsing every few seconds with an inner light. As expected, once everyone had crossed into the room the door vanished. What was slightly less expected was when two iron golems walked through the walls on either side of the room and began advancing into the middle. At the same time, small vents opened up along the wall near the floor, and water began rushing into the room.
As the party moved into combat, it quickly became apparent that these were no ordinary constructs. They were larger and more powerful than typical iron golems, and had a disconcerting tendency to repair the damage being caused by the Legacy, the dents and gashes slowly filling themselves in. Arrie and Autumn each chose a golem to fight, relying on their tried and true tactics of hitting something until it stopped moving. Yuri assisted Arrie, leaping into the air and driving her adamantium spear into the golem’s chest, and then pushing off with her legs to land several feet away. Tolly cast a spell on Osborn’s sword so that he could strike the huge constructs more effectively; the hin then moved to support Autumn. Tolly was about to cast another spell, when a noise behind him caught his attention. He moved out of the way as a panel opened up in the wall and a jet of flames shot out across the room. Several other panels opened around the room, and flames began to shoot out at random. Occasionally the jets of fire would touch one of the golems, accelerating its regeneration.
Kyle and Kupa took a few moments to analyze the purple orbs in the center of the room, watching as they pulsed every few seconds. Their analysis was sped up considerably when Tolly attempted to use a greater stone shape to trap one of the golems; one of the orbs flashed out of sequence just as Tolly finished the spell, and the magical energies dissipated.
“They’re dispelling magic!” Kyle warned. “Stay out of range!”
“Easy for you to say!” shouted Autumn, who was running out of maneuvering room. The golem had been focusing on Autumn, pounding her repeatedly with metallic fists.
Kupa inhaled sharply, and then spit acid, carefully controlling the stream of caustic liquid so that it actually split in two, with each stream coating one of the orbs. They immediately started to sizzle and warp, and seconds later one of the orbs shattered. The other one followed soon after, but not before it had activated one last time and caught Autumn, stripping away a defensive spell Tolly had placed earlier.
Kyle blasted one golem with a lightning bolt to slow it down, while Arrie transformed Anyweapon into a massive sword that would allow her to make more effective attacks, at the same time using a psionic power to allow her feet to cling to the walls, getting her up out of the rising water. Tolly finally entered the fray, coming to the aid of Arrie and Yuri. He struck the golem with the maul he’d formed from the soulsteel, and to his surprise discovered that the wounds he caused did not repair themselves. Between the three of them, they managed to finally do enough damage to get the golem to stop moving, though they could tell it was slowly repairing itself.
On the other side of the room, things were not quite as good. Autumn had been severely battered, and was on her last legs despite utilizing maneuvers that restored her inner strength. Sending his familiar Violet to land briefly on his wife’s shoulder, Kyle completed a desperate spell, draining his own life force to give to her. Seeing the situation, Arrie activated her cloak, and instantly traded places with Autumn. Arrie began attacking the other golem as Tolly quickly healed the aasimar.
“Mother will kill me if I let you die before you give her a grandchild!” Arrie shouted across the room.
Kyle paused. “…yeah, that’s something I can’t do through Violet.”
Finally, they managed to bring down the second golem. Tolly quickly used a series of spells in rapid succession, burying the golems in stone to buy them some more time, and keep them from being hit by jets of fire. The water was still rushing into the room, and was now up to mid-thigh on most of them. Osborn was almost chin deep.
“Look for something to open a door out of here!” he shouted. The party began searching the room quickly.
Osborn was able to find what he was looking for; a pair of mechanisms on the pedestals that the orbs had been sitting on. Unfortunately, the dragon’s acid had partially melted the controls.
“Can you make it work?” Tolly asked.
“I’ll try,” Osborn said, as Tolly handed him his necklace of adaptation.
It took quite a while, but Osborn was finally able to work around the ruined mechanisms enough to trigger them. The flow of water stopped, and began to drain away, even as the flame jets disappeared into the walls. Within moments, the floor was uncovered, and a doorway appeared in the far wall. The two mounds of stone under which the golems were buried were beginning to shake and crumble even as the Legacy dashed through the exit.
“Ardara is such a lovely hostess,” Yuri gasped, as they paused in the plain corridor beyond to heal their wounds and wring out soaking wet clothing. “I really must send her an invitation to my next cotillion.”
“You’re just being petulant,” Arrie teased.
“I’m just surprised she knows the word ‘cotillion’,” Kyle commented.
“I really like it here, actually,” Kupa said.
“Guess we should move on,” said Osborn, as he shouldered his pack again. “Only one way to go anyway.” Sure enough, the door behind them had vanished, as had the others.
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* The dead adventuring party making a cameo appearance here is a group that we made up to play as an alternate party, back during our GM's long hiatus from the main campaign. The idea was to give us a chance to let other people run a game in the world. We only ever played one adventure, though. Pepin, by the way, was my character.
Aah, the joys of dungeon crawling. Who cares if the rest of the world is burning - there's treasure to be looted and monsters to be killed! (Not that I'm saying the party did wrong by choosing to investigate the monastery's silence.) Did Kyle and Tolly's players truly simultaneously say the right answer to the volcano riddle?
Delemental
First Post
Krafus said:
Hey, it's not like we went there expecting a dungeon!
As for the riddle, well, we fudged that a little. The DM actually forgot to look up a suitable riddle for the session, but since it wasn't going to be a major obstacle anyway, he just assumed we'd figure out the answer. It was reasonable that the two most likely to answer it first would be the smartest character (Kyle) or the one most familiar with earth-related topics (Tolly).
Richard II
First Post
Yay, new story.
As I was waiting for a new update, I went back and reread most of the old stories, and something sort of occured to me. If Phanuel is autumn's father, shouldn't autumn be a half celestial instead of just plane-touched? Granted, I'm not up to date on my Good Outsider Biology Lessons, so it could be that the amount of celestial power imparted to offspring is immaterial of exactly when the celestial outsider showed up in the background, but to me Celestial + Human = Half Celestial.
As I was waiting for a new update, I went back and reread most of the old stories, and something sort of occured to me. If Phanuel is autumn's father, shouldn't autumn be a half celestial instead of just plane-touched? Granted, I'm not up to date on my Good Outsider Biology Lessons, so it could be that the amount of celestial power imparted to offspring is immaterial of exactly when the celestial outsider showed up in the background, but to me Celestial + Human = Half Celestial.
