Following the party, we returned to the DeLuxury, and the others stepped from my suite through the portal into a Magnificent Mansion summoned up by Endo. The following morning there was a polite knock at the suite door, and one of the waiting staff passed me a carefully sealed sheet of parchment fastened by a complex red wax crest.
Waking the others I joined them for a tremendous and highly enchanted breakfast summoned up by Janga (and augmented by some excellent kippers from the DeLuxury’s kitchens) after which I tore open the wax seal and read the letter.
“It’s from Lashonna,” I announced to my comrades. “An invitation to speak to her at her house tonight – at midnight. She says that she’ll send a carriage to pick us up and take us there.”
And that was why, at 11.30 we were waiting outside the playhouse where we were collected by Kelgorn, Lashonna’s gaunt limping half orc servant who drove us in an extremely comfortable carriage across the city to Misthall Manor; Lashonna’s mansion house. The property was only dwarfed by the unfinished ziggurat and Prince Zeech’s own massive palace.
The carriage glided to a gentle halt and Kelgorn dismounted and opened the door for us before leading us up through several generously appointed rooms into a book-lined study. Wearing a gold trimmed gown and sipping demurely from a large stone pint pot, Lashonna sat behind a vast desk. She placed her drink down on a low table concealed behind the desk, and dismissed Kelgorn before turning to us.
“Please sit,” she invited us before continuing. “I apologise for the lateness of the hour, but I thought it best not to call too much attention to your visiting me. I understand that you have some interest in a mage named ‘Balakard’?”
I nodded my agreement, and she continued.
“Balakard also came to speak to me some years ago, asking many questions and writing notes in his little book. I wondered what had come of him and his ventures to the Wormcrawl Fissure, and therefore took it upon myself to locate him. The spells I had to hand failed to locate Balakard himself, but I was able to locate his notebook. It appears that the book was recovered by Ilthane, the black dragon slain by… yourselves, I believe.
“Ilthane made her lair under Traitor’s Grave within the city some short distance to the east. If you were able to recover the book and return with it, I may be able to assist you further It will not, however, be a simple question of going to fetch a book – Ilthane had children which may still be lairing in her old nest.”
Not even taking the time to locate Fez (who had not been interested in coming to the playhouse with the rest of us), we headed straight to the cemetery. At the dead of night, the cemetery was wreathed deeply in mist and a series of open graves leaked an awful stench into the night air.
Janga cast a spell and laid his tiny hand on Flynne’s eyes. There was a slight glow which faded as the elf blinked around him before looking purposefully into the cemetery.
“This way,” he announced with certainty. As the first light of dawn etched across the horizon, we reached the cemetary’s very heart, where a wide bush concealed a 10 foot wide stone trapdoor. We felt our way around the edges and were just starting to pull at it when Flynne, and then Janga looked up in different directions.
“Wingbeats,” they said one after the other. Scanning the horizon, we could see four sets of massive dark wings beating at the lightening sky. Each of the creatures had a wingspan of an easy 30 feet, and all four were converging on us as we stood by the trapdoor.
Amidst a rustle of action, Flynne leapt for cover, Endo swigged a potion and faded from sight, and I chanted briefly before also disappearing. Janga looked around with a look of increasing panic on his face. Four long streams of acid lanced down from the dragons as they flew over our heads, and Janga leapt to one side. His heavy armour clanked heavily as he rolled across the floor and came up to one knee having completely avoided most of the acid and only been struck by one of the caustic sprays.
The dragons continued their flight, but were far lower and closer now, and Flynne broke cover shooting a series of arrows into the closest dragon. An appalling series of bloody wounds erupted in the creature’s belly. The tips of the remaining arrows in Flynne’s quiver then erupted in flames at Endo’s invisible chanting.
Janga turned and swung an arm towards the sky whilst calling on the powers of Fahrlanghan. A massive pillar of flame appeared in the air, wreathing the already wounded dragon, and with a high-pitched wailing scream it collapsed to the ground, still burning.
Having already cast a spell of hastening, I dashed across to give Flynne complete invisibility to his foes whatever he might choose to do and then, as Endo cast some spell of tremendous potency which stopped two of the dragons approaching, the third swooped downwards to begin its toothy assault on Janga. Abruptly, at a snarled spell from one of the other dragons, everything went dark for me, but I could still hear Flynne leap up from the branches of a low tree he had been concealed in and swoop away, his cloak rustling slightly as he flew upwards plying his bow as he went.
I crept out towards where I could hear Janga struggling against the closest dragon, chanting a song of encouragement, and left the edge of the darkness effect to the sight of a large black dragon clawing and biting at Janga’s comparatively tiny armoured body. Two more lines of acid stabbed out over the darkness sphere, spattering around the gnome’s already acid pitted armour, but once again he ducked and weaved away from the worst of them.
Overhead, I could see Flynne blinking in and out of sight, releasing an arrow from his bow every time I could see him, and each shaft slammed home into the body of the dragon fighting Janga, until eventually the great beast could take no more. With a last gurgled exhalation, the beast rolled onto its side, defeated.
Appearing from his invisibility spell, Endo gestured, and despite the distance I could see that one of the two dragons had been struck blind, before it and its sibling took to the skies in flight. Flynne fired shot after shot at their retreating hindquarters, whilst Endo swept towards the floor beneath him with his Rod of Quickening, creating a black chasm from which rose a large smoke-wreathed horse which snorted fire from its nostrils. The creature rose from the depths beneath him and took off, the wizard on its back chanting all the while. Such was the phenomenal speed of the phantasmal steed that he was underneath the two dragons in an instant, firing up towards them with a lancing green beam which turned the one with sight into a cloud of dust in a heartbeat.
The last dragon, still completely blind, flapped unsteadily away as Endo wheeled his steed around and trotted back towards us, slapping dust off his cloak whilst beaming towards us with a toothy half-orc grin.
.oOo.
After a great deal of effort, eventually Flynne managed to wrench the trapdoor open, and we crept through it into the earth-walled crumbling passageway beyond. Roots hung through the ceiling and the flickering light from the enchanted torch I held added to the dripping noise and the rank acidic smell to create a thoroughly hostile environment.
Dropped a short distance, we found ourselves in a craggy chamber, with several piles of smashed glass, broken containers, damaged crates and shattered alchemical equipment. Acid had dripped from the shattered flasks and beakers, scorched the earth beneath and formed into puddles (and in one case a large pool) of wretched fuming liquids.
My throat began to itch, and Endo sounded raw as he stepped forward chanting the words of a spell of mending to repair the broken glassware, at which point the bubbling pool erupted upwards, spraying acid in all directions. A terrible abomination rose from the bubbling pool dripping foul green liquids from its ‘flesh’, the creature was easily the size of the four dragons which had attacked us outside, perhaps larger, and writhing almost living streams of acid hung from its sides wreathing and cracking. The end of the creature’s long sinuous neck was tipped with five or six skulls, some human, one clearly a dragon, and one a curious amalgam of the two.
Fixing us with a stare from its empty eye sockets, each of the jawbones opened to send a massive stream of bubbling noxious vapours pouring over us all. The burning was terrible, and each of us (except Flynne who had flung himself over the top of the stream) screamed in pain as the acids seeped through gaps in armour. Worse, the fumes from the acidic spray somehow etched into our bones in an instant, leaving us all shivering and feeling cold. My knees suddenly sagged under the weight of my armour and equipment, and I could see all of the others suffering in the same way.
Chanting a spell, Janga dashed towards the pale green creature and tried to deliver the powerful spell which was stored in his outstretched fingers. His hand, however, simply pushed through the creature as though pushing at a hanging curtain. Flynne’s series of arrows either passed through it or bounced off the creature’s many skulls.
I danced backwards and fired a large blast from the staff I still carried with me, and whilst Endo cast a spell of his own which magically transported him to the corner of the room and out of trouble, the creature lashed out again and again at Janga, leaving long acid-burned welts across his face and arms. The diminutive cleric responded by reaching for it once again, and this time made contact.
The acidic undead squealed in half a dozen voices as bright light blazed from sudden cracks in its ethereal hide; then Flynne’s bowshots slammed into its skulls, shattering two of them and the thing fell back into the acid pool with a tremendous splash.
.oOo.
The treasure hoard came in the form of several bottles and a sheaf of scraps of paper. Balakard’s diary had been here, but had clearly been shredded by one or more of the younger dragons. Much of the text had fallen in one or other of the acid pools and we could salvage only a few of the scraps of paper.
As I collected these, Endo, Flynne and Janga examined the three small flasks.
“This one’s designed to give you the toughness of a dragon,” announced Endo. “And this one to make someone more charismatic, whilst the third…”
There was a faint popping noise, and we all turned to see Flynne guzzling the first of the philtres.
“Hang on!” Endo’s cries were too late. Flynne’s pale elven skin darkened abruptly. A faint scraping noise came from under his armour, and as I moved the perpetual torch close to him we realised that his entire skin had been covered with tiny reflective glittering black dragon scales.
.oOo.
After we had settled down and I had gingerly drunk the second phial of liquid, we took the scraps of paper and tried to arrange them into some sort of order.
It is as I suspected. The ancient undead dragon Dragotha is the Herald of Kyuss. He was granted his unlife by the Wormgod well over 15 centuries ago, after he stole the monolith from Kulith-Mar and brought it to his lair in the Rift Canyon. When Dragotha was slain by Tiamat, Kyuss repaid him with the gift on undeath, and in so doing bound him eternally to his will.
-
Dragotha’s presence in the world has been quiet for the last several Ages. The loss of his phylactery 1,500 years ago left him wary. Yet my research proves he stirs from his long sleep, that he now intends to waken Kyuss after all this time. Why now? What has changed? I fear a journey to the Wormcrawl Fissure to confront the dracolich is my only remaining option.
-
A king without his commander is powerless. It has taken Dragotha nearly 1,500 years to reach this point. If I can remove him now it will certainly be centuries before anything has a chance to release the Wormgod again. I shall leave immediately for the Wormcrawl Fissure and attempt to find Dragotha.
-
The Age of Worms and Kyuss’ resurrection were stopped fifteen centuries ago by the Order of the Storm. Historians believe that the Order died out not long after this victory, hunted down and destroyed by the last surviving members of the cult of Kyuss. These records are incorrect. The Order instead retreated to their stronghold on a secret island called Tilagos. Nobody knows where Tilagos is!
-
The Rite they performed obscured Dragotha’s phylactery from thought, history and sight… as if it never existed at all. But the Order of the Storm were no fools. They suspected Kyuss would one day rise again, that his worms would walk once more.
-
My research continued… It seems that on Tilagos is a library of sorts, a repository of the Order’s lore. It has been sought for centuries by wizards, scholars and explorers, for it is said to be filled with hundreds of years of history, memories, dreams, and of course, secrets. If a written account of what happened to Dragotha’s phylactery exists, it must certainly be there.
-
Tilagos Island… I have found it! It is located in the northern reaches of the Nyr Dyv. It doesn’t appear on any maps.
-
Worse. I’m afraid others are close to learning this as well, in part as an unfortunate result of my own research. My enemies are always quick to nip at my heels! I speak in particular of a simpering dog of a man named Heskin who once served Lashonna. I’m afraid Heskin has been wooed from her side with promises of wealth and power, and has taken word of this discovery to a disreputable man indeed, a powerful priest of Vecna named Darl Zuethos.
-
Complications… Before they built the library, the Order of the Storm drove a lasting bargain with primal elemental forces. They sacrificed their lives to whisk the island’s interior away from the Material Plane. In its place is a barren rock surrounded by an ever-raging storm of such intensity that ships which approach are invariably lost. The island itself appears on no maps, but the stories hint that the druids left a way for those in need to reach their secrets while at the same time warding the place away from the prying eyes of Kyuss’ undead fanatics.
.oOo.
We returned to Misthall Manor, where Lashonna was waiting to receive us. We passed the few scraps of paper to her. After she had taken a while to read through them all, she breathed Heskin’s name and reached into a deep drawer on her desk. Producing a scroll with a lock of hair attached, she announced, “I can help you there. I am rather concerned about ex-employees divulging my secrets, and am therefore in the habit of obtaining scraps of personal matter so that I can keep tabs on them. If you would like, I can scry upon him now.”
We had a brief chat before agreeing to take up her generous offer, and found ourselves sitting around a shallow silver scrying pool. The waters rippled, and we were suddenly looking down on the deck of a swaying ship. An ocean in full tempest was howling around the man who was lashed to the mast with coil after coil of rope. Orc sailors bellowed instructions to one another and dashed frantically from place to place across the ship.
Almost silently amidst the chaos, two subtly-horned lithe figures dressed in dark silks dropped from the mast above to stand near the man. They clanked back at him contemptuously before being confronted by a heavy-set red skinned humanoid, whose hair seemed to blaze and we could see the rain sizzle as it landed on his hot skin.
As we watched, two more figures approached. One was a shifty looking bird-like man which wore a dark cloak under which he shielded a repeating crossbow from the rain.
The last was the only true human in the group, clad in blue robes with a repeated eye motif on them. He addressed the man tied to the mast with a sneer in his voice.
“Only a few hours more, Heskin, and we shall see if you shall live or die.”
He cut off abruptly, and then looked up at the very centre of the scrying pool.
“We have guests, Heskin,” he told the man in a mocking voice. “Your journey comes to an early end.”
Saying something I couldn’t quite make out, he drew back his robes from a dark clawed rotting hand and touched Heskin’s cheek. From the point of the touch, a dark stain spread across the man’s face. The stain became darker, and they greyed like coals on a hot fire. The man’s face then cracked and tore as he, screaming silently all the while, collapsed and sagged. His suddenly dry flesh was torn away by the driving wind and the coils of rope fell loose around the base of the mast.
The water in the scrying pool bubbled and hissed, boiling away in an instant and Lashonna looked around at us, appalled and frightened by what she had seen.
“You must hurry,” she whispered to us urgently.
We turned to Janga, but he was already casting the words to the spell which would whisk us away to Mage Point on the edge of the Nyr Dyv’s deep waters.
.oOo.
A few brief words with Manzorian’s assistant Cymria told us that Manzorian himself was ‘in one of the lower planes, dealing with an unruly Demon Lord’, and he would not be in a position to help us. We headed to the dock, and a few minutes conversation with a sullen and mutilated sailor showed us that an area a dozen leagues to the north was covered in storm.
Endo cast a couple of spells, and we headed off in haste and style.