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The Liberation of Tenh (updated April 24)
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Thanks for your patience all, it's been a long day . . . I hope a double-length update makes you smile. This session was a lot of fun to play. (sniff) You'll have to forgive me (sob). I get all choked up when my monsters kill a PC in one round.
----------
Wealsun 22, CY 593
50: Shirts versus skins and shrubs versus trees: The photosynthetic battle for scrub-plain supremacy.
Prisantha removes her crystal ball of true seeing from its pouch. “This will serve, I think,” she says to herself. Her first attempt to scry the druid who enchanted the tooth-and-claw of the wolves receives a null result. She tries again, but still receives no image. “Huh,” she mutters, and taps the side of the ball lightly.
“Maybe there is some other magic at work,” Heydricus suggests cheerily. Try scrying the master of the wolves.”
In her ball, Prisantha sees an elf—a young man of common Northern stock, although his dress resembles the reclusive Southern wood elves more than his own kin. He crouches atop a large stone monolith, one of several arranged in a circle atop a barren and rocky hilltop. He looks to the skies, cups his hands to his mouth, and howls.
After a moment, he purses his lips and says, “Tell Sirlog that four were slain, and two return. We had best be ready.”
A deep baritone voice replies, “As you say.”
Prisantha breaks her scrying, and reports what she has seen. After a moment, she invokes her crystal ball again, this time targeting Sirlog. To her surprise, she receives a vision of several trees surrounding a small sun-dappled clearing. A family of field mice skitter amongst the roots of one of the trees, and a lone rabbit cleans its paws. Intrigued, Prisantha watches the scene, a bemused smile on her face. The mice romp and play, with the rabbit standing watch. After a few minutes, the rabbit tests the air and flees, as a massive dire wolf enters the scene, rumbling low in its throat. To Prisantha’s surprise, the field mice greet the new arrival by rushing toward it, and the wolf paws at them in greeting.
Prisantha looks up from her crystal ball and shrugs.
Dabus frowns. “There is often no ready truth in that ball of yours,” he says. “Tritherion will guide us.”
Dabus moves away from the group, and enters into a meditative trance. His communion ushers his spirit into the presence of his God, and he is instantly comforted. Tritherion will inspire him.
Rising up from his center, vibrating his soul and almost incidentally striking the ears, Dabus hears a profound voice; it is at once his mother, his father, and his own self. “Dabus Twice-Born, what would you have of your God? What would you have of Me?”
“Great Tritherion, enemy to all that seek to bind, I would have your Truth.”
“Ask,” the voice intones. “Tritherion will answer.”
“These beings that sent the wolf-dragons,” Dabus begins. “Are they our enemies?”
“They are,” Dabus is assured.
“Are they servants of the Old One?”
“They are not. They defile Iuz and oppose his aims. ”
“Do they bear the curse of lycanthropy?”
“They do not. ”
“Do they truly seek the ore?”
“They do. ”
“Do they intend to stockpile the ore?”
“They do not. ”
“Do they intend to make weapons with it?”
“After a fashion. A tool no mortal may wield might kill what can never die. ”
“Do they intend to build a construct?”
“They have no such intention. ”
“Do they know that the Iuzians no longer control Cur’ruth?”
“They do not. ”
“Do they expect the Iuzians to counterstrike?”
“They do not. ”
“Will they come after the ore again?”
“If the sun rises and sets, they will come. ”
“Will Sirlog come?”
“In a manner of speaking. ”
“Is Sirlog the wolf?”
“No. ”
Dabus pauses, thinking for a moment. “Is Sirlog one of the mice?”
“Yes. Fare well, Dabus, and know that you please your God. Tritherion has spoken. ”
-----
Dabus returns to the group, and reports on what he has learned.
“That sounds bad,” Heydricus says. “What is this weapon?”
“I could vision the thing,” Prisantha says off-handedly. “It will only take a moment.” Before anyone can reply, she has completed her spell, and the color drains from her face. “Well,” she says.
“Well?” Heydricus asks.
“Here is my vision; The terror that gives the barber’s kiss to mountain and plain has no name, for knowledge of it is before naming was. Ten times one thing were given dominion of earth and sky, each marked according to its kind, each kin according to their mark. Seven have died, two sleep, and this one stirs.”
“So . . . we can kill it?” Heydricus says.
“Well, it can die,” Pris says. “But that’s not the same thing.”
“What is it?” Dabus asks.
“Add it to the list,” Heydricus mutters dejectedly. “How is it all we seem to do with ourselves is hack stuff into pieces, and the list keeps getting longer?”
Dabus raises a finger and says, “On the topic of killing. I’ve been considering. It is said, ‘attack where the enemy is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.’ If Prisantha’s crystal ball is good for anything, it is good for targeting teleport spells. So why don’t we just make a list of everyone we need to kill, have a meeting to prioritize, then begin killing them, one a day, until we have completed our list.”
Heydricus stares at Dabus.
“It’s how I get my household chores done,” Dabus says sheepishly.
“I love it,” Heydricus says. “I f--king love it. That’s perfect.”
“It would make for a busy week,” Dabus hedges.
“I could free up the time,” Heydricus suggests. “Mialec can cover for me.”
“Don’t we have enemies in front of us to concern ourselves with?” Prisantha asks.
“Yes,” Dabus says. “Tritherion tells me that they are coming after us even now.”
“Excellent.” Heydricus looks excited. “We can set an ambush!” he exclaims. “We so rarely get to do the ambushing.” To Dabus, he says, “When we get home, I’ll start on a list.”
Prisantha nods, and rubs her hands together. “I have the perfect spell. I will cover us with a veil—an impenetrable illusion. I can make us seem to all senses to be part of the natural scenery. They will be taken completely by surprise!”
“I would like to be a lion,” Dabus says.
“Lions are not native to this region,” Prisantha replies. “You can be a stone.” She turns to Heydricus and sizes him up. “Plants are very symbolic, you know. I think I will make you into a wildflower bush—distant, but alluring nonetheless.” Prisantha looks at Heydricus hopefully.
The Liberator does not seem to understand. He ponders for a moment, and shakes his head. “No. Make me into a rose bush—beautiful, but dangerous to the touch!”
“Roses are not native to this region,” Pris sighs.
“Then make me into a stallion! I’ve been called a stallion before,” he says, waggling his eyebrows.
“I’ll make you into a wildflower bush. We’ll all be wildflower bushes.”
-----
The afternoon lengthens into evening, and just as the last of the twilight is about to slip away, the three wildflower bushes arranged equidistantly around the ore-cart notice a strange mist beginning to flow into the area, against the wind.
Even the dimmest of shrubberies realize that mist does not normally flow against the wind, nor does it often appear on warm summer nights in the open Tenh plain.
A disembodied voice arises from the mist, as the vapor begins to swirl together, forming a tall cylinder. “They have gone.” After a moment, the vapor sprouts tendrils, and takes the shape of a tree—a ‘grandfather tree’ in the local parlance; thick and knotted, branches twisting back against one another. Around the tree, several other forms appear; the feral elf Prisantha scryed earlier, holding hands with a half-elf woman who might be his lover, or perhaps his daughter. They materialize atop the broken ore cart, its contents still where the dragon left them. A large dire wolf picks up its ears as it appears nearby, and an even larger monstrosity takes form several yards distant. The first dire wolf is big for its kind, and has a particularly wise look about its eyes, but the second seems stupid, and is large enough to swallow a halfling whole (without chewing). The wolves scent the air, but Prisantha’s veil assures that they smell nothing amiss.
“There is nothing invisible.” The woman says.
“There is no one here,” the smaller of the two wolves says in perfect common. “They have fled.”
The elf takes in the scene, then his brows furrow. Blooming Talisman flowers? This time of year? He starts to open his mouth.
At that moment, Heydricus-the-wildflower-bush proves the old adage that the most distant and alluring bushes are often the most likely to crit you on a partial charge. He tears forward from his position, and lays into the elf, cutting him once with his forehand and again with his backhand stroke. To the eyes of everyone present (excluding Prisantha), a Talisman bush just opened two gaping wounds along the wolf-lord’s midsection.
“It’s the Elder Conclave!” the elf cries. “We are lost!”
The smaller wolf is not so sure. “Hold your ground,” he growls.
Another bush disappears as Prisantha casts improved invisible on herself. Dabus rustles his own flowering branches and invokes a destruction on the grandfather-tree, but spell fails to take full effect. Instead, it withers several of the lower branches and causes a rain of leaves onto the heads of the combatants scattered around its trunk.
Heydricus seizes his advantage, striking the feral elf again, this time marking his previous ‘X’ with a ‘I’. He splits the elf near in two, and the corpse sprays blood as it falls onto the pile of ore, where it slides to the ground with a wet and meaty flopping sound. Heydricus follows through and chops into the tree with a ferocious two-handed stroke. The huge wolf jumps onto the ore cart, and seizes Heydricus in his mouth, thinking to shake him, but Heydricus digs in and will not budge.
Prisantha speaks a power word stun at the awakened wolf, but the spell has no effect at all. The wolf says, “This is madness,” as he stalks toward Prisantha’s location, his ears forward.
The grandfather-tree’s branches rattle in some unseen wind.
“Of course I can,” the wolf replies. “Give me a moment, and hush.” The wolf cocks his head to one side, straining to pick up the faintest of sounds.
Just as Dabus speaks a holy word.
The sacred word rips the sound from the air around Dabus’ enemies, and leaves in its place a lingering drone that deafens them. With the Liberators’ scents masked by the veil, the deafened wolves have no means to locate Prisantha.
Secure in her invisibility, Pris takes a few minutes to look around the battlefield, and notices a pair of huge red dragons, flying in low over the hills, very near the battle. Both dragons clutch massive dire wolves in their claws, the wolves’ ears pinned back by either terror or wind-shear. The dragons seem intent on strafing the combat, delivering 12 HD fur-and-fang-bombs into the midst of the brawl. Pris yells for Dabus’ attention, and the cleric rustles his branches meaningfully.
Two of the largest nearby cone-trees shudder and animate, pulling their roots up from the earth and waddling to a position where they can reach Heydricus with their wildly thrashing branches. As they advance on him, one of them plows into the ruined ore-cart, shoving it back, dredging a massive furrow in the earth, and spilling the ore. Heydricus leaps clear, but the body of the feral elf falls to the ground and is buried in ore up to its chest.
The half-elven woman cries out in dismay, and fixes Heydricus with a seething stare before muttering an arcane phrase and disappearing from sight. Realizing that two can play at that game, Heydricus also invokes an improved invisibility.
The awakened wolf pounces on the spot Heydricus occupied a moment ago, and begins to use his huge mass to try and locate the sorcerer by feel. Preferring to remain un-mauled, Heydricus slips around the haunch of the wolf, and out of danger. Just as he does so, Prisantha feebleminds the creature, putting such clever notions to rest along with the better part of the wolf’s intellect and personality.
The remaining huge wolf stands confused, as he can neither smell, hear or see his former target. After a moment, he yips a response to some unheard mental command and leaps directly at Dabus.
Unfortunately for the staunch cleric, Dabus is now the only Liberator visible, and with his enemies deafened, he becomes the only target they can sense in any way. Fortunately for him, he knows how to keep a low profile in situations just like this.
He moves toward the grandfather-tree belligerently, then sets a blade barrier directly into the path of the swooping dragons, on a steeply-angled elipse, striking them just beneath the shoulder-joints. As the first of the whirling blades sink through dragon-scale and into flesh, the beasts predictably rear back, pulling out of their dive and dragging the huge wolves through the plane of blades before letting go of the wolves and dropping them back through the spell as they desperately try to stay aloft. The wolves pass through the barrier with a spray of blood and fur, and one of them manages to slowly drag itself away from the fighting. Both dragons have had their wing-tips shredded by the spell, and fly out of control, forming drunken corkscrews as they disappear into the rapidly-darkening sky.
Just then, Dabus is pounded by a lightning bolt from an unseen source-- one that arcs through Heydricus as well. Both animated trees waddle over and start hammering Dabus, and the grandfather-tree joins in as well, delivering a near-lethal dose of poison injected through a twig that squirms through a hole in the cleric’s armor. With all the whistling wood, flying bark, and poisoned branches, it’s a wonder that the huge wolf can even manage to squeeze in long enough to crit Dabus. But, like they teach ‘em in Villain School, “persistence is the key to momentary reversals of mis-fortune”.
“Poison,” Dabus gasps. He falls to the ground, too broken to convulse, dead.
Prisantha frowns a very pretty (if unseen) frown, and clasps her hands together. “I wish . . .” she begins, “that Dabus had thrown off that poison!”
And in an instant it is so. Dabus is still standing, although his holy symbol is covered in wolf drool, and there are pieces of bark in his hair and clothes.
The two wolves, both dire and feebleminded turn at the same time, and run into the night. The animated trees continue to focus on Dabus, but the grandfather-tree has seen enough. He begins to walk on his own roots away from the cleric, perhaps hoping that his enemies will leave him in peace.
They do not. Heydricus charges at the tree, chopping into it once more. The tree collapses in on itself for a moment, its lowest branches striking Heydricus in the back like an Epic Bad Hug. Heydricus grunts in pain, and backs away from the thing.
Suddenly, in response to an unseen chanting coming from the vicinity of the ore cart, Dabus disappears. Prisantha looks around for the spell-caster, but cannot see anyone. She determines to dispel magic on the area, and while she’s sure her spell has had some effect, no one becomes visible. The two animated trees begin a laborious shuffle, following the path of the fleeing grandfather-tree and sweeping for invisible Liberators as they go.
Then, Prisantha disappears.
Heydricus begins to feel the first flush of panic, a sensation intimately familiar for a veteran of the Temple of Elemental Evil. He realizes with a start that it has been a while since he really felt the odds were stacked against him to the point of futility. As he muses over these sentimental feelings of despair, terror and hopelessness, he removes a carved wooden wand from his belt, and places a fireball directly between the grandfather tree and the ore cart. He is rewarded by an exclamation of pain, seemingly coming from the dead elf.
In response, a lightning bolt emerges from the air just above the corpse, and flashes through the night, lighting the whole scene for an instant with a stark bluish chiaroscuro, complimenting the fireball’s red-oranges of a moment before. Heydricus predictably avoids the worst, but as was intended, the lightning bolt gives away his position, and all three trees close in on him.
“F-ck it,” Heydricus says, and charges directly at the grandfather-tree. He cuts into the thing over and over, pushing past the branches as the tree tries to defend itself with its hoary limbs. Heydricus swings from his heels, and feels the shockwave bounce back through his sword and all the way into his feet. The tree tips backward with a shriek of splintering wood, leaving behind only a stump. The animated trees suddenly cease their motion, and separated from the earth, they slowly topple and fall. One falls directly onto the body of the feral elf, crushing the invisible sorceress as it lands.
All is quiet. The moment lengthens into first one breath, then two, then several. No one attacks Heydricus, and no one speaks. The adrenaline drains out of the battered sorcerer in a rush, and even eating the worm at the bottom of a cure serious wounds potion doesn’t take the pain away.
The captain of the guards assigned to the ore caravan emerges from his hiding place, and approaches Heydricus with tears in his eyes, overcome by emotion. “You know sir, I used to adventure a bit in my youth, and I just wanted to say that I ain’t never thought I’d see nothin’ like what I just saw. That were a beautiful thing, and I ain’t ashamed to say it.”
Heyrdicus smiles at him warmly, and puts a hand on his shoulder. “You’re going back to Cur’ruth now, but first,” Heydricus hands the man his portable hole. “Fill this with the ore.”
----------
Wealsun 22, CY 593
50: Shirts versus skins and shrubs versus trees: The photosynthetic battle for scrub-plain supremacy.
Prisantha removes her crystal ball of true seeing from its pouch. “This will serve, I think,” she says to herself. Her first attempt to scry the druid who enchanted the tooth-and-claw of the wolves receives a null result. She tries again, but still receives no image. “Huh,” she mutters, and taps the side of the ball lightly.
“Maybe there is some other magic at work,” Heydricus suggests cheerily. Try scrying the master of the wolves.”
In her ball, Prisantha sees an elf—a young man of common Northern stock, although his dress resembles the reclusive Southern wood elves more than his own kin. He crouches atop a large stone monolith, one of several arranged in a circle atop a barren and rocky hilltop. He looks to the skies, cups his hands to his mouth, and howls.
After a moment, he purses his lips and says, “Tell Sirlog that four were slain, and two return. We had best be ready.”
A deep baritone voice replies, “As you say.”
Prisantha breaks her scrying, and reports what she has seen. After a moment, she invokes her crystal ball again, this time targeting Sirlog. To her surprise, she receives a vision of several trees surrounding a small sun-dappled clearing. A family of field mice skitter amongst the roots of one of the trees, and a lone rabbit cleans its paws. Intrigued, Prisantha watches the scene, a bemused smile on her face. The mice romp and play, with the rabbit standing watch. After a few minutes, the rabbit tests the air and flees, as a massive dire wolf enters the scene, rumbling low in its throat. To Prisantha’s surprise, the field mice greet the new arrival by rushing toward it, and the wolf paws at them in greeting.
Prisantha looks up from her crystal ball and shrugs.
Dabus frowns. “There is often no ready truth in that ball of yours,” he says. “Tritherion will guide us.”
Dabus moves away from the group, and enters into a meditative trance. His communion ushers his spirit into the presence of his God, and he is instantly comforted. Tritherion will inspire him.
Rising up from his center, vibrating his soul and almost incidentally striking the ears, Dabus hears a profound voice; it is at once his mother, his father, and his own self. “Dabus Twice-Born, what would you have of your God? What would you have of Me?”
“Great Tritherion, enemy to all that seek to bind, I would have your Truth.”
“Ask,” the voice intones. “Tritherion will answer.”
“These beings that sent the wolf-dragons,” Dabus begins. “Are they our enemies?”
“They are,” Dabus is assured.
“Are they servants of the Old One?”
“They are not. They defile Iuz and oppose his aims. ”
“Do they bear the curse of lycanthropy?”
“They do not. ”
“Do they truly seek the ore?”
“They do. ”
“Do they intend to stockpile the ore?”
“They do not. ”
“Do they intend to make weapons with it?”
“After a fashion. A tool no mortal may wield might kill what can never die. ”
“Do they intend to build a construct?”
“They have no such intention. ”
“Do they know that the Iuzians no longer control Cur’ruth?”
“They do not. ”
“Do they expect the Iuzians to counterstrike?”
“They do not. ”
“Will they come after the ore again?”
“If the sun rises and sets, they will come. ”
“Will Sirlog come?”
“In a manner of speaking. ”
“Is Sirlog the wolf?”
“No. ”
Dabus pauses, thinking for a moment. “Is Sirlog one of the mice?”
“Yes. Fare well, Dabus, and know that you please your God. Tritherion has spoken. ”
-----
Dabus returns to the group, and reports on what he has learned.
“That sounds bad,” Heydricus says. “What is this weapon?”
“I could vision the thing,” Prisantha says off-handedly. “It will only take a moment.” Before anyone can reply, she has completed her spell, and the color drains from her face. “Well,” she says.
“Well?” Heydricus asks.
“Here is my vision; The terror that gives the barber’s kiss to mountain and plain has no name, for knowledge of it is before naming was. Ten times one thing were given dominion of earth and sky, each marked according to its kind, each kin according to their mark. Seven have died, two sleep, and this one stirs.”
“So . . . we can kill it?” Heydricus says.
“Well, it can die,” Pris says. “But that’s not the same thing.”
“What is it?” Dabus asks.
“Add it to the list,” Heydricus mutters dejectedly. “How is it all we seem to do with ourselves is hack stuff into pieces, and the list keeps getting longer?”
Dabus raises a finger and says, “On the topic of killing. I’ve been considering. It is said, ‘attack where the enemy is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.’ If Prisantha’s crystal ball is good for anything, it is good for targeting teleport spells. So why don’t we just make a list of everyone we need to kill, have a meeting to prioritize, then begin killing them, one a day, until we have completed our list.”
Heydricus stares at Dabus.
“It’s how I get my household chores done,” Dabus says sheepishly.
“I love it,” Heydricus says. “I f--king love it. That’s perfect.”
“It would make for a busy week,” Dabus hedges.
“I could free up the time,” Heydricus suggests. “Mialec can cover for me.”
“Don’t we have enemies in front of us to concern ourselves with?” Prisantha asks.
“Yes,” Dabus says. “Tritherion tells me that they are coming after us even now.”
“Excellent.” Heydricus looks excited. “We can set an ambush!” he exclaims. “We so rarely get to do the ambushing.” To Dabus, he says, “When we get home, I’ll start on a list.”
Prisantha nods, and rubs her hands together. “I have the perfect spell. I will cover us with a veil—an impenetrable illusion. I can make us seem to all senses to be part of the natural scenery. They will be taken completely by surprise!”
“I would like to be a lion,” Dabus says.
“Lions are not native to this region,” Prisantha replies. “You can be a stone.” She turns to Heydricus and sizes him up. “Plants are very symbolic, you know. I think I will make you into a wildflower bush—distant, but alluring nonetheless.” Prisantha looks at Heydricus hopefully.
The Liberator does not seem to understand. He ponders for a moment, and shakes his head. “No. Make me into a rose bush—beautiful, but dangerous to the touch!”
“Roses are not native to this region,” Pris sighs.
“Then make me into a stallion! I’ve been called a stallion before,” he says, waggling his eyebrows.
“I’ll make you into a wildflower bush. We’ll all be wildflower bushes.”
-----
The afternoon lengthens into evening, and just as the last of the twilight is about to slip away, the three wildflower bushes arranged equidistantly around the ore-cart notice a strange mist beginning to flow into the area, against the wind.
Even the dimmest of shrubberies realize that mist does not normally flow against the wind, nor does it often appear on warm summer nights in the open Tenh plain.
A disembodied voice arises from the mist, as the vapor begins to swirl together, forming a tall cylinder. “They have gone.” After a moment, the vapor sprouts tendrils, and takes the shape of a tree—a ‘grandfather tree’ in the local parlance; thick and knotted, branches twisting back against one another. Around the tree, several other forms appear; the feral elf Prisantha scryed earlier, holding hands with a half-elf woman who might be his lover, or perhaps his daughter. They materialize atop the broken ore cart, its contents still where the dragon left them. A large dire wolf picks up its ears as it appears nearby, and an even larger monstrosity takes form several yards distant. The first dire wolf is big for its kind, and has a particularly wise look about its eyes, but the second seems stupid, and is large enough to swallow a halfling whole (without chewing). The wolves scent the air, but Prisantha’s veil assures that they smell nothing amiss.
“There is nothing invisible.” The woman says.
“There is no one here,” the smaller of the two wolves says in perfect common. “They have fled.”
The elf takes in the scene, then his brows furrow. Blooming Talisman flowers? This time of year? He starts to open his mouth.
At that moment, Heydricus-the-wildflower-bush proves the old adage that the most distant and alluring bushes are often the most likely to crit you on a partial charge. He tears forward from his position, and lays into the elf, cutting him once with his forehand and again with his backhand stroke. To the eyes of everyone present (excluding Prisantha), a Talisman bush just opened two gaping wounds along the wolf-lord’s midsection.
“It’s the Elder Conclave!” the elf cries. “We are lost!”
The smaller wolf is not so sure. “Hold your ground,” he growls.
Another bush disappears as Prisantha casts improved invisible on herself. Dabus rustles his own flowering branches and invokes a destruction on the grandfather-tree, but spell fails to take full effect. Instead, it withers several of the lower branches and causes a rain of leaves onto the heads of the combatants scattered around its trunk.
Heydricus seizes his advantage, striking the feral elf again, this time marking his previous ‘X’ with a ‘I’. He splits the elf near in two, and the corpse sprays blood as it falls onto the pile of ore, where it slides to the ground with a wet and meaty flopping sound. Heydricus follows through and chops into the tree with a ferocious two-handed stroke. The huge wolf jumps onto the ore cart, and seizes Heydricus in his mouth, thinking to shake him, but Heydricus digs in and will not budge.
Prisantha speaks a power word stun at the awakened wolf, but the spell has no effect at all. The wolf says, “This is madness,” as he stalks toward Prisantha’s location, his ears forward.
The grandfather-tree’s branches rattle in some unseen wind.
“Of course I can,” the wolf replies. “Give me a moment, and hush.” The wolf cocks his head to one side, straining to pick up the faintest of sounds.
Just as Dabus speaks a holy word.
The sacred word rips the sound from the air around Dabus’ enemies, and leaves in its place a lingering drone that deafens them. With the Liberators’ scents masked by the veil, the deafened wolves have no means to locate Prisantha.
Secure in her invisibility, Pris takes a few minutes to look around the battlefield, and notices a pair of huge red dragons, flying in low over the hills, very near the battle. Both dragons clutch massive dire wolves in their claws, the wolves’ ears pinned back by either terror or wind-shear. The dragons seem intent on strafing the combat, delivering 12 HD fur-and-fang-bombs into the midst of the brawl. Pris yells for Dabus’ attention, and the cleric rustles his branches meaningfully.
Two of the largest nearby cone-trees shudder and animate, pulling their roots up from the earth and waddling to a position where they can reach Heydricus with their wildly thrashing branches. As they advance on him, one of them plows into the ruined ore-cart, shoving it back, dredging a massive furrow in the earth, and spilling the ore. Heydricus leaps clear, but the body of the feral elf falls to the ground and is buried in ore up to its chest.
The half-elven woman cries out in dismay, and fixes Heydricus with a seething stare before muttering an arcane phrase and disappearing from sight. Realizing that two can play at that game, Heydricus also invokes an improved invisibility.
The awakened wolf pounces on the spot Heydricus occupied a moment ago, and begins to use his huge mass to try and locate the sorcerer by feel. Preferring to remain un-mauled, Heydricus slips around the haunch of the wolf, and out of danger. Just as he does so, Prisantha feebleminds the creature, putting such clever notions to rest along with the better part of the wolf’s intellect and personality.
The remaining huge wolf stands confused, as he can neither smell, hear or see his former target. After a moment, he yips a response to some unheard mental command and leaps directly at Dabus.
Unfortunately for the staunch cleric, Dabus is now the only Liberator visible, and with his enemies deafened, he becomes the only target they can sense in any way. Fortunately for him, he knows how to keep a low profile in situations just like this.
He moves toward the grandfather-tree belligerently, then sets a blade barrier directly into the path of the swooping dragons, on a steeply-angled elipse, striking them just beneath the shoulder-joints. As the first of the whirling blades sink through dragon-scale and into flesh, the beasts predictably rear back, pulling out of their dive and dragging the huge wolves through the plane of blades before letting go of the wolves and dropping them back through the spell as they desperately try to stay aloft. The wolves pass through the barrier with a spray of blood and fur, and one of them manages to slowly drag itself away from the fighting. Both dragons have had their wing-tips shredded by the spell, and fly out of control, forming drunken corkscrews as they disappear into the rapidly-darkening sky.
Just then, Dabus is pounded by a lightning bolt from an unseen source-- one that arcs through Heydricus as well. Both animated trees waddle over and start hammering Dabus, and the grandfather-tree joins in as well, delivering a near-lethal dose of poison injected through a twig that squirms through a hole in the cleric’s armor. With all the whistling wood, flying bark, and poisoned branches, it’s a wonder that the huge wolf can even manage to squeeze in long enough to crit Dabus. But, like they teach ‘em in Villain School, “persistence is the key to momentary reversals of mis-fortune”.
“Poison,” Dabus gasps. He falls to the ground, too broken to convulse, dead.
Prisantha frowns a very pretty (if unseen) frown, and clasps her hands together. “I wish . . .” she begins, “that Dabus had thrown off that poison!”
And in an instant it is so. Dabus is still standing, although his holy symbol is covered in wolf drool, and there are pieces of bark in his hair and clothes.
The two wolves, both dire and feebleminded turn at the same time, and run into the night. The animated trees continue to focus on Dabus, but the grandfather-tree has seen enough. He begins to walk on his own roots away from the cleric, perhaps hoping that his enemies will leave him in peace.
They do not. Heydricus charges at the tree, chopping into it once more. The tree collapses in on itself for a moment, its lowest branches striking Heydricus in the back like an Epic Bad Hug. Heydricus grunts in pain, and backs away from the thing.
Suddenly, in response to an unseen chanting coming from the vicinity of the ore cart, Dabus disappears. Prisantha looks around for the spell-caster, but cannot see anyone. She determines to dispel magic on the area, and while she’s sure her spell has had some effect, no one becomes visible. The two animated trees begin a laborious shuffle, following the path of the fleeing grandfather-tree and sweeping for invisible Liberators as they go.
Then, Prisantha disappears.
Heydricus begins to feel the first flush of panic, a sensation intimately familiar for a veteran of the Temple of Elemental Evil. He realizes with a start that it has been a while since he really felt the odds were stacked against him to the point of futility. As he muses over these sentimental feelings of despair, terror and hopelessness, he removes a carved wooden wand from his belt, and places a fireball directly between the grandfather tree and the ore cart. He is rewarded by an exclamation of pain, seemingly coming from the dead elf.
In response, a lightning bolt emerges from the air just above the corpse, and flashes through the night, lighting the whole scene for an instant with a stark bluish chiaroscuro, complimenting the fireball’s red-oranges of a moment before. Heydricus predictably avoids the worst, but as was intended, the lightning bolt gives away his position, and all three trees close in on him.
“F-ck it,” Heydricus says, and charges directly at the grandfather-tree. He cuts into the thing over and over, pushing past the branches as the tree tries to defend itself with its hoary limbs. Heydricus swings from his heels, and feels the shockwave bounce back through his sword and all the way into his feet. The tree tips backward with a shriek of splintering wood, leaving behind only a stump. The animated trees suddenly cease their motion, and separated from the earth, they slowly topple and fall. One falls directly onto the body of the feral elf, crushing the invisible sorceress as it lands.
All is quiet. The moment lengthens into first one breath, then two, then several. No one attacks Heydricus, and no one speaks. The adrenaline drains out of the battered sorcerer in a rush, and even eating the worm at the bottom of a cure serious wounds potion doesn’t take the pain away.
The captain of the guards assigned to the ore caravan emerges from his hiding place, and approaches Heydricus with tears in his eyes, overcome by emotion. “You know sir, I used to adventure a bit in my youth, and I just wanted to say that I ain’t never thought I’d see nothin’ like what I just saw. That were a beautiful thing, and I ain’t ashamed to say it.”
Heyrdicus smiles at him warmly, and puts a hand on his shoulder. “You’re going back to Cur’ruth now, but first,” Heydricus hands the man his portable hole. “Fill this with the ore.”
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the_mighty_agrippa
First Post
i love this story hour. the original rtttoee thread inspired by dm to run us through the module.
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Barastrondo
First Post
(contact) said:
This may just be the funniest thing I have ever read in any Story Hour. Ever.
Ever.
...no, wait...
...Yes. Ever.
ThoughtBubble
First Post
Ok... I've got a dilemma. On one hand, I got an extra long update of LOT. On the other, I just got my own office.
Which one made my day?
Which one made my day?
KidCthulhu
First Post
(contact) said:
Brother, you've just said a mouthful. Way to sum up the adventurers' condition.
I love the "little list" idea. Working on parody G&S song right now.
Joshua Randall
Legend
Er, isn't anyone other than me wondering what happened to Dabus and Prisantha?
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