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<blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 7890473" data-attributes="member: 6816692"><p>(On to a rather long-ish post. I'll leave this one here as I could not get it out of my mind <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> [MEDIA=youtube]02q8kPJn_e4[/MEDIA] )</p><p></p><p>So we join the beran fleet with two ships from Risur alongside the Lux Profectusque as they sail towards the Isla de las Focas. As we already expected, the weather turns from bad to storm as soon as we get closer to the island, but fortunately our weather druids are able to keep the storms at bay. Then we see that the gnolls haven't been idle either as they block off their island with a large fleet on their own. What really astonishes us is the fact that they got... rather small wyverns to attack us from the air. Wyverns which are mounted by... magically shrunk gnolls!</p><p></p><p>Fortunately, we know magical ways to fly as well, so we take to the skies to handle these unusual threats. Auryn flies close to one of their groups and utters a single, paralyzing note which makes the wyvern's wing motions stop as well, plunging them down into the sea. Meanwhile, Carlyle takes care of the rest.</p><p></p><p>From the ships below, we can hear several of the beran sailors cheer for us. But the cheers quickly turn to cries of surprise and shock when two large, automatically acting dragonboats approach the fleet, shooting fire. We take a closer look at the ships and realize that these are actual seaborne golems.</p><p></p><p>“These fools... let me show them the downsides of automatons” Auryn says with a big grin before taking a deep dive through the golem's fire. Then she takes control of the ships one by one orders them to turn around to shoot at the gnoll's fleet.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: rgb(65, 168, 95)">(I've never regretted to learn that nifty spell. It has become one of Auryn's signature spells and she managed to troll Lya really hard in adventure 9)</span></p><p></p><p>“Seems like we do have to risk less lives than we anticipated. I hope you don't mind this kind of 'mind-bending', Bruse Cavallo. Not like they have actual minds of their own” she chuckles as she takes a quick fly-over to the beran flagship before returning to our risuri vessels. Bruse Cavallo nods with a big grin before shouting the order to engage the enemy fleet.</p><p></p><p>The battle starts with lots of cannon fire on both sides. However, from one corner of our eyes we spot that one vessel seems to ignore the orders of the Bruse and head for the Isla on a different route as it is heading directly towards what's left of the storm: The Lux Profectusque. We signal the defection to Bruse Cavallo who orders the Lux to return to the formation immediately. But it seems like he's being ignored. Of course, Cavallo is infuriated by this willful disregard of his orders. We take the Danoran defection as a signal to hurry to the Isla immediately, so we take a smaller boat, turn it invisible and let Margit summon a tailwind to speed us up.</p><p></p><p>Fortunately, we do know how to find the entrance to the hoard of Gradiax as soon as we land on the island on a forsaken beach. Knowing the general direction, it is quite an easy feat to find the tracks leading to the grand caverns, so we take a few minutes to prepare for an ambush on Team Lya. It doesn't take much longer and the trio of Lya, Rush and Merton enters the entrance, discussing the curiosity of “feral gnolls” building a railway into their mountain. Then, we spring our trap, knocking each of them out before they realize what hit them. We tie them up and disarm them, then put them into a lorry so the gnolls won't spot and kill them should they happen to patrol the area. To make matters even more safe, Carlyle conjures an illusory wall to hide the lorry containing team Lya.</p><p></p><p>After taking care of the Danorans, we decide to head deeper into the mountain. After following the tracks for a while, we spot a group of gnolls handling pallets. They seem to be guarded by a pair of mechanical rhinoceroses and we find that the only way forward seems to be behind said pallets. So we have no choice but to engage the gnolls and their automatons. Auryn takes one of the rhinos and bends it to her will while Carlyle initiates combat with the gnolls. The second rhino takes this opening to impale Auryn's left leg, leaving her atop the raging automaton while ordering the other one to destroy its companion. Carlyle makes haste to disassemble toe second rhino with some mighty slashes before taking care of his wounded partner.</p><p></p><p>“Don't worry, it won't even leave a scratch” he says while pouring a healing liquid onto the gaping wound which starts to close immediately. </p><p></p><p>"Thank you. Don't know what I would do without you" she returns with an honest smile.</p><p></p><p>After Auryn is healed up again, we continue our descent through the tunnels. We finally arrive in what appears to be a cave where several gnolls are busy operating a pump and corresponding generators. We hear more yapping coming from other caverns and agree that this must be where the gnoll's base is located. We decide that the gnolls are not our primary concern as we're still looking for Tinker and Gradiax' daughter Teraklir. And as there seems to be an elevator in the pump cavern, we take out the gnolls and use said elevator to descent even deeper.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: rgb(65, 168, 95)">(Tiz told us afterwards that there were abducted people hidden inside these caverns who had been forced to operate their duplicants. We never expected that the duplicants were moved by hostages and thought they were defectors or totally different people. oops.)</span></p><p></p><p>After arriving at the ground level, we leave the elevator and find even more tracks and a lorry. Inside, we spot a severed duplicant's head which turns into the striking image of Tinker Oddcog as soon as we take a closer look. Tinker seems to be as insane as ever as he states that the machines talk to him and also that the “large folk” cannot understand his kind of art. We try to argue with him again and try to convince him to come with us, but the head then starts changing and finally turns into the head of Mr. Pemberton. He invites us to come down to his realm and talk like grown-ups (that being obviously meant as a jab at Tinker), so why don't we take the lorry to come to him.</p><p></p><p>We check said lorry for any possible kind of trap while the head turns inert again. When we find none, we decide to take the ride further down into the volcano. As we're drawing close to the end of the track, we spot countless unused duplicants standing at each side of the track and we get the uncanny feeling as if someone's about to replace half of Ber with them. When we finally arrive the end of the track, we find ourselves in a gigantic kind of forge where countless mechanical parts lay scattered on the ground. Also, we spot a non-moving conveyor belt and an eldritch object shooting a large, continuous laser beam at a lake filled with lava. We take a short glimpse at said object only to guess that this might just be the fabled eye of the Tyrant Yeref.</p><p></p><p>“There you are!” Tinker shouts, waltzing in with what appears to be an enormous mech-suit. “Look who's the small ones now!”</p><p></p><p>We try to approach the mad gnome diplomatically, asking him to join our team and help us uncover the secrets of the Colossus Borne, whom he helped to create. Tinker doesn't want to hear any of it though, so we try a different approach.</p><p></p><p>“Mr. Oddcog, you seem to know more about machines that we could ever do. Because you have a special gift of hearing their whispers. So... if you could just teach us how to listen and understand them... and maybe talk to them, that alone would help us so much.”</p><p></p><p>“Teach?! No! No, no no! I'm here with PEMBERTON! I'll stay with Pemberton and the machines!”</p><p></p><p>“Shush, Tinker. You still got work to do, don't you?” Pemberton says calmly as he enters the forge.</p><p></p><p>And Tinker simply does as he's been told. He then turns to us and smiles.</p><p></p><p>“Finally some company who's playing on a higher intellectual level.” he adds while looking around warily. He then doesn't beat around the bush as he immediately offers us to join him in his plan to take over Ber. After all, these barbarians are nothing more but wild, chaotic beasts who long for the hand of a strong leader.</p><p></p><p>"And you do think that a dragon girl is the ideal 'strong leader' for a people who made great efforts to leave centuries of dragon tyranny behind them?” Carlyle says with a smirk, leaving “Pemberton” awestruck.</p><p></p><p>“Don't look so surprised, Teraklir. We know who you are. We're not here to harm you, we're here to make you an offer. Abandon your conquest of Ber and join the Pact of Boyle. You can imagine what happens if the Berans find out who you are and that your kind still lives.” Auryn adds.</p><p></p><p>“This is HIS plan, isn't it?! Using his thralls to try to control me, that's so typical. Not this time. I WILL rule all of Ber. TINKER! Remove these pests!”</p><p></p><p>As Tinker returns still heavily armed, we withdraw to the forges' entrance to lure him out a bit. Then Auryn makes a dive for the cockpit, smashes its window open and charms Tinker while Carlyle keeps a close eye on “Pemberton”. Who makes a beeline to the control console which seems to be the thing that's operating the laser beam. Fearing that the enraged dragon might redirect the beam towards Tinker and Auryn, he uses a teleport spell to place himself between duplicant and console.</p><p></p><p>“It is enough, really. We're not here to harm you, so please don't try to hurt the one person who might understand you more than anyone else”</p><p></p><p>“You know nothing, puny human!” Pemberton says, while still moving towards the console. Which leaves Carlyle with no choice but to destroy the duplicant.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, Auryn lures Tinker out of the forge, only to realize that this Tinker is yet another duplicant. So we let him discard his steamsuit in the lave lake. Among the scarreted parts on the conveyor, we also find an almost finished mechanical dragon duplicant, which in turn means that we didn't really need the improvised version from Fordren. So we take the drakelicant with us and start searching for the real Teraklir.</p><p></p><p>We enter the next room only to find what appears to be cocoon-shaped sleeping capsules, two of which contain Tinker Oddcog and “Minister of Rebellion” Pardo. Then, we hear a sharp mechanical noise and other conveyors getting activated in the tunnels before hearing a familiar voice in our heads.</p><p></p><p>“I managed to regain control of the defense mechanisms. I can also deactivate the teleportation blockade at your signal. And...” he sighs mentally “...let me clean this up a bit. This should not be... duplicated by anyone”</p><p></p><p>We then see masses of unused duplicants being flung towards the lava lake as if they were moved by an invisible force.</p><p></p><p>“Let me take care of the sleeping ones. You go find my daughter. And give her the ring I put into your pocket, will you? She doesn't know how to transform yet.”</p><p></p><p>As soon as Fordren's voice is out of her head, Auryn starts searching her pockets immediately, where she finds a ring imbued with polymorph powers. Without giving the how and when too much of a thought, we then try to find Teraklir as quickly as possible. It doesn't take too long and we find an illusory wall, leading to another corridor which then leads to an enormous cave filled with mountains of ancient treasure.</p><p></p><p>But that's not all... as on top of all this splendor we see a colossal dragon, large as a house and surrounded by comparatively tiny blue and green floating stones.</p><p></p><p>“So, you finally found Gradiax the Terrible, Steel Tyrant and Master of Ber. Submit yourselves, mortals, and you may live.“</p><p></p><p>“Impressive.” Carlyle says “But you cannot fool us. We know who you are and you are still a half-century old dragon youth. So please, cast off your illusion. We do not intend to fight you.”</p><p></p><p>“I do not care for your intentions. This is MY realm and you shall suffer for your foolish resistance!”</p><p></p><p>Then the gigantic dragon opens his mouth to release its fiery breath. We take cover and agree that talking won't work at this stage.</p><p></p><p>“The stones. Blue is for offense. I take the left, you take the right.” Auryn whispers, then casts an acceleration spell before starting a dance of fire protection.</p><p></p><p>Carlyle nods and then twists time itself to come closer to the floating stones he starts collecting immediately. Teraklir instantly realizes what we are trying to do and flies into a full rage, attacking us with all her empowered form has to offer. We try to dodge and parry her furious attacks as good as we can, but still suffer some injuries in the process. Collecting the gems seem to work though as her claws grow much slower and smaller by each stone.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: rgb(65, 168, 95)">("Collect the stones before the dragon smashes you to pieces" is a wholly different type of encounter than your usual ones. Tiz said that the original Teraklir would have been too easy, especially as we eliminated Lya and Tinker out of the equation. So he took the stats of some way bigger draon and reducet it bit by bit. Which was quite painful at the beginning)</span></p><p></p><p>As soon as we got all the blue ones, we turn to the green stones. This time, Teraklir's offense is much weaker and she doesn't get a single hit on us. Still mad, but even a bit impressed, the dragon hisses “If you can defeat me, then maybe I'll give this king of yours a chance. But that won't happen.”</p><p></p><p>“When we defeat you” Carlyle replies, “then maybe our king will give you a chance.”</p><p></p><p><span style="color: rgb(65, 168, 95)">(this is funnier in German since “if” and “when” are the same word which can be used in a temporal and in a conditional sense.)</span></p><p></p><p>Auryn laughs briefly as she collects her part of the green stones. As soon as we got the last gem, the draconic matrix destabilized completely, dissolving the image of “Gradiax” to reveal the person underneath it: A red dragon, not much taller than a horse, wearing both a metal claw and a metal wing. Before Teraklir gets the chance for further attacks, Auryn points her weapon at Teraklir's chest and lets her eyes flash with violet light.</p><p></p><p>“We defeated you. There is no use in fighting us at this point. Surrender. Now.”</p><p></p><p>The dragon growls, but she still lowers her claws and ceases her hostilities. Then she laments that we ruined her perfect plan which would have certainly worked were it not for us and our interference in Ber. We agree that her plan was really clever and might have worked, but also remind her that Ber has some allies and friends in its neighboring countries which would have surely intervened the moment a Tyrant Teraklir would have proclaimed herself “ruler of Ber”. After all, that's what King Boyle did to help the Berans get rid of the Tyrants in the first place. The same King who, we remind her, had also defeated her powerful father.</p><p></p><p>“See, this is why we came here, Teraklir. To offer you to become part of the Pact of Boyle in the name of King Aodhan of Risur. It is neither in our, nor in the other dragon's interest that the world knows about you.” Carlyle explains.</p><p></p><p>“We don't want you to be hunted down. We don't want you to die. We hope that you can lead and make a life of your own, free from your father's shadow.” Auryn adds.</p><p></p><p>“In the guise of a weak human, I suppose. Disgraceful.”</p><p></p><p>“Strength does not depend on form. Perhaps you can understand this if you try to look at our world through the eyes of our kind. Your father wasn't afraid to do so, so why should you?” Auryn says, handing the Ring of transformation to the young dragon.</p><p></p><p>Teraklir finally agrees, takes the ring and promises to keep her identity a secret and never harm Risur or its citizens. We take this as a first step, but remind her that she's have to swear the oath in front of the King for it to be official. So we cast a sending spell to Harkover Lee to tell him the news and request a private audience as quickly as possible. As soon as Lee replies that we shall meet at the teleportation circle in Slate, we tell Gradiax to lower the teleportatoin ward, take the now-elvish looking Teraklir and teleport to our capital.</p><p></p><p>When we arrive in Slate, we're quite surprised to see that the place is warded off with lots of illusion magics. Also, all guards seem to have left the area and we are welcomed by King Aodhan and the Principal Minister. Our King is a bit astonished to see the teenage elf with the metal prosthetic, but he then directly proceeds to the official part of the Pact, making Teraklir, daughter of Gradiax, swear that she won't reveal her identity or try to harm Risur. In return, he welcomes her under the protection of the crown.</p><p></p><p>As soon as the short ceremony is finished, Teraklir states she's disappointed that she never even got the chance to prove her strength to Gradiax, and that she had to submit to a human on top of that.</p><p></p><p>“Don't hate yourself.” Carlyle replies. “Your father knew about your plan and he called it brilliant. But like any good father...” - Auryn is breathing heavily at this part - “...he was concerned about your future. He doesn't want to lose you, even if you don't care for him at the moment. And even he had to admit that creating the duplicants was a mistake. Such a technology is a threat to everyone.”</p><p></p><p>Auryn takes a moment and then adds that her people also once ruled over a great empire, the grandest the world had ever seen. And that their leaders could be seen as Tyrants, too, at least from the perspective of a slave. It took a catastrophe that nearly killed all of her people to see their mistakes and move on to another way of life.</p><p></p><p>“Think about it this way: Through our survival, through our change, we actually became stronger and wiser. And the next time the Eladrin will appear on the word's stage, we will be free from the shackles of our past.”</p><p></p><p>She then shakes her head as if she just realized that she had never thought about the Malice and their survival this way. Teraklir seems to remain skeptical, but she mentions that she'll maybe start her new life by studying magic and technology at Pardwright. We decide to leave her (and the eye of Yeref) in the able hands of Harkover Lee and King Aodhan.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: rgb(65, 168, 95)">(and this is how we managed to keep the whole Pact of Boyle stuff a national secret. This is also not the last time that we've seen Teraklir in action)</span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lylandra, post: 7890473, member: 6816692"] (On to a rather long-ish post. I'll leave this one here as I could not get it out of my mind ;) [MEDIA=youtube]02q8kPJn_e4[/MEDIA] ) So we join the beran fleet with two ships from Risur alongside the Lux Profectusque as they sail towards the Isla de las Focas. As we already expected, the weather turns from bad to storm as soon as we get closer to the island, but fortunately our weather druids are able to keep the storms at bay. Then we see that the gnolls haven't been idle either as they block off their island with a large fleet on their own. What really astonishes us is the fact that they got... rather small wyverns to attack us from the air. Wyverns which are mounted by... magically shrunk gnolls! Fortunately, we know magical ways to fly as well, so we take to the skies to handle these unusual threats. Auryn flies close to one of their groups and utters a single, paralyzing note which makes the wyvern's wing motions stop as well, plunging them down into the sea. Meanwhile, Carlyle takes care of the rest. From the ships below, we can hear several of the beran sailors cheer for us. But the cheers quickly turn to cries of surprise and shock when two large, automatically acting dragonboats approach the fleet, shooting fire. We take a closer look at the ships and realize that these are actual seaborne golems. “These fools... let me show them the downsides of automatons” Auryn says with a big grin before taking a deep dive through the golem's fire. Then she takes control of the ships one by one orders them to turn around to shoot at the gnoll's fleet. [COLOR=rgb(65, 168, 95)](I've never regretted to learn that nifty spell. It has become one of Auryn's signature spells and she managed to troll Lya really hard in adventure 9)[/COLOR] “Seems like we do have to risk less lives than we anticipated. I hope you don't mind this kind of 'mind-bending', Bruse Cavallo. Not like they have actual minds of their own” she chuckles as she takes a quick fly-over to the beran flagship before returning to our risuri vessels. Bruse Cavallo nods with a big grin before shouting the order to engage the enemy fleet. The battle starts with lots of cannon fire on both sides. However, from one corner of our eyes we spot that one vessel seems to ignore the orders of the Bruse and head for the Isla on a different route as it is heading directly towards what's left of the storm: The Lux Profectusque. We signal the defection to Bruse Cavallo who orders the Lux to return to the formation immediately. But it seems like he's being ignored. Of course, Cavallo is infuriated by this willful disregard of his orders. We take the Danoran defection as a signal to hurry to the Isla immediately, so we take a smaller boat, turn it invisible and let Margit summon a tailwind to speed us up. Fortunately, we do know how to find the entrance to the hoard of Gradiax as soon as we land on the island on a forsaken beach. Knowing the general direction, it is quite an easy feat to find the tracks leading to the grand caverns, so we take a few minutes to prepare for an ambush on Team Lya. It doesn't take much longer and the trio of Lya, Rush and Merton enters the entrance, discussing the curiosity of “feral gnolls” building a railway into their mountain. Then, we spring our trap, knocking each of them out before they realize what hit them. We tie them up and disarm them, then put them into a lorry so the gnolls won't spot and kill them should they happen to patrol the area. To make matters even more safe, Carlyle conjures an illusory wall to hide the lorry containing team Lya. After taking care of the Danorans, we decide to head deeper into the mountain. After following the tracks for a while, we spot a group of gnolls handling pallets. They seem to be guarded by a pair of mechanical rhinoceroses and we find that the only way forward seems to be behind said pallets. So we have no choice but to engage the gnolls and their automatons. Auryn takes one of the rhinos and bends it to her will while Carlyle initiates combat with the gnolls. The second rhino takes this opening to impale Auryn's left leg, leaving her atop the raging automaton while ordering the other one to destroy its companion. Carlyle makes haste to disassemble toe second rhino with some mighty slashes before taking care of his wounded partner. “Don't worry, it won't even leave a scratch” he says while pouring a healing liquid onto the gaping wound which starts to close immediately. "Thank you. Don't know what I would do without you" she returns with an honest smile. After Auryn is healed up again, we continue our descent through the tunnels. We finally arrive in what appears to be a cave where several gnolls are busy operating a pump and corresponding generators. We hear more yapping coming from other caverns and agree that this must be where the gnoll's base is located. We decide that the gnolls are not our primary concern as we're still looking for Tinker and Gradiax' daughter Teraklir. And as there seems to be an elevator in the pump cavern, we take out the gnolls and use said elevator to descent even deeper. [COLOR=rgb(65, 168, 95)](Tiz told us afterwards that there were abducted people hidden inside these caverns who had been forced to operate their duplicants. We never expected that the duplicants were moved by hostages and thought they were defectors or totally different people. oops.)[/COLOR] After arriving at the ground level, we leave the elevator and find even more tracks and a lorry. Inside, we spot a severed duplicant's head which turns into the striking image of Tinker Oddcog as soon as we take a closer look. Tinker seems to be as insane as ever as he states that the machines talk to him and also that the “large folk” cannot understand his kind of art. We try to argue with him again and try to convince him to come with us, but the head then starts changing and finally turns into the head of Mr. Pemberton. He invites us to come down to his realm and talk like grown-ups (that being obviously meant as a jab at Tinker), so why don't we take the lorry to come to him. We check said lorry for any possible kind of trap while the head turns inert again. When we find none, we decide to take the ride further down into the volcano. As we're drawing close to the end of the track, we spot countless unused duplicants standing at each side of the track and we get the uncanny feeling as if someone's about to replace half of Ber with them. When we finally arrive the end of the track, we find ourselves in a gigantic kind of forge where countless mechanical parts lay scattered on the ground. Also, we spot a non-moving conveyor belt and an eldritch object shooting a large, continuous laser beam at a lake filled with lava. We take a short glimpse at said object only to guess that this might just be the fabled eye of the Tyrant Yeref. “There you are!” Tinker shouts, waltzing in with what appears to be an enormous mech-suit. “Look who's the small ones now!” We try to approach the mad gnome diplomatically, asking him to join our team and help us uncover the secrets of the Colossus Borne, whom he helped to create. Tinker doesn't want to hear any of it though, so we try a different approach. “Mr. Oddcog, you seem to know more about machines that we could ever do. Because you have a special gift of hearing their whispers. So... if you could just teach us how to listen and understand them... and maybe talk to them, that alone would help us so much.” “Teach?! No! No, no no! I'm here with PEMBERTON! I'll stay with Pemberton and the machines!” “Shush, Tinker. You still got work to do, don't you?” Pemberton says calmly as he enters the forge. And Tinker simply does as he's been told. He then turns to us and smiles. “Finally some company who's playing on a higher intellectual level.” he adds while looking around warily. He then doesn't beat around the bush as he immediately offers us to join him in his plan to take over Ber. After all, these barbarians are nothing more but wild, chaotic beasts who long for the hand of a strong leader. "And you do think that a dragon girl is the ideal 'strong leader' for a people who made great efforts to leave centuries of dragon tyranny behind them?” Carlyle says with a smirk, leaving “Pemberton” awestruck. “Don't look so surprised, Teraklir. We know who you are. We're not here to harm you, we're here to make you an offer. Abandon your conquest of Ber and join the Pact of Boyle. You can imagine what happens if the Berans find out who you are and that your kind still lives.” Auryn adds. “This is HIS plan, isn't it?! Using his thralls to try to control me, that's so typical. Not this time. I WILL rule all of Ber. TINKER! Remove these pests!” As Tinker returns still heavily armed, we withdraw to the forges' entrance to lure him out a bit. Then Auryn makes a dive for the cockpit, smashes its window open and charms Tinker while Carlyle keeps a close eye on “Pemberton”. Who makes a beeline to the control console which seems to be the thing that's operating the laser beam. Fearing that the enraged dragon might redirect the beam towards Tinker and Auryn, he uses a teleport spell to place himself between duplicant and console. “It is enough, really. We're not here to harm you, so please don't try to hurt the one person who might understand you more than anyone else” “You know nothing, puny human!” Pemberton says, while still moving towards the console. Which leaves Carlyle with no choice but to destroy the duplicant. Meanwhile, Auryn lures Tinker out of the forge, only to realize that this Tinker is yet another duplicant. So we let him discard his steamsuit in the lave lake. Among the scarreted parts on the conveyor, we also find an almost finished mechanical dragon duplicant, which in turn means that we didn't really need the improvised version from Fordren. So we take the drakelicant with us and start searching for the real Teraklir. We enter the next room only to find what appears to be cocoon-shaped sleeping capsules, two of which contain Tinker Oddcog and “Minister of Rebellion” Pardo. Then, we hear a sharp mechanical noise and other conveyors getting activated in the tunnels before hearing a familiar voice in our heads. “I managed to regain control of the defense mechanisms. I can also deactivate the teleportation blockade at your signal. And...” he sighs mentally “...let me clean this up a bit. This should not be... duplicated by anyone” We then see masses of unused duplicants being flung towards the lava lake as if they were moved by an invisible force. “Let me take care of the sleeping ones. You go find my daughter. And give her the ring I put into your pocket, will you? She doesn't know how to transform yet.” As soon as Fordren's voice is out of her head, Auryn starts searching her pockets immediately, where she finds a ring imbued with polymorph powers. Without giving the how and when too much of a thought, we then try to find Teraklir as quickly as possible. It doesn't take too long and we find an illusory wall, leading to another corridor which then leads to an enormous cave filled with mountains of ancient treasure. But that's not all... as on top of all this splendor we see a colossal dragon, large as a house and surrounded by comparatively tiny blue and green floating stones. “So, you finally found Gradiax the Terrible, Steel Tyrant and Master of Ber. Submit yourselves, mortals, and you may live.“ “Impressive.” Carlyle says “But you cannot fool us. We know who you are and you are still a half-century old dragon youth. So please, cast off your illusion. We do not intend to fight you.” “I do not care for your intentions. This is MY realm and you shall suffer for your foolish resistance!” Then the gigantic dragon opens his mouth to release its fiery breath. We take cover and agree that talking won't work at this stage. “The stones. Blue is for offense. I take the left, you take the right.” Auryn whispers, then casts an acceleration spell before starting a dance of fire protection. Carlyle nods and then twists time itself to come closer to the floating stones he starts collecting immediately. Teraklir instantly realizes what we are trying to do and flies into a full rage, attacking us with all her empowered form has to offer. We try to dodge and parry her furious attacks as good as we can, but still suffer some injuries in the process. Collecting the gems seem to work though as her claws grow much slower and smaller by each stone. [COLOR=rgb(65, 168, 95)]("Collect the stones before the dragon smashes you to pieces" is a wholly different type of encounter than your usual ones. Tiz said that the original Teraklir would have been too easy, especially as we eliminated Lya and Tinker out of the equation. So he took the stats of some way bigger draon and reducet it bit by bit. Which was quite painful at the beginning)[/COLOR] As soon as we got all the blue ones, we turn to the green stones. This time, Teraklir's offense is much weaker and she doesn't get a single hit on us. Still mad, but even a bit impressed, the dragon hisses “If you can defeat me, then maybe I'll give this king of yours a chance. But that won't happen.” “When we defeat you” Carlyle replies, “then maybe our king will give you a chance.” [COLOR=rgb(65, 168, 95)](this is funnier in German since “if” and “when” are the same word which can be used in a temporal and in a conditional sense.)[/COLOR] Auryn laughs briefly as she collects her part of the green stones. As soon as we got the last gem, the draconic matrix destabilized completely, dissolving the image of “Gradiax” to reveal the person underneath it: A red dragon, not much taller than a horse, wearing both a metal claw and a metal wing. Before Teraklir gets the chance for further attacks, Auryn points her weapon at Teraklir's chest and lets her eyes flash with violet light. “We defeated you. There is no use in fighting us at this point. Surrender. Now.” The dragon growls, but she still lowers her claws and ceases her hostilities. Then she laments that we ruined her perfect plan which would have certainly worked were it not for us and our interference in Ber. We agree that her plan was really clever and might have worked, but also remind her that Ber has some allies and friends in its neighboring countries which would have surely intervened the moment a Tyrant Teraklir would have proclaimed herself “ruler of Ber”. After all, that's what King Boyle did to help the Berans get rid of the Tyrants in the first place. The same King who, we remind her, had also defeated her powerful father. “See, this is why we came here, Teraklir. To offer you to become part of the Pact of Boyle in the name of King Aodhan of Risur. It is neither in our, nor in the other dragon's interest that the world knows about you.” Carlyle explains. “We don't want you to be hunted down. We don't want you to die. We hope that you can lead and make a life of your own, free from your father's shadow.” Auryn adds. “In the guise of a weak human, I suppose. Disgraceful.” “Strength does not depend on form. Perhaps you can understand this if you try to look at our world through the eyes of our kind. Your father wasn't afraid to do so, so why should you?” Auryn says, handing the Ring of transformation to the young dragon. Teraklir finally agrees, takes the ring and promises to keep her identity a secret and never harm Risur or its citizens. We take this as a first step, but remind her that she's have to swear the oath in front of the King for it to be official. So we cast a sending spell to Harkover Lee to tell him the news and request a private audience as quickly as possible. As soon as Lee replies that we shall meet at the teleportation circle in Slate, we tell Gradiax to lower the teleportatoin ward, take the now-elvish looking Teraklir and teleport to our capital. When we arrive in Slate, we're quite surprised to see that the place is warded off with lots of illusion magics. Also, all guards seem to have left the area and we are welcomed by King Aodhan and the Principal Minister. Our King is a bit astonished to see the teenage elf with the metal prosthetic, but he then directly proceeds to the official part of the Pact, making Teraklir, daughter of Gradiax, swear that she won't reveal her identity or try to harm Risur. In return, he welcomes her under the protection of the crown. As soon as the short ceremony is finished, Teraklir states she's disappointed that she never even got the chance to prove her strength to Gradiax, and that she had to submit to a human on top of that. “Don't hate yourself.” Carlyle replies. “Your father knew about your plan and he called it brilliant. But like any good father...” - Auryn is breathing heavily at this part - “...he was concerned about your future. He doesn't want to lose you, even if you don't care for him at the moment. And even he had to admit that creating the duplicants was a mistake. Such a technology is a threat to everyone.” Auryn takes a moment and then adds that her people also once ruled over a great empire, the grandest the world had ever seen. And that their leaders could be seen as Tyrants, too, at least from the perspective of a slave. It took a catastrophe that nearly killed all of her people to see their mistakes and move on to another way of life. “Think about it this way: Through our survival, through our change, we actually became stronger and wiser. And the next time the Eladrin will appear on the word's stage, we will be free from the shackles of our past.” She then shakes her head as if she just realized that she had never thought about the Malice and their survival this way. Teraklir seems to remain skeptical, but she mentions that she'll maybe start her new life by studying magic and technology at Pardwright. We decide to leave her (and the eye of Yeref) in the able hands of Harkover Lee and King Aodhan. [COLOR=rgb(65, 168, 95)](and this is how we managed to keep the whole Pact of Boyle stuff a national secret. This is also not the last time that we've seen Teraklir in action)[/COLOR] [/QUOTE]
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