Welcome to the Halmae (updated 2/27/07)

[Cerebral Paladin]

Great stories as always, Spyscribe.

I'm curious about the use of the term "sistren" for the Allirians. Is that linked to their religion or just a general style choice?

 

[Fajitas]

I'm curious about the use of the term "sistren" for the Allirians. Is that linked to their religion or just a general style choice?

It's religious. Alirrian and Sedellan sects tend to take the feminine terms to describe all their members, while Kettenite and Ehktian sects tend to take the masculine ones. Thus, Alirrian monks are all Sister So-and-so, Kettenite monks are all Brother So-and-So. Sedellan knights are all Dames, Ehktian knights are all Sirs.

This, in general, keeps me amused.

 

[spyscribe]

The session that plays out over the next few updates was a bit different than our usual games. Figuring that one innovation deserved another, I’ve played with our usual format a little bit, hoping to better capture the feel of the evening. Look for short, frequent posts over the next week.

This game also continued our tradition of guest stars, this time with Thatch’s player’s mother playing Annika. Hence, the character intros at the opening.

And now, have a seat, enjoy the previews, and get ready for…

 

[spyscribe]

Part the One-Hundred Fifth

or

[size=+1]Twenty-One Days in the Ketkath[/size]

Fade up Title Card: Day One

Dissolve to:

It’s a clear and sunny day in the Ketkath Mountains. On a ridge above camp, Benedic stands, cloak blowing in the wind. Silhouetted against the sky he cuts quite the dashing figure.

At least, Lira thinks so. Benedic reaches down and gives her a hand up, and the two of them take a moment to enjoy the view before returning to the others.

Back at camp, Anvil is reapportioning pack-loads for their long journey across the mountains. He catches Thatch staring at him as he takes Lira’s bedroll and puts it in the young fighter’s load. “Kettenek’s Justice demands it,” he says, and goes off to make sure the fire has been thoroughly smothered.

Thatch shoulders his pack, muttering about having to go all this way on foot. They have horses, but no, better to just go on foot and return to Bob and the others later…

Annika stifles a yawn and returns to her packing.

Eva watches all of this impassively, hands tucked in her pockets, compulsively shuffling a deck of cards. She notices Reyu returning from her morning prayers. The elf takes in the business of camp with only a small sigh.

Kiara is in swallow form, zipping around in a complex set of aerial maneuvers which culminate in a loop around Thatch’s head before turning into a girl once again. She grabs Thatch by the arm, “Come on! There are fish in the stream over here. Do you think you can catch them? Huh?”

Before Thatch can try his arm at angling, Benedic and Lira return. Benedic, obviously enjoying being back in guide mode, claps his hands and calls for the party’s attention.

“Alright,” he begins, “I’ve got the lay of the land, and things are going to be a bit different from here on. There’s no trail, and no settlements for miles around. Of course, that doesn’t mean we’re alone. All kinds of beasties live in these mountains. Our best bet, keep to ourselves. Don’t make too much noise. We’ll keep a small fire at night, but we don’t want too much light either. Most things ‘round here, we don’t bother them, hopefully, they won’t bother us.”

The party nods their understanding. Quickly, they finish breaking camp and head out into the wilderness.



Day 2

Anvil watches the ground ahead of him very carefully. Kettenek’s Justice demands they take proper precautions in a strange land, and he has taken it upon himself to make sure that Thatch steps in the same places that Benedic did before him.

Most of the time, Thatch is a little bit off. Which causes him to nearly step on something that lies glinting on the ground.

Anvil pauses to pick it up. It’s a stone arrowhead.

Benedic takes a look. “Looks like something from the Old Ones, the natives that lived in the Ketkath before the Sovereigns came. Not surprising, the Vale was a holy site for them too. Probably a couple hundred years old.”

Anvil pockets the object, and readjusts his pack straps. He is still carrying the capstone the party found in Sheesak’s cave—dubbed by the rest of the party as “the big not-evil rock.” After several weeks, the party still has no idea what to do with it, and Anvil has to admit that carrying around a fifty-pound stone does get a bit wearing, even if it is Kettenek’s element.

“Look there!” Reyu calls from the back of the marching order where she walks with Paws.

Over the next ridge, an eagle soars across the sky. Then, as the party watches, the bird suddenly dives down, targeting some unseen prey below. But, as the bird dips below the horizon, the party members see that it was not beyond the next ridge, but beyond the next several ridges.

Thatch gapes. “That bird must have been the size of a house!”

Kirara, in swallow form, tucks into the side of Annika’s hood.

Eva swallows, throat suddenly dry.

“Well,” says Lira, “at least it’s far away.”

The march resumes.

 

[spyscribe]

Day 3

Near a waterfall, Lira once again tries to blow the horn that the party took from Sheesak the Druid ogre. Annika had identified it as casting summon nature’s ally IV. Kiara sounded it, and a rhinoceros appeared. Lira hopes that her summoned puppy was merely a fluke.

The noise of the horn is barely heard above the roaring of the water. As Lira lowers the horn from her lips she sees that a grey wolf has appeared before her.

“Hello,” she says.

The wolf looks at her a bit quizzically, and after about 20 seconds, disappears.

“Well, I guess that’s an improvement.”

Eva pats her friend on the back. “Maybe you just get dogs.”


Day 4

Benedic freezes in his tracks, hand going to his sword. The rest of the group, arrayed around a small fire eating lunch, looks up.

About forty feet away stands a large dog-like creature. It growls angrily, eyes wild, and a thin trail of foam drips from its mouth.

Lira whispers to Eva, “I didn’t have anything to do with that one.”

Benedic takes a step back, cautiously. “Everyone, get ready just in case it – ”

Before Benedic can finish speaking the animal leaps at him…

And vanishes.

Faster than anyone can react, the dog reappears right beside Benedic, bites him viscously on the arm, and then rapidly backs away.

Thatch comes charging forward, raises his sword in a mighty swing, and brings it crashing down… straight through the animal… and onto the frozen ground. Thatch’s eyes go wide as he sees the dog is flickering, there one instant, and gone the next. He realizes it must have blinked out of existence just as he was about to hit it with his sword.

Benedic swears quietly, and shouts to warn the others, “Blink dog!”

“What?” Eva shouts back as she draws an arrow.

Benedic fires off an arrow that passes harmlessly through the animal’s flickering body by way of demonstration. “It blinks.”

Well, forget this Lira thinks grimly, and she casts magic missile. Two bolts fly from her finger tips straight towards the animal. Just as they are about to impact, the dog flickers out of phase… and with a shimmer, the bolts vanish as well. A fraction of a second later, the dog is back, limping.

Facinating thinks Annika, the force effect of the missile must be able to follow it through into the ethereal plane. She begins to cast. I could write a paper on that when I get back to the Academy.

Reyu just has time to fire at the dog before it vanishes again. This time it reappears next to Lira and tears a chunk out of her thigh.

Fortunately, the party’s luck is turning. Kiara and Benedic both hit the creature with their next arrow volleys. Lira and Annika fire more magic missiles and Anvil charges forward, landing a solid blow with his sword.

Although the animal is clearly in pain, its anger is even stronger than its injuries. The dog vanishes again, this time reappearing right behind Anvil, who was the last one to cause him pain.

The dog rises as if to attack… and then falls to the ground.

Not taking any chances, Thatch plunges his sword down towards the fallen carcass, gritting his teeth against the reverberations of steel hitting stone. He holds his sword in place, and watches with grim satisfaction as the creature eventually stops blinking and solidifies around the blade.

Anvil wipes his own blade, and as he sheathes his sword, notices Lira bleeding freely from a bite on her leg.

“Here.” He beckons, and Lira limps over. Anvil begins casting a cure spell and is just about to seal the wound when a shout comes from Benedic:

“Stop!”

Everyone turns to stare at the ranger, who has tied off his arm above the bite and appears to be in the middle of dousing the wound with water from his canteen.

“You want to have to slice her back open?”

“What do you speak of?” Anvil demands. “This is the healing power of Kettenek.”

Benedic rolls his eyes in exasperation. “Will it cure disease? That is a rabid animal, and the bite could be infected. You’ve got to clean the wound out before you cure it.”

Anvil, although dubious, agrees to hold off as Reyu tends to Lira’s leg.

Thatch looks on, grotesquely fascinated. “How do you know when you’ve got it clean enough?”

“We will know,” Reyu replies mildly, “when they do not develop the disease.”

“Oh.”

Lira grits her teeth as the bite is looked to. “I hate blinking, misty, ethereal things.”

Meanwhile, Kiara, being very careful (she assures Annika numerous times), pokes the dead blink dog with a large stick, getting a good look at it so she’ll be able to recognize it if she sees one again.

Indeed, she finds, it looks almost exactly like the three animals cresting the hill coming towards them.

“Guys…” she begins.

Everyone stares. The three animals come to a stop some forty feet away. The one in front lets out a low, mournful howl. The other two join it, and for half a minute their cries echo amid the mountains. Then, they lower their heads and vanish.

 

[spyscribe]

Day 6

It’s times like this, when he’s in the middle of the mountains, in the middle of the night, standing guard with a fourteen-year-old, that Thatch really misses Dennis.

He swats at a fly buzzing around his ear. Funny, to have flies out at night. Even funnier, he realizes, when it sounds like there’s a cloud of them buzzing around inside your head.

“Hey Kiara, do you hear anything?”

“Like what?”

“Nevermind.”

Kiara scans their camp. Rock, rock, Anvil, Reyu, Benedic, rock with a bump-- Wait a second…

“Hey Thatch, there’s a bump on that rock.”

Thatch looks. He wouldn’t have though anything of it, but now that she mentions it, he’s pretty sure that bump didn’t used to be there.

“Who goes there?” he calls out, experimentally.

There’s a skittering sound and the bump vanishes. Dimly in the shadows, it almost seems like a humanoid creature is running off.

By the time they get to the rock, there’s nothing there but a strange smell, something like sulphur or hot metal. Reyu, once awake, notices a scrape on the rock, but she can’t track the creature, whatever it was.

“Well,” says Kiara, “at least it’s gone now.”

 

[spyscribe]

Day 7

It’s growing dark. Benedic has gone ahead to scout, as is his custom, while the rest of the group makes camp.

As Eva prepares to unroll her bedding for yet another night onto yet another hard and rocky bit of ground, she hears a faint grinding noise. She looks over at Lira. “Did you hear that?”

Lira nods.

“Shhh! Everybody listen.”

Now, the rest of the party can hear it too. Following the noise to its source they find a perfectly round hole, sunk into the ground near a small group of boulders.

Anvil finds the hole glows slightly under detect magic, and when Benedic is brought to investigate, he theorizes it might be a xorn.

“What’s that?” everyone wants to know.

“Err…” Benedic finds himself on the spot. “It’s a burrowing creature, eats rocks.”

“Will it eat us?”

“Are you a rock?”

After some discussion, the group decides not to move camp, but triples up on the watches.

At sunrise, the hole is gone.

 

[spyscribe]

Day 9

As their ninth day in the Ketkath progresses, some of the party notice Benedic periodically dropping back to consult with Reyu, at the back of their column with Paws.

By mid-afternoon, it’s obvious even to Eva that a thick bank of clouds is blowing in fast and it’s darker than it should be at that hour. Benedic signals for a halt.

“We’ve got a blizzard blowing in. Hopefully it will be quick, but we should dig in somewhere we can ride it out.”

The group makes a hasty camp, sheltered by a cliff-wall at their back, finishing their preparations just as the snows hit. It’s not nearly as strong as the unnatural blizzards created by Sheesak, but still, the snow is coming down thick and fast.

After two hours, almost everyone is thoroughly chilled.

“Do you want me to cast a rope trick?” Annika asks.

Benedic and Reyu shake their heads. “Nah, this should be blowing through in a couple of hours.”

Eight hours after it started, the storm finally lets up. The party emerges from their snow cave, blue and shivering.

Eva is heard to mutter under her breath, “If that’s a quick storm I’d hate to be caught in a long one.”


Day 10

The next day dawns bright and clear. Benedic wakes up to full sinuses and a pounding headache.

As he sets about his morning duties breaking camp, he notices Kiara flitting around him Amazing, he thinks, how she can flit even when she’s in human form. He finally realizes she appears to be staring intently at the corners of his mouth.

“Noh,” he tells her thickly, “I don’ thing i’th rabies.”

 

[spyscribe]

vectors of infection

Day 11

Lira is awakened in a manner that has become her routine since she started sitting the last watch before dawn. By tiny teeth tugging at her ear and Euro in her head thinking, Come on, Boss. Time to get up. You’re on watch, Boss. Come on!

“Okay, okay,” she whispers back, sleepily. “I’m coming. I’m com—ah-chooo!”

Euro hastily backs off, blinking rapidly.

“Crap.”

*****

That afternoon, Reyu, at the back of the column, is the first to notice something following behind them as they march. For maybe half an hour she hears a faint sound of footsteps and sometimes catches a glimpse of something green out of the corner of her eye.

She sends a discrete signal up the line for the party to halt and whirls around.

Behind them, a tiny green head pokes up over a rock, sees her looking, and vanishes. Then, a few feet away, another head appears and ducks back down. In a minute, Reyu counts four or five, but it’s hard to know if any of the heads are the same ones.

“Hello,” Reyu calls out in Sylvan. “We are not here to harm you.”

There is a bustle of activity, with heads popping up and down very rapidly, accompanied by a squeaking, twittering noise, which then ceases as abruptly as it began.

The party continues on their way, and after a few minutes realizes they are still being followed.

Kiara turns to swallow form to spy on their pursuers and gets a glimpse of a small green scaled creature clutching a short spear.

She tries talking to them in Sylvan again, which causes another burst of activity and chatter, but no comprehensible response.* It seems plain that while the creatures recognize they are being spoken to, they are unable or unwilling to respond in kind.

*(Several members of the party suspect the creatures were saying, “Holy crap, a talking bird!”)

Whatever they are, they follow the party for the rest of the day and into the dusk.

The party posts extra watches overnight, and by morning, their followers are gone.


Day 13

Benedic and Lira both wake up feeling better than they have in days.

Annika however, is now distinctly under the weather. Anvil watches as Kiara flutters around her, making sure she drinks plenty of tea when they make stops, and that she doesn’t exert herself too much.

It is a pity, he thinks, to see those not gifted with the blessings of Kettenek’s strength to overcome such adversities.

He glances around to see that no one is watching, and surreptitiously wipes his nose on his sleeve.

 

[Angcuru]

Enjoying this immensely, as always.

BTW, what happened to Day 5?