Divine Wrath - Chapter 3
Chapter 3 – Said the spider to the fly
OOC Notes:
Exp this session is 2713.
Good session. We had objectives, came up with a plan, and executed it. Dylan mentioned this and I agree – it’s nice to feel like we’re calling the shots for a change. I’m sure it won’t last tho.
This Week’s Adventure:
We had a series of discussions about what to do next. We also took several breaks so that Aethramyr and Dravot could tend to the people here, as well as just reflect on our own.
The whole time, something had been nagging at me, related to the matter at hand, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Hopefully it would come later.
After one break Valanthe reporting having received something of a message from Tritherion, who said something about an elven saying about nothing seems as bad after a warm bath (which I immediately repeated and then again in elven for the full effect, it being something of word to live by for me). This raised questions about the marionettes and perhaps water being able to release the children. And this brought us back to more discussions about what next.
Then it finally hit me what had been bothering me. Iuz had presumably wanted the isometril, and had attacked the Coot’s lands in the past to get it. Chavram certainly wanted it, and had attacked in force recently. In each case the Coot’s forces prevented them from getting control of the mine.
If we destroy the Egg of Coot, what will stop Chavram or Iuz from getting to the isometril?
This was a very disturbing thought – the notion of Chavram with access to all that material was troubling to say the least. I shared this thought with Dravot who looked rather horrified when I mentioned it, but of course he had no more idea than I did. For the time being we set this aside and went back to discussing more immediate concerns.
We were all agreed that our deepest concern was the marionettes – or more particularly the children inside. Until we understood more about them and how to disable them and release the children safely, we would not be able to attack in force. So it seemed the first thing we needed to do was capture some marionettes intact and see what could be done. We made provisions for a safe cave to take them so that Scorch could examine them, and we were discussing ways of getting a hot bath set up, in the event that Tritherion was to be taken literally. The Owl told us of hot springs some miles away, near an active volcano. This would simplify the hot water problem.
The volcano was guarded by a druid named Agner – one of Haldrin’s original group. The pieces slowly came together that we are apparently not the first band of adventurers that the gods dispatched to attack the Egg of Coot. Haldrin’s band was shattered, with several of their group killed. The druid now guards the area near the volcano but Haldrin could not say if he would be helpful or not. (This troubled me and I feared there was bad blood between them.)
It was a risk we decided to take. We would use the one disruption device available to us to ambush a small patrol of marionettes. We would tie them up and use some Tenser’s disks to move them quickly out of the area, and examine them in safety. (A web spell would seem to be even better, however apparently the marionettes, like the spiders they resemble, can navigate webs freely.)
Before that though, Dravot and Aethramyr wanted to speak to Venn. He was kept in a locked room and while being quite insane now, he had clearly been a powerful wizard in the past. Dravot and Scorch believe he is suffering from some kind of curse, and will attempt to remove it the next day. There being little else they can do for him, they leave him be.
That night, Aethramyr looked in on Venn’s dreams. There were bizarre blackened people encased in skeletons of copper and brass. The people sounded vaguely like bodaks to Dravot, but the skeletons were a mystery. I had no idea what a bodak was, but Dravot said their gaze can kill.
I had an unusual night myself. I was dreaming and remembering Tongs and that wondrous flight across the Flanness. I remembered her saying “I pity your not having wings, children. You can cast your spells to fly, but it's not a part of you. There's no joy in it, sure enough.” And I thought to myself at the time “I can’t even do that much, but it would be grand enough to take to the sky even with that.” Then I was home again, but flying through trees and woods under my own power. Tongs was wrong – there was joy in it, wings or no.
This was not terribly unusual in itself – I had dreamt of flying before. What was unusual was when I woke up – I realized I understood now. I knew how the spell worked. I knew how to fly.
Dravot and Scorch tried each to remove the curse on Venn’s mind, but it was too powerful for them. They resolved to combine their efforts the next day and try again.
We set out in the direction of the hot springs in the morning. Haldrin knew of a suitable ambush spot to capture a patrol. Apparently they do not patrol on a regular schedule so we could be waiting for some time. Luck was with us however and an hour after we arrived, a patrol of five of the metal beasts came down the canyon.
We sat in hiding – the stealthy of us below in the canyon while the others waited fifty feet above. When the marionettes were close enough, Valanthe activated the device, and four of the marionettes began twitching and blinking oddly.
One of them still had its wits about it and began firing magic missiles from a small box on its back. But we surrounded and quickly subdued it, and we had all the marionettes tied up and chained well before the others recovered their senses. Their jointed legs moved in unusual ways but it was still easy enough to tie them up so they could do nothing. One other marionette was unusual – this one had an isometril crystal on a small rod sticking out of its back. The crystal pulsed at regular intervals. We wondered if it was some kind of communication device but for now, things were under control and we left the area and went to the volcano.
The volcano was hard to miss, and there were small melted areas and warm water near steam vents and so on. As we picked our way through the soft spots in the ground, we saw a large-ish pool ahead. This was only interesting because two massive paws just came out of it.
The paws were followed by a large head, and an even larger body. Soaking wet, this massive white bear looked over at us. It then started trotting our way. Half way over it seemed to think of something, and stopped and shook itself off, water flying everywhere. Personally I was glad it remembered to do this before it got to us. Must have been smarter than the average bear.
Then it looked over at us, and asked who we were.
I have noticed that I’m becoming more inured to the strange and fantastic of late – continued adventuring tends to do that. But even so, I still simply stood agape at a talking bear. I managed to collect myself after a moment and realized it must be the druid who had simply changed shape.
We started a conversation and told him why we had come. He seemed a bit puzzled at the whole thing. But it wasn’t until I called him Agner that things made more sense. He wasn’t Agner. He was a bear. A smart bear. A talking bear. But still a bear.
He referred to Agner as the master, so it seemed this was some kind of companion animal. Aethramyr spoke to him a bit and convinced him to take us to see Agner (I believe some exchange of chocolate was involved, which improved relations with the bear markedly.)
Agner was in a cave in the volcano base, in which were many hot springs. He was wary of us but seemed amenable to our basic purpose. Scorch and Valanthe began examining the marionettes in earnest while Aethramyr and I put one into one of the springs.
It didn’t work. Didn’t even come close. Well, if a deity send a clear and simple message on this subject, it would have been a first. So we removed the contraption and let Scorch and Valanthe do their work.
The children were held in by a thin webbing of mithril. There was a locking mechanism that could be opened with a knock spell. Valanthe also managed to jury rig a key of sorts that would release the child. Dravot also tried a greater command to die. This would cause them to eject the child (thinking it was dead) and in some cases would paralyze the marionette for a time.
The difficulty came in dealing with the one with the crystal. Valanthe attempted to remove the crystal but it triggered some kind of signal. Scorch quickly cast a misdirection on it, and it likely saved us a great deal of trouble. Soon after, something large hit the ground in the area where we had set the ambush. We did not investigate further though.
Agner had some interesting things to say regarding who he called the Green Woman. He was the reason he came here – to rescue her. She was tied to the land and the land to her. If she suffers, so does the land, and great power can be drawn from the land through her. It seemed clear that this was Ravenna, adding yet another layer to this mystery. Agner said that he wished to rescue her and set her free. Once that was done, he would seal the wound in the land (the strip mine). He said the volcano would help him in this.
There was the answer on how to protect the isometril. If we defeat the Egg and his minions, Agner would seal off the mine. I was greatly relieved to hear this, as it solved a rather large problem.
Apparently the spring also had some healing properties – when the children were released from the marionettes, they were in none-too-good shape. The spring was able to restore them to health and make them fit to travel back to the Roost.
Agner had also been to the south encampment where the slaves are kept. There are eight or nine hundred humans, halflings and elves being held there. They are kept in deep trenches – not horribly secure but they do not need to be. The sharp elves make regular patrols. There are sorcerers among their number. Three shifts are transported to the mines each day via an underground tunnel system. Their group was going through this tunnel when one of the battle dolls found them. The disruption devices from the Owl worked on one of the golems but the large black spider-like ones ignored it completely. The mage was turned into a statue, while the cleric was frozen solid.
They also saw a cuckoo (but probably not THE cuckoo). He was ten or fifteen feet tall – they saw him pull a man inside. He was like a series of cylinders with a cylinder surrounded by four pods that hovered off the ground. It had different faces and played music. The music had panicked the cleric.
They also fought the sharp elves. At range they are not too terrible but up close, there is some type of confusion effect. They are likely from one of the outer planes.
We concluded our study and left Agner and the volcano and made haste back to the roost. Scorch and Valanthe took the marionette parts back to the other separate cave to continue their work. On the way back, Rackhir from his griffon could see a gigantic spider-like metal beast at the ambush site. It seems that this was what fell from the sky, and it seemed very nasty indeed. We were fortunate that Scorch was as quick as he was, or we would have had more than we bargained for.
The Owl seemed pleased at our success, and took care of the children. The information we gained would of course prove invaluable to us. The net result seemed to be that we could release the children in several ways, and that we could do so reasonably quickly. Valanthe made several master keys so that we had plenty on hand.
One disturbing element Scorch uncovered was in the heads of the little beasts. Apparently there was a second source of energy for these things besides the children – it was a few strands of black hair. The implications were so obvious they didn’t need to be explained.
We now had the question of what to do next. We still needed to be sure we could neutralize large numbers of marionettes, and for that we needed isometril. Scorch said he could be more efficient with the small supply the Owl had but that would still not be enough for the scale we needed. So our next step would be to raid the mines for a supply of isometril and to further assess the defenses of the Egg.
Before we left the next morning, Dravot and Scorch again tried to cure Venn. This time, together, they were successful. Venn regained much of his sanity, though he would never be his former self.
We set out over the ice. We could go through the tunnels but we believed it would be less obvious to go over land. We found the mine easily enough with Haldrin leading. It was a series of pits in the earth, each one deeper yet smaller across than the last. There were frequent patrols – a group of sharp elves, each with several fighters, one larger fighter, and what we thought was a sorcerer. Each group was trailed by some kind of crystal golem with glowing blue eyes. We managed to slip between two patrols and get close to a building that housed the refinery.
Outside there were two huge metal eggs. We weren’t sure what their purpose was, but they could have been some kind of guardian. There were also alarm spells laid down but Aethramyr dispelled one and we slipped past.
We reached the refinery door and began slipping inside. Valanthe was inside looking around and I had just walked through when Thorkeld turned suddenly and ran right into Aethramyr’s shield, making enough noise to wake up Iuz. Iuz was not the problem however – the two eggs were. They heard the noise and started unfolding arms and legs. They were mechanical guardians but different from the kind we saw on the battle field.
Well, this would be the time we started gauging the defenses. While Valanthe gathered some ore, we worked quickly to take out the golems. These were not quite as stubborn as the broken one we saw on the battlefield though, and we were able to disable them fairly quickly. Fortunately Dravot was kind enough to enchant up some arrows for me, and they worked perfectly well against the golems. They seemed undamaged by the fire on the arrows, but it did do something. I’m just not sure what.
Valanthe told us that there were three sharp elves inside. Once the golems were gone we went in to deal with them. I knew they were waiting for a target but took the risk and stepped out from behind cover to see how much of a threat they were. They all fired at me, but between my shield spell and my other protections, none of the arrows found me. I was about to fire back, but Dravot moved where he could see them, and brought a massive pillar of fire down on them. There was nothing left but ash, and he muttered something about Pelor’s wrath.
Scorch had thrown a mass haste, so this was our chance. We split up to gather both the unrefined ore, and the refined ore that was in another container nearby. We spent a few moments grabbing all we could then got out – the patrols were all coming our way, having heard all the noise, so we had to leave quickly.
Fortunately they were careful and hence in no hurry to engage us without sufficient numbers. As they closed in Scorch threw a fireball behind us, but one of their sorcerers counterspelled it. After that they were even more cautious and had the crystal golems advancing in front. But we were able to outdistance them while the haste lasted and they were not anxious to pursue this unknown force into an ambush. We carefully returned to the Roost with our new cache of ore, and Scorch set to work examining it.
This ore may well be the key to our next move.
