Wandering Wolves: Whatever Happened to Halas Martain?

Eyre 26 - Dravago 6, YK 1000

Following the scant leads they have, the Wolves, with Resolute guiding them, used House Orien teleportation to arrive in Stormreach, on the trail of Halas Martain.

When they arrived in the Citadel of the Twelve, they were immediately met by Captain Birne, a nearly seven foot tall former savage with an imposing two-handed sword. He gruffly informed them that Greigur, the head of House Deneith and the Sentinel Marshals in Xen'drik, was waiting for them. He guided them through the Respite district and into Forgelight, over to the House Deneith enclave, where they met with Greigur.

One of Greigur's informants had told one of his men that they spotted Halas Martain being led into the jungle by a couple of Stone Giants. He believed they were affiliated with the Dominion of Purity, a faction that seeks to recover the lost culture of the giants, and had a rough idea where they operated, just south of Stormreach. He offered a guess that, "barring the Curse," it should take a day, maybe two to reach them.

They headed to the Southwatch part of the city to look into the Wayfinder Foundation, since Halas was a member, and they found Velenis, a shifter who is the most famous operative of the Foundation in Stormreach at the moment. He offered up apologies, but not much information, as no one at Wayfinder had heard from Halas Martain in quite some time. The Wolves, using money from Viorr's expense account, hired Velenis to help them scout the area and find Halas, and then headed to the Wayward Lobster to have dinner.

While Lysander won over the crowd with a lusty song, Pel bought a round for the house and then went out back to meet his informant, a man named Rajid, using his chameleon ring to slip out the back unobtrusively.

He found Rajid dead, still being chewed on by a few dire rats. His face and hands have been chewed off, and there's a note on him that reads "Stop Looking for Xain." Pel took the note and pushed the body into the water, then gathered up the Wolves to go back to the Ship's Cat, where they were staying. Pel went to the nearest Sivis message station to send a message to his operative Basilisk that "Rajid is dead, watch your back."

The next morning, with Velenis leading them, they headed out into the jungles of Xen'drik. After about two days of travel, the found a bridge across a raging river, and on the other side, a patrol of cyclops, stone giants and a fire giant guarding the entry into the Dominion of Purity's territory.

Resolute called out his Name Dread and charged across the bridge, slamming one of his bastard swords into the Fire Giant Forgecaller's leg and pinning him in the spot, as Pel, Luggoth and William charged over the bridge as well. Lysander jumped up onto the ropes of the bridge and took aim with his bow, firing and hitting the Cyclops as it moved onto the bridge to swing its club at Luggoth. The Stone Giant Runecarver spoke some words and fired off a rune of stony sleep which targeted Pel and William, as the other Stone Giants moved in to attack Resolute and Luggoth.

Luggoth swung a mighty blow at the Fire Giant Forgecaller, breaking his nose in a massive gout of blood and causing the mighty giant to stagger back a few steps in pain. As William tried to leap the rope, using his boots of free movement to escape the rune's effects, he caught his foot and landed in front of the Rune Carver, but rolled to his feet and called out both the Runecarver and the Cyclops to come and get it. Pel turned invisible and moved onto the bridge, but the rune affected him, and he was frozen in place as the Cyclops unknowingly moved right past him, angling for Lysander. Lysander responded with disturbing visions that caused the Cyclops to stumble off the side of the bridge, although it managed to grab hold of it rather than fall into the river below, causing the bridge to tilt precariously to one side from his weight. The Runecarver struck at William with his war pick as the Fire Giant risked attacks from both Luggoth and Resolute to call down a flame burst on both of them. The Stone Giants continued their assault on Luggoth and Resolute, bloodying and battering both of them badly.

Pel's invisibility wore off, revealing him as a statue on the bridge, but the Cyclops paid him no attention, instead climbing back up to menace Lysander, who responded with his patented clockwork bomb and sovereign glue trick. When he tried to roll between the Cyclops's legs, it swatted him with his club, and he dropped the bomb, leaving it stuck to the bridge and ticking.

Resolute, Luggoth and William began attacking the Stone Giants in earnest, and when the Runecarver tried to move away, he drew a nasty blow from William, which didn't prevent him from firing off another rune of stony sleep. The Forgecaller blasted Resolute with another fire pillar, which he mostly shrugged off, as the Stone Giants turned their attention to smashing William.

Resolute finished off the Forgecaller as Luggoth and William continued to battle the Stone Giants, and Lysander deftly avoided the Cyclops's attempt to grab him and used his new songbow to cast compulsion on the Cyclops. The arcane effect caused a stream of blood to begin running from the creature's nose. The Runecarver blasted Resolute with a thundering echo, and the other stone giant then swung his club into the warforged's head, knocking him out.

Pel, no longer under the influence of the rune, called on the Traveler to heal Luggoth, and then stood and fired a burst of daunting light at the Stone Giant bashing William, which went wide. Steam began pouring from Resolute's chest, as his systems began to fail, and Luggoth charged over to use his oakhammer rage on the Stone Giant that had dropped Resolute, knocking it prone with a sickening crack that indicated several broken bones. Lysander tried to force the Cyclops to step onto the clockwork bomb, but it resisted him, although that didn't stop Lysander from moving off the bridge, using Majestic Word to heal Resolute and launching vicious mockery at the Cyclops.

As the Runecarver attacked William with his war pick again and one Stone Giant missed following up with a club strike, the other one landed another solid blow on the healed but still downed Resolute. The warforged, badly battered but still awake, stood up and regained his bearings as Luggoth, William and Pel focused on the Stone Giant to keep it from attacking Resolute again.

With a loud click, the timer for the Clockwork Bomb sprung early and exploded, splitting the bridge in the middle and sending the Cyclops plummeting to the water below. The Runecarver again struck William with his war pick, staggering the Deneith momentarily, long enough for the other Stone Giant to swing a solid blow as well.

After Pel healed William, he attacked the Stone Giant with a sly flourish, and William finished it off with a brash strike, opening up his defenses so that the other Stone Giant could bash him hard, cracking several ribs. Resolute stabbed both of his bastard swords into that Stone Giant, and then followed up with another attack, and then another, finally causing the Giant to topple over dead.

The Runecarver, now the only foe left, tried to use his thundering rune, but fell afoul of Pel's flame strike and William's lasting threat, and when he tried to run, William and Resolute finished him.

With the fight over, Velenis climbed across the half-destroyed bridge, and the Wolves took a few minutes to rest, recover and tend to their wounds.

Velenis helped them follow the tracks of the giants down to the rest of the tribe. There they saw that the tribe was quite large, made up of two dozen more stone giants, fire giants and cyclops. Their leaders were a Fire Titan and a Storm Titan, and they had Halas Martain hanging from a large tree about sixty feet in the air. The two Titans were talking to him, asking him about some kind of idol he had stolen from them, and he was telling them that he couldn't remember where he left their treasure, due to some arcane effect on his memory.

After some debate, Lysander stood up and used a ritual to enhance his voice and gave an impressive, peaceful speech about how they wanted Halas Martain, but didn't seek any conflict with the giants. The Titans invited him to come down, and with William by his side, the two walked into the midst of the Dominion of Purity tribe.

The Titans explained that they sought an ancient giant idol, a representation of one of the giant heroes of old which is said to offer a sort of divine right to the leader who has it. Halas had stolen it from them some time ago. If they could get him to give them the idol, and if they would promise that he would be punished for his thievery, they would turn him over to the Sentinel Marshals.

When the Titan lifted Lysander up to Halas, a light seemed to go on in his eyes, and he claimed to remember where the idol was. He claimed that he had hidden it in some Ziggurat ruins while being chased by Drow, and that it was too small for the giants to get into, so the Wolves would have to recover it. The Twelve had rescued him from the drow, but he didn't really remember much of what had happened after that, except that he knew he had run into the Wolves while working for the Twelve. He tried to talk his way into going with them, but neither Lysander nor the Titans wanted that, and instead they got Halas to draw them a map.

After a day of traveling south, they encountered Brand, who had teleported to Stormreach and followed their trail with a message from the Sentinel Marshals in Passage. The servant of an Aundarian winemaker named Bethesne had discovered disturbing writings in his journals and seen him meeting with shadowy figures, and had sent a message to a friend before he mysteriously died. That friend, finding no luck with Aundarian law, contacted the Sentinel Marshals. He also turned up dead, which caused the Marshals to investigate Bethesne, only to find him gone. What they had heard leads them to believe he is tied in with the Lords of Dust, and that he had fled to Xen'drik, so they sent his dossier with Brand to bring to Resolute.

Resolute and Luggoth headed back to Stormreach to get onto Bethesne's trail, and Brand joined the Wolves, who brought him up to speed on what they were doing. As ranking Sentinel Marshal, Resolute put William in charge of the Halas Martain operation, and they all agreed to meet in Stormreach when they had recovered their respective fugitives.

One more day of southward journey later, they came upon the Ziggurat ruins, walking in through a magically protected path that always remained clear-cut even in the heavy jungle. It appeared mostly uninhabited, but the Wolves knew that drow lurked within, and they sent Pel and Brand to scout ahead.

They spotted some Hellstinger scorpions, and while they were both quite stealthy, they didn't account for the scorpions' tremorsense, and it gave off a loud shriek and clacking of its claws, alerting its drow masters to intruders.

The drow emerged from various buildings, throwing poisoned boomerangs at William, trying unsuccessfully to sneak up on Brand and launching darkfire at Pel, a priest of a god other than Vulkoor. William moved in to engage the Hellstinger Scorpion, which grabbed him with one of its claws, but he broke free and swung with a brash strike before dropping into his Rain of Steel stance.

One of the drow, a trained Vulkoor assassin, summoned a cloud of darkness and vanished within it. As the other drow stabbed and blasted unsuccessfully at Pel and William, the Wolves focused their attacks on the scorpion. After a volley of attacks by the combined Wolves, William brought the thing down with an appalling crunch.

The drow stingblade began moving around Pel and William with a whirling dervish attack, landing two blows before William spotted the flaw in his pattern and landed a brutal blow on the Stingblade with his axe, knocking him off-balance and forcing him to miss his last two steps and swings at Lysander and Brand. The drow assassin stabbed Lysander twice from within the cloud of darkness, which vanished and left him exposed to retaliation in the form of Pel's flame strike, which blasted the assassin and the stingblade, and to Brand, who marked the assassin with his aegis of assault. The priest, meanwhile, blasted William with a magical stinging blast akin to a scorpion's venom.

William moved into a tactically solid position and called all of his foes to him, but most of them were able to dodge his attacks, except for the assassin, who received a glancing blow from Vendetta. With the drow arrayed around him, however, William was able to begin attacking with his Rain of Steel. The assassin, heedless of the damage from William, stabbed Brand twice, and dodged an attack from Pel.

The Scorpion priest, dragged off the building by William's attack, was displeased to see Brand teleport up next to him and swing his blade, and William, trying to take advantage, pulled the Xen'drik boomerang out of his own chest and threw it at the priest, but his unfamiliarity with his weapon led to him missing.

The drow assassin continued his assault on Pel and Lysander with rapier and crossbow, and Pel followed up with a lingering revelation and shapechanger's feint, as Lysander took a moment to restore himself with a majestic word and his second wind. Brand teleported back away from the priest and marked the assassin for death, and William followed up with his bodyguard's link. Despite the solid hits he was taking, the assassin seemed to be avoiding any major damage, and was still very much in the fight.

The assassin summoned darkness again and fled the combat to find a better position, and the priest called upon the drow stingblade to sacrifice his life, causing him to fall over dead, with an explosion of spectral scorpions rising from his corpse and stinging all around him. The painful stings knocked Pel unconscious briefly, before Lysander could rouse him with a majestic word. Lysander followed this up by aiming his bow very deliberately and landing an arrow in the drow priest's shoulder, causing him to curse with pain and cry out to his god Vulkoor for aid.

The assassin, having found his better position, stabbed his rapier into Brand and bloodied him, but William followed up with his own victorious surge, bloodying the assassin and drawing some vigor of his own. Meanwhile, the scorpion priest began climbing back up to the top of the ziggurat as Pel and Lysander fired and missed him.

The assassin struck William once more, and then he sacrificed his life as the priest summoned the spectral scorpions from his spirit, stinging all of the Wolves, who started climbing up to the ziggurat to attack the priest.

The priest endured and avoided attacks for a few seconds, firing back with pain sting, until William swung a brash strike and dazed the priest with Vendetta, which turned the tide, allowing Pel to stab him with his rapier, and Brand finished the priest off with his swords.

After claiming the treasure, including the giant's idol, from within the ziggurat, the Wolves returned to the giants. They all went in to exchange the idol for Halas, and William put his prisoner in manacles. As they left the giant camp, Lysander glanced back, thinking off launching a series of insults at the beings who had enslaved his ancestors, but Pel convinced him that was probably not the wisest course of action.

Rain began to fall as the Wolves walked through the night, heading back toward Stormreach. Lysander and Brand both spotted the tracks of Yuan-Ti in their path, and after determining that they couldn't easily avoid the Yuan-ti by going around, William secured Halas to a tree with the manacles so they wouldn't have to worry about him.

Pel and Brand managed to sneak up on one of the tents and kill two humans, whom they recognized as snaketongue zealots, human cultists who worshiped the same god as the Yuan-Ti. They then moved further up and spotted several Yuan-Ti, including an Abomination, Sharp-Eyes and their Shadow Snake pet.

Pel fired his hand crossbow into the Shadow Snake as Brand tried to rush it and Lysander fired at it as well, but the snake was too quick for these follow-up attacks, and it responded by rushing forward and biting Pel and Lysander. William charged the Abomination, blocking off an easy path for the other Yuan-Ti, who fired their bows unsuccessfully at William. An Incanter made herself known, stepping out of one of the tents at the rear of the camp and missing an attack on William, who dodged in behind the Abomination for cover.

As the poison from the shadow snake coursed through Pel and Lysander's veins, they attacked the snake with their blades, and Brand moved in to assist as Whitehearth rushed back to bite at the archers. The Abomination slashed into William with his bastard sword as the fighter withdrew and moved to use his appalling crunch on the Shadow Snake, which bit him in retaliation. The physical damage was minor, but the poison allowed the Incanter to briefly take control of William's body. Meanwhile, the Sharp-Eyes, confronted by Whitehearth, put away their bows and drew scimitars to engage the Wolf.

Pel slashed the snake with lingering revelation, very nearly killing it, and Brand finished it off with a twin strike before teleporting over to attack the Incanter. The Abomination, defending his mistress, came over and grabbed Brand, rendering him vulnerable to a follow-up from William, who, under the thrall of the incanter, charged Brand with Vendetta.

William managed to shake off the poison and the incanter's domination to hit her with a lasting threat attack. As he did, Pel and Lysander both opened up with their ranged weapons on the Incanter, and Brand teleported out of the Abomination's grasp. One of the Sharp-Eyes remained engaged with Whitehearth, as the other one moved to help the Incanter and Abomination.

Lysander and Brand finished off the Incanter, and the Abominations and Sharp-Eyes fled into the jungle. The Wolves, seeing no percentage in chasing them down, let them run.

When the went back to the tree, they found that Halas had been doing his best to climb it, hoping to get the manacles off somehow. He sheepishly offered some nonsense excuses before climbing back down. Feeling that this camp was secure enough, the Wolves settled in to rest for the night before heading back to Stormreach the next morning.