Olarune 8 - Olarune 27, YK 1000
With the foulspawn and Emerald Claw destroyed, the Wolves decided to look around Grentonn a bit, determining that the people there had known about the Emerald Claw, but had been unable to speak out, since all of the women and children had been held hostage in the apartments. They had decided to descend into the mine when a lone figure, badly mutilated, stumbled up to them. William recognized him by rank, and told them that he was most likely Maresh's second in command. He was missing an eye, an arm and a large amount of skin from his back, and seemed mostly crazed. But he muttered at them with such intensity that they didn't interrupt.
"We came. Grentonn. We came. Jhorash'tar. No match, no trouble, savages against our blades, our discipline, but then we came. Grentonn. Things! Foul things! Even then, the foul things fell. They fell, they fell and did not get up, and we chased. We chased, they fell, we chased, and down, down into the mine."
"Maresh went. Yes, with half our number, he went. Pursuit, he said. Cut the head off, he said. I stayed, my men and I, we stayed to protect. Failed. More foul things. More death. Failure. But not death. Not for us. They took us. Proud blademarks, terrified dwarf miners, they took us. Found Maresh. Found our comrades. All prisoners. All flesh. All brains. All blood."
"Dark. Dark and cold. Slimy. Wet. Screaming. Bones cracking. Flesh tearing. Screaming. One of us gone. Down the gullets. Then the dark."
"Oh, but the light. The light. More terrible. It would come. Pale and gray. Twisted and cruel. Spoke in our minds. Promised us pain. Tore our flesh. Ripped our forms. Called it art. Took my eye. Took my arm. Worse for others. Days? Weeks?"
"Maresh, the others. They live. Some of them. Most of them. They live. Torture. Conversion. The Cult. They live. I tried. I tried. Maresh. Made me go. Ordered me. Blademark, he said. Duty, he said. Reinforcements, he said. Grentonn, he said."
"Wandering. Alone. Dark. Creatures everywhere. Eating the mushroom walls. Drinking foul Khyber piss. Lost. Alone. Found the mine. Found it. Found you. Save them. SAVE THEM!"
And with that, Gunther closed his one remaining eye and dies, his duty fulfilled, despite the madness that threatened to overtake him.
Since the elevator had been sabotaged, the Wolves had to walk down the path, which took a few hours. When they got to the mine, they found it abandoned, but a smaller shaft lead to a secondary mine, which had Khyber dragonshards partially excavated from the walls. This mine was a site of slaughter, with a couple of dwarf miners and a dozen Emerald Claw lying dead on the ground. Bloody but abandoned weapons and torn armor revealed that there were other Emerald Claw here, but they were gone. Bloody footprints and trails of dark blood lead back down into Khyber.
The Wolves found that the caverns of Khyber were disorienting and tricky, even for experienced adventurers like themselves, and after a day of travel, they had doubled back on themselves and found themselves very close to where they had begun. They set out again, marking the walls with chalk, and were able to find their way deeper into Khyber.
The sunless Khyber, filled with distant alien sounds and monstrous civilizations lurking just out of sight, began taking a toll on the Wolves. They were unable to rest for more than a few hours at a time for fear of enormous patrols of monsters. They came face to face with a band of Foulspawn on their second day of travel, and moved stealthily to engage them, as they were unable to go around them. William drew their attention as the rest of the Wolves moved quietly into position.
The Foulspawn Hulks and Berserker moved in to attack William, and the Seer blasted the Deneith with a warp orb, dazing him briefly as the Hulks and Berserker moved in to attack.
Luggoth charged in to engage the Hulks with William, who smashed one of them with an appalling crunch. Brand broke from cover to surprise the Seer, as Pel continued to quietly maneuver for position.
Luggoth swung his storm of blades as William attacked with bodyguard's link, and the two of them were wearing one of the Hulks down, as Brand and Lysander continued to focus their attention on the Seer. None of them paid much attention to the Berserker, who was mostly attacking his allies in his blood rage.
The Hulks, however, were battering William fairly badly, but William killed one of the Hulks, allowing Luggoth to concentrate on the other one. Meanwhile, Brand and Lysander finished off the Seer, and Lysander healed William with a majestic word.
The Wolves turned on the Hulk and Luggoth finally dropped him with a howling strike, at which point they all focused on the Berserker, and Luggoth landed another killing blow.
The next day, they snuck past a city full of Kuo-Toa, but in their passing, they discovered that they were worshiping a familiar looking idol that they called Xulo. They had begun to get the hang of Khyber at this point, and though they were all a bit short-tempered and weary, they traveled uneventfully for two more days, sneaking past a band of Quaggoth slavers on the way.
On their sixth day of travel, they were beginning to realize just how far Maresh's lieutenant had come in his battered condition. They also ran into a Duergar trading party, which looked formidable, and potentially hostile, more so when William tried and failed to intimidate them. Fortunately, Lysander offered arcane words of friendship and convinced them to deal as well. The Wolves bought a map of portions of Khyber for 1,000 gp in gems, one which pointed them toward the lair of the Mind Flayer Neshyk.
The next day brought them face to face with a huge river of magma, with giant chunks of rock floating in it. They guessed that they were probably under or very near the Fist of Onatar, the volcano they had seen on their way in to the Mror Holds. The Wolves were somewhat daunted by the notion of trying to cross it, but using some rope and some athletic skill, they were able to get across without any major burns or serious trouble.
After crossing through Foulspawn territory, guided by Lysander's instincts, they found the cave of madness, which had been marked on the map. The haunting memories of his time as a vampire ate at William, while Lysander's mind was cast back to bad memories and guilt he hadn't thought of in decades, memories from times before many of the Wolves had even been alive. Luggoth, meanwhile, saw himself becoming the very monster the Lords of Dust wanted him to become, murdering not just Jaela Daran but hundreds of worshipers of the Silver Flame. Pel and Brand, though beset by madness of their own, managed to shake it off enough to guide the others through the cave. They were all shaken, but they had survived, and now they had only the final gauntlet to pass, the lair of the Purple Worm that lived just outside of Neshyk's home.
As they walked through the tunnel carved out by the Worm, Brand and Whitehearth nearly made enough noise to wake the beast, but the Wolves were able to cross, untouched, and enter the darkened lair of Neshyk.
They found a cavern outside of his lair and outside of the Worm's hunting ground, and after William used his dragonmark to set a protective ward, the Wolves took their first long rest in ten days before venturing in to rescue Maresh, the other Deneith and the dwarf miners.
Neshyk's lair was completely dark, so the Wolves drew immediate attention when they entered with their lights. They quickly found themselves battling the guards at the entrance, a pair of Hook Horrors and a handful of blind Grimlocks.
Pel opened with a massive flame strike, which blasted one of the Hook Horrors and furiously lit up one of the Grimlocks. Luggoth charged in to attack another Grimlock, and Brand followed up to help him, as did William, who smashed the Grimlock with an appalling crunch before moving into his reign of steel stance, swinging precision blows at the Grimlocks as they gathered around him and began smashing him with their greataxes.
The cave was arranged in such a way that William had managed to bottleneck the opponents, and thus he was the target of all of their attacks. One of the Grimlocks forced its way past William, although not without suffering a punishing blow from Vendetta, but he retaliated with a painful axe swing into Brand.
As Luggoth began his storm of blades, furiously slashing at one of the Grimlocks, Brand used his own luring strike to help, and William drew all the remaining Grimlocks to him. They continued their vicious assault, badly wounding William, as the Hook Horrors grabbed Whitehearth and Pel and tried to drag them over to where they were.
Brand finished off one of the Grimlocks as one of the Hook Horrors picked up Whitehearth and flung him into the back of the cavern, making him a target for the Grimlock guards who had been hanging back, even as the other sunk both of its hooks into Luggoth's shoulders.
Luggoth tore himself free of the rending hooks and went into Oakhammer Rage, knocking the Hook Horror down, and Whitehearth rushed in to begin biting and clawing at the downed Hook Horror.
As Pel and Lysander focused their healing efforts on the bloody William, Luggoth finished off one of the Hook Horrors as Brand continued to focus on the other one, and William continued to attack the Grimlocks surrounding him. As William finished off another Grimlock, Luggoth continued to rage away at the remaining Hook Horror, but it was Lysander who killed it, finishing it off with one his trademark bardic insults so devastating it could stop a monster's heart.
With the Hook Horrors down, the Wolves were free to help William with the remaining Grimlocks, and they made relatively quick work of them. Brand finished one of them, and William cut down the last.
With the battle over, and nothing emerging from the stone slab at the end of the chamber, the Wolves took five minutes to rest before William, Pel and Brand combined their efforts to lift it out of the way.
In the next chamber, they found the Deneiths, the dwarves and the Emerald Claw survivors stuck to the wall with sticky, viscous slime. Lysander recognized it as a Mind Flayer birthing chamber, but saw that they hadn't been implanted, and reasoned that they must not have had any mind flayer tadpoles to use.
There was one Deneith missing amongst the prisoners, and that was William's Uncle Maresh. One of the Deneiths pointed to a tunnel off to the side, which he said led to the Mind Flayer's lair, where it had been tormenting Maresh for some time. With an angry William in the lead, the Wolves headed down into the tunnel.
The tunnel opened into a larger chamber, still dark and covered in slime. At the back of the room, they could see a massive pile of the slime, but they didn't see any Mind Flayer. Instead, they saw more Grimlocks, a pair of Chuul, a Grell and a Destrachan. They recognized some of these creatures, but not all of them.
The Wolves made short work of the Grimlocks, but found the rest of the guards to be a bit tougher. In addition, when they engaged the guards, the Mind Flayer made himself known, dropping the chameleon skin provided by his magic ring to begin attacking.
William got tangled up fighting the Chuuls, while the Grell and the Destrachan moved around the battlefield, blasting with psychic lightning and sonic pulses respectively. Lysander used his taunting decoy on the Mind Flayer, which enraged it, and it closed in on him and grabbed him with its tentacles, beginning to drill towards his brain, intent on devouring it.
Meanwhile, William was suffering from an onslaught by the Chuuls, and the Grell was doing its best to keep others away from its master the Mind Flayer. Fortunately, the tide began to turn as the Wolves focused their attention, and Pel healed William, allowing him to come back and kill both Chuuls with assists from Brand and Luggoth.
Lysander managed to break free of the Mind Flayer, but still found himself its target, as it blasted him and Pel with mind blasts, and the Grell fired psychic lightning at the one it had seen as his master's prey. The Mind Flayer moved in and grabbed the now blinded and dazed Lysander once more, but Pel swept in to heal his friend and attack the Mind Flayer, even as the Destrachan launched a sonic pulse that nearly hit the changeling.
The Grell unleashed a psychic storm, bloodying Whitehearth and William and cutting half of the Wolves off from their allies. However, Pel was able to attack the Mind Flayer again, knocking it off balance, although it managed to maintain its grip on Lysander, drilling into his head even though Lysander turned invisible.
The Wolves were beginning to worry for Lysander's survival, and the Destrachan and Grell were still in the fight. Then William charged the Destrachan, which had been staying out of the fray, and launched a vicious chop at it with Vendetta. The Grell began using his venomous mind attacks on Pel and Brand, who were attempting to free Lysander from the Mind Flayer, and Luggoth was frustrated, stunned by the sonic attacks of the Destrachan and the mental assaults of the Grell and the Mind Flayer.
Brand used his dimensional bond to link himself with the Mind Flayer, who responded with a vicious mind blast that hit Pel particularly hard, but he was forced to release Lysander by the attacks focused on him. His tentacles began flailing as he moved again toward the bard, who announced that "this is not how my story ends!" before firing his bow, launching an arrow directly into the Mind Flayer's brain. The aberration dropped dead to the slimy floor of the cave.
William, meanwhile, managed to hit the Destrachan again, hard enough to daze it, and Brand and Whitehearth moved in to finish it off. The Grell tried to flee, but the Wolves gave chase and relentlessly pounded it with attacks. Finally Lysander, once again displaying his arcane-influenced skill with words, stared malevolently at the aberrant creature and ordered it to die.
William found his Uncle Maresh in the pool of slime at the back of the cave. Maresh was in bad shape, missing portions of his arms, skin from all over his body and one of his eyes. Pel did what he could to heal him, but some of his deformities remained, needing healing beyond Pel's skills.
After taking a long rest in the Mind Flayer's abandoned lair, the Wolves, with the Deneith guarding the Emerald Claw as prisoners, traveled back through Khyber and arrived in Grentonn.
They knew something was wrong when they found that the secondary mine had been cleared of bodies, and there were fresh ones there, the bodies of a dozen or so dwarves, mostly women and children murdered by blade. The Khyber dragonshards were also entirely gone.
When they rushed to the surface, the Wolves found that Grentonn had been the site of slaughter. All of the dwarves were dead, and it appeared they had been poisoned while eating some kind of feast. After investigating, they discovered that Caela d'Orien was missing, not amongst the dead.
They also found Yentil d'Sivis, the gnome, murdered in his office, but he had left a note to foil his murderer. In his hand, the Wolves found a note that read: "Bloody Tyrant - Stormwreck Bay - Olarune 27." Lysander had heard of the Bloody Tyrant, and believed it to be a ship in the Bloodsails fleet out of the Lhazaar Principalities.
Maresh was devastated by what he saw as a failure in his duty, but William was adamant that they get his uncle back to Korth as soon as possible. Brand realized that they could go after Caela and get Maresh and his men (and their prisoners) back to Korth, and he opened a linked portal to send them, along with the body of Maresh's lieutenant, back to General Karlach.
Then they got on the trail of Caela d'Orien. The map they had been given by the Duergar gave them a shortcut through Khyber, and they reluctantly descended into the depths again. The journey took a day and a half, and was no less stressful, but they managed to get out onto the shores of Stormwreck Bay in time to see Caela rowing out to meet the Bloody Tyrant.
The Wolves jumped into the water and swam out to catch the boat before it could weigh anchor and depart. They climbed aboard the deck to find that it was crewed mostly by elven pirates, although a human captain and an ogre bosun were amongst the crew as well. The Captain called "to arms" and the battle was on!
William drew the ogre, many of the pirates and Caela to him before slashing at them with Vendetta and adopting his reign of steel stance. Caela responded by swinging her sword at everyone around her, using her swordmage talent to mark Lysander and then teleporting clear of the fight. Lysander responded by sending disturbing visions to her and the pirates, sliding Caela right to the edge of the ship, where she managed to grab hold before going into the water.
Brand quickly activated his dimensional bond to avoid losing Caela, who was one of the targets of Pel's flame strike, which also hit the ogre, the captain and one of the pirates. The Pirate Captain swung at Brand, nearly killing him after the attacks he had suffered from the other pirates, and the dwarven first mate who had come up on deck joined with the ogre in attacking William. Another dwarf, a dark mage, had come up on the deck as well, and began firing his magic at Pel, although for that he suffered a vicious cut to his neck from Vendetta.
Luggoth moved in to attack the Pirate Captain as Caela dropped into the water, extinguishing the fire on her body. Lysander healed Brand, who teleported into the water to chase down Caela, as Pel moved in to help William with the ogre with blade and healing magic.
Caela and Brand battled in the water, and Brand noticed that she was using an ornate arcane blade. He wasn't sure, but he believed it to have some significance for House Orien. Lysander, meanwhile, leaned over the edge of the boat and used his saga of vengeance to assist Brand, allowing the Orien scion to finish off the murderous renegade from his house.
With Caela dead, and the Wolves doing significant damage, the Captain called for a halt to hostilities. The wary Wolves agreed to let the pirates go in exchange for Caela's body and a ride to the shore.
Monday, May 03, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
Game Schedule May - July
May 7th - Wandering Wolves: Whatever Happened to Halas Martain? - with guest-star Resolute (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Dan)
May 14th - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
May 21st - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
May 28th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
June 4th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
June 11th - Fiasco (Randy, Dan, Chris, Nate, Jamie, Joe, Max all invited)
June 18th - Wandering Wolves with guest star Resolute (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Dan)
June 25th - No Gaming - Randy, Paul, Jamie & Joe out of town
July 2nd - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
July 9th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
July 16th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
July 23rd - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul or Dan)
July 30th - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
May 14th - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
May 21st - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
May 28th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
June 4th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
June 11th - Fiasco (Randy, Dan, Chris, Nate, Jamie, Joe, Max all invited)
June 18th - Wandering Wolves with guest star Resolute (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Dan)
June 25th - No Gaming - Randy, Paul, Jamie & Joe out of town
July 2nd - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
July 9th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
July 16th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
July 23rd - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul or Dan)
July 30th - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
Saturday, April 24, 2010
CoL Recap: The Recovery of Quill
Dravago 24 - Dravago 25, YK 1000
Xiu does flippy attack on Thuranni assassin and bruises her. Alain uses greater magic weapon to boost Xiu and Magnus while hitting Thuranni assassin lady. Torgen hits Thuranni assassin with jagged axe. Xau is still blind. One of the assassins runs away. Torchy shoots Alain, who resists poison. Magnus attacks Thuranni with his axe and misses her. She turns invisible and flees out the door to where Torchy is. Other assassin tries to stab Torgen and misses, he runs but takes AOO from Torgen, joins the others.
Xiu moves in and bait and switches Torchy, who is bloodied. Alain fires burning weapons with crossbow at Torgen. Torgen rushes in, drawing AOO from Torchy, calls out a challenge to mark all bad guys, uses arc of vengeance on all of them. Xau is still blind, moves to the wall and then saves, taking damage. Torchy hits Torgen with poisoned short sword, he is bloodied. Magnus uses come and get it on the two other assassins, dropping Torchy. Torgen takes AOO on Lady Assassin, she moves away and becomes invisible to tremorsense as well (probably by going into the water.) The other assassin becomes invisible, draws AOO from Torgen but manages to run over the bridge. Xiu cannot spot either assassin, throws dust to show which square the assassin is in. Alain heals Torgen, fires aggravating force bolt at other assassin and drops him. His bleeding wound kills him.
Torchy was local talent, hired by Lady Assassin to bolster their forces. The job was to kill Renslick and the people he was meeting with, he clearly underestimated Brenner. Alain asks where he was hired, he was hired at a tavern called the Cup and Die. We decide not to use him as an invisible pinata, and to take him to the law instead. Xau and Torgen go to take the bodies and assassin in to the law, tell them that we were attacked while wandering the town, while the rest of us go back to our temporary headquarters.
Xau and Xiu hire an inquisitive, Drenna d'Medani (half-elf) to look for Brenner, we tell her to deliver information to our base of operations. Alain spends about an hour making heroic tier antivenom for the group. We go to Orien lightning rail station to see what we can find out about Brenner/Quill meeting. The Danger Twins look for a book recording who has anything in the lockers, she finds keys and some are missing. They pick the locks on the eight lockers whose keys are missing. They find clothing, bribes, alcohol and a bloody foot. The bloody foot is only part of a chopped-up body in the locker. We put it in Xiu's bag of holding, Magnus goes to talk to the approaching patrol. We flee out the back exit as Magnus tells the patrol that he saw lockers open and blood on the floor. Magnus goes to rent a room at the Cup and Die.
We pull the body out at our base, and discover that it's elven. Xau sends message back using shadow emblem asking if Quill has a dragonmark. We positively identify him, check the lining of his cloak as requested and find three flexible daggers and a slip of paper. Coded message that only Xau and Xiu can read. He had learned of an upcoming transfer of stolen funds in the 2 million gold piece range. Was going to meet his contact for confirmation. As we decide what to do with the body, Drenna shows up.
She reports Brenner has left town, appears to have left by water via the cliff. She intends to pursue unless we have other instructions. Her intuition (mark of detection) tells her he will travel north and then out of Karrn Bay. We tell her to send us a message when she catches up to him.
In the morning, an officer comes to the Cup and Die to talk to Magnus about the investigation at the Orien Lightning Rail Station. He gives him mostly straight answers and allays suspicion. Xau and Torgen go to check in with the Watch before leaving town, they are cleared of any suspicion. We go to Lightning Rail station in the morning, it is full of graduates from Rekkenmark, including the Prince of Breland.
We go to House Phiarlan to report in, present them with a bag of body parts and our story. He gives us a letter of credit and tells us to come back tonight to talk to Quill.
Quill found a fence in town trying to move something pretty big, and his name was Brenner. He posed as a thief trying to sell an item, went to Brenner, discovered that he was buying anything stolen, the bigger the better. Quill told him he would steal a magical gemstone from the Rekkenmark Academy, Brenner agreed to fence it. Went back to check out Brenner's place of business, found a draft of a letter saying that he would be visiting Stormhome on Nymm 15 to deliver the package as agreed. Signed "Forward the New Age!" Intention was to get back to where he was staying to report, but doesn't remember making it back.
Xiu does flippy attack on Thuranni assassin and bruises her. Alain uses greater magic weapon to boost Xiu and Magnus while hitting Thuranni assassin lady. Torgen hits Thuranni assassin with jagged axe. Xau is still blind. One of the assassins runs away. Torchy shoots Alain, who resists poison. Magnus attacks Thuranni with his axe and misses her. She turns invisible and flees out the door to where Torchy is. Other assassin tries to stab Torgen and misses, he runs but takes AOO from Torgen, joins the others.
Xiu moves in and bait and switches Torchy, who is bloodied. Alain fires burning weapons with crossbow at Torgen. Torgen rushes in, drawing AOO from Torchy, calls out a challenge to mark all bad guys, uses arc of vengeance on all of them. Xau is still blind, moves to the wall and then saves, taking damage. Torchy hits Torgen with poisoned short sword, he is bloodied. Magnus uses come and get it on the two other assassins, dropping Torchy. Torgen takes AOO on Lady Assassin, she moves away and becomes invisible to tremorsense as well (probably by going into the water.) The other assassin becomes invisible, draws AOO from Torgen but manages to run over the bridge. Xiu cannot spot either assassin, throws dust to show which square the assassin is in. Alain heals Torgen, fires aggravating force bolt at other assassin and drops him. His bleeding wound kills him.
Torchy was local talent, hired by Lady Assassin to bolster their forces. The job was to kill Renslick and the people he was meeting with, he clearly underestimated Brenner. Alain asks where he was hired, he was hired at a tavern called the Cup and Die. We decide not to use him as an invisible pinata, and to take him to the law instead. Xau and Torgen go to take the bodies and assassin in to the law, tell them that we were attacked while wandering the town, while the rest of us go back to our temporary headquarters.
Xau and Xiu hire an inquisitive, Drenna d'Medani (half-elf) to look for Brenner, we tell her to deliver information to our base of operations. Alain spends about an hour making heroic tier antivenom for the group. We go to Orien lightning rail station to see what we can find out about Brenner/Quill meeting. The Danger Twins look for a book recording who has anything in the lockers, she finds keys and some are missing. They pick the locks on the eight lockers whose keys are missing. They find clothing, bribes, alcohol and a bloody foot. The bloody foot is only part of a chopped-up body in the locker. We put it in Xiu's bag of holding, Magnus goes to talk to the approaching patrol. We flee out the back exit as Magnus tells the patrol that he saw lockers open and blood on the floor. Magnus goes to rent a room at the Cup and Die.
We pull the body out at our base, and discover that it's elven. Xau sends message back using shadow emblem asking if Quill has a dragonmark. We positively identify him, check the lining of his cloak as requested and find three flexible daggers and a slip of paper. Coded message that only Xau and Xiu can read. He had learned of an upcoming transfer of stolen funds in the 2 million gold piece range. Was going to meet his contact for confirmation. As we decide what to do with the body, Drenna shows up.
She reports Brenner has left town, appears to have left by water via the cliff. She intends to pursue unless we have other instructions. Her intuition (mark of detection) tells her he will travel north and then out of Karrn Bay. We tell her to send us a message when she catches up to him.
In the morning, an officer comes to the Cup and Die to talk to Magnus about the investigation at the Orien Lightning Rail Station. He gives him mostly straight answers and allays suspicion. Xau and Torgen go to check in with the Watch before leaving town, they are cleared of any suspicion. We go to Lightning Rail station in the morning, it is full of graduates from Rekkenmark, including the Prince of Breland.
We go to House Phiarlan to report in, present them with a bag of body parts and our story. He gives us a letter of credit and tells us to come back tonight to talk to Quill.
Quill found a fence in town trying to move something pretty big, and his name was Brenner. He posed as a thief trying to sell an item, went to Brenner, discovered that he was buying anything stolen, the bigger the better. Quill told him he would steal a magical gemstone from the Rekkenmark Academy, Brenner agreed to fence it. Went back to check out Brenner's place of business, found a draft of a letter saying that he would be visiting Stormhome on Nymm 15 to deliver the package as agreed. Signed "Forward the New Age!" Intention was to get back to where he was staying to report, but doesn't remember making it back.
Friday, April 02, 2010
Game Schedule April - June
April 9th - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 2 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
April 16th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
April 23rd - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 3 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
April 30th - Gaming Off - Free Comic Book Day
May 7th - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Dan)
May 14th - D&D Against the Giants (Randy, Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
May 21st - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
May 28th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
June 4th - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Nate, Paul)
June 11th - Fiasco (Randy, Dan, Chris, Nate, Jamie, Joe, Max, Jason all invited)
June 18th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
June 25th - No Gaming - Randy in California (or gaming without Randy)
Potential schedule for April - June. Let me know if folks have any conflicts. As of May 14, we're at Ben's new house, with (I think) a new start time of 8? Or 7:30? Ben, chime in on comments and let us know.
Since we only have one Wolves session in June, I might try and run us a bit longer if possible that night. I'd love to start earlier, but I think 7:30 is as early as we can realistically get everyone there.
April 16th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
April 23rd - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 3 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
April 30th - Gaming Off - Free Comic Book Day
May 7th - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Dan)
May 14th - D&D Against the Giants (Randy, Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
May 21st - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
May 28th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
June 4th - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Nate, Paul)
June 11th - Fiasco (Randy, Dan, Chris, Nate, Jamie, Joe, Max, Jason all invited)
June 18th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
June 25th - No Gaming - Randy in California (or gaming without Randy)
Potential schedule for April - June. Let me know if folks have any conflicts. As of May 14, we're at Ben's new house, with (I think) a new start time of 8? Or 7:30? Ben, chime in on comments and let us know.
Since we only have one Wolves session in June, I might try and run us a bit longer if possible that night. I'd love to start earlier, but I think 7:30 is as early as we can realistically get everyone there.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
CoL Recap: Intrigue in Rekkenmark
Dravago 24, YK 1000
Torgen's prophecy: "The Shining Tome of Prophecy defends our lineage. I cache it beside the torn earth, lest ill befall me."
Danger Twins investigating theft of Karrnathi King's money from Kundarak vault in Rekkenmark, Phiarlan spy (Codename: Quill) originally sent hasn't reported in. Hired Alain to help twins put together a team to look into it.
3000 gp to go to Rekkenmark, 3000 gp on successful completion
-320 gp to Rekkenmark on lightning rail, through the Rekkenwood (4.5 Hour Journey)
Halax ir'Wynarn - Youngest son of Boranel, King of Breland - Soon to graduate from Rekkenmark Academy
Invitations to graduation ceremony and reception for three of us, Danger Twins are performing Cirque de Changeling
Xiu and Magnus go out to try and fence loot, seek information
Xao, Torgen and Alain find a safehouse just in case - Alain criticals his History roll for the city, he knows that Cannith have a warehouse here not in use, was used during the war to store all manner of things. We find it is not unoccupied. Crossbowmen on the rooftops.
Torgen examines defenses, determines gang is small and inexperienced. Xau shapeshifts, goes to doorway and meets dirty, gruff-looking man, convinces him he's a potential new recruit and gains entrance. There are eight humans here, making soap. ;)
The "Black Network" is what they call themselves, Xao indicates that he's heard rumors about their skill and tries to "talk his way into the gang." Has to prove himself by dueling to first blood. He downplays his ability, but gets first blood, cutting the opponent across his hand. They tell him to get them some food.
-5 gp to get food for "Black Network"
Xiu spots a pickpocket planning to steal from her, talks to him at knife-point, Magnus keeps an eye out to see if he has any backup. Xiu wants him to help find the black market, selling something rare and unusual, he indicates that he's seen "a lot of that kind of thing lately." Magnus spots the pickpocket's partner, a woman a block down in an alley. He waves at her, and she runs away.
Xiu starts talking trash to the pickpocket, asking him what he's moved before, and whether or not his contact can handle what she's trying to sell. Magnus suggests that she take the knife away, says "his friend left," which makes the pickpocket even more nervous. Xiu takes the knife away from his throat, indicates "I'm better throwing these things than using them up close, don't try to run."
Pickpocket ready to make an introduction to Finn, the best fence in Rekkenmark... that he knows. He's heard rumors that Finn has turned down some work because he couldn't handle the amount of money involved, which is unusual for Rekkenmark and for Finn.
Leads them into the alleys, Magnus keeps track as if he were in a dungeon, they walk into a small stone building in the rundown part of town. On the inside, it's outfitted as a shrine to the Dark Six with gruesome masks on the wall. Gentleman wearing mostly black turns around and frowns at the strangers.
Puts the frown away when he sees business might be involved. "Greetings and may the blessings of the Six be upon you."
Xiu implies the pickpocket has been saying bad things about him, which probably means the end of the pickpocket. She wants to trade her goods for information or other goods. "I'm willing to work on the barter system."
She tries to Bluff him into believing that the scepter she has is rare and valuable, but she doesn't have it with her. "It sounds very valuable."
He opens a secret compartment beneath a dragon's head mask, returns with a pair of goggles. He infers from her description of the performer gone missing that she's with House Thuranni, and she doesn't correct him. Then asks about an individual showing a lot of money and trying to move merchandise.
Finn says there's one new individual in town, asks about the scepter. "You say it has an emerald the size of a crab-apple?" She makes another Bluff check (crit) and says "I was goiing to say the size of a melon."
Finn says to come back tonight with the scepter, he says he'll deliver the erstwhile fence to them. Magnus makes an insight check to determine if they're being set up, and decides he's on the up and up, and is eager to eliminate his competition with massive payment for doing so. "It would be unfortunate if we were to disappear here," Magnus tells him.
Skill challenge complete (280 XP)
Xao brings food back to the Black Network, with a story that we caught him trying to steal to get an introduction and we are introduced as badasses, trying to look intimidating (and not being particularly effective). They see through the story. Zac, the older man, picks up on the untruth.
We failed the skill challenge to use the warehouse, they tell us to get out, we're not intimidating enough. "We have eyes everywhere!" Xao drops his disguise and tells them "Eyes are useless if you're too blind to see."
That gives them pause, and Xao then warns them not to mess with us, impetuous youth tries to attack and misses him, Xao acrobatically spins to the side and puts his own blade to his throat. Torgen sees that Zac is showing a lot of concern for "Matthew" the youth. "It's a big warehouse. We can stay out of each other's way." "Or not," Xao says, pushing the blade a bit more.
A deal is worked out for us to use half of the warehouse and to leave each other alone.
We go to Rekkenmark Academy to go to the graduation ceremony. The sergeant of the outer guard accosts us, we give him the invitations, he is not happy that we are late. Danger twins head backstage, we enter the main hall.
The Danger twins search backstage for any clues left by Quill, notice that one of the makeup tables has a feather quill pen among the detritus. Don't have time to investigate before going out to perform. The rest of us go to join the audience. There are probably some Wynarns in attendance. Recognize Baron Xorlan d'Cannith, who has powerful allies in Karrnath and has the strongest claim to rulership of the House.
Xiu finds that the quill is custom-designed, and has room for a message inside. She finds a coded message from Quill: "Brennen Dravago 2 - 11 PM at Lightning Rail." Clearly this is when Taen lost contact.
We go to the reception afterwards, out on the parade grounds, catered by House Ghallanda.
Xao and Xiu circulate, talk and try to find out if anyone has been robbed lately, or find out anything about Brennen. They eavesdrop and hear buzz about whether or not Kaius's plan to rebuild the White Arch bridge will succeed.
Alain talks to Xorlan, gives him his home address in Korth, asks about Brennen, the White Arch bridge, missing Phiarlan operatives, gains no particular knowledge but makes an important contact. Xao goes to talk to the Baron's wife and the Karrnathi royalty with her, they are in conversation about Karrnathi ore output over the next two years. They are a bit standoffish, but the Karrnathi has a conversation about the rapier vs. the greatsword with him.
Xau brings Xiu over to get an introduction to Karrnathi royalty, Hyran ir'Tennet, civic minister of Karrnath. Xiu asks about the amount of steel being used, and who might be doing what with all that steel. Magnus hears a lot of military discussions about comparative defenses. Xau finds out that the Baroness runs the business side of Cannith East. Xiu takes Hyran over to the bar, and tries to get information out of him. She hears more about the bridge project, says it's amazing that they're finally able to afford it, asks how far off it is. Hasn't been presented to Parliament yet, not certain to happen.
Possibly a Parliament of Funk. "What say you, Minister Bootsy?"
Go to meet Finn's contact that night. He spots them on the bridge, Finn has the fence in manacles, asks to see the scepter. Xiu gets him to confirm that he fenced a silver shield, which Magnus confirms with a wave is one of the items we're looking for. When she produces the scepter, Xau notices that Finn seems nervous, and probably doesn't have reinforcements.
Finn spots Alain moving past an arrow slit, freaks out, Xiu gives him the scepter, he runs out, gets filled with arrows and died. Alain bursts in, sees the dead Finn, and the man in manacles fades from view. He sticks his dagger in Xiu's ribs, reappears, Alain blasts him with Aggravating Force.
Torgen runs into the building, and an assassin drops off the roof and tries to stab him. Alain and Xiu notice that the guy in chains bears the Mark of Shadow. Assassin stabs Torgen with poisoned blade, blinding him. Another one drops off and stabs him as well. Magnus charges the second assassin with Bull Charge, pushing the assassin into the room and then secondary attacks him with a critical hit, knocking him prone and causing a jagged wound by hacking off most of his achilles tendon. Alain is hit and blinded by another assassin.
Xiu flanks and hits him with Bloodbath. Lead assassin (in chains) shifts out of flank, attacks Xiu and misses.
Blinded, Alain rolls a lightning sphere at two assassins, hitting one of them (Torchy, who is dazed and grants combat advantage to dwarves) and missing the prone one, then saves against blindness. Torgen, still blinded, uses tremors on the two assassins next to him. missing the downed one and hitting Torchy, the one who is standing, saves against poison due to dwarf metabolism, takes poison damage from aftereffect.
Xao moves to flank with Xiu, aims disheartening strike and crits lead assassin with his vicious rapier and bloodying (bruising) him. Ork, the prone assassin, takes ongoing damage, stands up, uses swift hand strike on Magnus and missing, but secondary attack hits him, almost getting rid of his temporary hit points. He tries to shift, but Magnus's combat challenge (crit) prevents him from moving and bloodies him.
Torchy the assassin uses his short sword and misses Torgen, Magnus uses hack and hewe on Ork and Torchy, misses Ork but hits Torchy for minor damage. Last hidden assassin appears, firing poisoned crossbow bolt into Magnus and blinding him. Alain is hit with a crossbow bolt and blinded. Xiu uses her changeling trick, then attacks with Rogue's Luck against lead assassin. stabbing him twice and leaving him in bad shape, and he turns invisible and runs away out the back door.
Alain hears female assassin whispering "Brennen, you coward!", uses his second wind and is no longer blinded.
Torgen runs after Brennen, drawing attacks of opportunity from Torchy and the other male assassin, one of whom hits and poisons him. He doesn't see Brennen, but turns back attack the other assassin and hit him with a crit, leaving him with a bleeding gash. He recovers from blindness and takes poison damage.
Xao moves next to his sister and is still blinded. Ork crits Magnus, who uses his shield to turn it into a regular hit, uses unbreakable to reduce damage, and is then blinded by poison. Seeing that Magnus is blinded, Ork flees onto the bridge. Torchy swings and misses Magnus, then shifts outside. Magnus shakes off the blindness, takes poison damage and moves over to use Knee Breaker on the female assassin, slowing her down, and yells for someone to block the door.
Torgen's prophecy: "The Shining Tome of Prophecy defends our lineage. I cache it beside the torn earth, lest ill befall me."
Danger Twins investigating theft of Karrnathi King's money from Kundarak vault in Rekkenmark, Phiarlan spy (Codename: Quill) originally sent hasn't reported in. Hired Alain to help twins put together a team to look into it.
3000 gp to go to Rekkenmark, 3000 gp on successful completion
-320 gp to Rekkenmark on lightning rail, through the Rekkenwood (4.5 Hour Journey)
Halax ir'Wynarn - Youngest son of Boranel, King of Breland - Soon to graduate from Rekkenmark Academy
Invitations to graduation ceremony and reception for three of us, Danger Twins are performing Cirque de Changeling
Xiu and Magnus go out to try and fence loot, seek information
Xao, Torgen and Alain find a safehouse just in case - Alain criticals his History roll for the city, he knows that Cannith have a warehouse here not in use, was used during the war to store all manner of things. We find it is not unoccupied. Crossbowmen on the rooftops.
Torgen examines defenses, determines gang is small and inexperienced. Xau shapeshifts, goes to doorway and meets dirty, gruff-looking man, convinces him he's a potential new recruit and gains entrance. There are eight humans here, making soap. ;)
The "Black Network" is what they call themselves, Xao indicates that he's heard rumors about their skill and tries to "talk his way into the gang." Has to prove himself by dueling to first blood. He downplays his ability, but gets first blood, cutting the opponent across his hand. They tell him to get them some food.
-5 gp to get food for "Black Network"
Xiu spots a pickpocket planning to steal from her, talks to him at knife-point, Magnus keeps an eye out to see if he has any backup. Xiu wants him to help find the black market, selling something rare and unusual, he indicates that he's seen "a lot of that kind of thing lately." Magnus spots the pickpocket's partner, a woman a block down in an alley. He waves at her, and she runs away.
Xiu starts talking trash to the pickpocket, asking him what he's moved before, and whether or not his contact can handle what she's trying to sell. Magnus suggests that she take the knife away, says "his friend left," which makes the pickpocket even more nervous. Xiu takes the knife away from his throat, indicates "I'm better throwing these things than using them up close, don't try to run."
Pickpocket ready to make an introduction to Finn, the best fence in Rekkenmark... that he knows. He's heard rumors that Finn has turned down some work because he couldn't handle the amount of money involved, which is unusual for Rekkenmark and for Finn.
Leads them into the alleys, Magnus keeps track as if he were in a dungeon, they walk into a small stone building in the rundown part of town. On the inside, it's outfitted as a shrine to the Dark Six with gruesome masks on the wall. Gentleman wearing mostly black turns around and frowns at the strangers.
Puts the frown away when he sees business might be involved. "Greetings and may the blessings of the Six be upon you."
Xiu implies the pickpocket has been saying bad things about him, which probably means the end of the pickpocket. She wants to trade her goods for information or other goods. "I'm willing to work on the barter system."
She tries to Bluff him into believing that the scepter she has is rare and valuable, but she doesn't have it with her. "It sounds very valuable."
He opens a secret compartment beneath a dragon's head mask, returns with a pair of goggles. He infers from her description of the performer gone missing that she's with House Thuranni, and she doesn't correct him. Then asks about an individual showing a lot of money and trying to move merchandise.
Finn says there's one new individual in town, asks about the scepter. "You say it has an emerald the size of a crab-apple?" She makes another Bluff check (crit) and says "I was goiing to say the size of a melon."
Finn says to come back tonight with the scepter, he says he'll deliver the erstwhile fence to them. Magnus makes an insight check to determine if they're being set up, and decides he's on the up and up, and is eager to eliminate his competition with massive payment for doing so. "It would be unfortunate if we were to disappear here," Magnus tells him.
Skill challenge complete (280 XP)
Xao brings food back to the Black Network, with a story that we caught him trying to steal to get an introduction and we are introduced as badasses, trying to look intimidating (and not being particularly effective). They see through the story. Zac, the older man, picks up on the untruth.
We failed the skill challenge to use the warehouse, they tell us to get out, we're not intimidating enough. "We have eyes everywhere!" Xao drops his disguise and tells them "Eyes are useless if you're too blind to see."
That gives them pause, and Xao then warns them not to mess with us, impetuous youth tries to attack and misses him, Xao acrobatically spins to the side and puts his own blade to his throat. Torgen sees that Zac is showing a lot of concern for "Matthew" the youth. "It's a big warehouse. We can stay out of each other's way." "Or not," Xao says, pushing the blade a bit more.
A deal is worked out for us to use half of the warehouse and to leave each other alone.
We go to Rekkenmark Academy to go to the graduation ceremony. The sergeant of the outer guard accosts us, we give him the invitations, he is not happy that we are late. Danger twins head backstage, we enter the main hall.
The Danger twins search backstage for any clues left by Quill, notice that one of the makeup tables has a feather quill pen among the detritus. Don't have time to investigate before going out to perform. The rest of us go to join the audience. There are probably some Wynarns in attendance. Recognize Baron Xorlan d'Cannith, who has powerful allies in Karrnath and has the strongest claim to rulership of the House.
Xiu finds that the quill is custom-designed, and has room for a message inside. She finds a coded message from Quill: "Brennen Dravago 2 - 11 PM at Lightning Rail." Clearly this is when Taen lost contact.
We go to the reception afterwards, out on the parade grounds, catered by House Ghallanda.
Xao and Xiu circulate, talk and try to find out if anyone has been robbed lately, or find out anything about Brennen. They eavesdrop and hear buzz about whether or not Kaius's plan to rebuild the White Arch bridge will succeed.
Alain talks to Xorlan, gives him his home address in Korth, asks about Brennen, the White Arch bridge, missing Phiarlan operatives, gains no particular knowledge but makes an important contact. Xao goes to talk to the Baron's wife and the Karrnathi royalty with her, they are in conversation about Karrnathi ore output over the next two years. They are a bit standoffish, but the Karrnathi has a conversation about the rapier vs. the greatsword with him.
Xau brings Xiu over to get an introduction to Karrnathi royalty, Hyran ir'Tennet, civic minister of Karrnath. Xiu asks about the amount of steel being used, and who might be doing what with all that steel. Magnus hears a lot of military discussions about comparative defenses. Xau finds out that the Baroness runs the business side of Cannith East. Xiu takes Hyran over to the bar, and tries to get information out of him. She hears more about the bridge project, says it's amazing that they're finally able to afford it, asks how far off it is. Hasn't been presented to Parliament yet, not certain to happen.
Possibly a Parliament of Funk. "What say you, Minister Bootsy?"
Go to meet Finn's contact that night. He spots them on the bridge, Finn has the fence in manacles, asks to see the scepter. Xiu gets him to confirm that he fenced a silver shield, which Magnus confirms with a wave is one of the items we're looking for. When she produces the scepter, Xau notices that Finn seems nervous, and probably doesn't have reinforcements.
Finn spots Alain moving past an arrow slit, freaks out, Xiu gives him the scepter, he runs out, gets filled with arrows and died. Alain bursts in, sees the dead Finn, and the man in manacles fades from view. He sticks his dagger in Xiu's ribs, reappears, Alain blasts him with Aggravating Force.
Torgen runs into the building, and an assassin drops off the roof and tries to stab him. Alain and Xiu notice that the guy in chains bears the Mark of Shadow. Assassin stabs Torgen with poisoned blade, blinding him. Another one drops off and stabs him as well. Magnus charges the second assassin with Bull Charge, pushing the assassin into the room and then secondary attacks him with a critical hit, knocking him prone and causing a jagged wound by hacking off most of his achilles tendon. Alain is hit and blinded by another assassin.
Xiu flanks and hits him with Bloodbath. Lead assassin (in chains) shifts out of flank, attacks Xiu and misses.
Blinded, Alain rolls a lightning sphere at two assassins, hitting one of them (Torchy, who is dazed and grants combat advantage to dwarves) and missing the prone one, then saves against blindness. Torgen, still blinded, uses tremors on the two assassins next to him. missing the downed one and hitting Torchy, the one who is standing, saves against poison due to dwarf metabolism, takes poison damage from aftereffect.
Xao moves to flank with Xiu, aims disheartening strike and crits lead assassin with his vicious rapier and bloodying (bruising) him. Ork, the prone assassin, takes ongoing damage, stands up, uses swift hand strike on Magnus and missing, but secondary attack hits him, almost getting rid of his temporary hit points. He tries to shift, but Magnus's combat challenge (crit) prevents him from moving and bloodies him.
Torchy the assassin uses his short sword and misses Torgen, Magnus uses hack and hewe on Ork and Torchy, misses Ork but hits Torchy for minor damage. Last hidden assassin appears, firing poisoned crossbow bolt into Magnus and blinding him. Alain is hit with a crossbow bolt and blinded. Xiu uses her changeling trick, then attacks with Rogue's Luck against lead assassin. stabbing him twice and leaving him in bad shape, and he turns invisible and runs away out the back door.
Alain hears female assassin whispering "Brennen, you coward!", uses his second wind and is no longer blinded.
Torgen runs after Brennen, drawing attacks of opportunity from Torchy and the other male assassin, one of whom hits and poisons him. He doesn't see Brennen, but turns back attack the other assassin and hit him with a crit, leaving him with a bleeding gash. He recovers from blindness and takes poison damage.
Xao moves next to his sister and is still blinded. Ork crits Magnus, who uses his shield to turn it into a regular hit, uses unbreakable to reduce damage, and is then blinded by poison. Seeing that Magnus is blinded, Ork flees onto the bridge. Torchy swings and misses Magnus, then shifts outside. Magnus shakes off the blindness, takes poison damage and moves over to use Knee Breaker on the female assassin, slowing her down, and yells for someone to block the door.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Wandering Wolves: What Waits in The Dark (1)
Zarantyr 27 - Olarune 7, YK 1000
Resolute scooped the remains of Orlok's brain and internal mechanisms into a bag, as Brand concentrated and drew a circle with a mixture of arcane dust on the floor. His dragonmark flared to life, and in seconds, a shimmering portal opened up, showing the arrival room on Wolf Island in Silver Lake. The Wolves, along with their newest ally, stepped through.
They were greeted by Deneith security, who recognized the Wolves but not the warforged holding a smelly sack. Remembering William's constant cautions against shapechangers, they asked for proof of the Wolves' identities in the form of countersigns, questions and a demonstration of functional dragonmarks by William, Lysander and Brand. With security satisfied, and William happy to see that security was being stringent at the linked portals, the Wolves took the ferry over to the Wolves' Reward.
William disbursed gold, gems and platinum to each of the Wolves from the party treasury, and for his part, he took one of the Karrnathi paintings, which he planned to mount, along with his sword Terminus, in the war room below the Reward.
Lysander and William then went to the House Sivis office to send a message to General Karlach and let him know the status of their mission, and that they would be arriving in Karrlakton in a few days.
Brand, meanwhile, went to meet up with Luggoth and hear about what happened on the way to Passage, and anything of note that happened while he was there. Luggoth didn't have much to report, only that Aeromus and many of his allies in the House had been placed under house arrest, awaiting the scheduling of the trial, which they expected to take a few months, as the barristers would be doing research going back years for the case.
Pel took up a few of his roles around the casino, checking in on various schemes and agents, and then took on his identity of Viorr so that he could charter The Beginner's Luck airship from the Reward out to the Mror Holds, so that the Wolves could check in on potential Emerald Claw activity at the Deneith operation going on at the mining village of Grentonn.
After about four days, the Wolves arrived to make a stop in Karrlakton. They disembarked, gave the remains of Orlok to Karlach and gave him a full report on what had happened. Resolute decided to head to Sentinel Tower and make a report about his whereabouts and ask for new assignments, and bid the Wolves farewell for now.
The Wolves boarded the Beginner's Luck again that evening and flew for four more days to the southernmost tip of the Ironroot Mountains. They disembarked by means of rope ladders and entered the subterranean dwarf kingdom of the Mror Holds, walking through the territory of Clan Soldorak. They were close enough to the active volcano the Fist of Onatar that it was consistently hot, which Pel found quite a relief after their journeys in the frigid Karrnathi wilderness.
A few hours later, they found themselves in the small mining town of Grentonn. It had less than a dozen buildings, including one large apartment building most likely for the families of the miners and several other smaller buildings that represented businesses and other needs for the town. Though the Wolves didn't have anyone who could read the Dwarven script on the doors and windows, they were able to figure out that one of the places was the town tavern, and they went in to talk to Dulok ir'Soldorak, the owner of the place.
The tavern was small, and he didn't have any food to offer, explaining that he tended to work on the miners' shifts, and they had been down in the mine for several weeks, ever since the attacks by foulspawn on the town. Dulok told them that the miners had dug too deep and uncovered a vein of Khyber dragonshards, but in doing so they had dug right into Khyber, and foul aberrations had attacked in response. The town sheriff had died successfully repelling the invasion, and the mayor had arranged a contract with House Deneith for security while they dug out the rest of the shards.
The Wolves left Dulok's tavern and went over to the tents that were the base of operations for House Deneith. William was surprised to see that there were less than a dozen Deneith blademarks here, none of them dragonmarked, and their leader, Lieutenant Falchor, came over to tell him why.
Falchor explained that Maresh and most of the blademarks had gone down into the mine to protect against the foulspawn incursions while the miners worked, and he had left a skeleton crew up above to guard the town against attacks from without. Falchor expressed gratitude that the Wolves were there, suggesting they could help bolster what he believed was not enough men to guard the town.
However, there were several suspicious things about Falchor. For one, he and all his men had bushy beards, which was unusual for Deneith men. For another, he seemed very insistent in trying to keep the Wolves from descending into the mines. And for another, he was somewhat disrespectful and distrusting of his commanding officer.
The Wolves decided to seek a bit more information, and they went to a secluded area in town where Lysander could perform arcane rites to seek rumors. He learned of a teacher missing her students, an unpopular dwarven woman in town and that most of the inhabitants were scared, never going outside, and that they didn't much like what had happened "since the Deneith came."
Suspicious, Pel took on the identity of one of the Deneith blademarks and struck up a conversation. He managed to quickly confirm that the Deneiths were gone, and that in fact Falchor and his men were The Emerald Claw in disguise. Luggoth, William and Brand inspected the traces of blood and other battle scenes in the middle of town to confirm the truth of foulspawn involvement, rather than a battle between the Claw and Deneith. Before they could confront Falchor, however, they got much more vivid proof that foulspawn were attacking Grentonn.
With a howling and screaming, a band of foulspawn emerged from the mine shaft, cutting their way through the disguised Claw and into the town, where they found the Wolves waiting. Brand identified them as William counted them off: 2 Dolgaunt Monks, 2 Foulspawn Manglers, 2 Foulspawn Hulks, a Foulspawn Berserker and a Foulspawn Seer leading them. William pulled Vendetta from its sheathe and the Wolves prepared to battle these foul escapees from Khyber's depths.
Pel quickly turned invisible and moved into position, angling for the leader, as the monks charged Lysander and the manglers began moving around William, their four arms swinging bone daggers at him with freakish glee. Luggoth charged one of the Dolgaunt monks as the Hulks slowly squeezed their way through alleys.
Lysander began loudly singing a song of courage, and he punctuated it by slicing his scimitar across the belly of the Dolgaunt monk in front of him, causing it to let out a gout of black blood and an inhuman screech of pain, as lightning burst from Lysander's sword to blast the other Dolgaunt. Brand swiped at one of the manglers before teleporting next to the Foulspawn Seer. He swung his blades into the Seer, but it disappeared in a burst of warped air before the blades could connect.
Unfortunately for the Seer, it teleported right next to Pel, who became visible and shoved his rapier into the foul being's chest.
Luggoth, William and Lysander wound up in a melee with the Hulks, Manglers, Dolgaunts and Berserker as Pel and Brand pursued the Seer, trying to finish him off. The manglers proved deadly with their dagger dance, moving around their opponent and slashing in with a bone dagger whenever their guard was down, leaving numerous tiny cuts first on Brand and then on Whitehearth.
The Dolgaunts used their tentacles to pull various Wolves around, draining their life force from them before the Wolves could cut loose, and the Hulks pounded on William and Luggoth. The Berserker, in a state of frenzy, spent as much time cutting into his allies as he did cutting into the Wolves.
William finished off one of the Hulks and turned his attention to the other as Pel cut himself free of the Dolgaunt's tentacles and then called down the Traveler's burning flame on the foulspawn in retaliation.
The Seer kept teleporting away as Brand pursued him, blasting at the Orien scion with warp orbs that dazed and slowed him down, keeping him at bay. Though the Seer was sorely wounded, he managed to keep clear of the melee, and his foulspawn servants were able to keep the Wolves occupied.
Brand slashed both swords into the remaining Hulk, one of them cutting deep into its flesh, and Luggoth let out a loud cry of rage and finished the monster off, as William struggled with the Dolgaunt who had him wrapped in his tentacles, swinging Vendetta at the creature even as his life-forced flowed into the monk, healing some of its wounds. He pulled away, but the other Dolgaunt grabbed him and pulled him into position for the Manglers to move in and attack William.
As the Dolgaunts continued to grab the various Wolves in turn, and William suffered greatly at the hands of the Manglers, Lysander did his best to keep the Wolves fighting with his majestic words. When one of the Dolgaunts grabbed Lysander with a tentacle and pulled it to him, Lysander reached into his deep-pocket cloak and pulled out a clockwork bomb and sovereign glue, attaching it to the creature's face.
Brand activated his dragonmark, teleporting and swapping places with Luggoth, and he reached out and clicked the timer on the clockwork bomb as the Dolgaunt lashed out a tentacle and grabbed him.
One of the Manglers began its dagger dance and stabbed William three times, finally causing the battered Deneith defender to tumble to the ground, unconscious and bleeding badly.
Luggoth growled angrily and took the offending Mangler's head off with his sword, whirling and charging the other one, killing it as well.
Lysander pulled out his lute to distract one of the Dolgaunts as Brand teleported away from the other one, leaving it alone as the clockwork bomb on its face exploded, leaving it charred, blind but still alive. Brand's teleportation took him next to the Seer, which he killed with a sword stroke before charging over to attack the Berserker.
As Pel and Lysander moved in to help Luggoth with the Berserker, Luggoth exchanged blows with the other Dolgaunt monk. William, restored by Pel's healing, got up to attack the Berserker as well, as Brand finished off one Dolgaunt monk and then moved to help William.
The Berserker swung his greatsword, again dropping the wounded William, but in response, Brand slipped his longsword into the thing's ribs, ending its life. The Wolves then turned on the last Dolgaunt monk, and Brand and Whitehearth managed to finish it off.
Resolute scooped the remains of Orlok's brain and internal mechanisms into a bag, as Brand concentrated and drew a circle with a mixture of arcane dust on the floor. His dragonmark flared to life, and in seconds, a shimmering portal opened up, showing the arrival room on Wolf Island in Silver Lake. The Wolves, along with their newest ally, stepped through.
They were greeted by Deneith security, who recognized the Wolves but not the warforged holding a smelly sack. Remembering William's constant cautions against shapechangers, they asked for proof of the Wolves' identities in the form of countersigns, questions and a demonstration of functional dragonmarks by William, Lysander and Brand. With security satisfied, and William happy to see that security was being stringent at the linked portals, the Wolves took the ferry over to the Wolves' Reward.
William disbursed gold, gems and platinum to each of the Wolves from the party treasury, and for his part, he took one of the Karrnathi paintings, which he planned to mount, along with his sword Terminus, in the war room below the Reward.
Lysander and William then went to the House Sivis office to send a message to General Karlach and let him know the status of their mission, and that they would be arriving in Karrlakton in a few days.
Brand, meanwhile, went to meet up with Luggoth and hear about what happened on the way to Passage, and anything of note that happened while he was there. Luggoth didn't have much to report, only that Aeromus and many of his allies in the House had been placed under house arrest, awaiting the scheduling of the trial, which they expected to take a few months, as the barristers would be doing research going back years for the case.
Pel took up a few of his roles around the casino, checking in on various schemes and agents, and then took on his identity of Viorr so that he could charter The Beginner's Luck airship from the Reward out to the Mror Holds, so that the Wolves could check in on potential Emerald Claw activity at the Deneith operation going on at the mining village of Grentonn.
After about four days, the Wolves arrived to make a stop in Karrlakton. They disembarked, gave the remains of Orlok to Karlach and gave him a full report on what had happened. Resolute decided to head to Sentinel Tower and make a report about his whereabouts and ask for new assignments, and bid the Wolves farewell for now.
The Wolves boarded the Beginner's Luck again that evening and flew for four more days to the southernmost tip of the Ironroot Mountains. They disembarked by means of rope ladders and entered the subterranean dwarf kingdom of the Mror Holds, walking through the territory of Clan Soldorak. They were close enough to the active volcano the Fist of Onatar that it was consistently hot, which Pel found quite a relief after their journeys in the frigid Karrnathi wilderness.
A few hours later, they found themselves in the small mining town of Grentonn. It had less than a dozen buildings, including one large apartment building most likely for the families of the miners and several other smaller buildings that represented businesses and other needs for the town. Though the Wolves didn't have anyone who could read the Dwarven script on the doors and windows, they were able to figure out that one of the places was the town tavern, and they went in to talk to Dulok ir'Soldorak, the owner of the place.
The tavern was small, and he didn't have any food to offer, explaining that he tended to work on the miners' shifts, and they had been down in the mine for several weeks, ever since the attacks by foulspawn on the town. Dulok told them that the miners had dug too deep and uncovered a vein of Khyber dragonshards, but in doing so they had dug right into Khyber, and foul aberrations had attacked in response. The town sheriff had died successfully repelling the invasion, and the mayor had arranged a contract with House Deneith for security while they dug out the rest of the shards.
The Wolves left Dulok's tavern and went over to the tents that were the base of operations for House Deneith. William was surprised to see that there were less than a dozen Deneith blademarks here, none of them dragonmarked, and their leader, Lieutenant Falchor, came over to tell him why.
Falchor explained that Maresh and most of the blademarks had gone down into the mine to protect against the foulspawn incursions while the miners worked, and he had left a skeleton crew up above to guard the town against attacks from without. Falchor expressed gratitude that the Wolves were there, suggesting they could help bolster what he believed was not enough men to guard the town.
However, there were several suspicious things about Falchor. For one, he and all his men had bushy beards, which was unusual for Deneith men. For another, he seemed very insistent in trying to keep the Wolves from descending into the mines. And for another, he was somewhat disrespectful and distrusting of his commanding officer.
The Wolves decided to seek a bit more information, and they went to a secluded area in town where Lysander could perform arcane rites to seek rumors. He learned of a teacher missing her students, an unpopular dwarven woman in town and that most of the inhabitants were scared, never going outside, and that they didn't much like what had happened "since the Deneith came."
Suspicious, Pel took on the identity of one of the Deneith blademarks and struck up a conversation. He managed to quickly confirm that the Deneiths were gone, and that in fact Falchor and his men were The Emerald Claw in disguise. Luggoth, William and Brand inspected the traces of blood and other battle scenes in the middle of town to confirm the truth of foulspawn involvement, rather than a battle between the Claw and Deneith. Before they could confront Falchor, however, they got much more vivid proof that foulspawn were attacking Grentonn.
With a howling and screaming, a band of foulspawn emerged from the mine shaft, cutting their way through the disguised Claw and into the town, where they found the Wolves waiting. Brand identified them as William counted them off: 2 Dolgaunt Monks, 2 Foulspawn Manglers, 2 Foulspawn Hulks, a Foulspawn Berserker and a Foulspawn Seer leading them. William pulled Vendetta from its sheathe and the Wolves prepared to battle these foul escapees from Khyber's depths.
Pel quickly turned invisible and moved into position, angling for the leader, as the monks charged Lysander and the manglers began moving around William, their four arms swinging bone daggers at him with freakish glee. Luggoth charged one of the Dolgaunt monks as the Hulks slowly squeezed their way through alleys.
Lysander began loudly singing a song of courage, and he punctuated it by slicing his scimitar across the belly of the Dolgaunt monk in front of him, causing it to let out a gout of black blood and an inhuman screech of pain, as lightning burst from Lysander's sword to blast the other Dolgaunt. Brand swiped at one of the manglers before teleporting next to the Foulspawn Seer. He swung his blades into the Seer, but it disappeared in a burst of warped air before the blades could connect.
Unfortunately for the Seer, it teleported right next to Pel, who became visible and shoved his rapier into the foul being's chest.
Luggoth, William and Lysander wound up in a melee with the Hulks, Manglers, Dolgaunts and Berserker as Pel and Brand pursued the Seer, trying to finish him off. The manglers proved deadly with their dagger dance, moving around their opponent and slashing in with a bone dagger whenever their guard was down, leaving numerous tiny cuts first on Brand and then on Whitehearth.
The Dolgaunts used their tentacles to pull various Wolves around, draining their life force from them before the Wolves could cut loose, and the Hulks pounded on William and Luggoth. The Berserker, in a state of frenzy, spent as much time cutting into his allies as he did cutting into the Wolves.
William finished off one of the Hulks and turned his attention to the other as Pel cut himself free of the Dolgaunt's tentacles and then called down the Traveler's burning flame on the foulspawn in retaliation.
The Seer kept teleporting away as Brand pursued him, blasting at the Orien scion with warp orbs that dazed and slowed him down, keeping him at bay. Though the Seer was sorely wounded, he managed to keep clear of the melee, and his foulspawn servants were able to keep the Wolves occupied.
Brand slashed both swords into the remaining Hulk, one of them cutting deep into its flesh, and Luggoth let out a loud cry of rage and finished the monster off, as William struggled with the Dolgaunt who had him wrapped in his tentacles, swinging Vendetta at the creature even as his life-forced flowed into the monk, healing some of its wounds. He pulled away, but the other Dolgaunt grabbed him and pulled him into position for the Manglers to move in and attack William.
As the Dolgaunts continued to grab the various Wolves in turn, and William suffered greatly at the hands of the Manglers, Lysander did his best to keep the Wolves fighting with his majestic words. When one of the Dolgaunts grabbed Lysander with a tentacle and pulled it to him, Lysander reached into his deep-pocket cloak and pulled out a clockwork bomb and sovereign glue, attaching it to the creature's face.
Brand activated his dragonmark, teleporting and swapping places with Luggoth, and he reached out and clicked the timer on the clockwork bomb as the Dolgaunt lashed out a tentacle and grabbed him.
One of the Manglers began its dagger dance and stabbed William three times, finally causing the battered Deneith defender to tumble to the ground, unconscious and bleeding badly.
Luggoth growled angrily and took the offending Mangler's head off with his sword, whirling and charging the other one, killing it as well.
Lysander pulled out his lute to distract one of the Dolgaunts as Brand teleported away from the other one, leaving it alone as the clockwork bomb on its face exploded, leaving it charred, blind but still alive. Brand's teleportation took him next to the Seer, which he killed with a sword stroke before charging over to attack the Berserker.
As Pel and Lysander moved in to help Luggoth with the Berserker, Luggoth exchanged blows with the other Dolgaunt monk. William, restored by Pel's healing, got up to attack the Berserker as well, as Brand finished off one Dolgaunt monk and then moved to help William.
The Berserker swung his greatsword, again dropping the wounded William, but in response, Brand slipped his longsword into the thing's ribs, ending its life. The Wolves then turned on the last Dolgaunt monk, and Brand and Whitehearth managed to finish it off.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Wandering Wolves: Scars of Karrnath (2-4)
Zarantyr 16 - Zarantyr 26, YK 1000
With Lysander offering a Traveler's Chant through chattering teeth, the Wolves were able to cover the remaining ground to the Karrnathi scout base in only a day and a half. They were still suffering from the bitter cold, with Pel suffering the worst, desperately missing the warmth of cities he had lived in his entire life.
When they got within sight of the small fortress, they realized that they weren't going to find it easy to get Lysander inside for healing. An army from the plane of Risia was laying siege to the fortress, kept at bay only by the strong stone walls and occasional bolts of alchemically-treated fiery crossbow bolts.
Circling quietly and carefully, Pel spotted a secret entrance at the rear of the castle. He and William determined that if they were able to wait for the right moment, there would be only a small patrol of ice gargoyles, an ice-touched umber hulk and a single ice archon to be taken out before they slipped inside.
Pel started things off by launching a flame strike at the archon and the umber hulk, as Brand and William closed ranks and Lysander moved up invisibly, launching an illusory decoy at the archon, which drew it's attention as Whitehearth moved in to attack.
William engaged the Umber Hulk, which bit him and held him in its jaws as he hacked relentlessly away with Terminus. An ice gargoyle, along with a frost-touched white wyrm, flew in to support the icy scouts below.
While Lysander supported William in his attacks on the Umber Hulk, Brand and Pel engaged the ice archon. Supporting fire began coming out to hit the gargoyles and the wyrm, as scouts inside the base launched alchemically-treated fiery crossbow bolts at the airborne foes.
The ice archon, battered by Brand and Pel, attempted to flee but was smashed by Pel, and Brand moved to help William and Lysander with the umber hulk.
Pel charged the frost wyrm as Lysander shifted targets to one of the ice gargoyles, and William and Brand continued to slice away at the umber hulk, which still had William in its mandibles. William drew back and stabbed the Umber Hulk through its eye, drawing strength from its screech of pain, and Pel took advantage of the opportunity to slide in and lash a deep cut across the umber hulk's back.
The ice gargoyle, suffering under Lysander's blade, bow and a dash of alchemist's fire, flew up and away, probably to get reinforcements, but it would be too late. William unleashed another deadly blow on the umber hulk, and Pel finished it off with a slash of his rapier, as Brand and Whitehearth began focusing their attacks on the wyrm.
The wyrm, though mostly undamaged by the earlier fighting, was now the focus of all the attacks, and Pel, Brand and Whitehearth used flanking and covering maneuvers to wound it and position it for the kill, which William delivered.
The battle completed, one of the scouts popped open the secret hatch to allow the Wolves access to the fortress before any of the icy assault forces could see the secret way in.
Once inside, Lysander was taken to the necromancer Roland Ochem, who cured his disease with a quick ritual. Unfortunately, this was to be the last bit of good news for a while.
William quickly realized that the man in charge was a Corporal, Drago Zhent, and Dragon revealed that he was one of General Karlach's scouts, and that most of the commanding officers and indeed many of the forces at the base had been killed when the icy creatures first attacked. They had managed to seal off the fortress, and send a courier for help, but they estimated it would be at least a week before reinforcements arrived.
Corporal Zhent explained that if this fortress fell, the Risians would immediately turn towards the citizenry of Karrnath. They had to keep the forces occupied for as long as they could, even if it meant their deaths.
Lysander, remembering his history, suggested using fiery walls built from alchemical fire to keep the Risian forces at bay, and also propped up the many dead bodies to make it look as if there were more defenders on the walls. William then used his military training to determine the best spots to fire barrels of alchemists' fire out into the enemy, where they would do the most good.
The combination of fire walls and flaming barrels kept the foes from the walls for a few days, until the fiery walls began to go out. Pel and Brand led a small force of scouts out to re-light the fires, but they encountered an umber hulk and had to flee before it brought reinforcements to deal with them.
Lysander spoke nightly to keep morale up, singing and telling tales of valor, and though the troops, and indeed the Wolves, were growing tired, on the eighth day they looked out and saw a large contingent of Karrnathi undead coming over the rise, tearing into the Risian forces and scattering them aside.
With the fortress defense maintained, Corporal Zhent, PFC PFC Fraedus Dorn, PFC Holden Kessler and PFC Sigor Hintram, bolstered by alchemist's fire from Ochem's stockpile, headed out to Iceridge Tower.
The tower stood right at the foot of the Icetop Mountains, its exterior glowing with blue energy from the plane of Risia. Floating out over the ice, defending the only entrance, was an undead Bloodkiss Beholder. It spotted the Wolves and their scouts and, screeching, moved to defend against them.
The ice was slippery, causing the Wolves and their scouts to fall, until they found their way to some snow-covered patches that were easier to stand on. The Beholder's death scream pierced the ears of William and Lysander, and was especially effective on Lysander. Lysander responded, however, with an inspiring refrain that struck at the core of what remained of the undead monster's soul, and Brand followed up by slashing into the creature. It responded by sucking the life out of William to restore its own health.
William, bloody but unafraid, went into his rain of steel stance, landing several blows on the Bloodkiss Beholder as the scouts began firing bolts into it. The Beholder lashed out, hitting the Wolves in turn, but they dealt their own damage as well, and as Pel and Brand healed themselves, Lysander and William poured on the attacks.
As William moved up to attack, he dealt a vicious blow to the Beholder, causing it to unleash another death scream, which finished off the downed PFC Hintram. However, this was the last casualty of the battle, as William, Pel and Brand closed ranks on the creature, and the other scouts showed uncanny accuracy, peppering the hideous beast with bolts into its deadened eye stalks.
Brand laid in the final attacks, stabbing his short sword into the creature's central eye and slicing at its stalks with his longsword, allowing William to finish it with one last kata of his rain of steel stance.
The Wolves, panting and bloodied, carried their gear over to one of the smaller snow hills surrounding Iceridge Tower and sat down to catch their breath. William insisted that they bury Private Sigor before they went any further, so he and Brand dug into the frozen ground enough to put the soldier into a shallow grave and then covered him up. William scowled at Pel's offer of last rites on behalf of the Traveler, but Pel had studied enough of the Soveriegn Host to say a few prayers for the young soldier, and Lysander offered up a short but stirring eulogy on behalf of their fallen ally.
Pel strayed a bit toward a nearby snowdrift, and the other Wolves looked up when they heard a loud clang in response to Pel's knock. They were soon gathered around a warforged, inert and half-frozen. As William stepped closer, his dragonmark began glowing, and the identification rune on the warforged's forehead glowed in response.
William shrugged and grunted, and so everyone turned to look to Lysander. Lysander scrutinized the mark on the warforged's forehead and said "Hmm. You know, I think I have heard of this. His name is Resolute, and he worked for the Sentinel Marshals during the Last War. But nobody has seen him for close to two decades. I wonder what he's doing here?"
Just then, the ice began to crack, as the warforged's eyes popped open, and he began flexing his mechanical muscles to get out of the frosty prison.
"What--- where's Orlok? Where's Hannah?"
William and the others were taken aback, to say the least. But they quickly determined what had happened.
Resolute was a warforged Sentinel Marshal and servant of Dol Dorn of the Sovereign Host who, along with Hannah and Alarich d'Deneith, was a deputy to Sentinel Marshal Sigor d'Deneith. He was the first one assigned to track down Count Orlok when the Emerald Claw was outlawed, and he had tracked him here to Iceridge Tower. Unfortunately, it was a trap for him, and Orlok's troops and undead were ready. About to be utterly destroyed, Resolute instead activated a plan he and Hannah had developed, allowing himself to become inert. The plan was that she would come after Orlok next, and when she found Resolute, she would use her dragonmark to "restart his systems" and the two of them could take down the necromancer together.
Apparently, William's dragonmark, just one generation removed from Hannah's, had been enough to trigger the contingency. And now the Wolves had an ally who had been waiting twenty years to pursue Orlok into Iceridge Tower.
William smashed down the double doors leading into the tower, encountering two pale blue Icetomb Wights, one Battle Wight in chainmail and a tattered Karrnathi military uniform, and one greenish undead creature seemingly stitched together. Pel warned the group that it was a blaspheme. As the creatures charged, the Wolves noticed that the floor of the first level was frozen solid with a thick layer of ice that made movement difficult.
Pel unleashed a holy light from his holy symbol, causing two of the wights to shriek in pain, as Lysander slid easily across the ice thanks to his eladrin agility, firing arrows at the wights as he charged. William and Resolute charged in to engage the Icetomb Wights, as Brand and Whitehearth moved to flank the Battle Wight.
The Blaspheme bolstered his allies with whispered words of undead power, and blasted away at Pel with unholy rays, as Pel joined Brand and Whitehearth in attacking the Battle Wight.
Resolute swung his two bastard swords with speed and deadly precision, chopping deep into the flesh of the Icetomb Wight and then into the Blaspheme, moving around the battle as one of the Icetomb Wights grabbed Pel, even as William used a reaping strike to bring down the other one. Pel felt a chill go through him from the Wight's touch and saw ice form over him, freezing him in place, although he took heart as he watched Brand cut down the Battle Wight.
The Karrnathi scouts, who had been firing their crossbows and using their longswords, were mostly ineffective against the powerful undead, and PFC Halden found himself in the sights of the Blaspheme. Before it could blast him with an unholy ray, however, Resolute charged into it, slashing his swords across its neck and leaving its head hanging by a mere thread, which Resolute then cut off with another quick swing.
Lysander pulled out his scimitar and moved to engage the remaining Icetomb Wight as Pel struggled with his icy prison. William tried to charge the Wight but fell afoul of the slippery floor, resorting to his rarely-used bow, which he fired wide, missing the target.
Brand moved over to help Lysander as the eladrin bard unleashed a sting of vicious mockery on the Blaspheme, laced with arcane power that struck even the undead's heart with shame and doubt. William got to his feet and charged as well, and before long, the Wight was surrounded by all of the Wolves, plus their ally Resolute. Brand swung the final blow, stabbing the Wight through the eye with his longsword to finish it off.
The Wolves took a short rest, their breath escaping in frozen clouds in the frigid room. Pel was feeling exhausted, but ready to go on, and the Wolves and their allies pushed forward into the spiral staircase that led higher into the tower.
On the first floor, they found a kitchen and a series of storerooms, all empty and broken down, and then moved on. A floor above, they found a decrepit dining room, once well-furnished, and a library filled with Karrnathi books, including two valuable first editions. Lysander, always welcoming new stories, stuffed the deep pockets of his magical cloak to bursting with books.
On the third floor, they interrupted a second gang of undead (Reapers, Karrnathi zombies, another Blaspheme and a female Battle Wight) in a large semicircular room full of blood, torture tools, and large tables. The Wight referred to "Orlok's machinery," and her voice and appearance was that of Hannah d'Deneith. She wielded Vendetta, a family righteous execution sword similar to William's Terminus, and it was clear that Orlok had turned his greatest foe into a twisted mockery of life, now an ally.
Resolute and William gritted their teeth, realizing there was no cure for the thing that had been their friend and relative, respectively, and that she had to be destroyed.
Hannah swung Vendetta in a high arc and slashed into Pel, who was nearest to her, and the Wolves moved in to fight. Pel, weakened and immobilized, turned invisible to regroup, while William pulled Hannah and a Reaper to him to fight. Resolute quickly joined in, swinging his swords at Hannah and the Reaper and moving to support William, as Lysander moved in through the other door in the room to take up position. The zombies moved up and attacked, knocking William back a few feet, and the Reapers demonstrated an ability to attack and then teleport and remain insubstantial for a few seconds after a successful attack.
Hannah offered mocking words to Resolute and William, but spent her attack on Brand, who teleported away, using his dragonmark to put William back into the fight in his place. Pel once again unleashed radiant light from his holy symbol, blasting all of the undead with the vengeful fury of the Traveler.
William continued to attack Hannah as Resolute swung his swords in a whirlwind at the Karrnathi zombies and Lysander unleashed disturbing visions on the Reapers.
Finally, Hannah turned her sword on William, and the two great swords of the Snow family met in combat for the first time. Brand and Whitehearth moved up to assist, biting and slashing, as William struck back with a lasting threat. Simultaneously, Pel unleashed a flame strike on the Reapers, with bursts of the flame singeing Hannah and the zombies as well.
The Blaspheme continued to bite at William as Resolute, Brand, Whitehearth and William poured attacks onto Hannah, who was weakening from the onslaught. Lysander leaped onto a table and healed William with a majestic word before launching a saga of vengeance involving Karrnathi tales he had recently learned against Hannah.
The zombies moved in to attack Brand and Pel, but the Wolves kept up their focus on Hannah. As Brand activated his dimensional bond to make sure she didn't get away, William swung Terminus in a high arc and decapitated the thing that was once his aunt.
With their leader fallen, the remaining undead fell quickly to the assault of Resolute and the Wolves. Brand and Whitehearth finished one zombie, William finished off one of the Reapers with his rain of steel stance, Brand finished another with an acrobatic strike and then combined with Whitehearth to destroy the last zombie, and Resolute finished off the Blaspheme.
Resolute pulled out one of his firestorm arrows and struck it into Hannah's corpse, incinerating his body as he said a prayer to Dol Dorn. William offered up his own farewell to his aunt while Brand and Resolute threw the remaining corpses of the undead out the hole in the tower, onto the ice below.
Weary and battered, the Wolves decided to chance a long rest. The air was cold, but not quite as cold as it was outside, allowing them to cover up in heavy blankets and sleep, albeit fitfully. While they did, an undead ward cast by Lysander and William's eye of alarm guarded the stairwell. Nothing disturbed it during their rest, and after about eight hours, the Wolves were ready to move upward to finally confront Count Orlok.
On the next level, they found a sacred chapel, decorated with Karrnathi art and centered around a polished stone altar and a twelve-foot statue of Lady Vol. The Wolves recognized it as a lich, but didn't know who it was. The altar began to glow with a sickly black unholy light, and the chapel's defenders, a group of Mummies and Karrnathi Skeletons, moved to attack the interlopers.
William called out a battle cry that drew the mummies to him, and he swung Vendetta into them as Brand and Resolute moved in to join the battle. Lysander opened fire with his bow and Pel blasted all of the undead with holy light. The altar's glow turned out to have a sinister meaning, as a black light flashed across William's eyes, and he found himself doing the bidding of the altar.
William spun in place and stabbed Vendetta through Pel's gut, nearly killing the very surprised priest of the Traveler. The scouts, unsure what was happening, began firing from the stairwell, launching crossbow bolts at the mummies and skeletons. The Wolves scattered away from their dominated ally, as Lysander gave a word of healing to keep Pel from bleeding out. The mummies focused their attacks on Resolute, but turned to attack William as well as the domination faded.
Pel, wounded but not out of the fight, distracted one mummy's attention with a changeling trick before destroying it with a sly flourish, and Resolute swung both of his bastard swords through another one to finish it off, right before the altar dominated him.
William charged the altar and began slashing at it with Vendetta as Resolute moved, unable to reach any foes due to the slowing effect of the domination. Lysander began trying to climb up behind the statue to topple it onto the altar, and when Brand found that his swords weren't able to damage the altar, he moved over to help.
The mummies focused their attacks on William as Pel slid over, ran his rapier up along a skeleton's ribs to give off a strange musical sound before slashing into the confused skeleton. The altar once again dominated William, and now both he and Resolute were under the sway of Vol's power.
As Pel ducked narrowly away from another swing from William, the skeletons focused their attacks on Pel and Lysander, as did the mummies. Pel slashed at another mummy, doing most of the damage in the fight while Lysander and Brand focused on staying alive and trying to topple the statue. The altar glowed once more, and Brand fell under its sway, just as Resolute managed to shake off its effects and leap up onto the altar.
William slashed at Resolute, who endured the strike, and the solid hit allowed William to regain his bearings and shake off the altar's effects momentarily, just as a skeleton moved in and tore a nasty gash in his side. Brand swung his swords at Lysander, who managed to duck long enough for Brand to regain his wits, and then the two of them began pushing against the rear of the statue. It began to tilt, but was fully pulled over when Resolute jumped up and put all of his weight on the front, bringing it down with a crash.
The altar cracked, but did not break, and William resumed attacking it. The Wolves dodged most of the attacks of the skeletons and mummies, returning fire between their attempts to destroy the altar, which continued to dominate Resolute and William in turn.
Fortunately, with the effects spotted, the Wolves were generally able to stay out of the way of their dominated allies, focusing their attacks on the altar and its skeletal and mummified allies instead. Brand finished one of the mummies off, and Pel finished the other one.
Brand and Whitehearth destroyed another skeleton, and Pel finished the last one, and a few seconds later, the Wolves turned their attention to the altar and destroyed it completely.
Bloody and battered from the attacks, the Wolves took a few minutes to rest before exploring the rest of the level. They discovered a chamber full of little pools of blood, which Pel guessed were the sacraments of various Blood of Vol cults in the area. He destroyed them with a flame strike before exploring the other room, a mostly unused alcove where priests of Vol probably rested. The Wolves again barricaded doors and set defenses and rested for another eight hours, assuming that Orlok would be the next foe they would face. Lysander treated the mummy rot of most of the group, and resisted its effects himself, but Brand was unable to shake it, and went into the final battle still suffering the curse's effects.
The next three levels of the tower were abandoned, but not entirely empty. They found unused barracks, no doubt used when this was an Emerald Claw base during the war. They found an elaborate private chamber which wasn't covered in dust, but didn't seem to see a lot of use. The bath chamber was dry and the bed never slept in. However, they did find a chest with gold and a valuable ivory bowl.
On the next level, they found the first locked door the tower had presented, and Pel picked the lock so they could go in. There, they found the tower's treasure vault, which had several bags of gold and a magical short sword that Brand claimed for his own. Lysander spotted a secret door, which led to several ritual circles. Brand identified them as locked portals, and after some discussion, the Wolves destroyed them, cutting off Orlok's avenue of escape.
Finally, the reached the top level of the tower. They listened, but couldn't hear anything beyond some whirring machinery, so William knocked down the door.
The 30-foot-high ceiling was alive with a view of the plane of Dolurrh, and below that grisly image there were putrescent zombies and Karrnathi skeletons. William charged in and found that the zombies exploded with putrescence when destroyed, calling out a warning to the others as they moved into the room.
On the other side of the room they spotted their foe, Count Orlok. He was nothing more than a brain in a jar, floating above the floor in a grotesque mockery of life, and guarding him was a stitched-together golem made up of different cadavers.
Resolute swore an oath and charged into battle against Orlok, with Brand close behind, summoning his own dimensional bond. They were making certain the creature wouldn't escape them. Before they reached him, Pel summoned a flame strike on Orlok and his golem.
The zombies and skeletons moved in to attack William and Brand, and the Cadaver Golem swung a meaty fist, punching Brand in the face. Orlok dominated Resolute briefly and turned a fearful burst of psionic energy on Brand, who was forced to flee, but who quickly came back, running up along the wall, teleporting next to Orlok and the golem and slashing out with his swords.
Pel turned his holy light on the skeletons as Lysander unleashed another Karrnathi-flavored saga of vengeance on Orlok. William, disregarding the gooey explosions of the zombies, chopped through them, spitting out putrescence and moving purposefully to destroy Orlok's skeletal allies.
The skeletons, undead warriors of Karrnath, unleashed withering attacks on Resolute and William, but the warriors paid little mind, focusing on destroying Orlok. Orlok, disturbed by the damage he had taken and the relentlessness of his foes, hovered up into the air and headed for the stairwell, hoping to escape through his portals.
As Resolute called out his name, he charged through the skeletons and golems, slashing and swinging, moving to the stairwell to prevent Orlok from escaping. Brand teleported up to slash at Orlok and then grabbed the wall, but a petulant Orlok mind-controlled him, forcing him to leap thirty feet to the floor, crashing with a sickening thud. Brand got up, woozy but still alive, and still under Orlok's sway, taking his attacks to William.
Pel, meanwhile, blasted the fleeing Orlok with daunting light, and Lysander sent out disturbing visions, and the brain in a jar was still human enough to be vulnerable to these effects. William, ignoring the attacks of his dominated ally Brand, continued to pour furious attacks on the Karrnathi skeletons and resist the angry swings of the Cadaver Golem.
Resolute finished off one of the skeletons with an off-hand strike while Pel moved in to help William with the golem.
As William and Pel continued to assault the golem, Lysander turned invisible and snuck down into the portal room, preparing a clockwork bomb for Orlok's arrival. Orlok used his mind control powers to get Resolute out of the way and flee down the stairwell, drawing flaming crossbow bolts from the scouts who waited there.
One of the skeletons moved down the stairs to help his master escape, but Resolute chased it down and destroyed it, and Brand ran past him, charging down to attack Orlok, unaware of the clockwork bomb waiting for them both.
Meanwhile, Pel stabbed deep into the golem's forehead, causing it to scream in a surprising mimicry of living pain, which William ended by slashing its head off with Vendetta.
Brand pulled up short and slashed into Orlok, cracking his glass chamber, and fluids began pouring out. The bomb detonated, destroying Orlok's brain and mechanical mechanisms, as Brand shielded his eyes from the fallout.
With Lysander offering a Traveler's Chant through chattering teeth, the Wolves were able to cover the remaining ground to the Karrnathi scout base in only a day and a half. They were still suffering from the bitter cold, with Pel suffering the worst, desperately missing the warmth of cities he had lived in his entire life.
When they got within sight of the small fortress, they realized that they weren't going to find it easy to get Lysander inside for healing. An army from the plane of Risia was laying siege to the fortress, kept at bay only by the strong stone walls and occasional bolts of alchemically-treated fiery crossbow bolts.
Circling quietly and carefully, Pel spotted a secret entrance at the rear of the castle. He and William determined that if they were able to wait for the right moment, there would be only a small patrol of ice gargoyles, an ice-touched umber hulk and a single ice archon to be taken out before they slipped inside.
Pel started things off by launching a flame strike at the archon and the umber hulk, as Brand and William closed ranks and Lysander moved up invisibly, launching an illusory decoy at the archon, which drew it's attention as Whitehearth moved in to attack.
William engaged the Umber Hulk, which bit him and held him in its jaws as he hacked relentlessly away with Terminus. An ice gargoyle, along with a frost-touched white wyrm, flew in to support the icy scouts below.
While Lysander supported William in his attacks on the Umber Hulk, Brand and Pel engaged the ice archon. Supporting fire began coming out to hit the gargoyles and the wyrm, as scouts inside the base launched alchemically-treated fiery crossbow bolts at the airborne foes.
The ice archon, battered by Brand and Pel, attempted to flee but was smashed by Pel, and Brand moved to help William and Lysander with the umber hulk.
Pel charged the frost wyrm as Lysander shifted targets to one of the ice gargoyles, and William and Brand continued to slice away at the umber hulk, which still had William in its mandibles. William drew back and stabbed the Umber Hulk through its eye, drawing strength from its screech of pain, and Pel took advantage of the opportunity to slide in and lash a deep cut across the umber hulk's back.
The ice gargoyle, suffering under Lysander's blade, bow and a dash of alchemist's fire, flew up and away, probably to get reinforcements, but it would be too late. William unleashed another deadly blow on the umber hulk, and Pel finished it off with a slash of his rapier, as Brand and Whitehearth began focusing their attacks on the wyrm.
The wyrm, though mostly undamaged by the earlier fighting, was now the focus of all the attacks, and Pel, Brand and Whitehearth used flanking and covering maneuvers to wound it and position it for the kill, which William delivered.
The battle completed, one of the scouts popped open the secret hatch to allow the Wolves access to the fortress before any of the icy assault forces could see the secret way in.
Once inside, Lysander was taken to the necromancer Roland Ochem, who cured his disease with a quick ritual. Unfortunately, this was to be the last bit of good news for a while.
William quickly realized that the man in charge was a Corporal, Drago Zhent, and Dragon revealed that he was one of General Karlach's scouts, and that most of the commanding officers and indeed many of the forces at the base had been killed when the icy creatures first attacked. They had managed to seal off the fortress, and send a courier for help, but they estimated it would be at least a week before reinforcements arrived.
Corporal Zhent explained that if this fortress fell, the Risians would immediately turn towards the citizenry of Karrnath. They had to keep the forces occupied for as long as they could, even if it meant their deaths.
Lysander, remembering his history, suggested using fiery walls built from alchemical fire to keep the Risian forces at bay, and also propped up the many dead bodies to make it look as if there were more defenders on the walls. William then used his military training to determine the best spots to fire barrels of alchemists' fire out into the enemy, where they would do the most good.
The combination of fire walls and flaming barrels kept the foes from the walls for a few days, until the fiery walls began to go out. Pel and Brand led a small force of scouts out to re-light the fires, but they encountered an umber hulk and had to flee before it brought reinforcements to deal with them.
Lysander spoke nightly to keep morale up, singing and telling tales of valor, and though the troops, and indeed the Wolves, were growing tired, on the eighth day they looked out and saw a large contingent of Karrnathi undead coming over the rise, tearing into the Risian forces and scattering them aside.
With the fortress defense maintained, Corporal Zhent, PFC PFC Fraedus Dorn, PFC Holden Kessler and PFC Sigor Hintram, bolstered by alchemist's fire from Ochem's stockpile, headed out to Iceridge Tower.
The tower stood right at the foot of the Icetop Mountains, its exterior glowing with blue energy from the plane of Risia. Floating out over the ice, defending the only entrance, was an undead Bloodkiss Beholder. It spotted the Wolves and their scouts and, screeching, moved to defend against them.
The ice was slippery, causing the Wolves and their scouts to fall, until they found their way to some snow-covered patches that were easier to stand on. The Beholder's death scream pierced the ears of William and Lysander, and was especially effective on Lysander. Lysander responded, however, with an inspiring refrain that struck at the core of what remained of the undead monster's soul, and Brand followed up by slashing into the creature. It responded by sucking the life out of William to restore its own health.
William, bloody but unafraid, went into his rain of steel stance, landing several blows on the Bloodkiss Beholder as the scouts began firing bolts into it. The Beholder lashed out, hitting the Wolves in turn, but they dealt their own damage as well, and as Pel and Brand healed themselves, Lysander and William poured on the attacks.
As William moved up to attack, he dealt a vicious blow to the Beholder, causing it to unleash another death scream, which finished off the downed PFC Hintram. However, this was the last casualty of the battle, as William, Pel and Brand closed ranks on the creature, and the other scouts showed uncanny accuracy, peppering the hideous beast with bolts into its deadened eye stalks.
Brand laid in the final attacks, stabbing his short sword into the creature's central eye and slicing at its stalks with his longsword, allowing William to finish it with one last kata of his rain of steel stance.
The Wolves, panting and bloodied, carried their gear over to one of the smaller snow hills surrounding Iceridge Tower and sat down to catch their breath. William insisted that they bury Private Sigor before they went any further, so he and Brand dug into the frozen ground enough to put the soldier into a shallow grave and then covered him up. William scowled at Pel's offer of last rites on behalf of the Traveler, but Pel had studied enough of the Soveriegn Host to say a few prayers for the young soldier, and Lysander offered up a short but stirring eulogy on behalf of their fallen ally.
Pel strayed a bit toward a nearby snowdrift, and the other Wolves looked up when they heard a loud clang in response to Pel's knock. They were soon gathered around a warforged, inert and half-frozen. As William stepped closer, his dragonmark began glowing, and the identification rune on the warforged's forehead glowed in response.
William shrugged and grunted, and so everyone turned to look to Lysander. Lysander scrutinized the mark on the warforged's forehead and said "Hmm. You know, I think I have heard of this. His name is Resolute, and he worked for the Sentinel Marshals during the Last War. But nobody has seen him for close to two decades. I wonder what he's doing here?"
Just then, the ice began to crack, as the warforged's eyes popped open, and he began flexing his mechanical muscles to get out of the frosty prison.
"What--- where's Orlok? Where's Hannah?"
William and the others were taken aback, to say the least. But they quickly determined what had happened.
Resolute was a warforged Sentinel Marshal and servant of Dol Dorn of the Sovereign Host who, along with Hannah and Alarich d'Deneith, was a deputy to Sentinel Marshal Sigor d'Deneith. He was the first one assigned to track down Count Orlok when the Emerald Claw was outlawed, and he had tracked him here to Iceridge Tower. Unfortunately, it was a trap for him, and Orlok's troops and undead were ready. About to be utterly destroyed, Resolute instead activated a plan he and Hannah had developed, allowing himself to become inert. The plan was that she would come after Orlok next, and when she found Resolute, she would use her dragonmark to "restart his systems" and the two of them could take down the necromancer together.
Apparently, William's dragonmark, just one generation removed from Hannah's, had been enough to trigger the contingency. And now the Wolves had an ally who had been waiting twenty years to pursue Orlok into Iceridge Tower.
William smashed down the double doors leading into the tower, encountering two pale blue Icetomb Wights, one Battle Wight in chainmail and a tattered Karrnathi military uniform, and one greenish undead creature seemingly stitched together. Pel warned the group that it was a blaspheme. As the creatures charged, the Wolves noticed that the floor of the first level was frozen solid with a thick layer of ice that made movement difficult.
Pel unleashed a holy light from his holy symbol, causing two of the wights to shriek in pain, as Lysander slid easily across the ice thanks to his eladrin agility, firing arrows at the wights as he charged. William and Resolute charged in to engage the Icetomb Wights, as Brand and Whitehearth moved to flank the Battle Wight.
The Blaspheme bolstered his allies with whispered words of undead power, and blasted away at Pel with unholy rays, as Pel joined Brand and Whitehearth in attacking the Battle Wight.
Resolute swung his two bastard swords with speed and deadly precision, chopping deep into the flesh of the Icetomb Wight and then into the Blaspheme, moving around the battle as one of the Icetomb Wights grabbed Pel, even as William used a reaping strike to bring down the other one. Pel felt a chill go through him from the Wight's touch and saw ice form over him, freezing him in place, although he took heart as he watched Brand cut down the Battle Wight.
The Karrnathi scouts, who had been firing their crossbows and using their longswords, were mostly ineffective against the powerful undead, and PFC Halden found himself in the sights of the Blaspheme. Before it could blast him with an unholy ray, however, Resolute charged into it, slashing his swords across its neck and leaving its head hanging by a mere thread, which Resolute then cut off with another quick swing.
Lysander pulled out his scimitar and moved to engage the remaining Icetomb Wight as Pel struggled with his icy prison. William tried to charge the Wight but fell afoul of the slippery floor, resorting to his rarely-used bow, which he fired wide, missing the target.
Brand moved over to help Lysander as the eladrin bard unleashed a sting of vicious mockery on the Blaspheme, laced with arcane power that struck even the undead's heart with shame and doubt. William got to his feet and charged as well, and before long, the Wight was surrounded by all of the Wolves, plus their ally Resolute. Brand swung the final blow, stabbing the Wight through the eye with his longsword to finish it off.
The Wolves took a short rest, their breath escaping in frozen clouds in the frigid room. Pel was feeling exhausted, but ready to go on, and the Wolves and their allies pushed forward into the spiral staircase that led higher into the tower.
On the first floor, they found a kitchen and a series of storerooms, all empty and broken down, and then moved on. A floor above, they found a decrepit dining room, once well-furnished, and a library filled with Karrnathi books, including two valuable first editions. Lysander, always welcoming new stories, stuffed the deep pockets of his magical cloak to bursting with books.
On the third floor, they interrupted a second gang of undead (Reapers, Karrnathi zombies, another Blaspheme and a female Battle Wight) in a large semicircular room full of blood, torture tools, and large tables. The Wight referred to "Orlok's machinery," and her voice and appearance was that of Hannah d'Deneith. She wielded Vendetta, a family righteous execution sword similar to William's Terminus, and it was clear that Orlok had turned his greatest foe into a twisted mockery of life, now an ally.
Resolute and William gritted their teeth, realizing there was no cure for the thing that had been their friend and relative, respectively, and that she had to be destroyed.
Hannah swung Vendetta in a high arc and slashed into Pel, who was nearest to her, and the Wolves moved in to fight. Pel, weakened and immobilized, turned invisible to regroup, while William pulled Hannah and a Reaper to him to fight. Resolute quickly joined in, swinging his swords at Hannah and the Reaper and moving to support William, as Lysander moved in through the other door in the room to take up position. The zombies moved up and attacked, knocking William back a few feet, and the Reapers demonstrated an ability to attack and then teleport and remain insubstantial for a few seconds after a successful attack.
Hannah offered mocking words to Resolute and William, but spent her attack on Brand, who teleported away, using his dragonmark to put William back into the fight in his place. Pel once again unleashed radiant light from his holy symbol, blasting all of the undead with the vengeful fury of the Traveler.
William continued to attack Hannah as Resolute swung his swords in a whirlwind at the Karrnathi zombies and Lysander unleashed disturbing visions on the Reapers.
Finally, Hannah turned her sword on William, and the two great swords of the Snow family met in combat for the first time. Brand and Whitehearth moved up to assist, biting and slashing, as William struck back with a lasting threat. Simultaneously, Pel unleashed a flame strike on the Reapers, with bursts of the flame singeing Hannah and the zombies as well.
The Blaspheme continued to bite at William as Resolute, Brand, Whitehearth and William poured attacks onto Hannah, who was weakening from the onslaught. Lysander leaped onto a table and healed William with a majestic word before launching a saga of vengeance involving Karrnathi tales he had recently learned against Hannah.
The zombies moved in to attack Brand and Pel, but the Wolves kept up their focus on Hannah. As Brand activated his dimensional bond to make sure she didn't get away, William swung Terminus in a high arc and decapitated the thing that was once his aunt.
With their leader fallen, the remaining undead fell quickly to the assault of Resolute and the Wolves. Brand and Whitehearth finished one zombie, William finished off one of the Reapers with his rain of steel stance, Brand finished another with an acrobatic strike and then combined with Whitehearth to destroy the last zombie, and Resolute finished off the Blaspheme.
Resolute pulled out one of his firestorm arrows and struck it into Hannah's corpse, incinerating his body as he said a prayer to Dol Dorn. William offered up his own farewell to his aunt while Brand and Resolute threw the remaining corpses of the undead out the hole in the tower, onto the ice below.
Weary and battered, the Wolves decided to chance a long rest. The air was cold, but not quite as cold as it was outside, allowing them to cover up in heavy blankets and sleep, albeit fitfully. While they did, an undead ward cast by Lysander and William's eye of alarm guarded the stairwell. Nothing disturbed it during their rest, and after about eight hours, the Wolves were ready to move upward to finally confront Count Orlok.
On the next level, they found a sacred chapel, decorated with Karrnathi art and centered around a polished stone altar and a twelve-foot statue of Lady Vol. The Wolves recognized it as a lich, but didn't know who it was. The altar began to glow with a sickly black unholy light, and the chapel's defenders, a group of Mummies and Karrnathi Skeletons, moved to attack the interlopers.
William called out a battle cry that drew the mummies to him, and he swung Vendetta into them as Brand and Resolute moved in to join the battle. Lysander opened fire with his bow and Pel blasted all of the undead with holy light. The altar's glow turned out to have a sinister meaning, as a black light flashed across William's eyes, and he found himself doing the bidding of the altar.
William spun in place and stabbed Vendetta through Pel's gut, nearly killing the very surprised priest of the Traveler. The scouts, unsure what was happening, began firing from the stairwell, launching crossbow bolts at the mummies and skeletons. The Wolves scattered away from their dominated ally, as Lysander gave a word of healing to keep Pel from bleeding out. The mummies focused their attacks on Resolute, but turned to attack William as well as the domination faded.
Pel, wounded but not out of the fight, distracted one mummy's attention with a changeling trick before destroying it with a sly flourish, and Resolute swung both of his bastard swords through another one to finish it off, right before the altar dominated him.
William charged the altar and began slashing at it with Vendetta as Resolute moved, unable to reach any foes due to the slowing effect of the domination. Lysander began trying to climb up behind the statue to topple it onto the altar, and when Brand found that his swords weren't able to damage the altar, he moved over to help.
The mummies focused their attacks on William as Pel slid over, ran his rapier up along a skeleton's ribs to give off a strange musical sound before slashing into the confused skeleton. The altar once again dominated William, and now both he and Resolute were under the sway of Vol's power.
As Pel ducked narrowly away from another swing from William, the skeletons focused their attacks on Pel and Lysander, as did the mummies. Pel slashed at another mummy, doing most of the damage in the fight while Lysander and Brand focused on staying alive and trying to topple the statue. The altar glowed once more, and Brand fell under its sway, just as Resolute managed to shake off its effects and leap up onto the altar.
William slashed at Resolute, who endured the strike, and the solid hit allowed William to regain his bearings and shake off the altar's effects momentarily, just as a skeleton moved in and tore a nasty gash in his side. Brand swung his swords at Lysander, who managed to duck long enough for Brand to regain his wits, and then the two of them began pushing against the rear of the statue. It began to tilt, but was fully pulled over when Resolute jumped up and put all of his weight on the front, bringing it down with a crash.
The altar cracked, but did not break, and William resumed attacking it. The Wolves dodged most of the attacks of the skeletons and mummies, returning fire between their attempts to destroy the altar, which continued to dominate Resolute and William in turn.
Fortunately, with the effects spotted, the Wolves were generally able to stay out of the way of their dominated allies, focusing their attacks on the altar and its skeletal and mummified allies instead. Brand finished one of the mummies off, and Pel finished the other one.
Brand and Whitehearth destroyed another skeleton, and Pel finished the last one, and a few seconds later, the Wolves turned their attention to the altar and destroyed it completely.
Bloody and battered from the attacks, the Wolves took a few minutes to rest before exploring the rest of the level. They discovered a chamber full of little pools of blood, which Pel guessed were the sacraments of various Blood of Vol cults in the area. He destroyed them with a flame strike before exploring the other room, a mostly unused alcove where priests of Vol probably rested. The Wolves again barricaded doors and set defenses and rested for another eight hours, assuming that Orlok would be the next foe they would face. Lysander treated the mummy rot of most of the group, and resisted its effects himself, but Brand was unable to shake it, and went into the final battle still suffering the curse's effects.
The next three levels of the tower were abandoned, but not entirely empty. They found unused barracks, no doubt used when this was an Emerald Claw base during the war. They found an elaborate private chamber which wasn't covered in dust, but didn't seem to see a lot of use. The bath chamber was dry and the bed never slept in. However, they did find a chest with gold and a valuable ivory bowl.
On the next level, they found the first locked door the tower had presented, and Pel picked the lock so they could go in. There, they found the tower's treasure vault, which had several bags of gold and a magical short sword that Brand claimed for his own. Lysander spotted a secret door, which led to several ritual circles. Brand identified them as locked portals, and after some discussion, the Wolves destroyed them, cutting off Orlok's avenue of escape.
Finally, the reached the top level of the tower. They listened, but couldn't hear anything beyond some whirring machinery, so William knocked down the door.
The 30-foot-high ceiling was alive with a view of the plane of Dolurrh, and below that grisly image there were putrescent zombies and Karrnathi skeletons. William charged in and found that the zombies exploded with putrescence when destroyed, calling out a warning to the others as they moved into the room.
On the other side of the room they spotted their foe, Count Orlok. He was nothing more than a brain in a jar, floating above the floor in a grotesque mockery of life, and guarding him was a stitched-together golem made up of different cadavers.
Resolute swore an oath and charged into battle against Orlok, with Brand close behind, summoning his own dimensional bond. They were making certain the creature wouldn't escape them. Before they reached him, Pel summoned a flame strike on Orlok and his golem.
The zombies and skeletons moved in to attack William and Brand, and the Cadaver Golem swung a meaty fist, punching Brand in the face. Orlok dominated Resolute briefly and turned a fearful burst of psionic energy on Brand, who was forced to flee, but who quickly came back, running up along the wall, teleporting next to Orlok and the golem and slashing out with his swords.
Pel turned his holy light on the skeletons as Lysander unleashed another Karrnathi-flavored saga of vengeance on Orlok. William, disregarding the gooey explosions of the zombies, chopped through them, spitting out putrescence and moving purposefully to destroy Orlok's skeletal allies.
The skeletons, undead warriors of Karrnath, unleashed withering attacks on Resolute and William, but the warriors paid little mind, focusing on destroying Orlok. Orlok, disturbed by the damage he had taken and the relentlessness of his foes, hovered up into the air and headed for the stairwell, hoping to escape through his portals.
As Resolute called out his name, he charged through the skeletons and golems, slashing and swinging, moving to the stairwell to prevent Orlok from escaping. Brand teleported up to slash at Orlok and then grabbed the wall, but a petulant Orlok mind-controlled him, forcing him to leap thirty feet to the floor, crashing with a sickening thud. Brand got up, woozy but still alive, and still under Orlok's sway, taking his attacks to William.
Pel, meanwhile, blasted the fleeing Orlok with daunting light, and Lysander sent out disturbing visions, and the brain in a jar was still human enough to be vulnerable to these effects. William, ignoring the attacks of his dominated ally Brand, continued to pour furious attacks on the Karrnathi skeletons and resist the angry swings of the Cadaver Golem.
Resolute finished off one of the skeletons with an off-hand strike while Pel moved in to help William with the golem.
As William and Pel continued to assault the golem, Lysander turned invisible and snuck down into the portal room, preparing a clockwork bomb for Orlok's arrival. Orlok used his mind control powers to get Resolute out of the way and flee down the stairwell, drawing flaming crossbow bolts from the scouts who waited there.
One of the skeletons moved down the stairs to help his master escape, but Resolute chased it down and destroyed it, and Brand ran past him, charging down to attack Orlok, unaware of the clockwork bomb waiting for them both.
Meanwhile, Pel stabbed deep into the golem's forehead, causing it to scream in a surprising mimicry of living pain, which William ended by slashing its head off with Vendetta.
Brand pulled up short and slashed into Orlok, cracking his glass chamber, and fluids began pouring out. The bomb detonated, destroying Orlok's brain and mechanical mechanisms, as Brand shielded his eyes from the fallout.
Game Schedule March - May
March 19th - D&D Against the Giants (Randy, Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
March 26th - Dominion (Randy, Ben, Nate?, Dave? Dan?)
April 2nd - D&D Against the Giants (Randy, Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
April 9th - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 2 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
April 16th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
April 23rd - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 3 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
April 30th - Rock Band at Randy's House - maybe? (Free Comic Book Day next morning)
May 7th - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 4 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
May 14th - D&D Against the Giants (Randy, Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
May 21st - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
May 28th - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
March 26th - Dominion (Randy, Ben, Nate?, Dave? Dan?)
April 2nd - D&D Against the Giants (Randy, Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
April 9th - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 2 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
April 16th - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
April 23rd - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 3 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
April 30th - Rock Band at Randy's House - maybe? (Free Comic Book Day next morning)
May 7th - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 4 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
May 14th - D&D Against the Giants (Randy, Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
May 21st - D&D Against the Giants (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max, Randy)
May 28th - Wandering Wolves (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Game Schedule March - April
A little weirdness in March and April, because of STAPLE!, birthdays, Houston Comics-palooza and all that surrounds that. So... tentatively:
February 19th - Wandering Wolves: Scars of Karrnath Part 4 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Dan, Paul)
February 26th - D&D Circle of Love (Randy, Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
March 5th - No Gaming - STAPLE!
March 12th - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 1 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
March 19th - D&D Circle of Love (Randy, Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
March 26th - Dominion (Randy, Ben, Dave, Jason?, Dan?)
April 2nd - D&D Circle of Love (Randy, Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
April 9th - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 3 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
April 16th - D&D Circle of Love (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
April 23rd - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 4 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
April 30th - D&D Circle of Love (Dan, Ben, Randy, Joe & Jamie, Max)
The 16th is tentative. There may be a LEOG trip to New Orleans, and if so I'll be out for that. But you guys could play without me.
Btw, the first week of May is a no-go for gaming as well. Free Comic Book Day and all that entails. We will probably do a Rock Band get together that Friday with the FCBD guests.
How does this look for everybody?
February 19th - Wandering Wolves: Scars of Karrnath Part 4 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Dan, Paul)
February 26th - D&D Circle of Love (Randy, Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
March 5th - No Gaming - STAPLE!
March 12th - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 1 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
March 19th - D&D Circle of Love (Randy, Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
March 26th - Dominion (Randy, Ben, Dave, Jason?, Dan?)
April 2nd - D&D Circle of Love (Randy, Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
April 9th - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 3 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
April 16th - D&D Circle of Love (Dan, Ben, Joe & Jamie, Max)
April 23rd - Wandering Wolves: What Waits In The Dark Part 4 (Randy, Chris, Jason, Ben, Nate, Paul)
April 30th - D&D Circle of Love (Dan, Ben, Randy, Joe & Jamie, Max)
The 16th is tentative. There may be a LEOG trip to New Orleans, and if so I'll be out for that. But you guys could play without me.
Btw, the first week of May is a no-go for gaming as well. Free Comic Book Day and all that entails. We will probably do a Rock Band get together that Friday with the FCBD guests.
How does this look for everybody?
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Wandering Wolves: Scars of Karrnath (1)
Zarantyr 2 - Zarantyr 15, YK 1000
Having driven off the attack by Cavoletta and her allies, the Wolves turned their attentions to Breyten d'Orien and Url, who were in deep trouble with House Tharashk and House Orien. Brand sent a Sivis message to his father, who was arrested immediately upon entering the Orien enclave in Passage, as he'd expected. However, it took only a few hours for that to change.
Aeromus d'Orien was arrested and taken into custody by House Orien security, and a trial was scheduled for him and Traega, to determine the truth of what was going on with both of them. House Orien requested that Breyten and Url be sent back to Passage for the trial, and the Wolves decided that, in addition to security from Houses Orien, Tharashk and Deneith, they would send Luggoth with them to make sure the two of them arrived in Passage and were incarcerated. They made arrangements for Luggoth to come and meet them in Karrnath when he was done.
The rest of the Wolves went to their linked portals on Silver Lake Isle and traveled to Korth, where they were met by a House Orien coach that was to take them to Karrlakton to meet with General Gustavus Karlach, commander of Karrnathi military forces in that city.
Karrnath was in the throes of the worst blizzard that anyone could remember, colder than many of the Wolves had ever been. William thoroughly enjoyed the chance to revisit his homeland... the rest of the Wolves weren't so fond of being without their creature comforts of Sharn or the Wolves' Reward.
The travel took a few days, but it was uneventful. Throughout most of the journey, the windows on the coach had a view of the Mournland, which was unsettling to say the least. Freezing weather and the dead, gray mist of the Mournland left most of the Wolves with a less-than-pleasant first impression of Karrnath.
After two days of travel, they had a brief stop in the town of Vurgenslye, and then they traveled for another day and a half, reaching Karrlakton late in the day. The coach deposited them at the headquarters for Karrlakton's military, and they were greeted by Corporal Hanish Viett, who took them in to General Karlach's office.
Karlach, a man in his early sixties, was dressed in his full military uniform, complete with a number of medals and ribbons, and wearing the ring of the Order of Rekkenmark, as well as a fur hat in the Karrnathi style. William quickly recognized that Karlach was a highly-decorated officer.
Karlach offered the Wolves some vedbread (crusty bread with sharp ved cheese) and lamb and vegetable stew, and then proceeded to tell them why he had asked to see them.
"I was an officer in the Karrnathi military during the Last War. I saw action in the Talenta Plains and the Mror Holds, but for most of the war I battled against Thrane. Just after I was promoted to lieutenant, I met Count Werner ir'Orlok. It was in 961, during the Siege of Shadukar, under the command of General Horacht. We took Shadukar and pillaged it completely, with necromancers reviving the bodies of their foes to bolster the ranks of their armies. When we were finally forced out by Thranish troops a year later, Horacht ordered them to shut the gates of the city and put it to the torch, leaving the city an utter ruin, filled with dead and undead."
"It was a horrible thing, but much as I disliked them, I followed my orders. I didn't like Orlok, though... he was creepy, even for a necromancer, and I got the sense that he was sizing him up for some kind of horrible projects."
"I was very nearly your uncle, William, and I should have been. I met your aunt Hannah when I was home visiting family in Karrlakton. She was 19, and had just begun work as a Blademark, and I was was 37, and had just been promoted to Major. We shared a long distance courtship throughout the war, never in one place long enough to spend more than few days together. I proposed to her after a few years, but both of us knew that nothing would come of it until after the war was over."
"When Cyre was destroyed, we both knew the war was coming to an end, and we both transferred back to Karrlakton. I took over command of the forces here, and Hannah took a job training Sentinel Marshals instead of going on active missions so frequently. We made plans to marry as soon as the war was officially over. Just after these plans were made, Hannah had to go out to rescue some of her students who had disappeared on a mission into the Shadow Marches, chasing rumors that Count Orlok had been risen from the dead. She never came back."
"I've always assumed that Orlok killed her, but I've been searching for him ever since. I've hired House Tharashk scouts and inquisitors, as well as my own scouts, and one of them came to me a few weeks ago to tell me he spotted activity in Iceridge Tower in the Icetop Mountains, which was one of Orlok's labs during the war."
"If it is Orlok, my scouts will need stronger support to handle him. If the Wolves will go up to the base and rendezvous with my scouts, I'm willing to pay each of you. In addition, I have some pull with the Sentinel Marshals, and I know, William, that you have petitioned to become one. If you can capture or kill Orlok, I think I can get them to make you a Sentinel Marshal."
Karlach handed each of the Wolves a small pouch, with an extra one for Luggoth. Inside was gold, platinum and a gem for expenses.
He then asked if William would indulge him in a game of Conqueror. William hadn't played the game since he was a boy, and after an early lead, the general began dominating his game. The Wolves decided to help, with Lysander engaging the general in talk of stories and history from the region, while Brand spotted weaknesses in the general's game and imparted them to William, and Pel tried to convince the general that William's game was stronger than it looked.
The combined efforts of the Wolves won the game, although William wasn't entirely happy to have, in his mind, cheated. Karlach accepted the loss with a smile and told William that he should practice, making it clear that he thought the Wolves' help was a fair counterbalance to his much greater experience with the game.
After doing a little shopping in Karrlakton, and spotting a number of doomsayers in the Mournland-adjacent city, the Wolves boarded the Orien coach again. They traveled for 3 days to Vedykar, then 3 and a half more days to Vulyar, where they boarded the Eastern Line lightning rail. After about 15 hours of travel, they arrived in the small mining town of Irontown.
There they were met by a House Vadalis representative who gave them four magebred horses to take out to the base. The horses had camping and cold weather gear on them, and the Wolves bundled up to head into the freezing weather. It helped a little, but they still found the weather absolutely chilling, and travel was extremely tiring.
After two days in the blizzard, exhausted from the cold, they realized that they were lost, and that the white, mostly featureless landscape offered few clues which direction to go. Fortunately, William was able to recall some elements of the Karrnathi wilderness from his school days that pointed them in what they thought was the northeast, and Brand was able to discern from the way the snow fell that they were nearing Lake Dark, which was the correct way to go. Lysander recalled a story he had heard about a soldier lost in a blizzard, and some of the things he had done to survive, and finally all of the Wolves were able to spot the faintest trail leading to a cottage, with light in the windows.
The cottage belonged to Kravitz and Hestia Bonne. Kravitz was a one-legged veteran of the Last War, and it was clear to the Wolves from the symbols in their home that they were worshipers of the Blood of Vol. This, they explained, was why they lived in isolation away from the town, and they also said that they held no love for the Emerald Claw and its bastardization of their religion. The Bonnes were smithys, and they sold armor and weapons to Irontown from time to time.
After serving some food to the Wolves, they told them that they had recently celebrated Revelation Day at their temple, but that their priest, a mummy, and the rest of the followers had betrayed them. They had used the blood from the ritual to create a blood elemental that they intended to take with them to the Mror Holds for some kind of Emerald Claw operation. When that time came, they would come down from the temple to get Hestia and Kravitz, and they would either have to go with them or be killed as traitors to the cause.
Kravitz asked if the Wolves, in exchange for a safe place to sleep and rest, would go to the temple and deal with the Vol cult. The Wolves were all too eager to do this anyway, and so, after a night of sleep and warmth that got them back to their fully rested and ready selves, they followed Hestia out into the snow once more to find the Blood of Vol temple.
The temple was a few hours away from the cottage, and it was a fairly impressive structure, built of stone with stain-glass windows and only one entrance. William, never once for ceremony, kicked open the doors and charged in.
The mummy was overseeing a ceremony in the candle-lit temple, surrounded by close to a dozen cultists, and a blood elemental and blood amniote, a kind of ooze, stood in the center of the temple.
William moved in to draw both the elemental and the amniote to him, and managed to keep their focus on him throughout the battle. Pel, Brand and Lysander spread out throughout the temple in preparation for the battle.
Two of the cultists revealed themselves as warlocks, firing desiccating curses at Brand and William, and following up with deadly curses that scoured the flesh more quickly from their foes. As William continued to battle the amniote, the elemental and the occasional cultist, Brand and Lysander made quick work of some of the cultists, and Pel engaged the mummy.
His opening salvo was to blast it with the scourging radiant light of the Traveler, then he pulled out his scimitar and began hacking at him, as Brand moved in to help. Lysander, with help from Whitehearth, engaged two of the more brutish cultists.
The mummy focused attacks with his skull-headed mace on Pel, and before long, all of the Wolves had plenty of scrapes and bruises. The desiccating curses were taking their toll on Brand, who was barely able to remain on his feet, and the elemental and the amniote had been pounding relentlessly on William.
With most of the cultists dealt with, the wounded Wolves focused their attacks on the mummy and his blood elementals. Pel called down a flame strike that set the mummy on fire and damaged the last remaining cultist, who fell under the sway of Lysander's persuasion and found himself marching toward the snow outside, firing his bow back at his tormentors without much effect.
The mummy, on fire and dying, stumbled into William's reign of steel stance, and William swung Terminus and cleaved the undead priest's head from his shoulders. A wave of necrotic energy swept out from him, infecting all of the Wolves with the curse of mummy rot. William turned back to attack the elemental and the amniote, and Pel moved in to join him. Brand teleported in and finished the elemental with a flurry of his blades, right after it managed to smash William into unconsciousness.
The Wolves focused their attacks on the amniote, and Lysander finished it off with a song powerful enough to cause deathly fear in the barely sentient ooze. As Pel moved to bandage William, Brand charged outside and finished off the last remaining cultist before he could return to cause more trouble.
Searching the blood-soaked temple, the Wolves found a couple of rooms where they could rest, shielded from the elements. They also found the cult's treasury, which included valuable gems and gold, as well as a blood red potion of vitality brewed from the blood of the cultists and the mummy's herbs. In addition, William found a letter from Count Orlok, clearly addressed to the mummy. It read:
"I have word that our operation in the Mror Holds has encountered some difficulties. The resistance at the mining operation is more severe than anticipated, and I have a request to provide some reinforcements. As you are the nearest Blood of Vol cult available, and my own forces are busy providing security here at the tower, I need you to take as much force as you can muster to the ir'Mroranon mining operation as soon as possible. Perhaps the ritual you had been working on to create constructs of blood would be useful to this purpose.
Lady Vol will look on your assistance quite favorably. The dragonshards we are procuring at the mining colony are crucial to Operation: Ascendance."
Lysander ministered to each of the Wolves to deal with the after-effects of the mummy's curse, and with his help, all of them managed to shake off mummy rot. Unfortunately, Lysander himself didn't, and the next morning, the hale and hearty Wolves saw that their elven companion looked sallow, sickly and near-death. They realized that in order to save him, they'd have to journey for two days across the blizzard conditions without resting, for fear of Lysander taking a turn for the worse.
Having driven off the attack by Cavoletta and her allies, the Wolves turned their attentions to Breyten d'Orien and Url, who were in deep trouble with House Tharashk and House Orien. Brand sent a Sivis message to his father, who was arrested immediately upon entering the Orien enclave in Passage, as he'd expected. However, it took only a few hours for that to change.
Aeromus d'Orien was arrested and taken into custody by House Orien security, and a trial was scheduled for him and Traega, to determine the truth of what was going on with both of them. House Orien requested that Breyten and Url be sent back to Passage for the trial, and the Wolves decided that, in addition to security from Houses Orien, Tharashk and Deneith, they would send Luggoth with them to make sure the two of them arrived in Passage and were incarcerated. They made arrangements for Luggoth to come and meet them in Karrnath when he was done.
The rest of the Wolves went to their linked portals on Silver Lake Isle and traveled to Korth, where they were met by a House Orien coach that was to take them to Karrlakton to meet with General Gustavus Karlach, commander of Karrnathi military forces in that city.
Karrnath was in the throes of the worst blizzard that anyone could remember, colder than many of the Wolves had ever been. William thoroughly enjoyed the chance to revisit his homeland... the rest of the Wolves weren't so fond of being without their creature comforts of Sharn or the Wolves' Reward.
The travel took a few days, but it was uneventful. Throughout most of the journey, the windows on the coach had a view of the Mournland, which was unsettling to say the least. Freezing weather and the dead, gray mist of the Mournland left most of the Wolves with a less-than-pleasant first impression of Karrnath.
After two days of travel, they had a brief stop in the town of Vurgenslye, and then they traveled for another day and a half, reaching Karrlakton late in the day. The coach deposited them at the headquarters for Karrlakton's military, and they were greeted by Corporal Hanish Viett, who took them in to General Karlach's office.
Karlach, a man in his early sixties, was dressed in his full military uniform, complete with a number of medals and ribbons, and wearing the ring of the Order of Rekkenmark, as well as a fur hat in the Karrnathi style. William quickly recognized that Karlach was a highly-decorated officer.
Karlach offered the Wolves some vedbread (crusty bread with sharp ved cheese) and lamb and vegetable stew, and then proceeded to tell them why he had asked to see them.
"I was an officer in the Karrnathi military during the Last War. I saw action in the Talenta Plains and the Mror Holds, but for most of the war I battled against Thrane. Just after I was promoted to lieutenant, I met Count Werner ir'Orlok. It was in 961, during the Siege of Shadukar, under the command of General Horacht. We took Shadukar and pillaged it completely, with necromancers reviving the bodies of their foes to bolster the ranks of their armies. When we were finally forced out by Thranish troops a year later, Horacht ordered them to shut the gates of the city and put it to the torch, leaving the city an utter ruin, filled with dead and undead."
"It was a horrible thing, but much as I disliked them, I followed my orders. I didn't like Orlok, though... he was creepy, even for a necromancer, and I got the sense that he was sizing him up for some kind of horrible projects."
"I was very nearly your uncle, William, and I should have been. I met your aunt Hannah when I was home visiting family in Karrlakton. She was 19, and had just begun work as a Blademark, and I was was 37, and had just been promoted to Major. We shared a long distance courtship throughout the war, never in one place long enough to spend more than few days together. I proposed to her after a few years, but both of us knew that nothing would come of it until after the war was over."
"When Cyre was destroyed, we both knew the war was coming to an end, and we both transferred back to Karrlakton. I took over command of the forces here, and Hannah took a job training Sentinel Marshals instead of going on active missions so frequently. We made plans to marry as soon as the war was officially over. Just after these plans were made, Hannah had to go out to rescue some of her students who had disappeared on a mission into the Shadow Marches, chasing rumors that Count Orlok had been risen from the dead. She never came back."
"I've always assumed that Orlok killed her, but I've been searching for him ever since. I've hired House Tharashk scouts and inquisitors, as well as my own scouts, and one of them came to me a few weeks ago to tell me he spotted activity in Iceridge Tower in the Icetop Mountains, which was one of Orlok's labs during the war."
"If it is Orlok, my scouts will need stronger support to handle him. If the Wolves will go up to the base and rendezvous with my scouts, I'm willing to pay each of you. In addition, I have some pull with the Sentinel Marshals, and I know, William, that you have petitioned to become one. If you can capture or kill Orlok, I think I can get them to make you a Sentinel Marshal."
Karlach handed each of the Wolves a small pouch, with an extra one for Luggoth. Inside was gold, platinum and a gem for expenses.
He then asked if William would indulge him in a game of Conqueror. William hadn't played the game since he was a boy, and after an early lead, the general began dominating his game. The Wolves decided to help, with Lysander engaging the general in talk of stories and history from the region, while Brand spotted weaknesses in the general's game and imparted them to William, and Pel tried to convince the general that William's game was stronger than it looked.
The combined efforts of the Wolves won the game, although William wasn't entirely happy to have, in his mind, cheated. Karlach accepted the loss with a smile and told William that he should practice, making it clear that he thought the Wolves' help was a fair counterbalance to his much greater experience with the game.
After doing a little shopping in Karrlakton, and spotting a number of doomsayers in the Mournland-adjacent city, the Wolves boarded the Orien coach again. They traveled for 3 days to Vedykar, then 3 and a half more days to Vulyar, where they boarded the Eastern Line lightning rail. After about 15 hours of travel, they arrived in the small mining town of Irontown.
There they were met by a House Vadalis representative who gave them four magebred horses to take out to the base. The horses had camping and cold weather gear on them, and the Wolves bundled up to head into the freezing weather. It helped a little, but they still found the weather absolutely chilling, and travel was extremely tiring.
After two days in the blizzard, exhausted from the cold, they realized that they were lost, and that the white, mostly featureless landscape offered few clues which direction to go. Fortunately, William was able to recall some elements of the Karrnathi wilderness from his school days that pointed them in what they thought was the northeast, and Brand was able to discern from the way the snow fell that they were nearing Lake Dark, which was the correct way to go. Lysander recalled a story he had heard about a soldier lost in a blizzard, and some of the things he had done to survive, and finally all of the Wolves were able to spot the faintest trail leading to a cottage, with light in the windows.
The cottage belonged to Kravitz and Hestia Bonne. Kravitz was a one-legged veteran of the Last War, and it was clear to the Wolves from the symbols in their home that they were worshipers of the Blood of Vol. This, they explained, was why they lived in isolation away from the town, and they also said that they held no love for the Emerald Claw and its bastardization of their religion. The Bonnes were smithys, and they sold armor and weapons to Irontown from time to time.
After serving some food to the Wolves, they told them that they had recently celebrated Revelation Day at their temple, but that their priest, a mummy, and the rest of the followers had betrayed them. They had used the blood from the ritual to create a blood elemental that they intended to take with them to the Mror Holds for some kind of Emerald Claw operation. When that time came, they would come down from the temple to get Hestia and Kravitz, and they would either have to go with them or be killed as traitors to the cause.
Kravitz asked if the Wolves, in exchange for a safe place to sleep and rest, would go to the temple and deal with the Vol cult. The Wolves were all too eager to do this anyway, and so, after a night of sleep and warmth that got them back to their fully rested and ready selves, they followed Hestia out into the snow once more to find the Blood of Vol temple.
The temple was a few hours away from the cottage, and it was a fairly impressive structure, built of stone with stain-glass windows and only one entrance. William, never once for ceremony, kicked open the doors and charged in.
The mummy was overseeing a ceremony in the candle-lit temple, surrounded by close to a dozen cultists, and a blood elemental and blood amniote, a kind of ooze, stood in the center of the temple.
William moved in to draw both the elemental and the amniote to him, and managed to keep their focus on him throughout the battle. Pel, Brand and Lysander spread out throughout the temple in preparation for the battle.
Two of the cultists revealed themselves as warlocks, firing desiccating curses at Brand and William, and following up with deadly curses that scoured the flesh more quickly from their foes. As William continued to battle the amniote, the elemental and the occasional cultist, Brand and Lysander made quick work of some of the cultists, and Pel engaged the mummy.
His opening salvo was to blast it with the scourging radiant light of the Traveler, then he pulled out his scimitar and began hacking at him, as Brand moved in to help. Lysander, with help from Whitehearth, engaged two of the more brutish cultists.
The mummy focused attacks with his skull-headed mace on Pel, and before long, all of the Wolves had plenty of scrapes and bruises. The desiccating curses were taking their toll on Brand, who was barely able to remain on his feet, and the elemental and the amniote had been pounding relentlessly on William.
With most of the cultists dealt with, the wounded Wolves focused their attacks on the mummy and his blood elementals. Pel called down a flame strike that set the mummy on fire and damaged the last remaining cultist, who fell under the sway of Lysander's persuasion and found himself marching toward the snow outside, firing his bow back at his tormentors without much effect.
The mummy, on fire and dying, stumbled into William's reign of steel stance, and William swung Terminus and cleaved the undead priest's head from his shoulders. A wave of necrotic energy swept out from him, infecting all of the Wolves with the curse of mummy rot. William turned back to attack the elemental and the amniote, and Pel moved in to join him. Brand teleported in and finished the elemental with a flurry of his blades, right after it managed to smash William into unconsciousness.
The Wolves focused their attacks on the amniote, and Lysander finished it off with a song powerful enough to cause deathly fear in the barely sentient ooze. As Pel moved to bandage William, Brand charged outside and finished off the last remaining cultist before he could return to cause more trouble.
Searching the blood-soaked temple, the Wolves found a couple of rooms where they could rest, shielded from the elements. They also found the cult's treasury, which included valuable gems and gold, as well as a blood red potion of vitality brewed from the blood of the cultists and the mummy's herbs. In addition, William found a letter from Count Orlok, clearly addressed to the mummy. It read:
"I have word that our operation in the Mror Holds has encountered some difficulties. The resistance at the mining operation is more severe than anticipated, and I have a request to provide some reinforcements. As you are the nearest Blood of Vol cult available, and my own forces are busy providing security here at the tower, I need you to take as much force as you can muster to the ir'Mroranon mining operation as soon as possible. Perhaps the ritual you had been working on to create constructs of blood would be useful to this purpose.
Lady Vol will look on your assistance quite favorably. The dragonshards we are procuring at the mining colony are crucial to Operation: Ascendance."
Lysander ministered to each of the Wolves to deal with the after-effects of the mummy's curse, and with his help, all of them managed to shake off mummy rot. Unfortunately, Lysander himself didn't, and the next morning, the hale and hearty Wolves saw that their elven companion looked sallow, sickly and near-death. They realized that in order to save him, they'd have to journey for two days across the blizzard conditions without resting, for fear of Lysander taking a turn for the worse.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Wandering Wolves: The Opening of the Wolves' Reward
Vult 27, YK 999 - Zarantyr 2, YK 1000
With only a few days until the opening of the Wolves' Reward, Brand gathered the Wolves in the war room and told them that he had received a communication from his father.
Brand and Traega had done some exploring in the Shadow Marches and found a rich dragonshard field, which they offered to House Orien as a way to buy Traega some favor with the House again. Traega arranged to have the map sent to the Orien enclave in Passage, where one of his contacts would get it to the higher-ups so it could be sold to House Tharashk, who would pay handsomely for another field in the area.
Traega's contact stole the map and passed it off to Aeromus, Brand's uncle, who immediately made plans to sell it directly to House Tharashk, cutting Orien (and Traega) out entirely. This sale was to take place at the gathering of the Houses for the opening of the Wolves' Reward, where no one would think anything of high-ranking scions of the House meeting.
Fortunately, Traega had anticipated something like this, and had sent a false map to his contact. He sent the real map to Brand and instructed him to watch Aeromus's agent during the opening of the Wolves' Reward, and to put the real map into House Tharashk's hands immediately after Aeromus's agent handed over the false map. The result would be Tharashk's anger at nearly being sold a fake map and House Orien's anger at being cut out of a deal, and with Traega heading to Passage as soon as the switch was made, the hope was that Traega would be reinstated and Aeromus arrested.
Counseled by Pel and Lysander, Brand determined that the best thing to do was make sure that the representatives from House Orien and House Tharashk didn't see each other until the gala on opening night, and to make sure they were in the semi-private dining room on that night, more or less assuring the time and place of the hand-off.
On the morning of Vult 27, the Wolves gathered with the ambassadors from Galifar's Hope to greet the Daughters of Sora Kell, making a rare appearance outside Droaam. They came walking up to the casino entrance with an Oni mage, Crezyan Rrac, in tow. The Wolves couldn't say anything about Crezyan Rrac's role in the plot, nor his ties to the Lords of Dust, without implicating themselves, and they weren't happy to hear that Crezyan was being appointed the Droaam ambassador to Galifar's Hope.
They were even less happy when Sora Teraza declared "This place will be baptized in blood." She then stared at Luggoth and said "I would speak with you" before heading inside and up to Galifar's Hope.
With that nerve-rattling meeting over, the Wolves went back inside the casino to deal with various business. Lysander was running all over the casino making sure that the opening night festivities, including performances in the Wolfsong Hall, The Wanderers' Prospect and Rorsa's Den were going according to plan. Brand was coordinating with Chance, the casino manager, and Diarmand, the casino's head of security, on the House Orien/House Tharashk intrigues, and Pel, William and Luggoth went up to visit the Daughters of Sora Kell.
While Pel and William stood in the hallway talking with the beautiful Sora Katra with Sora Maenya and Crezyan Rrac looking on, Luggoth went in to speak with Sora Teraza, the oracle. She told him of her interpretation of the Prophecy, that his murder of Jaela Daran was preordained, but that she believed that it would be done to save the world from plunging into darkness. She also explained that some of the Chamber, and the Lords of Dust, did not believe this, and thought that Luggoth was to be responsible for plunging the world into darkness. In addition, she revealed that the Prophecy indicated that Luggoth was going to kill Ttemmal the Rakshasa, which was why he had sometimes disobeyed his masters' wishes and tried to murder Luggoth instead of corrupting him.
Luggoth insisted that he didn't care what the Prophecy said, that he was going to do what he could for his friends and loved ones, and the Prophecy be damned, but Sora Teraza insisted that the Prophecy would determine what happened to Luggoth and his friends, and that he therefore cared very much. In addition, she told him that his role in the Prophecy made him important, and that many would seek to curry favor with him. Sora Teraza was no different, and she told Luggoth that if she had further information for him in the future, she might send for him.
As Luggoth had a thoroughly uncomfortable meeting with Sora Teraza, William and Pel had an equally, if differently, uncomfortable meeting outside. William did his best to stare down Crezyan Rrac, remembering his attempts to kill the Wolves. Pel engaged in verbal repartee with Sora Katra, and was surprised and discomfited to learn that her skill with diplomatic double-speak and hidden meanings surpassed his. Without directly saying anything, Pel was able to discern that the Hags knew all about the Wolves' involvement in Breland's attempted assassination coup, and that they knew as well that Crezyan Rrac was an agent of the Lords of Dust. He was also able to learn that Sora Katra preferred to know the secret agenda of their ambassador, rather than to have someone whose betrayal might be unpredictable.
Fully convinced that the Daughters of Sora Kell were formidable opponents, the Wolves descended by air skiff back down to the casino, where they were met by Brand, who informed them of what had been going on while they had their meeting.
The House Orien contingent had shown up at midday, and in addition to a dozen Orien representatives, they were led by Aeromus's son, Brand's cousin, the weaselly Breyten d'Orien, with the bestial Url Conaway accompanying him as security. Url had come to Brand and informed him that his scouts had seen a group of fey creatures advancing out of the Whitehorn Wood, moving to rendezvous with a larger army in the Eldeen Reaches, which was almost certainly planning an assault on the Wolves' branch of civilization in what they considered their wild. He counseled sending the most powerful agents the Wolves could manage to deal with these leaders before larger trouble resulted.
Even though they knew it was a distraction, the Wolves couldn't afford to ignore it. They left Lysander and Chance to make sure that the House Tharashk and House Orien groups didn't meet up early and took magebred horses to the south to deal with this enemy force.
The enemy force was made up of a unicorn, a firbolg hounder, a centaur hunter, a shifter representing the Children of Winter and four cyclops.
The unicorn charged and impaled William, who was suddenly forced to take it much more seriously as a foe, as Pel engaged the Firbolg by calling down a flame strike on him and his allies. Brand, in a blur of speed and teleportation, rushed across the river to engage the centaur archer in melee, as Luggoth flew into his frost rage and attacked the other shifter.
None of the Wolves present understood the elven that their foes spoke, but they were able to discern their motives when the centaur barked out a command and the cyclops turned to attack Brand, using the flat of their blades. Clearly, they had been told to capture a House Orien scion at least, quite possibly Brand specifically.
William maintained his reign of steel stance, keeping the Firbolg and Unicorn close to him as Luggoth stayed with and killed the Children of Winter Doomspeaker. Pel used all his deceptive talents and martial talents to cut the Firbolg and leave him bleeding, finishing him off by cutting off one leg and then, when he had fallen to the ground, slicing his throat open.
Brand kept at the centaur with his blades as the centaur responded with arrows, until Whitehearth was able to finish it off, bringing it down and tearing out his throat. The Wolves had hoped to capture one of the attackers, but the unicorn put on a burst of speed and fled down the river.
It was an eight hour trip back to the casino, and it was the middle of the night when they arrived. The Deneith blademark at the door told them that Diarmand had been looking for them, and had a few things to tell them, so they went to wake him up. They found him in his room with a giggling young woman in his bed, which did not amuse William at all.
Fortunately, they also learned that while matters of interest had occurred while they were away, none of them were terribly urgent, at least as far as the Wolves were concerned. A female-identified warforged named Scabbard had arrived, claiming to represent the Lord of Blades and wanting a seat at the table at Galifar's Hope to represent their new nation, formed in the Mournland, which had caused quite a stir with the ambassadors. In addition, Josilian d'Tiarlan of House Sivis and a Blood of Vol priestess named Ermena Dorn had both requested an audience with Pel. He resolved to meet with them in the morning.
Brand went to talk with Lysander, and learned that the House Tharashk contingent had arrived and immediately been taken to Rorsa's Den for some bawdy entertainment that they were now sleeping off, and they hadn't had any interaction with Breyten, whom Chance had plied with booze and whores, or Url, who had spent a fair amount of time "casing" the casino as if looking for weak spots in its security.
The next morning, Pel spoke first with Ermena Dorn, a soft-spoken woman who explained that the Blood of Vol, like worship of the Traveler, was associated with evil because of bad elements, but that the religion itself wasn't wholly evil. She explained that it was about worshiping the divinity within one's self, and choosing life over death, and that some viewed undeath as one way to avoid death, which Seekers of the Blood of Vol considered unwelcome, and even unnatural. She argued that allowing a temple of the Blood of Vol in The Wolves' Reward would go a long way towards showing people that the religion wasn't violent or dangerous, and would help to undercut the damage done (and the influence over many religious adherents) by the Emerald Claw.
Pel wasn't convinced that it was a good idea, nor that the other Wolves would go for it, but he did agree to talk with Ermena again in a few days before she left to go back to Karrnath.
Pel's visit with Josilian, the gnomish barrister for House Sivis, was less difficult, although no less surprising. It turned out that Sava Kharisa, Councilor in Sharn, had willed her art gallery to Pel upon her death, and now that the Pel who had taken possession was revealed to be a fraud, Josilian had papers for Pel to sign so that he could take possession of it.
The Wolves then took a journey up to Galifar's Hope to find out what had happened with Scabbard, and they overheard that she had indeed been granted a seat on the table, non-voting at present, over the strenuous objections of the four remaining Five Nations of Karrnath, Thrane, Aundair and Breland, and over the furious anger of non-voting Cyre. The tie-breaking vote had come from Maechen, on behalf of Argonnessen, which caused no end of discussion and frustration amongst the ambassadors.
The discussion got even more heated when Ambassador Neya ir'Krell of Aundair and Ambassador Valtar ir'Wynarn of Thrane began arguing about the rightful possessor of Thaliost. The city was to have gone back to Aundair when the war with Droaam was over, and in return Thrane was to get a larger chunk of conquered Droaam, but since the war ended in peace rather than conquest, things were still being hashed out, and it didn't sound like the decisions were going to be made easily.
William took some time to talk to Karrnathi ambassador Sedge Avadarn, laying out any number of plans for aggressive military action by Karrnath. Avadarn patiently explained to William that there was more to his home culture than warfare, and that he should experience the art, the food and the other culture of Karrnath, rather than looking for targets which might ignite the Last War again.
The rest of the day was spent in preparation for the gala opening, which was held in The Wanderer's Prospect restaurant, with entertainment provided by House Phiarlan. During the event, the Wolves chatted with several friendly faces, including the very pregnant Lady Elaydren d'Cannith, who expressed worry about her Uncle Merrix and concern for the head of her House, Jorlanna d'Cannith, who was experiencing criticism due to her relationship with Kalen d'Orien.
William was flagged down by Lieutenant Vorik Taggert, a Karrnathi soldier who presented a message from General Gustavus Karlach, whom William knew from his teen years when General Karlach was dating his Aunt Hannah. He asked that William come to see him in Karrlakton as soon as he was able.
Brand, meanwhile, had a chat with a scarred gentleman named Ari Romhaar, an Aundarian lightning mage with a lightning-themed "traveling carnival of wonders." He explained that he had gotten the scars thanks to an attempt to capture a Behir in Xen'drik for his circus, because the adventurers he hired were not up to the task. Once Brand determined that the adventurers he spoke of were not the Young Wolves, he agreed to consider Ari's offer to come down to Xen'drik with him and capture the beast, although Pel expressed that they definitely wanted to do some research on Romhaar before agreeing to anything.
And then it was showtime for Traega d'Orien's plot. Brand watched as Breyten d'Orien exchanged his map for money with the House Tharashk operative, and Brand rushed in to give him the real map. As the House Tharashk contingent was beginning to ask pointed questions, however, a loud, brusque female voice rang out.
The voice belonged to Cavoletta, werewolf servant of the Lords of Dust, who announced that she was there to kill Luggoth. She transformed into her werewolf form, a handful of patrons revealed themselves to be cultists of the Lords of Dust and, to the horror of everyone there (and the intense anger of William) the House Deneith Blademarks drew their weapons and revealed themselves to be working for Cavoletta.
Or so it would seem. In fact, William quickly spotted that they were not fighting in the Deneith style, and given that he knew several of the men to be Deneith, he quickly realized that they were suffering fiendish possession. With a yell to "Take them alive! They're possessed!" he waded into the fray.
Luggoth, for his part, snarled at Cavoletta "I've been waiting for this" and charged into battle. Pel cracked his cousin across the face, activating his dimensional bond and told him to "stay put" before pulling both of his swords and leaping into battle as well.
William, Pel and Brand made short work of the cultists, even though they were emboldened by Cavoletta's bloodcurdling howl. The Blademarks split between supporting Cavoletta in her battle against Luggoth and trying, unsuccessfully, to keep William out of the fight.
While Pel, William and Brand did their best to knock out the Blademarks, Luggoth and Cavoletta tore into each other. Cavoletta began to look unsteady on her feet, and Pel moved into heal Luggoth, giving him just enough strength to land a final blow on Cavoletta, who responded by tearing into Luggoth twice more, but the frost covering his body, combined with the grievous wounds he had dealt her, took its toll, and she collapsed to the ground, mere seconds before Luggoth himself had to stumble to a chair to fight off the moon frenzy coursing through his veins as a result of her bite.
No one ever accused the Wolves of throwing a dull party.
With only a few days until the opening of the Wolves' Reward, Brand gathered the Wolves in the war room and told them that he had received a communication from his father.
Brand and Traega had done some exploring in the Shadow Marches and found a rich dragonshard field, which they offered to House Orien as a way to buy Traega some favor with the House again. Traega arranged to have the map sent to the Orien enclave in Passage, where one of his contacts would get it to the higher-ups so it could be sold to House Tharashk, who would pay handsomely for another field in the area.
Traega's contact stole the map and passed it off to Aeromus, Brand's uncle, who immediately made plans to sell it directly to House Tharashk, cutting Orien (and Traega) out entirely. This sale was to take place at the gathering of the Houses for the opening of the Wolves' Reward, where no one would think anything of high-ranking scions of the House meeting.
Fortunately, Traega had anticipated something like this, and had sent a false map to his contact. He sent the real map to Brand and instructed him to watch Aeromus's agent during the opening of the Wolves' Reward, and to put the real map into House Tharashk's hands immediately after Aeromus's agent handed over the false map. The result would be Tharashk's anger at nearly being sold a fake map and House Orien's anger at being cut out of a deal, and with Traega heading to Passage as soon as the switch was made, the hope was that Traega would be reinstated and Aeromus arrested.
Counseled by Pel and Lysander, Brand determined that the best thing to do was make sure that the representatives from House Orien and House Tharashk didn't see each other until the gala on opening night, and to make sure they were in the semi-private dining room on that night, more or less assuring the time and place of the hand-off.
On the morning of Vult 27, the Wolves gathered with the ambassadors from Galifar's Hope to greet the Daughters of Sora Kell, making a rare appearance outside Droaam. They came walking up to the casino entrance with an Oni mage, Crezyan Rrac, in tow. The Wolves couldn't say anything about Crezyan Rrac's role in the plot, nor his ties to the Lords of Dust, without implicating themselves, and they weren't happy to hear that Crezyan was being appointed the Droaam ambassador to Galifar's Hope.
They were even less happy when Sora Teraza declared "This place will be baptized in blood." She then stared at Luggoth and said "I would speak with you" before heading inside and up to Galifar's Hope.
With that nerve-rattling meeting over, the Wolves went back inside the casino to deal with various business. Lysander was running all over the casino making sure that the opening night festivities, including performances in the Wolfsong Hall, The Wanderers' Prospect and Rorsa's Den were going according to plan. Brand was coordinating with Chance, the casino manager, and Diarmand, the casino's head of security, on the House Orien/House Tharashk intrigues, and Pel, William and Luggoth went up to visit the Daughters of Sora Kell.
While Pel and William stood in the hallway talking with the beautiful Sora Katra with Sora Maenya and Crezyan Rrac looking on, Luggoth went in to speak with Sora Teraza, the oracle. She told him of her interpretation of the Prophecy, that his murder of Jaela Daran was preordained, but that she believed that it would be done to save the world from plunging into darkness. She also explained that some of the Chamber, and the Lords of Dust, did not believe this, and thought that Luggoth was to be responsible for plunging the world into darkness. In addition, she revealed that the Prophecy indicated that Luggoth was going to kill Ttemmal the Rakshasa, which was why he had sometimes disobeyed his masters' wishes and tried to murder Luggoth instead of corrupting him.
Luggoth insisted that he didn't care what the Prophecy said, that he was going to do what he could for his friends and loved ones, and the Prophecy be damned, but Sora Teraza insisted that the Prophecy would determine what happened to Luggoth and his friends, and that he therefore cared very much. In addition, she told him that his role in the Prophecy made him important, and that many would seek to curry favor with him. Sora Teraza was no different, and she told Luggoth that if she had further information for him in the future, she might send for him.
As Luggoth had a thoroughly uncomfortable meeting with Sora Teraza, William and Pel had an equally, if differently, uncomfortable meeting outside. William did his best to stare down Crezyan Rrac, remembering his attempts to kill the Wolves. Pel engaged in verbal repartee with Sora Katra, and was surprised and discomfited to learn that her skill with diplomatic double-speak and hidden meanings surpassed his. Without directly saying anything, Pel was able to discern that the Hags knew all about the Wolves' involvement in Breland's attempted assassination coup, and that they knew as well that Crezyan Rrac was an agent of the Lords of Dust. He was also able to learn that Sora Katra preferred to know the secret agenda of their ambassador, rather than to have someone whose betrayal might be unpredictable.
Fully convinced that the Daughters of Sora Kell were formidable opponents, the Wolves descended by air skiff back down to the casino, where they were met by Brand, who informed them of what had been going on while they had their meeting.
The House Orien contingent had shown up at midday, and in addition to a dozen Orien representatives, they were led by Aeromus's son, Brand's cousin, the weaselly Breyten d'Orien, with the bestial Url Conaway accompanying him as security. Url had come to Brand and informed him that his scouts had seen a group of fey creatures advancing out of the Whitehorn Wood, moving to rendezvous with a larger army in the Eldeen Reaches, which was almost certainly planning an assault on the Wolves' branch of civilization in what they considered their wild. He counseled sending the most powerful agents the Wolves could manage to deal with these leaders before larger trouble resulted.
Even though they knew it was a distraction, the Wolves couldn't afford to ignore it. They left Lysander and Chance to make sure that the House Tharashk and House Orien groups didn't meet up early and took magebred horses to the south to deal with this enemy force.
The enemy force was made up of a unicorn, a firbolg hounder, a centaur hunter, a shifter representing the Children of Winter and four cyclops.
The unicorn charged and impaled William, who was suddenly forced to take it much more seriously as a foe, as Pel engaged the Firbolg by calling down a flame strike on him and his allies. Brand, in a blur of speed and teleportation, rushed across the river to engage the centaur archer in melee, as Luggoth flew into his frost rage and attacked the other shifter.
None of the Wolves present understood the elven that their foes spoke, but they were able to discern their motives when the centaur barked out a command and the cyclops turned to attack Brand, using the flat of their blades. Clearly, they had been told to capture a House Orien scion at least, quite possibly Brand specifically.
William maintained his reign of steel stance, keeping the Firbolg and Unicorn close to him as Luggoth stayed with and killed the Children of Winter Doomspeaker. Pel used all his deceptive talents and martial talents to cut the Firbolg and leave him bleeding, finishing him off by cutting off one leg and then, when he had fallen to the ground, slicing his throat open.
Brand kept at the centaur with his blades as the centaur responded with arrows, until Whitehearth was able to finish it off, bringing it down and tearing out his throat. The Wolves had hoped to capture one of the attackers, but the unicorn put on a burst of speed and fled down the river.
It was an eight hour trip back to the casino, and it was the middle of the night when they arrived. The Deneith blademark at the door told them that Diarmand had been looking for them, and had a few things to tell them, so they went to wake him up. They found him in his room with a giggling young woman in his bed, which did not amuse William at all.
Fortunately, they also learned that while matters of interest had occurred while they were away, none of them were terribly urgent, at least as far as the Wolves were concerned. A female-identified warforged named Scabbard had arrived, claiming to represent the Lord of Blades and wanting a seat at the table at Galifar's Hope to represent their new nation, formed in the Mournland, which had caused quite a stir with the ambassadors. In addition, Josilian d'Tiarlan of House Sivis and a Blood of Vol priestess named Ermena Dorn had both requested an audience with Pel. He resolved to meet with them in the morning.
Brand went to talk with Lysander, and learned that the House Tharashk contingent had arrived and immediately been taken to Rorsa's Den for some bawdy entertainment that they were now sleeping off, and they hadn't had any interaction with Breyten, whom Chance had plied with booze and whores, or Url, who had spent a fair amount of time "casing" the casino as if looking for weak spots in its security.
The next morning, Pel spoke first with Ermena Dorn, a soft-spoken woman who explained that the Blood of Vol, like worship of the Traveler, was associated with evil because of bad elements, but that the religion itself wasn't wholly evil. She explained that it was about worshiping the divinity within one's self, and choosing life over death, and that some viewed undeath as one way to avoid death, which Seekers of the Blood of Vol considered unwelcome, and even unnatural. She argued that allowing a temple of the Blood of Vol in The Wolves' Reward would go a long way towards showing people that the religion wasn't violent or dangerous, and would help to undercut the damage done (and the influence over many religious adherents) by the Emerald Claw.
Pel wasn't convinced that it was a good idea, nor that the other Wolves would go for it, but he did agree to talk with Ermena again in a few days before she left to go back to Karrnath.
Pel's visit with Josilian, the gnomish barrister for House Sivis, was less difficult, although no less surprising. It turned out that Sava Kharisa, Councilor in Sharn, had willed her art gallery to Pel upon her death, and now that the Pel who had taken possession was revealed to be a fraud, Josilian had papers for Pel to sign so that he could take possession of it.
The Wolves then took a journey up to Galifar's Hope to find out what had happened with Scabbard, and they overheard that she had indeed been granted a seat on the table, non-voting at present, over the strenuous objections of the four remaining Five Nations of Karrnath, Thrane, Aundair and Breland, and over the furious anger of non-voting Cyre. The tie-breaking vote had come from Maechen, on behalf of Argonnessen, which caused no end of discussion and frustration amongst the ambassadors.
The discussion got even more heated when Ambassador Neya ir'Krell of Aundair and Ambassador Valtar ir'Wynarn of Thrane began arguing about the rightful possessor of Thaliost. The city was to have gone back to Aundair when the war with Droaam was over, and in return Thrane was to get a larger chunk of conquered Droaam, but since the war ended in peace rather than conquest, things were still being hashed out, and it didn't sound like the decisions were going to be made easily.
William took some time to talk to Karrnathi ambassador Sedge Avadarn, laying out any number of plans for aggressive military action by Karrnath. Avadarn patiently explained to William that there was more to his home culture than warfare, and that he should experience the art, the food and the other culture of Karrnath, rather than looking for targets which might ignite the Last War again.
The rest of the day was spent in preparation for the gala opening, which was held in The Wanderer's Prospect restaurant, with entertainment provided by House Phiarlan. During the event, the Wolves chatted with several friendly faces, including the very pregnant Lady Elaydren d'Cannith, who expressed worry about her Uncle Merrix and concern for the head of her House, Jorlanna d'Cannith, who was experiencing criticism due to her relationship with Kalen d'Orien.
William was flagged down by Lieutenant Vorik Taggert, a Karrnathi soldier who presented a message from General Gustavus Karlach, whom William knew from his teen years when General Karlach was dating his Aunt Hannah. He asked that William come to see him in Karrlakton as soon as he was able.
Brand, meanwhile, had a chat with a scarred gentleman named Ari Romhaar, an Aundarian lightning mage with a lightning-themed "traveling carnival of wonders." He explained that he had gotten the scars thanks to an attempt to capture a Behir in Xen'drik for his circus, because the adventurers he hired were not up to the task. Once Brand determined that the adventurers he spoke of were not the Young Wolves, he agreed to consider Ari's offer to come down to Xen'drik with him and capture the beast, although Pel expressed that they definitely wanted to do some research on Romhaar before agreeing to anything.
And then it was showtime for Traega d'Orien's plot. Brand watched as Breyten d'Orien exchanged his map for money with the House Tharashk operative, and Brand rushed in to give him the real map. As the House Tharashk contingent was beginning to ask pointed questions, however, a loud, brusque female voice rang out.
The voice belonged to Cavoletta, werewolf servant of the Lords of Dust, who announced that she was there to kill Luggoth. She transformed into her werewolf form, a handful of patrons revealed themselves to be cultists of the Lords of Dust and, to the horror of everyone there (and the intense anger of William) the House Deneith Blademarks drew their weapons and revealed themselves to be working for Cavoletta.
Or so it would seem. In fact, William quickly spotted that they were not fighting in the Deneith style, and given that he knew several of the men to be Deneith, he quickly realized that they were suffering fiendish possession. With a yell to "Take them alive! They're possessed!" he waded into the fray.
Luggoth, for his part, snarled at Cavoletta "I've been waiting for this" and charged into battle. Pel cracked his cousin across the face, activating his dimensional bond and told him to "stay put" before pulling both of his swords and leaping into battle as well.
William, Pel and Brand made short work of the cultists, even though they were emboldened by Cavoletta's bloodcurdling howl. The Blademarks split between supporting Cavoletta in her battle against Luggoth and trying, unsuccessfully, to keep William out of the fight.
While Pel, William and Brand did their best to knock out the Blademarks, Luggoth and Cavoletta tore into each other. Cavoletta began to look unsteady on her feet, and Pel moved into heal Luggoth, giving him just enough strength to land a final blow on Cavoletta, who responded by tearing into Luggoth twice more, but the frost covering his body, combined with the grievous wounds he had dealt her, took its toll, and she collapsed to the ground, mere seconds before Luggoth himself had to stumble to a chair to fight off the moon frenzy coursing through his veins as a result of her bite.
No one ever accused the Wolves of throwing a dull party.
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