{Game clock resumes at 12:01pm 03/23/3200: Session starts off with a re-cap of the last
game and getting everyone back up to speed… then everything goes
pear-shaped. I’ll summarize the
remainder of their time in the army camp so as to spend more time on the
important bits that happened later on.}
Milo informs everyone that the spring equinox will soon be
upon them and that this is one of his holy days as well as the traditional day
upon which campaigns begin in the north lands.
He informs them that this is a good omen and the most fortuitous time
for them to undertake the next part of their journey; so they decide to scrap
plans for leaving with the third wave and start looking into new options. Thingerlun has been talking and searching
amongst his wizardly compatriots within the army camp and looking for a way to
short-cut all the remaining travel, and he cooks up an idea that he then sells
to Dwight…
The Plan:
Scrap the remodels and such and get a couple of regular
mule-powered wagons and a bunch of pack mules so the whole company is still
mobile. Thingerlun has tracked down
several wizards of his order that can cast the Planar Step spell, but none of them will risk performing the spell
as a ritual and that is the only way that everyone can be transported. So Dwight informs his commanders that it is
imperative that they order the wizards to comply. The reason for this is simply that no matter
how the company preps, they will never be able to push their way into Blessings
Be with a frontal assault; the town is already 80+ miles behind enemy lines…
and the Empire cannot risk the Scourge getting their hands on a creature with
perfect fore-knowledge!
The Commanders agree to the ritual which is only 4 days
long; so they will save a significant amount of time and probably catch the orc
horde by surprise. Unfortunately, when
the party approaches Archie and asks him if he will bring the engine with him
when they jump to Blessings Be he says, “Guild engines are too big to travel
that way, and I’m not going to let them cast any spells on me or my equipment…
but I hope you folks have a safe journey.
Thanks for the up-grades.”
There are 6 wizards that are able, but they refuse to work
together, and in the end the ritual is performed by 3 wizards… the spell ritual
fails and one of the wizards disappears in a swirling purple vortex. It takes 3 days to convince the remaining
wizards to try again, but by then the first of the “Embers” of the Phoenix
Lord’s return are spotted on the horizon.
Everything in camp stops for the 5 day observance of the Equinox. Over the course of the next few days the
shadowy arch of Valdreth continues to narrow, pressing into a single line in
the heavens due east with the sun rising behind it. The sparkles and comets of golden light climb
from the horizon brightly at sunrise and blotting out the “the celestial shadow
demons” (See post XX for details on the Skies of Áereth) growing and waxing in
intensity until neither golden embers nor shadow demons are seen. The arch of Valdreth begins to separate and
the days are noticeably longer. By the
time the holy days have passed and the ritual is completed on the 14th
of April; the third wave of the army has been on the road for 4 days; but this
time everything goes smoothly and the party is transported instantly to their
destination. {Ritual total was 41, (16,
17, and leader got a 25) this could have transported the entire army, but the
wizards were under orders not to
transport any but those within the circle.}
As they transit their
way through the purple nothingness between spaces, they all see the missing
wizard screaming silently and falling away from them, dwindling in size until
he vanishes in the haze of distance.
Everyone within the casting circle ends up exactly where they are
supposed to be: the road junction with the path to the Temple. It is 1pm on April 14th and they
have still managed to save themselves nearly 9 days of travel. However, they are at least 80 miles behind
enemy lines without any support beyond what they brought with them. They spot a trio of colossal draexodons each
carrying a howdah with a platoon of orcs just outside of maximum short bow
range to the south. The road to the temple
is un-powered and leads uphill to the east for less than a quarter mile to the
entrance.
The orc patrol spots them, hauls around and begins to
advance upon the new arrivals: screaming and working themselves into a hateful
fervor. The extremely large quadrupeds
wear leather barding along with the howdah on its back. They are powerful beasts about half the size
of the coal car of Archie’s train, but they are not the fastest of creatures
even when they aren’t pressed into service as transports. Fortunately for the
travelers, they had pre-deployed the buggy, and everyone was already packed
onto the wagons. All the pack mules had
been distributed evenly and lashed onto leads, so it was decided to make a dash
for the temple. At least the high ground
would give them the advantage.
Thingerlun thinks to Sythrixis; Hey, how many of us and our gear could you hide with an invisibility
spell?
Sythrixis; A fair few if the spell goes well and I can
maintain my concentration.
Thingerlun; Do it!
The best you can! To everyone
else “Try to stay together! I’ve got an idea!”
Sythrixis lands at the center of the cluster and gets a 27
on the spell check which is in fact sufficient to cover all of them, but they
fail to realize that they still leave a trail that even orcs can follow. This tactic does allow them to get nearly to
the plateau where the temple doors are closed tight before the spell wears
off. The orcs had found the trail and
followed it up the hill but not at any great speed, so they were only just
inside maximum short bow range, but still too far to sprint close enough for melee
combat. The adventurers got the
advantage in the initiative, and Lex spotted the weak link in the enemies
plan. Each of the beasts had a drover
that was lightly armored. She figures
that without anyone to direct the beasts the orcs would have a really bad time
and be too busy to cause trouble. She
took out the lead drover with one clean shot that arced high and then pinned
the drover to the howdah behind him.
Dwight, Bob and Thingerlun advance back down the hill a
short distance and manage to take out the other two drovers. Dwight kills the drover of the last beast in
line; Bob misses, but Thingerlun managed to conjure up a screaming eagle that
did enough damage to the drover of the middle beast that he simply vanished
into a glowing ash. The Draexodons buck
and gyrate in fury as the orcs try to get control over them, but most of the
orcs are thrown and trampled as the beasts head away from the danger. The company sets up a defensive perimeter
around the entrance to the Temple. The
huge brass doors are each10ft wide and nearly 20ft high. Lex examines them and declares them unlocked
and safe to open. Dwight gives orders to
have the door opened, and several of the troops rush forward. The doors are well balanced, but it has been
a while since they were opened and they squeal a bit as they are pushed inward
to reveal the grand entrance hall. It is
a simple affair of polished white and gold marble that is as wide as the doors
and just as high. The hall drove
straight back into the hill for less than 40ft and there were several alcoves
carved out for statues of Arden Brightheart in various poses on either
side. There are scattered leaves and
debris on the floor, confirming for them that they are the first to enter in
some time. This is taken as a generally
good sign. Dwight starts to organize who
is entering and who stays to guard the entrance while Bob goes in and checks
for traps and the equipment and mules are brought into the temple. The company had been organized into “front
line” and “archers” back at the depot based upon their talents. The archers stay and along with two of the
steam knights, one of the wizards and one of the clerics to defend the wagons
and entrance. Everyone else follows
along into the temple after Bob.
As their eyes adjusted to the lesser illumination within the
temple they see that there is a wide, natural looking cavern that branches off to
their right, and a smaller carved tunnel branches off to their right. Milo
drops into prayer and asks “Which direction will take us to the Dread Watcher
by the quickest pat?” A few moments go
by and he points to the left with reasonable assurance. They head out, but Bob gets in their way and
stops them just in time to avoid the statue that is rigged to collapse on
anyone heading towards the left hand tunnel.
Dwight pulls out the sword of conviction; “OK, what can you
tell us about the layout and such for the temple, secret doors, number of
levels?”
Sword cheerfully; “Sorry, can’t help you there. I have no idea.”
Dwight, annoyed; “WHAT!
You were in here for centuries, so you say! How can you not know anything about the
layout?!”
Sword, smugly emphasizing itself: “I… was pinning the Dread
Watcher to the wall in an old cave. The
humans built the temple around me; I never saw anything but the room I was in.”
Hearn; “But what about when you were stolen? You must’ve seen something then?”
Sword; “Nope… the thief put me into a scabbard and then
tossed me into a sack. Didn’t see
anything outside the chapel where I resided for the better part of 1400
years. Sorry.”
They set out again, but they need to move 2 by 2 down the
hall with Bob in front, followed by a Gavid, Ffwylldyr, Khrasus, and the
remaining Steam Knight and the rest waiting to go down the hall. Everyone was so intent on looking at the
floor that they missed the inky black shapes unfurling in the shadows above
them. Gavid and Ffwylldyr are enveloped
by these black octopus type creatures and hauled back up to the ceiling. The critters have eight tentacle legs have
membranes connecting them and end in vicious hooks. The result is a ‘bag’ that is more than
sufficient to envelope even a large creature.
In the instant before the fracas begins they see that Gavid’s boots drop
to the ground and still have his feet in them.
There is no struggling inside that critter, but Ffwylldyr’s feet are
still twitching and kicking.
The ceilings are 15ft high so Bob gets the steam knight to
lever him up, but the knight overestimates his strength and accidentally tosses
Bob about 20ft back down the hall. Bob
escapes with only minor injuries. They
try again and Bob succeeds at cutting the critters attachment to the ceiling
while several of the others are using spears to kill the other one. Milo tries to cast Bless but fails and has to spend time after the fight praying for
forgiveness. Hearn Blesses Bob to aid him in his attempt to cut Ffwylldyr out of the
critter, Milo casts paralysis on the creature and Bob manages to open up enough
to let them see the partially dissolved face of the Bard. Lex poisons the creature with one of her
‘special’ daggers, but it is too late… the Ffwylldyr is dead.
Milo consecrates the bodies.
A few moments later Lex and Bob set out down the hall; each
of them checking floor and ceiling until they find two doors, one on the right
and one on the left directly opposite each other. In a display of synchronized ditch digging
Lex goes right and Bob goes left. Lex
discovers that her door is blocked from the inside and can hear something
moving around inside. Bob discovers that
the door he is examining is locked, but he deals with it deftly and pushes it
open ever so slightly. He sees that the
room has benches in it and murals on the walls.
There is a soft golden light illuminating this room, but he cannot see
what it is. Everyone decides to check
out that room first and they push open the door to see a strange scene.
There is a black robed and hooded figure transfixed by fancy
magic sword and pinned to the wall on the opposite wall to their right. It is the sword that is emitting the soft
golden glow that lights the room. Bob,
Dwight, Lex and Milo are the first ones into the room, and when Dwight sees all
of this he must succeed at a willpower save against the sword’s ego… and
fails. {Player says nothing… just bows
his head and hands me the character sheet.} Dwight then screams, “Destroy the
sword!” and charges at the transfixed figure; leaping from bench to bench. When everyone else sees this there is a moment
of horror that passes over their faces as the same thought seems to occur to
all of them at the same time.
The thought might have gone something like this: “The sword
of conviction is supposed to pin the Dread Watcher to the wall immobile and
imprisoned, the scene in front of them suggests that that nothing is wrong here
and that they’ve been duped into carrying a false sword to the temple in an
attempt to get them to actually free the Dread Watcher.” {Although the Player’s thoughts were probably
more along the lines of; “That bastard tricked us!!”} They immediately suspect Dwight is possessed
by this ‘false sword’.
Bob tries to kill Dwight, but misses. Hearn fails at her attempt to use Command, Lex misses her shot, but
Thingerlun successfully casts Sleep
upon Dwight before he gets more than halfway across the room. Dwight falls between a couple of benches and
they secure him while they try to figure out what the hell is going on. They check out the room in a lot more detail
and notice the murals that seem to depict the opposite of everything they’ve
been told. The scenes show the Dread
Watcher as the hero and Arden as the fiend that needed to be vanquished. This just seems to confirm their suspicions.
{And all I did was describe the room… the rest just seemed
to explode entertainingly around me.}
Bob: “OK! Everyone
gather around we need to figure this out! Lex, you and some of the rest watch
the hall for any trouble.” Everyone
sorts themselves into the room and they start to rehash everything they know
about the Dread Watcher.
Thingerlun; “Sword, why have you tricked us into coming here
to destroy the true sword of conviction?”
Sword, indignantly says; “I’M the true sword! That is the false abomination! IT must be destroyed!”
Thingerlun; “Riiight.
And we’re supposed to believe you?
It’s obvious this place hasn’t been entered since the thief supposedly
left here, and then we find that the Dread Watcher is still hanging on the wall
like a beef curing for market. So tell
me again, what is your goal, why have you brought us here?”
Sword; “To destroy the Dread Watcher! To keep his power of Perfect Foreknowledge
out of the hands of mortals… it is a power that you shouldn’t have. It’s dangerous!”
{That is when a previously vague notion that had been
lurking about in the backs of their brains pounced out of the shadows: they were fighting a creature that is
supposed to have the ability to accurately predict the future…}
Hearn; “Well, if it can predict the future, then doesn’t it
know who we are and what we’re going to do next?”
{Oddly this thought just amplified their sense of
existential horror… I love it when a
plan comes together so nicely.}
Lex says from the doorway; “I guess the important question
is: ‘what is the nature of Precognition?’”
They all turn to Thingerlun and Milo to answer this
question… and while they cogitate upon the nature of Precognition, Hearn
decides to take a more practical approach.
She casts Detect Evil and
starts to survey the room in detail… including a rather candid search of Lex
Anne.
Lex; “What are you doing?!”
Hearn, impassively; “Detecting for evil.”
Lex says exasperatedly; “I’m NOT EVIL! Now go look around the rest of the room!”
Bob turns to Hearn; “So, what do you see?”
Hearn; “Well, she’s not evil, but the sword and several splotches
on the walls where some kind of evil spell has been used to mask them over are
most definitely evil in nature.”
Bob; “What about the sword in Dwight’s hands?”
Hearn; “No, that sword isn’t evil.”
The conversation returns to the idea of precognition and
Milo and Thingerlun tell everyone the following;
Milo; “Mortals, have never been given the ability to see the
subset of ALL possibilities, which is the preview of the gods…”
Thingerlun; “Even if mortals can see the nature of the
events, there is still no context for the events witnessed and the observer
invites their own biases into the interpretation. If this creature truly possesses the ability
to accurately predict the future then
how was it imprisoned the first time?”
Sword in Dwight’s sleeping hands; “Bravery! Arden’s entire company died to get him into
position to make the final strike, and he had to take a mortal wound to
accomplish the deed!”
While this is going on, Bob finally gets up the courage to
go over and examine the golden bowl on the altar at the front of the room, and
then sidles over to the corpse pined to the wall. He sees that the sword is glowing, but
otherwise looks just like the sword in Dwight’s hand. The corpse and his robes don’t appear to be
that old, a few years at most. He looks
at the walls where Hearn had shown the ‘edits’ and he comes to the conclusion
that this was a trap designed to fool them into killing one of their own and
taking the real sword far away: possibly even destroying it.
They decide that ‘perfect’ precognition might not be so
perfect after all, but that their enemy probably still knows a great deal about
them. They wake up Dwight, who succeeds
at his willpower save this time and after he is briefed on what happened during
the last half hour that he can’t remember: he wanders over and smashes the faux
sword with one mighty chop from the Sword of Conviction. They decide to take a better look at the
entrance to see if there are holy runes
or wards that are still intact or if
they have been destroyed. It takes them
a few minutes, but they find them inlayed with gold into the door-jam, and
threshold. The Ward is still active, which tells them that the Dread Watcher must
still be in here somewhere.
They circle back to the natural grotto that they passed over
earlier and see that there are a few steps down into a pool of water that is of
indeterminate depth. The cavern itself
is probably less than 50ft across, but the pool of water covers most of the
cavern’s floor. There is a large marble
statue of Arden Brightheart in the center of the pool wearing full platemail
armor inscribed with the religious symbol of Thormyr. The long dead hero has a penitent, kneeling
posture and is looking directly at the entrance to the grotto. Lex tosses a copper coin into the pool and
offers a prayer to the dead hero and thanks Thormyr for watching over them thus
far. She spots the submerged ledge that
circles the cavern and points it out to the others.
Milo, Lex, Dwight, and Bob are standing side by side on the
last step above water, peering out at all of this when Lex points out the ledge
that is actually the extension of the last underwater step when two sets of
skeletal arms lurch out of the pool. One
misses Bob, but Dwight is Paralyzed and pulled deep into the pool. The sword in his hand begins to emit soft
silver light that reveals to the party that there are two undead humanoids
lurking at the bottom of the 10ft deep pool; along with a couple other
inanimate bodies.
Milo grunts, then says; “Lacidons.”
Thingerlun; “What’re those?”
Milo; “Ghouls that live in the water ‘cause they
drowned. Watch out, they can paralyze
you with a touch.” He then holds up his
holy symbol and invokes the power of Ormazd to cast away the minions of
darkness. The results are so powerful
that his aura of light concentrates down into a beam that lances out from the
golden sun disc medallion in his hands to strike the nearest of the foul
creatures leaving a sizzling, streaming trail of bubbles in the water and both
of the lacidons scramble to the back of the pool trying to escape the righteous
power emanating from the cleric of the Sun God.
Several of the warriors are tasked to help Milo with destroying the fell
creatures while Lex and Bob perform another amazing display of synchronized
ditch digging. This time she dives for
the jumble of bodies at the near end of the pool, and to help drag Dwight out
of the pool for Hearn to check over. At
the same time and without prior planning, Bob dives in and swims to the statue
and begins to check it over for traps and clues.
Hearn directs several of the soldiers to lift him up by the
ankles and let the water drain out of his lungs before the paralysis wears off
and then casts Detect Magic and looks into the pool. She sees that there are some magical crossbow
bolts and a mace that glows with arcane power.
Lex brings them up to the surface without having to be told that they
are special… she assumed that since they weren’t tarnished or otherwise degraded
from their long submersion that they needed further study. Bob finds the placard which reads: When strength of steel in trouble fails,
Silent reverence shows the way. / Arden’s arm was strong and true, but ‘twas
his faith that won the day. Is what he reads out to everyone, then, “What
the hell does that mean?”
Before he delves into that he also notices that the statue
is well balanced and can be rotated to the left or right rather easily. He spins it around a couple of times while
everyone else ponders the words and discovers that there is a slight ‘catch’ in
the rotation when it passes over a certain section. “Everyone get ready for anything
strange! I think I found a secret
trigger for something.” And he sets it in place without even waiting for anyone
else to really understand what he was doing.
A section of wall on the far side of the cavern lowers into the floor
revealing another room. The heroes of
Silverton make their way over to the new room and leave their retinue to guard
the entrance.
They find a cloister that is maybe 5 paces on each side, but
was oriented at 450 from the entrance. It is packed with a desk and shelves on their
left and a chest of drawers and cot along the right hand wall and there is a
petrified corps in robes upon the cot. A
few dozen flies are flitting about the room and everything is silent but for
their breathing and the buzzing of the flies.
Then they see a translucent copy of the dead humanoid rise up from the
corpse. “BE GONE FROM MY CURSED
SANCTUARY! LEAVE THIS PLACE OR SUFFER MY
WRATH!!!”
{Game clock suspended at 2:30pm 04/14/3200}
