Post by Dead Greyhawk on Jan 3, 2007 21:01:20 GMT -5
Al and Diego keep watch while Oaklock prepares food and the priests pray to their deities. Otto, not liking the way the humanoid bodies disappeared, hikes back over to the sod-covered lean-to. Pulling out the small shovel found among the fire lizards, he begins using it to fill in the tunnel. The shovel shovels dirt like a fiend, and Otto, though quite tired after his ten minutes of work, has shoveled a half foot of soil off of the area surrounding the lean-to, filling what was a deep hole. Satisfied, he repacks his shovel and returns to camp.
After prayer and dinner, the clerics prepare to interrogate the Nerullite head. Recalling the difficulties in questioning the Nerullite priests who attempted to kill Adrienne, Cedrus steels himself for a difficult questioning. He is instead surprised when the Nerullite priest gladly reaches out from beyond death to speak with Cedrus. The Nerullite, Kennith, is effusive in his answers, as if he is trying to communicate more information than what he is strictly being asked.
Kennith states that he was a powerful priest in the thrall of Nerull, slaying the strong and bringing their souls to Nerull’s feast table. All was well in his dark world until suddenly the daemons and demodands through whom his dark curses were granted stopped speaking with him. It was as if Kennith’s connection to Nerull had been snapped. The simple curses taught to the merest of initiates still functioned, but none of the higher curses, nor the beings that normally he communed with, were available to him.
Kennith had heard that such a thing was possible. After all, it was well-known that the weak-hearted priesthood of the weakling brother of Hextor had been emasculated for nearly a year after their holy chalice was taken and defiled. Nerullites rarely work together, but Kennith, never feeling exactly safe, had made a list of those whose souls were dedicated to Nerull. With this list he could bargain his way out from under the thumb of either weal or woe, selling these secrets for his life. Instead, he used his list to find and try to contact his fellow worshipers and see if this was happening to them as well.
Many of the lesser priests were as confused and conflicted as he was. Nerull had ceased to reply to their pleas; only the commonest of curses were effective. Kennith murdered those who did not do his bidding, which was to contact all those on his list and determine who amongst them was still the prodigy of Nerull, basking in his leering visage.
It took only a few weeks’ effort before one of his minions told him of a Nerullite, Colin Twee, who was known to still use the higher curses. Kennith hunted him down and took him in the night. Under great agony, Colin divulged that he no longer served the skeletal one, but had turned to a false god, the Dead God. Kennith took Colin’s life in a slow and painful manner, and just before Colin passed into the eternal night, a voice spoke from Colin’s mouth, saying “I see you Kennith, and I shall not forget.”
Kennith knew that this Dead God was still weak, if it must manifest through the mouths of an individual priest. After all, had Nerull ever come because a single priest was tortured to death? Knowing that a circlet had been entombed many years ago in the Crystalmist mountains, a circlet that when worn controlled a great undead power, he made it a priority to find it and use it to unseat this pretender god. Searching through the libraries of Sterich and using his abilities to affect undead, still unchanged even though Nerull no longer responds, Kennith made it to this dorf to take the circlet from the ground.
Kennith wishes only ill on this Dead God. He tells this to the Company to convince them to don the circlet, use the undead against the Dead God: destroy its place on Oerth and place it back into oblivion. Take back Nerull’s might! Kennith’s soul shrieks in anger as the spell closes, ending the tenuous connection back from whatever hell it is in.
The Company tries to decipher Kennith’s information. The disappearance of Nerull as a curse-granting entity seems to align with the same period when the Nerullite holy symbols ceased protecting the Company in the Halls of Beoll-Dur. Diego recounts how he had thought the fire lizards would have been unable to touch him due to the protective qualities of the amulets, but the fire lizards simply ignored them.
The Company looks at the two scrolls and the circlet. Diego reaches out towards the circlet and pokes at it, causing it to reflect in the light. “Mithril, I think. Looks just like the ore we brought back from the ruins of Clan Mumatandin. Cold forged too, I’d wager. Look at the hammer marks on the inside of it,” he comments, possibly the most learned thing Diego has ever said. Al frowns and looks at it as well and is forced to agree, shone up by a human.
Adrienne has assured the others that the scrolls are not trapped, and Oaklock is brave enough to open the two scroll cases. The first contains archaic, but legible writing. “Found what was hidden. Control if you can, flee if you can’t. It will come to those both weak and strong of will.” The message closes with the same symbol as sealed the scroll case, an eye within a pentagram. The second is a clerical tract that Cedrus identifies as belonging to Boccob, the uncaring god of magic. It seems to be a powerful prayer that sets impressive wards against those with differing ethics and morals. Cedrus holds onto this scroll. Otto suggests that the scroll is designed to be read while the circlet is donned and the undead called. No one wishes to try that hypothesis out, so the circlet and the other scroll go into a small bag, for Dell or Winthrop to investigate.
The Company beds down, but after only a few hours, Al, who is on watch, hears a scrabbling, digging sound. Peering about, he sees what appear to be giant burrowing bugs climbing up out of the ground. Pale and ant-like, they appear to be termites of some sort, possibly swarming through the area. Otto, when woken, thinks it best to just move on, and the Company is rousted from sleep. A careful march up river for the rest of the night finds the Company a safe camping spot surrounded by stone cliffs. Here, the Company spends most of a day and a night resting.
Again, poor Al hears noise on his watch, but this time no giant bugs bedevil him. Instead, he sees nothing, not even something swimming in the river. The noises fade away, with no adverse effect. When the Company continues upriver, a crossing trail is found about a quarter mile away. Otto thinks the trail had traffic on it the night before, crossing it back towards where the rest of the Company camps, deep in the Crystalmists. The tracks appear to be those of dwarves, possibly a large war band. Al, low on beer, is sorely tempted to follow after them, but Otto reminds him of his duty to find and defeat the ogres mentioned by the Lord Gwaylar.
The river becomes broader and shallower, as the ledge that the Company is following becomes narrower and narrower. Otto idly walks out onto the river and, looking down, sees what must be an odd occurrence, a track in the river. Indeed, a single, large, metal-shod boot print is slowly being eroded by the flowing water. The river is blocked by several rocks at this point, so the particular spot where the print was made is nearly stagnant, but it is still surprising. Otto thinks it could easily have been made by an ogre.
Otto moves up to the front of the trail and casts around, looking for other signs. Instead of finding ogre tracks, he finds the spoor of a pack of large dogs along with tracks from two humans, likely a man and a woman. The Company chooses to camp in an almost-clearing, a wide spot where several trails come down out of the mountains and combine next to a fordable point in the river.
When the Company begins cooking, two humans, dressed in furs and warm clothes, approach and wave from the edge of the Company’s camp. “Hallooo, there! Got space for two more around that fire?” the man shouts. “We’ve got deer!” Otto and Cedrus exchange looks and then shrug, welcoming in the two.
The hunters, a married couple, explain that they live up in the mountains. They have several caves set up as redoubts in case of bad snow or sickness, but normally they simply travel from place to place, hunting for their meals, sleeping under the stars, or occasionally within an evergreen tree. They’ve been following a big stag for a couple of days now, the leader of the herd that the deer came from, but there is a wolf pack in the area, so they might get him first.
Adrienne, pleased to find some polite company for a change, is very talkative, telling the strangers about the exploits of the Company of the Blue Sun. She tells them about the fall of Farvale, the destruction of Nosnra’s steading, the flight from the burning undead pyre, the discovery of the gnomes, the destruction of the small dorf, and that now they are all headed upriver to kill ogres. The two hunters are a bit shocked by the amount of violence the Company is involved in, claiming they’ve not seen any ogres or undead ever!
After dinner, the hunter and his wife offer to play musical instruments and sing mountain songs to entertain the Company. They explain that they make up little ditties and songs while they are wandering all about the mountains to help their trading ventures when they head down into Sterich. Otto thinks this sounds like a great idea. He could learn some songs of the area and maybe sing along!
The hunter and his wife have good voices, high pitched and able to hold notes for an extended time, and they sing a series of soothing, lullaby-like songs. The Company nods along with them until they realize something is wrong. The long notes sound like howls and bursting into the camp are wolves, a whole pack of them. The wolves move quickly, too quickly, and the Company is rocked back by the slashing, snapping wolves. The Company moves to counter-attack, but the wolves are fast and often run out of distance before the Company can respond.
Oaklock and Diego slay several wolves with magical bolts and well-placed arrows before the wolf pack truly closes for a fight. The wolves tear repeatedly at the more lightly armored folk, but the warriors of the Company are stout and pin down the wolves when they do attack. Otto’s bastard sword and Al’s battle axe are covered in blood as they slay the wolves attacking them.
In the light from the cookfire and the covered glowing stones, it appears as if the singers take on a more lupine cast. Their faces elongate, becoming muzzle like, and their ears grow and swivel forward. The two wolf-headed people draw forth short swords and attack fiercely, moving as fast as the wolves do, stabbing and slashing at Oaklock, the only mage. Oaklock tries to defend himself from their attacks, but Otto, slashing the wolves in half with each of his mighty swings, quickly draws their attention as well.
“Kill them. They are abominations of nature, enchanting this wolf pack so!” shouts Cedrus, as he charges the wolf-headed male. Oaklock and Al concentrate on slaying the wolf-headed female, and between them, the wolf-woman has little chance. She quickly succumbs to their assault. Diego’s arrows seem to be inconsequential to the wolf-headed man, so he instead turns back to slaying the wolves.
Otto grins as he and the wolf-headed man face off. The wolf-headed man’s short sword is sharp and spears through Otto’s armor. “I heal. You won’t,” spits out Otto as he returns the favor. The wolf-man is sorely overmatched and quickly flees. As the wolf-man bounds away from the Company howling to summon the last of the wolf pack to flee with him, Otto shakes his bastardsword at him. “Not done yet!” he cries.
Rather than blunder through the woods after the retreating wolves, the Company heals themselves and sets a strong watch. Otto’s wounds knit and heal, and by the time the sun is up, and simple orisons have been prayed for, he is hale and hearty. The tracks, and blood, left by the wolves are clear and plain. Even though the wolves have leapt away and tried to confuse the trail, Otto is a master tracker, and no simple decoy such as this will mislead him, especially when he has the creature’s blood on his blade.
The trail leads up to a large cave in the side of the mountain, possibly one of these redoubts that the hunter and his wife had mentioned. The Company surrounds the entrance and announces their presence. Several wolves, somewhat wounded, explode from the rocky surface where they have been hiding, charging down at the Company, but Otto and Oaklock are prepared. Otto summons the spirits of the grass and trees to wind themselves around his enemies and grasp them. The wolves, running over the surface, are tightly wound and prevented from attacking or fleeing. Of course, this work, which might have saved the enthralled wolves’ animal spirits, is for naught, as Oaklock summons fire into the charging wolves. With sharply cut-off yips and squeals of pain, the wolves turn into clumps of burning fur.
A huge wolf, larger than a worg, bursts out of the cave, hopping from rock to rock, trying to avoid the writhing brush and grass before him. Diego shoots an arrow into it, but the huge wolf shrugs it off, apparently heading for a steep crevasse off to one side of the mountain. Rather than let the creature reach the crevasse. Oaklock squints to gauge the distance, and then fires off a narrow, but long, bolt of lightning, impaling the huge wolf and sending it thudding to the ground.
After prayer and dinner, the clerics prepare to interrogate the Nerullite head. Recalling the difficulties in questioning the Nerullite priests who attempted to kill Adrienne, Cedrus steels himself for a difficult questioning. He is instead surprised when the Nerullite priest gladly reaches out from beyond death to speak with Cedrus. The Nerullite, Kennith, is effusive in his answers, as if he is trying to communicate more information than what he is strictly being asked.
Kennith states that he was a powerful priest in the thrall of Nerull, slaying the strong and bringing their souls to Nerull’s feast table. All was well in his dark world until suddenly the daemons and demodands through whom his dark curses were granted stopped speaking with him. It was as if Kennith’s connection to Nerull had been snapped. The simple curses taught to the merest of initiates still functioned, but none of the higher curses, nor the beings that normally he communed with, were available to him.
Kennith had heard that such a thing was possible. After all, it was well-known that the weak-hearted priesthood of the weakling brother of Hextor had been emasculated for nearly a year after their holy chalice was taken and defiled. Nerullites rarely work together, but Kennith, never feeling exactly safe, had made a list of those whose souls were dedicated to Nerull. With this list he could bargain his way out from under the thumb of either weal or woe, selling these secrets for his life. Instead, he used his list to find and try to contact his fellow worshipers and see if this was happening to them as well.
Many of the lesser priests were as confused and conflicted as he was. Nerull had ceased to reply to their pleas; only the commonest of curses were effective. Kennith murdered those who did not do his bidding, which was to contact all those on his list and determine who amongst them was still the prodigy of Nerull, basking in his leering visage.
It took only a few weeks’ effort before one of his minions told him of a Nerullite, Colin Twee, who was known to still use the higher curses. Kennith hunted him down and took him in the night. Under great agony, Colin divulged that he no longer served the skeletal one, but had turned to a false god, the Dead God. Kennith took Colin’s life in a slow and painful manner, and just before Colin passed into the eternal night, a voice spoke from Colin’s mouth, saying “I see you Kennith, and I shall not forget.”
Kennith knew that this Dead God was still weak, if it must manifest through the mouths of an individual priest. After all, had Nerull ever come because a single priest was tortured to death? Knowing that a circlet had been entombed many years ago in the Crystalmist mountains, a circlet that when worn controlled a great undead power, he made it a priority to find it and use it to unseat this pretender god. Searching through the libraries of Sterich and using his abilities to affect undead, still unchanged even though Nerull no longer responds, Kennith made it to this dorf to take the circlet from the ground.
Kennith wishes only ill on this Dead God. He tells this to the Company to convince them to don the circlet, use the undead against the Dead God: destroy its place on Oerth and place it back into oblivion. Take back Nerull’s might! Kennith’s soul shrieks in anger as the spell closes, ending the tenuous connection back from whatever hell it is in.
The Company tries to decipher Kennith’s information. The disappearance of Nerull as a curse-granting entity seems to align with the same period when the Nerullite holy symbols ceased protecting the Company in the Halls of Beoll-Dur. Diego recounts how he had thought the fire lizards would have been unable to touch him due to the protective qualities of the amulets, but the fire lizards simply ignored them.
The Company looks at the two scrolls and the circlet. Diego reaches out towards the circlet and pokes at it, causing it to reflect in the light. “Mithril, I think. Looks just like the ore we brought back from the ruins of Clan Mumatandin. Cold forged too, I’d wager. Look at the hammer marks on the inside of it,” he comments, possibly the most learned thing Diego has ever said. Al frowns and looks at it as well and is forced to agree, shone up by a human.
Adrienne has assured the others that the scrolls are not trapped, and Oaklock is brave enough to open the two scroll cases. The first contains archaic, but legible writing. “Found what was hidden. Control if you can, flee if you can’t. It will come to those both weak and strong of will.” The message closes with the same symbol as sealed the scroll case, an eye within a pentagram. The second is a clerical tract that Cedrus identifies as belonging to Boccob, the uncaring god of magic. It seems to be a powerful prayer that sets impressive wards against those with differing ethics and morals. Cedrus holds onto this scroll. Otto suggests that the scroll is designed to be read while the circlet is donned and the undead called. No one wishes to try that hypothesis out, so the circlet and the other scroll go into a small bag, for Dell or Winthrop to investigate.
The Company beds down, but after only a few hours, Al, who is on watch, hears a scrabbling, digging sound. Peering about, he sees what appear to be giant burrowing bugs climbing up out of the ground. Pale and ant-like, they appear to be termites of some sort, possibly swarming through the area. Otto, when woken, thinks it best to just move on, and the Company is rousted from sleep. A careful march up river for the rest of the night finds the Company a safe camping spot surrounded by stone cliffs. Here, the Company spends most of a day and a night resting.
Again, poor Al hears noise on his watch, but this time no giant bugs bedevil him. Instead, he sees nothing, not even something swimming in the river. The noises fade away, with no adverse effect. When the Company continues upriver, a crossing trail is found about a quarter mile away. Otto thinks the trail had traffic on it the night before, crossing it back towards where the rest of the Company camps, deep in the Crystalmists. The tracks appear to be those of dwarves, possibly a large war band. Al, low on beer, is sorely tempted to follow after them, but Otto reminds him of his duty to find and defeat the ogres mentioned by the Lord Gwaylar.
The river becomes broader and shallower, as the ledge that the Company is following becomes narrower and narrower. Otto idly walks out onto the river and, looking down, sees what must be an odd occurrence, a track in the river. Indeed, a single, large, metal-shod boot print is slowly being eroded by the flowing water. The river is blocked by several rocks at this point, so the particular spot where the print was made is nearly stagnant, but it is still surprising. Otto thinks it could easily have been made by an ogre.
Otto moves up to the front of the trail and casts around, looking for other signs. Instead of finding ogre tracks, he finds the spoor of a pack of large dogs along with tracks from two humans, likely a man and a woman. The Company chooses to camp in an almost-clearing, a wide spot where several trails come down out of the mountains and combine next to a fordable point in the river.
When the Company begins cooking, two humans, dressed in furs and warm clothes, approach and wave from the edge of the Company’s camp. “Hallooo, there! Got space for two more around that fire?” the man shouts. “We’ve got deer!” Otto and Cedrus exchange looks and then shrug, welcoming in the two.
The hunters, a married couple, explain that they live up in the mountains. They have several caves set up as redoubts in case of bad snow or sickness, but normally they simply travel from place to place, hunting for their meals, sleeping under the stars, or occasionally within an evergreen tree. They’ve been following a big stag for a couple of days now, the leader of the herd that the deer came from, but there is a wolf pack in the area, so they might get him first.
Adrienne, pleased to find some polite company for a change, is very talkative, telling the strangers about the exploits of the Company of the Blue Sun. She tells them about the fall of Farvale, the destruction of Nosnra’s steading, the flight from the burning undead pyre, the discovery of the gnomes, the destruction of the small dorf, and that now they are all headed upriver to kill ogres. The two hunters are a bit shocked by the amount of violence the Company is involved in, claiming they’ve not seen any ogres or undead ever!
After dinner, the hunter and his wife offer to play musical instruments and sing mountain songs to entertain the Company. They explain that they make up little ditties and songs while they are wandering all about the mountains to help their trading ventures when they head down into Sterich. Otto thinks this sounds like a great idea. He could learn some songs of the area and maybe sing along!
The hunter and his wife have good voices, high pitched and able to hold notes for an extended time, and they sing a series of soothing, lullaby-like songs. The Company nods along with them until they realize something is wrong. The long notes sound like howls and bursting into the camp are wolves, a whole pack of them. The wolves move quickly, too quickly, and the Company is rocked back by the slashing, snapping wolves. The Company moves to counter-attack, but the wolves are fast and often run out of distance before the Company can respond.
Oaklock and Diego slay several wolves with magical bolts and well-placed arrows before the wolf pack truly closes for a fight. The wolves tear repeatedly at the more lightly armored folk, but the warriors of the Company are stout and pin down the wolves when they do attack. Otto’s bastard sword and Al’s battle axe are covered in blood as they slay the wolves attacking them.
In the light from the cookfire and the covered glowing stones, it appears as if the singers take on a more lupine cast. Their faces elongate, becoming muzzle like, and their ears grow and swivel forward. The two wolf-headed people draw forth short swords and attack fiercely, moving as fast as the wolves do, stabbing and slashing at Oaklock, the only mage. Oaklock tries to defend himself from their attacks, but Otto, slashing the wolves in half with each of his mighty swings, quickly draws their attention as well.
“Kill them. They are abominations of nature, enchanting this wolf pack so!” shouts Cedrus, as he charges the wolf-headed male. Oaklock and Al concentrate on slaying the wolf-headed female, and between them, the wolf-woman has little chance. She quickly succumbs to their assault. Diego’s arrows seem to be inconsequential to the wolf-headed man, so he instead turns back to slaying the wolves.
Otto grins as he and the wolf-headed man face off. The wolf-headed man’s short sword is sharp and spears through Otto’s armor. “I heal. You won’t,” spits out Otto as he returns the favor. The wolf-man is sorely overmatched and quickly flees. As the wolf-man bounds away from the Company howling to summon the last of the wolf pack to flee with him, Otto shakes his bastardsword at him. “Not done yet!” he cries.
Rather than blunder through the woods after the retreating wolves, the Company heals themselves and sets a strong watch. Otto’s wounds knit and heal, and by the time the sun is up, and simple orisons have been prayed for, he is hale and hearty. The tracks, and blood, left by the wolves are clear and plain. Even though the wolves have leapt away and tried to confuse the trail, Otto is a master tracker, and no simple decoy such as this will mislead him, especially when he has the creature’s blood on his blade.
The trail leads up to a large cave in the side of the mountain, possibly one of these redoubts that the hunter and his wife had mentioned. The Company surrounds the entrance and announces their presence. Several wolves, somewhat wounded, explode from the rocky surface where they have been hiding, charging down at the Company, but Otto and Oaklock are prepared. Otto summons the spirits of the grass and trees to wind themselves around his enemies and grasp them. The wolves, running over the surface, are tightly wound and prevented from attacking or fleeing. Of course, this work, which might have saved the enthralled wolves’ animal spirits, is for naught, as Oaklock summons fire into the charging wolves. With sharply cut-off yips and squeals of pain, the wolves turn into clumps of burning fur.
A huge wolf, larger than a worg, bursts out of the cave, hopping from rock to rock, trying to avoid the writhing brush and grass before him. Diego shoots an arrow into it, but the huge wolf shrugs it off, apparently heading for a steep crevasse off to one side of the mountain. Rather than let the creature reach the crevasse. Oaklock squints to gauge the distance, and then fires off a narrow, but long, bolt of lightning, impaling the huge wolf and sending it thudding to the ground.