Post by Dead Greyhawk on Nov 8, 2007 22:43:23 GMT -5
When Perrin escorts the Company out of the Hornwood and expresses a wish to join them on their travels, they welcome him with open arms. Only Eig is less than welcoming, the coolness the Company saw coming upon him in Hocholve being displayed towards Perrin and the others with half elven heritage.
Perhaps spurred by Eig's attitude, Winthrop calls a halt once the Company clears the forest, summons his chest, and calls Perrin over. Winthrop pulls forth the suit of fine chain armor found in Durnick. Perrin's eyes grow wide at the marvelous armor spread before him. "I've never seen anything like it," exclaims the astonished warrior priest. "Look at the color, it must be made almost entirely of mithril!" Adrienne, perhaps influenced by Winthrop's generosity, hands Perrin her falchion replaced with Caladon's military pick. Even Antonus joins in with the gift giving, asking if Perrin has any facility with musical instruments. Perrin has some training, and Antonus hands him the enchanted banjo, promising to teach him the chords necessary to activate its powers. Perrin is nearly overwhelmed with kind sentiments at the welcome he receives from the Company.
That night, as the Company camps north of Gorna, Dell calls over Antonus and hands him a scroll and another wand. "Use this in case of trouble," says Dell. "It emits a paralytic beam. Don't confuse it with the other one." Antonus nods and thanks his mentor. "Items are more powerful for you than your own spells right now. Remember this in the future," says Dell, doling out his wisdom. "By the way, was your attempt at gaining a familiar successful?" Antonus opens his mouth to reply and then winces in pain as something strikes him in the stomach with great force. "I see you've got the trots," continues Dell. "I warned you about drinking the water, no? Have fun and don't forget to memorize cantrips. I've got something to do. Don't bother me any more." Dell wanders off, giving Antonus a wide berth.
As the Company rides east-southeast, Perrin informs them of the state of the Oytwood. The forces of the Duke have mostly ceded the Oytwood to humanoids and mercenaries that have encamped on its eastern edge in the Stark Mounds. While the efforts of the Company in removing the White Crow and the Bergheim Mercenaries were valuable, they were not coordinated with the Duke's men. As a result, the overwhelmed Oytwood Scouts have retreated and retreated through the wood, those who lived within leaving for points to the west. Many elves have come to their brethren in the Hornwood, telling of how their homes were lost, but Perrin has few details.
Raven grows more and more enraged, snapping at the rest of the Company as the days pass. No one can understand what the problem is. Finally, Winthrop and Diego confront him, Diego telling Raven, "I will have no more of you telling me, do this, do that, mind my own business. I am a warrior and a man. Continue to treat me like a dog at your peril!"
"Look at this!" cries Raven, shaking a pouch at the two of them. The two of them look inside the pouch and see what looks like a collection of pebbles, all of a similar shape and size. "Someone keeps putting pebbles in with my lucky stone, and they are all close enough in shape and size that I can't be certain which is which! Each day there are more!"
Winthrop struggles to keep a grin off of his face. "Have me or one of the mages or priests determine what one is enchanted," directs Winthrop. "Then you can dump the rest."
Raven looks at Winthrop like he's a fool. "Do you think I'm a fool? Of course I've done that. They are all enchanted!" rants Raven.
Dell walks by and joins the three of them. "What do you have there?" asks Dell, nonchalantly.
"Stones," grinds out Raven, through clenched teeth.
"Are they singing stones?" asks Dell, with a sharp grin. "I hear that singing stones sing stony songs sadly." A full men's chorus of voices erupt from Raven's pouch as the a dirge is sung by the stones. The stones sing loudly, able to be clearly heard even when Raven clasps the pouch shut once again. Even Raven can see that the humor in the singing stones. "Just don't drop any," says Dell, "you wouldn't want to be out of tune."
The Company plots a course through Geoff that avoids most cities and towns, wishing to depart the Duchy with little fanfare and difficulty. The green lands turn rocky and brown and then eventually into barren hills, the Stark Mounds. The soils of the Stark Mounds are poor and the weather inhospitable, but the Company is well aware that many small hamlets exist within its confines. With priests available to create food and water, the Company has no need to draw on those hamlets meager resources and chooses instead to head directly towards Karmuk's Tower.
Upon reaching the Stark Mounds, Winthrop seems somewhat distracted, starting often on his horse and spinning about, as if searching for something. "I keep hearing things, but I can't make them out. They are like voices on the wind," says Winthrop, and for many days the Company rides on high alert, fearful that some invisible creature stalks them. Spells to detect invisible creatures show naught, and none of the priests detects any great evil in the area. Perhaps Winthrop is simply confused.
Sooner than expected, Karmuk's Tower rises up out of the hills before them. It appears as before, a single tower rising up from between the hills. The Company rides until they have a clear view of it and then sets up camp, planning to make their assault at nightfall. Armor is cleaned, weapons are honed, and spells chosen for their maximum effectiveness.
As night falls, the Company begins their assault on the tower. Winthrop gathers all close to him and enchants the Company into invisibility. Recalling where the portcullis and gate are, they move decisively towards it, but are surprised when activity erupts from the tower. In the darkness, it is difficult to see what exactly is occurring, but the sounds of chains on winches and the creaking of wood moving reaches them. Much of the Company spurs their horses on to reach the tower more quickly and push the attack home. Humanoid creatures carrying what appear to be bows and spears that glow leave the tower and form into squads. With good separation, they move to engage the rapidly approaching Company.
"Heads up!" cries Winthrop, who points up into the air, unsurprised that the occupiers of Karmuk's Tower have aerial steeds. Six horse-sized creatures spring into the air. With the dark sky above, Winthrop quickly loses sight of the creatures.
The Company spreads out some and mostly continues to close. Perrin and Antonus both slow their horses to a walk, gaining separation from the others, while Eig slides off at an angle away from the Company.
Suddenly, the invisible Company becomes marked! The riders on their creatures circle far overhead, and they begin to drop glowing stones down onto the battlefield, illuminating the Company and their positions. These actions are only the beginning though, as lightning and flame lance out from two of the riders, crashing into the Company. Jasper, caught in the middle of a massive ball of fire, collapses to the ground, the crossbow he has carried since the Jarl Grugnir's glacial rift charring and smoldering. In the moments that the glowing stones illuminate them, the creatures are seen to be hippogryphs, but the riders of the hippogryphs are fell wizards and sorcerers.
Eschewing his invisibility, Eig begins casting his prayer from horsebacks. The grasses off to one side begin to writhe, creating a border of sorts, but with the field of battle not yet determined, it does not create a barrier.
The humanoids behave differently. Some jeer at the Company from a distance, trying to entice the Company into a tactical error, pehaps taking a page from Dell's book. Some of the humanoids, who appear of mottled color and aspect, almost leathery, and lack armor, stop and discharge their bows, a collection of arrows falling in and among the Company. The others charge onwards to strike the Company in two well separated groups. As they close in, it is plain that these creatures are the same animated corpses prepared by the Incabulites outside of Longspear. The arrows that rain in among them are ignored by their dead flesh, but puncture the horses and some of the unlucky Company. Throughout it all, shouts in orcish from the darkness direct the undead to attack those in the light!
Winthrop recognizes the imbalance between the Company and their enemy and opens a portal into space and time, calling allies from beyond. While he does so, the rest of the Company flounders. Raven dismounts and begins shooting into the corpses, but his arrows have little effect. The mounted Diego's arrows are equally ineffective. Alouicious is able to strike at the creatures, but they are strong and hearty. His blows have an effect, but when wounded they disengage, leaving Al fighting unwounded corpse warriors.
Eig continues to try to define a field of battle by calling upon the spirits of Oerth to grasp the undead warriors, but the warriors cut their way back out of the grasses and work around them. Even Adrienne's and Hugh's invocations of their deities is without success, the undead shrugging off their adjurations.
Dell reaches up into the air to cast some great magic at the hippogryphs, but he then begins to act oddly. His body jerks about. He claps in rhythm. His horse shuffles right and then left and then backwards. Dell's legs flail about in odd patterns and his arms wave back and forth. It seems as if he is caught in some sort of seizure, well beyond his ability to control. "Ehhhh Macarena!" screams Dell in a paroxysm.
The rest of the Company fares equally as poorly. Winthrop's summoned guardians, a group of foul troglodytes, appears and is summarily massacred by concentrated missile fire from one of the squads of unlife. Antonus, in a panic, rides forward pointing one of his wands at the hippogryphs. A great gout of snow sprays from the end of the wand, ineffectively ending tens of feet beneath the flying mounts. Magical bolts fly back at Antonus, blasting away at his wards and nearly unseating him. Al, Raven, and Diego, the latter two having switched to their swords, slowly whittle away at their opponents, but they fight back with great blows and seem impervious to the crippling wounds they are receiving.
The situation looks grim to Winthrop, and he pulls forth the gem given to him by the birdmen of the Crystalmists. If ever there was a time that they needed the help of the birdmen's goddess, now was it. Winthrop pulls forth the gemstone and smashes it on the ground, and then he lifts himself up into the air to duel with the enemy mages.
A great whirlwind erupts from the broken gemstone, reaching thirty feet up into the air and pulsating with light. It whirls up towards the hippogryphs who flee from it. Winthrop sends bolts of energy after the nearest one, hoping to sway the balance of the battle. It is a near fatal miscalculation.
With a crack of thunder, a bolt of lightning passes through the whirlwind. The pulsating light is overwhelmed by the brightness of the lightning, and the whirlwind loses cohesion. A great gust of wind blows across the battlefield, nearly bowling the combatants over, as the minion of the birdmen's goddess is destroyed.
Winthrop, now alone in the sky, is beset by no less than four hippogryphs and their riders. The air around Winthrop is a mass of talons and beaks, spears and stabbing swords. Winthrop can not get enough space or time to cast even the most simple of his magics without being wildly buffeted and beaten. As he feels his stamina failing him, he flies quickly back towards the ground, where he suffers a devastating blow to his back. Winthrop collapses to the ground in a heap, barely breathing.
Hugh and Adrienne, faced with closing squads of unlife and the Company spread out over a large field of battle, rush to try to aid their beleaguered comrades. The hippogryphs and their riders become overconfident, and they dip down closer to the ground, casting arrows and magical bolts into the scrambling Company. Diego takes full advantage of their lack of foresight, pouring four arrows into one of the hippogryphs, slaying it. Its rider, unfortunately, does not plummet to the ground, landing in a heap, but instead flies up into the night sky, away from the battle. "Come on!" shouts Diego in frustration. "We're out matched."
Raven agrees. "Split up! Meet at the blacksmith's," shouts Raven, hoping that their opponents will not understand. As he does so, a sheet of flame cuts in a curve around Dell, Winthrop, and Jasper, protecting them from the unlife.
"Get them up quick," says Antonus, a scroll clenched in one hand and sweat pouring from his brow. "This is far beyond me, and I don't know how long I can maintain it." Indeed, parts of the wall are extinguished as the spell casters hovering high above swoop down to dispel the protective magic. Hand axes, presumably thrown through the obscuring flames, fly through the air as the Company attempts to disengage from battle. Raven and Hugh rush forward while Dell pogos back away from the fire, his horse trotting away with Adrienne attempting to follow. Winthrop and Jasper are scooped up, and the Company flees into the night in small groups, trying to avoid further conflict.
Perhaps spurred by Eig's attitude, Winthrop calls a halt once the Company clears the forest, summons his chest, and calls Perrin over. Winthrop pulls forth the suit of fine chain armor found in Durnick. Perrin's eyes grow wide at the marvelous armor spread before him. "I've never seen anything like it," exclaims the astonished warrior priest. "Look at the color, it must be made almost entirely of mithril!" Adrienne, perhaps influenced by Winthrop's generosity, hands Perrin her falchion replaced with Caladon's military pick. Even Antonus joins in with the gift giving, asking if Perrin has any facility with musical instruments. Perrin has some training, and Antonus hands him the enchanted banjo, promising to teach him the chords necessary to activate its powers. Perrin is nearly overwhelmed with kind sentiments at the welcome he receives from the Company.
That night, as the Company camps north of Gorna, Dell calls over Antonus and hands him a scroll and another wand. "Use this in case of trouble," says Dell. "It emits a paralytic beam. Don't confuse it with the other one." Antonus nods and thanks his mentor. "Items are more powerful for you than your own spells right now. Remember this in the future," says Dell, doling out his wisdom. "By the way, was your attempt at gaining a familiar successful?" Antonus opens his mouth to reply and then winces in pain as something strikes him in the stomach with great force. "I see you've got the trots," continues Dell. "I warned you about drinking the water, no? Have fun and don't forget to memorize cantrips. I've got something to do. Don't bother me any more." Dell wanders off, giving Antonus a wide berth.
As the Company rides east-southeast, Perrin informs them of the state of the Oytwood. The forces of the Duke have mostly ceded the Oytwood to humanoids and mercenaries that have encamped on its eastern edge in the Stark Mounds. While the efforts of the Company in removing the White Crow and the Bergheim Mercenaries were valuable, they were not coordinated with the Duke's men. As a result, the overwhelmed Oytwood Scouts have retreated and retreated through the wood, those who lived within leaving for points to the west. Many elves have come to their brethren in the Hornwood, telling of how their homes were lost, but Perrin has few details.
Raven grows more and more enraged, snapping at the rest of the Company as the days pass. No one can understand what the problem is. Finally, Winthrop and Diego confront him, Diego telling Raven, "I will have no more of you telling me, do this, do that, mind my own business. I am a warrior and a man. Continue to treat me like a dog at your peril!"
"Look at this!" cries Raven, shaking a pouch at the two of them. The two of them look inside the pouch and see what looks like a collection of pebbles, all of a similar shape and size. "Someone keeps putting pebbles in with my lucky stone, and they are all close enough in shape and size that I can't be certain which is which! Each day there are more!"
Winthrop struggles to keep a grin off of his face. "Have me or one of the mages or priests determine what one is enchanted," directs Winthrop. "Then you can dump the rest."
Raven looks at Winthrop like he's a fool. "Do you think I'm a fool? Of course I've done that. They are all enchanted!" rants Raven.
Dell walks by and joins the three of them. "What do you have there?" asks Dell, nonchalantly.
"Stones," grinds out Raven, through clenched teeth.
"Are they singing stones?" asks Dell, with a sharp grin. "I hear that singing stones sing stony songs sadly." A full men's chorus of voices erupt from Raven's pouch as the a dirge is sung by the stones. The stones sing loudly, able to be clearly heard even when Raven clasps the pouch shut once again. Even Raven can see that the humor in the singing stones. "Just don't drop any," says Dell, "you wouldn't want to be out of tune."
The Company plots a course through Geoff that avoids most cities and towns, wishing to depart the Duchy with little fanfare and difficulty. The green lands turn rocky and brown and then eventually into barren hills, the Stark Mounds. The soils of the Stark Mounds are poor and the weather inhospitable, but the Company is well aware that many small hamlets exist within its confines. With priests available to create food and water, the Company has no need to draw on those hamlets meager resources and chooses instead to head directly towards Karmuk's Tower.
Upon reaching the Stark Mounds, Winthrop seems somewhat distracted, starting often on his horse and spinning about, as if searching for something. "I keep hearing things, but I can't make them out. They are like voices on the wind," says Winthrop, and for many days the Company rides on high alert, fearful that some invisible creature stalks them. Spells to detect invisible creatures show naught, and none of the priests detects any great evil in the area. Perhaps Winthrop is simply confused.
Sooner than expected, Karmuk's Tower rises up out of the hills before them. It appears as before, a single tower rising up from between the hills. The Company rides until they have a clear view of it and then sets up camp, planning to make their assault at nightfall. Armor is cleaned, weapons are honed, and spells chosen for their maximum effectiveness.
As night falls, the Company begins their assault on the tower. Winthrop gathers all close to him and enchants the Company into invisibility. Recalling where the portcullis and gate are, they move decisively towards it, but are surprised when activity erupts from the tower. In the darkness, it is difficult to see what exactly is occurring, but the sounds of chains on winches and the creaking of wood moving reaches them. Much of the Company spurs their horses on to reach the tower more quickly and push the attack home. Humanoid creatures carrying what appear to be bows and spears that glow leave the tower and form into squads. With good separation, they move to engage the rapidly approaching Company.
"Heads up!" cries Winthrop, who points up into the air, unsurprised that the occupiers of Karmuk's Tower have aerial steeds. Six horse-sized creatures spring into the air. With the dark sky above, Winthrop quickly loses sight of the creatures.
The Company spreads out some and mostly continues to close. Perrin and Antonus both slow their horses to a walk, gaining separation from the others, while Eig slides off at an angle away from the Company.
Suddenly, the invisible Company becomes marked! The riders on their creatures circle far overhead, and they begin to drop glowing stones down onto the battlefield, illuminating the Company and their positions. These actions are only the beginning though, as lightning and flame lance out from two of the riders, crashing into the Company. Jasper, caught in the middle of a massive ball of fire, collapses to the ground, the crossbow he has carried since the Jarl Grugnir's glacial rift charring and smoldering. In the moments that the glowing stones illuminate them, the creatures are seen to be hippogryphs, but the riders of the hippogryphs are fell wizards and sorcerers.
Eschewing his invisibility, Eig begins casting his prayer from horsebacks. The grasses off to one side begin to writhe, creating a border of sorts, but with the field of battle not yet determined, it does not create a barrier.
The humanoids behave differently. Some jeer at the Company from a distance, trying to entice the Company into a tactical error, pehaps taking a page from Dell's book. Some of the humanoids, who appear of mottled color and aspect, almost leathery, and lack armor, stop and discharge their bows, a collection of arrows falling in and among the Company. The others charge onwards to strike the Company in two well separated groups. As they close in, it is plain that these creatures are the same animated corpses prepared by the Incabulites outside of Longspear. The arrows that rain in among them are ignored by their dead flesh, but puncture the horses and some of the unlucky Company. Throughout it all, shouts in orcish from the darkness direct the undead to attack those in the light!
Winthrop recognizes the imbalance between the Company and their enemy and opens a portal into space and time, calling allies from beyond. While he does so, the rest of the Company flounders. Raven dismounts and begins shooting into the corpses, but his arrows have little effect. The mounted Diego's arrows are equally ineffective. Alouicious is able to strike at the creatures, but they are strong and hearty. His blows have an effect, but when wounded they disengage, leaving Al fighting unwounded corpse warriors.
Eig continues to try to define a field of battle by calling upon the spirits of Oerth to grasp the undead warriors, but the warriors cut their way back out of the grasses and work around them. Even Adrienne's and Hugh's invocations of their deities is without success, the undead shrugging off their adjurations.
Dell reaches up into the air to cast some great magic at the hippogryphs, but he then begins to act oddly. His body jerks about. He claps in rhythm. His horse shuffles right and then left and then backwards. Dell's legs flail about in odd patterns and his arms wave back and forth. It seems as if he is caught in some sort of seizure, well beyond his ability to control. "Ehhhh Macarena!" screams Dell in a paroxysm.
The rest of the Company fares equally as poorly. Winthrop's summoned guardians, a group of foul troglodytes, appears and is summarily massacred by concentrated missile fire from one of the squads of unlife. Antonus, in a panic, rides forward pointing one of his wands at the hippogryphs. A great gout of snow sprays from the end of the wand, ineffectively ending tens of feet beneath the flying mounts. Magical bolts fly back at Antonus, blasting away at his wards and nearly unseating him. Al, Raven, and Diego, the latter two having switched to their swords, slowly whittle away at their opponents, but they fight back with great blows and seem impervious to the crippling wounds they are receiving.
The situation looks grim to Winthrop, and he pulls forth the gem given to him by the birdmen of the Crystalmists. If ever there was a time that they needed the help of the birdmen's goddess, now was it. Winthrop pulls forth the gemstone and smashes it on the ground, and then he lifts himself up into the air to duel with the enemy mages.
A great whirlwind erupts from the broken gemstone, reaching thirty feet up into the air and pulsating with light. It whirls up towards the hippogryphs who flee from it. Winthrop sends bolts of energy after the nearest one, hoping to sway the balance of the battle. It is a near fatal miscalculation.
With a crack of thunder, a bolt of lightning passes through the whirlwind. The pulsating light is overwhelmed by the brightness of the lightning, and the whirlwind loses cohesion. A great gust of wind blows across the battlefield, nearly bowling the combatants over, as the minion of the birdmen's goddess is destroyed.
Winthrop, now alone in the sky, is beset by no less than four hippogryphs and their riders. The air around Winthrop is a mass of talons and beaks, spears and stabbing swords. Winthrop can not get enough space or time to cast even the most simple of his magics without being wildly buffeted and beaten. As he feels his stamina failing him, he flies quickly back towards the ground, where he suffers a devastating blow to his back. Winthrop collapses to the ground in a heap, barely breathing.
Hugh and Adrienne, faced with closing squads of unlife and the Company spread out over a large field of battle, rush to try to aid their beleaguered comrades. The hippogryphs and their riders become overconfident, and they dip down closer to the ground, casting arrows and magical bolts into the scrambling Company. Diego takes full advantage of their lack of foresight, pouring four arrows into one of the hippogryphs, slaying it. Its rider, unfortunately, does not plummet to the ground, landing in a heap, but instead flies up into the night sky, away from the battle. "Come on!" shouts Diego in frustration. "We're out matched."
Raven agrees. "Split up! Meet at the blacksmith's," shouts Raven, hoping that their opponents will not understand. As he does so, a sheet of flame cuts in a curve around Dell, Winthrop, and Jasper, protecting them from the unlife.
"Get them up quick," says Antonus, a scroll clenched in one hand and sweat pouring from his brow. "This is far beyond me, and I don't know how long I can maintain it." Indeed, parts of the wall are extinguished as the spell casters hovering high above swoop down to dispel the protective magic. Hand axes, presumably thrown through the obscuring flames, fly through the air as the Company attempts to disengage from battle. Raven and Hugh rush forward while Dell pogos back away from the fire, his horse trotting away with Adrienne attempting to follow. Winthrop and Jasper are scooped up, and the Company flees into the night in small groups, trying to avoid further conflict.
